Gift biz unwrapped episode 38.
That ability to have instant access to all of your information
is just that's when the penny drops and you go,
I get this.
This is so valuable.
Hi, this Is John Lee,
Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,
and you're listening to gifted biz unwrapped,
and now it's time to light It up.
Welcome to gift biz,
unwrapped your source for industry specific insights and advice to develop
and grow your business.
And now here's your host,
Sue Monheit.
Hi there.
I'm Sue and welcome to the gift biz unwrapped podcast.
Whether you own a brick and mortar shop sell online or
are just getting started,
you'll discover a new insight to gain traction and to grow
your business.
And today I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have Steve
Dotto. Joining us.
Steve is Canada's most respected geek his word,
not mine for over 20 years as host and executive producer
of Datto tech,
a nationally syndicated TV show.
Steve has entertained and educated millions of Canadians on all aspects
of technology.
After 20 years in traditional broadcast,
Steve reinvented himself learning the world of social media,
online community building and internet marketing.
As he built his YouTube channel into his new career.
YouTube is Steve's new network of choice,
where he serves two communities,
a traditional how to and productivity stream,
which follows his TV tradition and a new focus on learning
the keys to growing and ultimately monetizing a YouTube channel.
Thank you so much,
Steve, for joining us and welcome to the show.
Thank you,
Sue. Is there anything you would like to add?
No, it sounded good.
Well, before we get started,
I have a message for our gift biz listeners.
I am specifically making this show go live this week.
And for those of you who are listening later than the
week, it goes live.
This is the week between Christmas and new year's 2015.
And my goal for all of you is to learn a
new way of doing things,
learn how to be more productive in your businesses for the
next year.
But if you're hearing this later,
it is never too late to start being more productive and
learning how to do things more efficiently so that we can
all grow our businesses faster.
And that's the reason I have Steven in this specific week,
Steve, as our listeners know,
we like to align the conversation around the life of a
motivational candle.
The light shines on you while you share your stories and
experiences. So are you ready to light this up?
Let's do that.
What color is a motivational candle that you would be attracted?
I'd say a green.
Ooh, I'm going to make you be more specific.
What shade of green,
Darker green hunter green forest screen,
somewhere in that Range.
Gotcha. And why do you choose that color?
It's restful to me,
restful and peaceful.
I need a little calm in my life occasionally.
And what would the quote be that would motivate you in
that Don your candle Use a tagline in all of my
videos and it's from the princess bride.
And I think a lot of people think it's just a
funny line and a throwaway line.
It's actually a lot of thought behind it.
It's a,
do you know the princess bride?
You've never seen the princess Bride,
never seen the princess bride.
We could end This interview right now,
go and watch it I'm back and let's do it at
that point there.
But why don't You give us a two liner?
Because there could be other listeners who also need to get
on the same plane.
There's a character called miracle.
Max is played by Billy crystal and as the hero who
has just died,
his come to him,
miracle. Max brings her back to life he's alive,
but he has no body functions whatsoever.
He can't walk.
You can barely talk.
He can't move his arms.
And he and his two Amigos are heading off to try
and rescue the damsel in distress.
As they're taking him away in a wheelbarrow to go and
attack, I heavily fortified castle miracle.
Max waves to them with this wave design was have fun
storming the castle.
Oh, that's why you say that it's miracle max.
To me,
the meaning is regardless of what you're facing,
go into the next venture with an open mind,
open heart and belief that you're going to succeed even in
the face of insurmountable odds.
So how fun Sloman the castle.
So it's just like,
you know,
yes, it's the challenges we face every day,
but you know,
face them with,
with the little joy in your heart and the belief in
success and know probably it'll probably work out better than you
might've anticipated.
Absolutely agree with you.
And you know,
you hear so many stories about people who are successful today
and they have overcome really,
really difficult challenges,
but doing it with a positive nature and an open heart
and the belief that you can overcome.
I mean,
in some cases,
what options do you have?
Exactly. All right.
Have fun storming the castle I'm with ya.
Well, I want to just dive right in Steve to all
of this Evernote stuff.
Again, gift biz listeners,
the topic that Steve talks about a lot.
Now, all of his YouTube videos,
you can find just a wealth of information and we'll follow
that up at the end of this interview.
But I specifically wanted to talk about Evernote for our businesses
and Steve,
for those people who may not know or have ever heard
of Evernote.
Can you give us a little description overall of what it
entails? Evernote is a digital notebook that runs on all of
your devices.
