The 6 tools I used to drive my business forward in 2015

2015 is the year we decided to really get serious about systems and processes in Amsterdam Mamas. As a self-funded, non-profit, volunteer run organisation we knew that our operational procedures were letting us down and causing issues for our volunteers. We needed to get everything into a place where the people who needed it could find it. We also needed to cut down on the time volunteers were spending on small admin tasks that could be efficiently outsourced to technology.

These are the online tools which have helped us streamline the organisation in 2015 and which we will continue to invest in throughout 2016.  

Zapier

All hail automation! 

Those niggly, little admin tasks that take up your precious time? The transfer of data between different online tools? All taken care of with Zapier.

We use it to move data between our bookkeeping system and our CRM system so we have had to invest in a paid package. No problem! That just means we pack in even more awesome zaps. Zapier has made automating data transfer and task creation so much easier. It has been worth the investment for the “star in gmail, create task in asana feature” alone, but it does so much more for us than that.

** Zapier has free and paid options. They also offer non-profits discounts.

ConvertKit

This one breaks my entrepreneurial heart just a little bit because I am a devoted MailChimp fan. I have a t-shirt and everything (no, I really do). The problem was that we had just started to encounter the pricier end of MailChimp. As we don't monetise most of our lists, this was becoming a problem. Speaking of lists, we were running many lists, paying for duplicate subscribers and struggling a bit with advanced features. When I came across ConvertKit I could immediately see the potential. Then I saw a deal which made trialing ConvertKit a no-brainer for a self-funded, non-profit organisation, and I jumped.

At the time of writing, we are concurrently running MailChimp and ConvertKit to ensure a smooth transition between systems. It also allows us to work out solutions for any features we miss. So far, other than missing a way to generate multi-newsletter sign-up forms and link click reports the transition has been phenomenally smooth and our open rates are up by 10-20% over the same content in MailChimp. 

So MailChimp, I love you but, for 2016 we’re going with ConvertKit.

** Convertkit is a paid product.**

Canva

I use Canva most days, but where it has revoluntionised things for our organisation is on social media. It has given us the ability to create brand consistent imagery with text overlays which used to only be available with photoshop. This meant that it was both out of our financial reach and on-call skillset. Canva has made a world of difference to the visual presence we create on social media for our followers. 

The introduction of Canva for Work this year took the product to the next level. It gave us everything we were loving, but  with the convenience of having all our branding elements in the where we needed them when we needed them. No more, slightly the wrong shade of red. We are visually on brand every.single.time.

** Canva has free and paid options.**

typeform

Firstly, so pretty! I initially came across typeform though through their conversion stats. With claims to out-perform your average survey software, I’ll admit, the sales pitch sucked me in.  And I am so grateful that it did. typeform is not only beautiful to use and intuitive, but people tell us that they love using it. Score! We’re running all internal and external forms through typeform now and have upgraded to PRO for more functionality.

** typeform has free and paid options. They also offer non-profits discounts.**

Calendly

After one too many double bookings in my calendar, I gave up and installed Calendly. It’s like having my own ultra-efficient PA built into gmail. Calendly has made it so much easier for my clients and my team to get a place in my diary. It has also stopped the endless chains of e-mails as we try to work out everyone’s availability. I didn’t hesitate to upgrade to the paid version so that I could offer more than one type of appointment slot. In time saved, it has been worth every cent.

** Calendly has free and paid options.**

asana

I can give up many things, but you will have to pry my asana account from my cold dead hands. Of every tool on this list, this is the one that I would find it hardest to replace. In the three years that we have been using asana for our team, it has morphed from us using it as a simple to-do task list to become the central nervous system of our organization.

Things that the team is tired of hearing me say:

“If it’s not on asana, it’s not happening”

“Everything you do has a process, put that process into asana then just keep doing it over and over and over again.”

“Use asana! I love it!”

“Have you checked for that on asana?”

The game changer for us in using asana, as an organization, was to create THE HUB, which is a standalone repository of everything we need to run the organization from systems to processes, branding elements to a who’s who. It has made getting everything out of people’s memories and into a place where others can find it, so much easier.

If you say yes to one new tool next year, make it asana.

** asana has free and paid options.**

Staying Curious

There has been a trend recently in the online entrepreneurial world to encourage people to "follow their passion". To seek their purpose through their work and fulfill it passionately, determinedly; hopefully, but not always, while making money.

LinkedIn even has a tag for it "passionate about work".

This isn't a new phenomenon. For years, we've been hearing people tell us to "love what you do and you'll never work another day in your life".

I have always been uncomfortable with that concept. 

There are things I am passionate about, my husband, my son, my causes, books, great food, good wine. I just don't consider my work to be in that category. On a good day, it can make my heart race, give me a huge adrenaline rush and make me grateful that I stepped out of my comfort zone to do it. But I don't think that I am "passionate" about my work in the same way. 