It's actually based in the cloud.
Most of it.
So you would use it on your computer,
on your smartphone,
on your tablet,
and it allows you to take notes,
but the taking of notes is such a small part of
what Evernote does.
It really could be kind of because of how it works
in the fact that you can do as well as,
you know,
type in a note or dictate a note or dry in
a, you know,
using your tablet,
you know,
do an illustration or hand,
write a note.
You can also use it to collect all sorts of different
little bits of information from the web.
It has a tool called the web clipper that allows you
to clip images or websites or texts from the web,
and basically allows you to collate all this information together and
store it in one place.
And it's got an incredibly powerful search engine attached to it.
So once you've got that information,
all in one place,
you can find it again.
I call it my digital brain people that,
you know,
there's a lot of different ways,
actually, probably the best way to look at it is it's
your digital bank account.
Over time,
you invest in it by capturing little bits of information.
For example,
I've got a note that has all of Shannon's sizes on
it. That's my partner.
If you're a husband or a partner and you're out shopping
for your significant other,
usually it's at the last moment,
you're usually a little bit desperate.
And can you always remember what size the ring is or
what size dress she wears or what her favorite fragrances,
you should really be able to remember those things,
but we can't always.
So having those sorts of things in a note,
we have so much access now because our mobile devices through
the cloud,
it means that all of the information that we stored,
we have access to add all the time,
wherever we are.
And whenever we are.
So with Evernote,
I just look at it as I put everything into it,
I just pour all of the little bits of things that
I need might need someday,
but don't bother remembering.
And can't remember,
and I have it all accessible.
I've got a note with my license plate number on it.
Why? Because whenever I'm checking into a place and they say,
what's your license plate number?
I can never remember it.
So there it is in a note and You probably have
your phone in your hand versus your wallet in your pocket.
Yeah. Your phone in your hand.
You know what else I take pictures of things like the
furnace filter and the water filter in my house because when
you're shopping and you bought cheese,
we need a new furnace filter.
I'll look,
there's a hardware store.
What's the size of our furnace filter again?
Is it 22 inches?
Is it 2,400?
You know,
you take a picture of it,
you have it there,
it's available to you.
And that's just kind of the low-hanging fruit.
I use it to take notes in meetings,
compose all of my blog posts and my newsletters in it.
So I have access to them and I copy it and
move the information into other areas,
but it's always there when I need it.
And where I,
Okay. So we talked a little bit about the personal usage,
and now you're talking about the business use.
So you actually compose all of your blog articles in Evernote,
actually inside the app.
So that then your stint at all there forever,
really? And then you move it over.
So then you don't almost have to back up a WordPress
site. You asked me for my bio for this talk today,
had it at my fingertips in seconds.
I wasn't looking at my computer through files and folders to
find a bio.
I went into Evernote.
I typed in Steve's bio and there was three or four
documents that I've composed different bios for different events for.
And I just copied one and incentive it to you.
All right.
So that answers my next question,
really, which is why use Evernote instead of using all of
these other apps that are available,
you know,
you've got apps that you can use for your travel plans,
all different types of information,
and you put absolutely everything in Evernote.
I Do,
but best of breed apps for other things are Evernote kind
of acts as a baseline.
And it works with other apps.
For example,
I still use passbook for my tickets.
I could have the ticket in Evernote and I do typically
have the receipt for the ticket and the ticket available,
but it's more convenient to have that ultimately in a tool
like passport or a ticket manager,
you could use Evernote to manage your tasks and calendars if
you want,
but you still want to have a task manager and a
calendar manager that kind of sinks to and works with Evernote.
So where you've got vertical tasks of that sort.
And there's a best of breed app that you want to
use. You use that app,
but you can still be using Evernote as a kind of
collection central point is that shoe box that you'd dump everything
into, but it's a magical shoe box because you can just
wave a wand over it and pull whatever you need out
of it when you Need it.
So pass book,
and let's say,
I use,
for example,
Google calendar,
all of that will sync into Evernote For the most part.
Yeah. Well,
Google calendar,
you can,
if you want to,
you can create some linkages to sync.
Far more relevant is the ability to be able to sync
your task manager,
which people would use a,
to do list or a Trello or an a sauna that's
sort of a tool it's far more relevant to want to
be able to sync that particular tool.
Typically speaking,
Evernote's where things come and you pull them together.
And then once they're in Evernote,
you can distribute them to wherever you need them at a
later time.
And there is some sinking that can happen.
One of the most important integrations you have in the Evernote
premium versions,
once you start paying for it is it has its own
email address.
So when people send you an email that you want to
save for the future,
rather than trying to save it within email software,
which makes it very difficult to find it because email is
not built for search,
primarily, I just forward all of those email messages into Evernote.
So if I get a receipt or an invoice or a
contract, rather than filing them somewhere on my computer,
I will email those into Evernote.
And then in Evernote,
I at T you can attach tags or you can move
them into notebooks,
or you can just find them by search,
but then I've got them where I expect to find them,
Right? So some of this is just a learning in terms
of how to use it,
but virtually the overall umbrella is this is a great place
and a great resource to capture every piece of information.
For the most part,
you know,
we just talked about tasks and all that,
but every piece of information that you are looking for on
the fly,
and I'm,
I'm thinking of a lot of our listeners right now,
they may own gift shops.
They may be out and about and have an idea generated
just because they see something it's so easy.
Confirm this for me,
Steve, that you just can take a picture,
right from your phone stored in Evernote,
maybe with a note attached,
reminding you why you were looking at that picture.
So virtually anywhere you are,
you can capture information,
bring it into Evernote so that you can easily access it.
Anytime you need to,
you don't have to wait to get back to the office
to make sure to put it in some folder that you're
storing things in.
Yeah, you don't have to remember.
So for example,
I use it all the time to research the videos that
I'm doing for my channel.
So if I see a,
a, a blog post or something like that has a product
that I think,
oh, that's a good angle.
Or that's something that might be interesting for me to record
later. I don't think twice,
I don't try and bookmark it and try and find it
that way.
And I don't write down a note.
I just use a tool called the Evernote web clipper,
which I click on.
And then it allows me to capture the screen or the
information from the screen and a variety of different ways.
And it automatically syncs it to my Evernote account.
I can add some tags saying demo or a demo ideas.
So that later on,
when I need context,
I'm searching for demo ideas.
I can bring up all the ones that I thought were
demo ideas,
good demo ideas.
So that's one way that you can collect information.
And another way is,
as you mentioned,
the camera,
which is one of the most powerful ways.
If you're sitting in a meeting and somebody is making notes
on the whiteboard,
rather than making notes,
take a picture of the whiteboard,
Evernote will actually go through it.
It'll parse the text out and allow you to search on
the text later it'll to convert the text or the graphic
into searchable text over time.
So you can also do that.
If you write handwritten notes down in a notebook,
you can take a picture of the notebook notes and you
can later on search on them.
If you're out for a fantastic dinner with friends and they
order a bottle of wine that you say,
this is so good,
but you never remember the name of the bottle of wine,
take a picture of the wine label.
And then next time your liquor store,
you just look at the picture of the wine label in
order to find the bottle of wine that you want to
buy. It's an information vacuum.
There's so many different ways to pull information into it.
But the bottom line is you have to get into the
habit of putting the information there and trusting that it's there.
That's why I call it a digital bank account is you
keep investing in it by putting more and more content in
it. And then you reap the benefits when you make a
withdrawal. And typically speaking,
it's not when you use the information for yourself,
but when you use it for others,
when you're sitting down at a coffee with a friend and
you've just clipped an article about a new type of mortgage
that you've just read about our new floor planning thing,
they will go to the retail market that they're talking about
doing which w which saves a lot of money.
And you say,
oh, I was just reading an article on that.
And then you go here,
let me get it for you.
And then you just open your phone and you send it
to them instantly,
that ability to have instant access to all of your information
is just,
that's when the penny drops and you go,
oh, I get this.
This is so valuable.
That's fabulous.
I'm going to bring up a couple of other instances where
I could see that you could use this.
Then I'm going to have a question for you,
Steve. A couple of other examples I can see is a
lot of us go out to gift shows because we're looking
for more product either to have in our retail shops,
or we're looking for materials that we're using for our crafts.
So if you're out at shows,
you could be speaking with an owner of a business whose
product you might want to be starting to use.
So you can not only capture information that way,
but also how they're using the product that when you get
back and you're in your craft room,
or you're in your studio,
you would have pictures of actually how those things work.
Sure. Yeah.
You can capture that information by photo.
You could make it an audio note.
You could make it like a dictation type note,
or you can actually have it converted to text.
You can actually narrate that to the information and have it
convert to text.