This has bothered me, like the new mother myth that all new mothers fall instantly and deeply in love with their babies. Some do and some don't. For me, holding my son for the first time, I was assailed with an emotional tsunami of awe, relief, exhaustion and panic as I tried to work out how to stop him crying. There definitely weren't any perfect pink fluffy clouds of new mother bliss then, or for some time afterwards. 

And so it is with business, I am certain that there are those who burn with an all-consuming passion for what they do, who have discovered their life's purpose in their career. But what about those of us who don't or who haven't? What are we left with? Are we just not trying hard enough? Maybe we are simply misguided, and haven't worked hard enough to discover our "passion" yet?

I was listening to an interview with author Elizabeth Gilbert recently. During the interview, she said something so insightful that I had to stop what I was doing and pay attention. 

She said, 

Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, "Hey, that's kind of interesting…"

And I realised, right then, that it is not passion that I have or that I even should be pursuing in my work. It's curiosity.

It's curiosity that drives me forward, that keeps me reaching for the next goal and the next phase. I'm curious. I want to know what happens in the next chapter. I like to keep my eyes wide open for the half hidden opportunity, the sly piece of information, the next breadcrumb on the trail. 

I want to stay curious. 

I did not dream, as a child, of running a non-profit parenting community or guiding others in their business growth. I do not consider these things to be my passion. They are, though, the things which I remain intensely curious about, that I hunger to know more about and that I desire to share with others. 

Steve Jobs popularised the incentive to "Stay hungry, stay foolish".

And he was right. We need drive and we need a healthy reality check every now and then, but I believe that we also need to stay curious because when our curiosity dies that path, for us, has ended. We become merely the traveller, no longer the explorer. 

Stay hungry, stay foolish, stay curious.

P.S. If you would like to know what I really wanted to be when I grew up then you can find out on the Amsterdam Mamas "Meet the Team" Podcast. Subscribe oniTunes or SoundCloud to make sure you never miss an episode.

What touching my toes taught me about my business and life

Last year I learned to touch my toes.

While this may not seem to be an accomplishment for many people, for me it was.

I have never been lithe, slim or flexible. I was born from Irish farming stock, sturdy against the hardships of life.

I hated the gym, I hated running and no matter how hard I tried, I could never bend down and touch my toes. I accepted that, “touch my toes? No, I’m not built to do that!”. Which is how expectations become facts.

To me it was a fact, it was an accepted truth and, as it turns out, it was a lie.

A difficult pregnancy and an uncomfortable birth finally led me to Pilates. I was so beaten and battered that I was willing to try anything to put my body back together again. I trained, every week, and over time I began to heal the gap between my brain and my body.

After 18 months of training, and stretching I took a deep breath, bent down and touched my toes. It was an achievement for me akin to winning an Olympic medal.

Which is a good enough story, but it is what I learned six months after which has been much more important.

In the six months after I first touched my toes, my life imploded. I faced personal and professional challenges which I believed to be insurmountable. I drifted, I burnt out, I became lost. My friendships suffered and my business teetered on the edge.

I couldn’t touch my toes anymore. This is not a metaphor, I was unable to bend down and touch my toes. I was still training, still trying but my body was holding the stress from my head and my heart. It would not, could not bend anymore.

During a training session, my Pilates Instructor asked me to touch my toes. I gave an eye roll and prepared for disappointment. As I tried and failed, she said to me “do it again. But this time, instead of experiencing it as pain, ask yourself is it pain or is it your body stretching?”

I bent down again. I reached my “pain-point”, I paused, I breathed, I bent further.

I did not touch my toes.

This isn’t a fairytale.

But I did get closer than I had in recent weeks to touching my toes.

In the days afterward, I reflected on this. I felt that there was a bigger message in there than just touching my toes. I experimented with exchanging the word pain for fear. When I reached my fear-point in life, or in business, was it fear or was I preparing to stretch?

Pain and fear are important in life. They are a warning signal. They are worthy of our attention. What they are not, is a stop-sign. And so often we get this wrong. We think that pain and fear mean that we should stop. When we feel fear of taking the next steps or when we feel pain for a plan gone wrong it can stop us in our tracks. We say “I feel this, so it must be telling me to stop. I’m listening”. Which is all well and good, as long as you’re listening to the right message.

I want you to think of the thing which is causing you pain or fear in your life or your business right now. The thing which is stopping you in your tracks and preventing you from moving forward. That point which you think that you cannot get past. And I want you to ask yourself this question,

“is this my stopping point or my stretching point?”

And it can be both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It may be that you have reached your stop-point in the direction you were heading. Which means that you now have the space to stretch in an alternative direction. But you need to pay careful attention to the message you are giving yourself, is it the right one?

As for me, I’m stretching, I’m doing the work, I’m going to touch my toes.