So there's all sorts of different ways that you can capture
that information while you're in there.
I didn't know that that is really super another option.
Many of you listeners also I know,
are in the gift basket business,
and you might be going to some of these conventions many
times at conventions of all sorts,
they'll have competitions.
I was just at the America's baking and sweet show.
And I did a scope about all of these beautiful cakes
and all of the designs.
You can take pictures of either gift baskets that are in
competition or cakes as I was just talking about.
And again,
have those for your own creative inspiration.
So you can just see that applications are really limited to
what you can think of to do.
And one of the keys is you might remember where you
were when you saw something,
but you might not have named it properly,
or you might have trouble finding of the photo.
You know,
especially if you have thousands and thousands of photos,
one of the very cool things that Evernote does patient services.
So it actually geotags images when you capture them.
So if you were at a trade show in Atlanta and
you had taken a picture of a gift basket,
but you can't find it for some reason,
all you have to do is ask Evernote to search and
it'll bring up an Atlas and just click on Atlanta and
then say all the notes that I created in Atlanta.
And there will be all a collection of the notes that
you created there.
I use it all the time when I'm out having dinner.
When I'm doing speaking engagements.
When I have dinner in a restaurant,
I don't bother taking the receipt with me.
I take a picture of the receipt right there,
which means I can then forward that digital version to my
accountant for all of my expenses,
but at the end of the trip as well,
I just click on the city and it collects all of
the different notes that I created in that city,
which are mainly receipts.
And then I can quickly assemble my expense report.
It's phenomenal.
Now does it timestamp as well?
Yes. Time and time and location.
Yep. Wow.
And then when we're talking about,
okay, thousands,
let's say you have thousands of notes.
It all revolves around folders,
but more importantly task.
Actually the hierarchy is very flat.
People who are used to creating a structure on their computer
are worried about folders and names and nested folders within folders.
So you can navigate through with your eyes to find what
you're looking for.
Evernote has an incredibly flat structure.
The basic way you find things is through just search and
you just type in the word or a phrase that you're
looking for.
And it'll bring up the related notes.
Most of the time,
it'll bring up four or five notes that you can see,
and you can immediately find the note you're looking for,
for broader searches or if you need context.
So for example,
if I was looking for something,
which was an idea,
a demo,
but I might have a task and to do list app,
I might have a mobility app.
I might have things that don't necessarily all have the same
verbiage attached.
Then you use the tags to create context and you create
a series of tags that allow you to search then by
context. And then within that structure,
you have notebooks or stacks of notebooks.
If you want to add some physical structure,
but lots of people use Evernote very successfully without adding very
much physical structure at talk,
just the straight searching by text,
and then adding context through tags does almost everything you need.
That's fabulous.
And I hope all of you are starting to get a
feel for all that you can do with Evernote and all
that you can capture.
And it might start to sound confusing.
And that certainly not what we're trying to do here.
It's actually very simple,
but we're just to give an overall feel for all the
different types of things that you can do with Evernote.
So I've got a little quick start guide that might help
people. If they are interested,
I'll send you the link and you can include it in
the notes if you'd like,
but it's a 30 minute quick start guide that walks people
through, setting up their account in the first place.
And I give them a starter set of notes,
which gives them an idea of what they can and can't
do with it.
A lot of people get stuck with paralysis by over analysis.
Do you even know what I mean?
They start to plan too far in advance,
what they're going to do rather than just use it.
So this quick start guide kind of walks you through just
getting started.
And then it gives you like eight notes to start with,
you know,
suggestions, like things like go take a picture of your water
filter, ask your partner for their sizes,
that sort of stuff.
Write down the license plate number for your car.
Then you've got those notes.
And then when you start to use those,
because once you put them into the computer,
of course they sync through the cloud.
Now you have access to them in the mobile device.
And that's where you start to really find the value of
it. All right.
So thank you so much,
Steve. That is fabulous.
And that now you guys,
if you're listening to this the week it goes live,
we've got a week where commonly,
it's more downtime.
We're getting into the new year.
I want to challenge every single one of you to go
out. Now,
grab this quick start guide.
The link is going to be in the show notes.
We'll talk about that a little bit later and go through
this. And if it's the information that Steve's recommending,
or if it's something else that's valuable to you,
go ahead and grab those and start using this.
The initial portion of Evernote is free.
And I know a lot of people never go to the
premium version.
You don't necessarily have to do that.
You can use this with great value,
even free.
So Steven,
my gift to you for the new year is the introduction
into Evernote to really make your life more productive and just
less stressful because you'll have so many things at your fingertips.
Yeah, this is the time of year.
A lot of people say this year,
I have to stay more in control.
Well, this is the base.
It won't get you in control if you don't have discipline,
but it gives you the tool to focus.
So let's go this way.
Step one would be,
do that quick start guide.
Okay. So we do that and it's,
you know,
downtime. We've decided we're going to focus on that.
Now it's getting into January again or a week or so
after you've done this,
what are good triggers for people to remember,
to continue using Evernote?
I think personally,
it's having it kind of always open on your computer in
the background and making sure that you start to develop what
I call the Evernote habit,
where you over time,
as soon as you see something that you'd like to keep
you just throw it in Evernote without thinking about it.
That to me is the turning point for most people is
when they start to use it and become second nature to
them. We've all developed habits for things like I know people
who, when they want to remember something and they're out traveling
around, they don't use it to do list or task manager.
They send themselves an email and they use email for everything.
And other people use their calendar for everything.
Those aren't necessarily good habits because those are places where information
is not easy to search for.
And you can get an overwhelm happening,
you get information overload,
like we need more email in our inbox.
So we're sending ourselves emails.
That's that's,
to me,
seems to me very counterproductive.
So learning,
you know,
kind of figuring out,
oh, Evernote can solve that for me.
And then trusting that you put the information there and you
don't coming up with your own system that you make sure
that you get it out in that you're honoring the information
that's in there.
Those are all parts of the habit that goes ahead.
I think just using it every day,
starting to use it every day.
And as a matter of fact,
we do have a course that we teach,
but the basis of the course is it's an email that's
sent to people every day for 10 consecutive days.
And actually every note,
every lesson is an Evernote note as a shared note that
people share in Evernote.
And the reason that I structured it this way is I
wanted to get people in the habit of opening Evernote for
sing in the morning when they read the email and they
do their lesson,
the lessons are short,
but the fact that it's then Evernote is open on their
computer and they're starting to get in the habit.
So it's so much easier to say,
oh, because it's there,
you feel like it's accessible.
Now it's accessible.
To be honest,
even if it's not open because of the way that Evernote
works. But the fact for most of us,
it takes that trigger for it to be open on our
computer for us to start thinking about actually putting things in
it. Once you reach that,
once it starts becoming a habit,
it will then become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that
you'll start to find the value in it in very quickly.
It'll probably become one of your indispensable Tools.
I went through Evernote.
I think you had 1.0
initially when I got started and first version and you are
so right,
the segments are relatively small and easy to follow,
but really significant in terms of the information and the value.
And it's great because if you forget something,
you can go right back and find exactly which section you
need to refresh your memory on.
And now you just released the second version of this,
correct? Yeah.
We Just updated the course and we just released it well
at the time of that,
this is out about a month and a half ago.
And so,
yeah, so we've just,
we've just had the initial launch of version 2.0,
and it's got some of the same content as version one
point over the course.
Cause a lot of stuff in never,
no, it hasn't changed.
A few things have changed and I found a better way
to explain some things.
I always try and put things in context as you know,
Sue. So I try and say,
this is the reason this isn't just what the tool does.
This is the reason we want to use this tool this
way. I think that adds a lot of value And you're
so great because since I had the first version,
now I already get the second version.
So that's what I'm going to be doing probably right during
this week,
when this is going live,
where would I send other people to take a look at
that course?
Oh, well we Can give them the link as well.
There's a link to the information page,
but anybody that signs up for the Evernote start guide they'll,
we'll be sending them a series of emails that will include
some extra tips.
And then also some notification that the courses available.
So they'll see that there as well,
Gift biz listeners,
if you're interested in this,
once you download the quick-start guide,
then just keep watching your email.
And over the course of just a short time,
you will then see the entrance into the course,
but we'll also have the link directly.
If you are an action taker and you want to get
started right away,
we'll get that for you as well.
Steve, we are going to move on now to the reflection
section. This is a place where we take a look at
you and you know,
you've had one career in TV,
you've gravitated onto YouTube and other things,
but what natural trait do you have that you think all
along has helped you to be successful?
Don't be humble.
Now. I Think for me,
maybe the strongest asset that I've kind of leveraged my entire
career is a very quick understanding of how things work and
a gift for being able to explain it.
I've always had been a good communicator as far as explaining
things to others.
And then strategically,
I guess I'm a bit of a workaholic,
but I've also got a boundless energy and passion towards the
things that I do.
Like I daydream about my projects that I'm working on all
the time.
I get excited about them.
And I think if you care at that level about what
you're doing,
then it makes it easy for you to pour the energy
in that that it's required.
I often think my success has come just from brute force,
no real strategy.
I just refuse to give up.
But you do have the passion for sharing what you're able
to learn with others.
I didn't ever see when you were on TV,
but I'm certainly following your YouTube,
which is Datto tech and whether it's Gmail or it's a
new app that you're sharing or clearly Evernote,
you can tell in the videos,
how much you enjoy doing this and sharing the passion is
definitely there.
And I've got A very particular,
I, I don't look at what technology does.
I look at what it does with us to us.
And so the value to us.
Yeah. And I think one of the strengths to the style
of communication that we've leveraged is everything has context.
I never just talk about a tool or talk about a
feature. I always talk about the reason and we were just
talking about this moments ago,
but I just talk about the reason that it's important and
how it ends up playing out in our lives.
And I think adding that extra layer of context constantly,
it really helps people communicate.
It helps people understand what it is I'm trying to communicate,
Right? None of us need another tool that's going to waste
our time.
It needs to provide value in some way,
either productivity or entertainment,
but not just to waste time.
So you're just driving home.
Why it's useful,
why you should be looking at it.
Yes. And also if you shouldn't be,
you know,
there's times that it's not going to work too well,
if I've gone through it,
then it helps you.
There You go.
Okay. Now I'm really curious about this now because I'm not
going to allow you to answer Evernote.
All right.
What tool are you using regularly that helps you to either
be productive or keep you as balanced as you can possibly
be Tool that I use that helps keep me productive.
Okay. You can't say Evernote.
I know I'm not going to say you're talking productivity for
me. The tool that I use that has given me my
career here is a tool called ScreenFlow,
which is a screen capture and recording tool that I use
to record all of my demos.
Camtasia is another version of that app,
but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without that class
of software.
So that's a tool that is absolutely essential to me.
Let me just look on my phone.
All right.
While you're looking,
I'll explain these to everybody in case they're not familiar with
ScreenFlow is Mac based,
right? Okay.
So there are two different apps.
One is called ScreenFlow,
which is used on a Mac.
Another is called Camtasia,
which is what I use on my PC.
And what this allows you to do is capture video and
then edit it,
adding in audio or overlays or all just different types of
things. So that's what Steve's talking about,
and that is what he's using to produce his YouTube videos.
And that's also what I produced to do my YouTube videos.
I also use it for all my course content.
And There you go.
And course content as well.
That's a tool I would be lost without it.
I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if there wasn't that
class of tool available to me,
the other,
what's the other thing that I'm kind of married to,
you know,
as far as the productivity space goes,
and since I'm not allowed to say Evernote,
you don't,
there's a tool on the Mac and other tool on the
Mac called text expander,
which is a keyboard macro tool,
which allows me to just with this short series of keystrokes,
be able to recall almost any snippet of text and there's
similar tools in windows,
one called and on the Mac,
it's called text expander.
So those are tools that once you get your head around
using them,
they saved me hours and hours every day.
Because again,
they're, cloud-based meaning that I've got the same shortcuts available to
me on my notebook and on my desktop computer.
So if somebody asks me,
I need the link to your YouTube subscription challenge,
they just cryptic URL.
I just,
that's just,
it's just three keys on my keyboard and then it auto-populates
it into the field.
So that's a tool that I use every day and saves
me. I dunno,
probably saves me five or six or maybe 10 minutes a
day. But when you add that up over time,
holy cow,
Just set them up for all the words that you will
commonly use,
or like you were saying things that you phrase phrases,
For example,
I have,
I sent a thank you letter to everybody that supports us.
I have a crowdfunding site called Patrion where people pay to
support the channel.
And so I have a letter that I send out to
everybody. Well,
I don't write that letter each time I address it each
time. So I write in there,
I, you know,
I read what they've done and then I,
and, and there's perks attached.
Like they get little gifts from me that they can download.
So rather than have to go and copy and paste that
from another document or anything else,
it's just a series of keyboard shortcuts.
So if you were to support me,
I'd say,
hi, Susan,
and then I'd hit return.
And then I'd hit five key strokes and a three paragraph
letter with a bunch of relevant links would be populated and
ready to go to you.
Well, I did get that letter,
but then you put,
you did,
but then you do personalize it too,
because it said,
yeah, and you're not,
yeah, you're not auto-populating with my name through like an auto
responder. You're actually reading them.
Oh no,
I get an email that says,
you know,
so-and-so has just decided to support you on Patriot.
And so I go into the,
into the manager at that point there,
I look at their bio and I thanked them.
And actually,
I remember that.
I remember that when you did it,
because we know each other,
but it's not like we talked to each other all the
time. And I think I must've been doing it like super
early in the morning.
Cause I'll often do that first thing in the morning and
I would,
my head was cloudy.
So I just said,
thank you.
Who is Susan?
And then I'd put two and two together.
Cause it didn't have your picture in there.
So I knew was you in the back of my mind,
but I didn't really think it was you.
Well, we clarified That when we were at sea life together.
That's right.
We did,
we did.
We cleared it all and I do appreciate the support.
And you got your Hug.
I hug.
Can't do without that.
I don't know when we'll see each other again,
but it better not be too long In the social media
marketing world.
Yes. I'm planning on fitting that into my schedule.
That's a good one.
All right.
I'm going to go on with our questions.
We're going to finish up here cause I,
you and I could talk all day.
This could be like a whole long,
long interview,
but I won't do that to everybody,
but all right.
What book have you read lately that you think our listeners
could find value in?
I think one of the most relevant books for me recently,
and it just clarifies what I consider to be content marketing.
I know your people are more into merchandise,
but my business is content marketing and content marketing is all
about creating relationships with your customers over time.
And you do that by providing them value by providing content
to them that makes their lives better.
So that's what my YouTube channel is all about is I'm
constantly putting out information that I believe my community would be
interested in.
And then out of that,
they tell me what products they're interested in and what they're
interested in learning more about.
And then things like my course,
my Evernote course grows out of the dialogue I have with
my community.
But Gary Vaynerchuk is a as a real leader in the
social media marketing space.
He's a man with bounding energy.
I don't ever want to be in a room with him.
I think I,
my head might explode,
but he's a really intelligent guy and he gets it.
He gets content marketing to a tee and he has a
book called jab jab jab hook to basically takes the boxing
philosophy and brings it to content marketing,
which is relationship building.
Essentially you give,
you, give,
you, give you give with the jabs and then the right
hook or the hook is you sell a product.
There's a transaction that happens,
but it's all about giving,
giving, giving,
giving, you know,
making sure,
building that relationship,
building that relationship before you ask for compensation.
Now it might not be quite as relevant,
but I believe that we could all understand the difference between
just having customers and having community.
If you can start to move your constituency less from being
a customer more to being community,
which is what you're doing right now with this podcast,
at that point there,
that puts you into a different business plane and a different
level of security and a different level of how you feel
about your business.
Much more heartfelt having relationships rather than Actually,
Steve. I'm glad that you brought this one up.
This is one of my favorite books also right now.
And I think for our listeners,
we have the opposite problem we give,
give, give,
and never ask for the sale.
It's notorious at craft shows,
people who are making homemade items don't value the time that's
been put in their own time in making these products.
So inevitably things get priced very low and then it's not
sustainable in terms of a business.
So I flip this whole thing over.
I would highly suggest and recommend this book as well,
but read it with where Steve saying,
you know,
value, value,
value versus south south.
I would challenge all of us if you are in the
realm that I'm,
that I've just described is make sure it's value,
value, value,
and then sell,
ask for the sale because that's very much where our audience
falls down.
Now I'm not necessarily talking about a strong sale in your
face, but don't be afraid to ask for that sale after
you've provided value.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because at the end of the day,
if they're going to be chased away by you asking for
business, they were never going to do business with You.
Exactly. And then you're wasting your time if you've provided The
value. But I did our webinar the other day,
which was I do an Evernote webinar,
which was like 55 minutes of me teaching about Evernote.
And then five minutes of me saying,
Hey, if you want to learn more,
by my course,
it's a very fair proposition going back and forth.
And we had a person on the webinars,
you know,
saying, holy cow,
we just stop with a sales pitch.
And I went,
I didn't actually have to respond people from the community,
responded back to the dude.
He's just giving us.
He's just got us on the road to success,
giving a 55 minutes away,
let him sell his course.
He has to make A living.
And it's not like you own Evernote.
You're teaching people how to use Evernote.
Oh yeah.
And A lot of people are gonna just,
just like the quick start guide.
That's all that a lot of people are going to need.
Some people are going to want to buy the course and
some people aren't and that's all fine.
You know,
the fact is now you know who I am.
Then you start to watch my videos and there might be
another course down line,
or you might just recommend it to somebody else,
or you might never purchase,
but still add value to the community by engaging comments,
watching my YouTube videos,
which helps me for ranking.
There's lots of different ways that building a community works for
us. We shouldn't be embarrassed to tall or reluctant if we
built a good product to ask somebody to pay for that
person. Absolutely.
And the way this might look in our environment as well
is through blog articles or providing additional information around our industry.
By example,
a couple of podcasts ago,
I interviewed Jen Eby from Eby farms.
We talked about the soap.
If you haven't seen that,
that episode was just a couple of weeks ago,
but she can do articles on what the value is of
full nature,
soaps to your body,
to your skin,
what the value is of not having other chemicals coming into
your body.
I mean,
all different,
fun things behind the scene.
Things, those are all value,
whether they're entertainment or educational.
So it doesn't necessarily mean value in terms of a tangible
item before you get to the tangible item that you're selling,
it's information that revolves around your product or the experience that
you have in your particular industries.
So Steve is talking about Evernote in the case of Jenn,
that I'm describing,
she's talking about the value of her product or Soper overall,
if you weren't going to purchase from her.
So just a couple of ideas there for you.
And like I said,
I'd love for you guys all also to listen or read
Gary V's book.
And just as you're listening to the podcast today,
you can listen to audio books with ease.
I've teamed up with audible for you to be able to
get audio book,
just like jab,
jab, jab,
right hook for free.
All you need to do is go to gift biz,
book.com and make a selection.
All right,
Steve, we are winding down now,
but not before I present you our dare to dream gift.
Okay? I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.
It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.
This is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights
that you would wish to obtain.
Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.
What is inside your box?
Wow. You know,
you gotta be a big dreamer.
Steve I've,
I've had some great success in the past and I recognize
what success represents for me.
It was always about being part of a team.
And, and,
and that's the one thing I miss working kind of on
my own now is I miss being part of a team.
So for me,
success is gonna look like growing my enterprise back because it's
a new venture for me,
again, back to the point where it's got a full-time small
committed and passionate team attached that I work with everyday,
as opposed to having a few part-timers working with me right
now, the rest of the things kind of fall into place.
It's more about how I feel about what I'm doing than
anything else.
So I just want to feel it.
I know that what it takes to make me feel great
about what I'm doing is to have people sharing in that
success. There you go.
And it sounds like you're on the road to it right
now already.
We're, we're getting there.
Wonderful. And we all wish the same for you,
Steve. All right.
So we have already talked a little bit throughout the whole
podcast about how people can get in touch with you.
I will have your website and the links to the start
guide. And then also directly to the course in the show
notes page,
any other ways that people could get in touch with you?
Oh, just Make sure they sign up and subscribe to the
YouTube channel.
So they see the videos coming down the pipe.
That's probably the best,
you know,
if they're interested in,
we, I cover far more than just Evernote.
I'll look at all sorts of different productivity solutions.
And if you are into online marketing,
we also talk a lot about that growing community in the
online space.
So I'll even give tips on WordPress and different tools that
you might be wanting to use.
So we've got a nice eclectic mix there on the channel,
but the YouTube channels where I focus,
most of my energy,
You guys can get lost in all the YouTube videos,
but they're all so valuable.
All right.
And as you also know,
just jump over to the show notes page at gift biz,
unwrapped.com. It'll give you all the links,
just in case you're listening to this while you're outside,
watching your kids,
having a snowball fight,
or you're driving to pick up things for new years,
wherever it might be doing the laundry,
whatever, all that information is there.
Thank you so much for the time to do this podcast
today. I really appreciate it specifically.
Like I said,
I wanted it to be targeted into this week.
You have shared such great information.
I am quite certain.
We've convinced people to go over and try Evernote and it
is free.
So you can jump right in right away and become more
productive for 2016.
Steve, once again,
thank you so much for being here and may your candle
always burn bright,
Learn how to work smarter while developing and growing your business.
Download our guide called 25 free tools to enhance your business
and life.
It's our gift to you and available at gift biz,
unwrap.com/tools. Thanks for listening and be sure to join us for
the next episode.
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