Carsonified

We’ve just moved our email, calendar and documents over to Google Apps (thanks Keir!) and it’s amazing. The migration of our email wasn’t too bad (besides the fact I deleted my entire ‘To Respond’ folder by mistake - oops).

However, Google Apps isn’t news to any of you. What is exciting is the way we’ve rolled out ‘Single Site Browsers’ (SSB) to make using them much easier.

We’re using Fluid to turn Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar into stand-alone apps which sit in the Dock. If you’re on a PC, you can use Prism to do the same (although it seems a bit slower than Fluid).

Why is that cool? Two reasons:

1. It looks gorgeous
2. It makes using them much easier

Why is it easier?

Mainly because people are used to their email and their calendar being stand-alone apps. Going to a browser tab and typing in a URL just doesn’t flow naturally (also it’s too easy to mistakenly close the tab). Clicking on an icon in your Dock or Start Menu is natural. Also, you can add these SSBs to your Start folder so they load every time your machine starts.

How?

It’s super easy. Just download Fluid or Prism and tell it what URL you want to turn into a SSB. The problem is it’ll choose the site’s favicon for the app icon, which usually looks crap. Instead, download these icons first and then tell Fluid to use them for your app. Beautiful.

If you have any other tips for integrating Google Apps into your desktop, please share in the comments below.

If you would like to spread the word about something you’re doing, YouTube is an amazing resource that you can’t afford to ignore. Here’s a quick story to demonstrate this:

I wanted to offer folks a few tips on starting a business, while also raising awareness of our new Start-up Clinic workshop.

I spent about one hour putting together a rough script, about two hours filming and three hours editing. The result was my How to Build a Start-up video which has been viewed over 10,300 times. Not bad for six hours work!

Here are a couple things I learned from this:

Simple editing makes a huge difference

I used iMovie ‘08 to add a simple intro, music and transitions. It adds credibility to the movie and makes it more fun to watch.

The content is everything

Make sure you have something valuable to say, before you hit the record button. No matter how slick the editing is, if you what you’re offering is of no value, people won’t view it or link to it.

Use variety

The first half of the video is me teaching in front of a blackboard, the second half is a simple screencast. It gives the video more substance and interest which means viewers get more value.

Focus on YouTube

I’d rather use Vimeo because it’s beautiful, but the truth is there’s a lot more people on YouTube. If you compare 90 views on Vimeo to 10,367 on YouTube there’s just no comparison.

Get a mic

Next time, I’ll spend a few bucks on a cheap lapel mic so the sound is clearer. However, if you’d like to get started today, just do it. No need for a mic initially.

Use Mousepose

When I did the screencast section, I used a simple tool called Mousepose.

If you’re showing people your screen, they obviously can’t see where you’re pointing ;) so you need a simple way to highlight areas of the screen. If you’re not on a Mac, Dragnifier does roughly the same thing.

Let Twitter know

I used Twitter to spread the word by letting people know I had posted the video. I don’t know exactly how many views this generated but I’m sure it helped.

Share your stories

That’s it - if you’ve had success with video on YouTube, please share any tips you’ve learned.

Google has recently released some amazing new functionality for it’s free (!) service Google Analytics. If you’re already using GA, make sure to update your tracking code to the new version.

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I love posters in Airports becuase they have to convey a simple idea to you very quickly. You’re walking by and the poster has about 1 second to capture your attention, communicate a message and make you remember it.

I saw this DHL poster in the airport in Berlin and loved it:

Ithink it’s the perfect summary of good customer service. I’ve made some customer service mistakes in my time, but the one thing I’ve learned is that you just need to practice saying “Sure, I’d be happy to do that for you.”

Real Life Example

This happened the other day with DropSend. I had a customer email me because he wanted to cancel his account. Well, one of the nice things about DropSend is that you don’t have to ask us to cancel your account. You can do it yourself by just going to the ‘My Account’ page and clicking ‘Please cancel my account’. Bam, your done.

I started writing this response:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! All you have to do to cancel your account is login, go to the ‘My Account’ page, and click ‘Please cancel my account’.

All the best,
Ryan

However, after a second of thought, I changed it to:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! I’ve cancelled your account for you.

Hope we can serve you in the future.

All the best,
Ryan

It meant I had to spend time logging into the DropSend Admin, searching for his account and clicking ‘Delete’. Time I didn’t want to spend, but looking back, I think it was important.

I never heard from that customer, thanking me for doing this. And I didn’t expect to. But hopefully it made his life a little easier.

I had a good look at my to-do list the other day and it hit me, I was still working primarily in the business, instead of on the business.

As you all know, it’s vital that the leader of a company (CEO, Director, Founder, whatever) is thinking about the direction of the company and is actively planning and thinking about the future. If that person gets bogged down in actually doing the day-to-day activities, then it becomes impossible to do that.

A few examples

Here are a few things that I realised I was getting bogged down with that really should be done by someone else:

1. Payroll, dividend vouchers and pensions - I finally decided to delegate this to Mo, our extremely talented book keeper. It’s a task that naturally fits into her skill set and it’s something that takes a fair bit of my time at the end of every month.
2. Data collection for analysis - Occasionally we do some research on our competitors, which can be quite time consuming. As I blogged about, I’ve now gotten a very capable virtual assistant who I delegate this to.
3. Marketing our events - Lisa has now become the Marketing Manager at Carson Systems. She is in charge of marketing across all of our products and events.
4. Making coffee … Just kidding, I’m still the coffee boy around here :)

Management by Delegation, not Abdication

So am I just saying that you should be delegating the time-consuming, boring stuff? Definitely not. You should be delegating everything (at least eventually).

As a business owner, you should remember that eventually, everything will be done by other people. This is the only way to truly realise the value of running your own company and the financial benefits of selling it someday. However, in order to get there, you need to train your team properly and then hand over responsibility.

Michael E Gerber, author of The Emyth Revisited, coined the phrase “Management by Delegation, not Abdication”, and it’s a powerful concept.

Management by Abdication says: “I don’t care how you get it done, just do it.”

Management by Delegation says: “Let me teach you how we do this here, and then you can have complete responsibility for it.”

The latter example ensures that the quality of service and products are preserved, whilst freeing you up to focus on running the company.

I just finished Tim Ferris’ excellent book The 4-Hour Workweek and it’s already had a significant impact on my life: It’s given me more free time.

The best tip I picked up from the book was hiring a virtual personal assistant (PA). Everyone has those annoying things on their to-do list that have been there for months, which just aren’t getting done. They’re important but you just don’t have enough fricken time to finish them.

Enter a ‘Virtual PA’. If you’re running a small business like Gill and I, you can’t justify spending £18K-£30k on the luxury of a PA. However, with the advent of the global marketplace, you can get a quality PA who works remotely, at a very affordable price.

I signed up with Get Friday, a reputable service in India. I’ve been assigned a PA named Shinu and he’s been very professional and helpful with the two tasks I’ve given him so far. The rates start at $15/hour and if you use them enough (160 hours a month) you can get that down to $7/hour.

Tips for using Virtual PAs:

1. Make sure their English is excellent (let them know you’ll need to speak to them over the phone)
2. Clarify exactly what the task is - don’t assume anything
3. Give them a deadline
4. Tell them how long they should take

(By the way, I took the above photograph while I was at the pub tonight. I just picked up a new Casio Exilim Card camera, so expect to see some more photos in the future.)

When Ryan Singer did a workshop for us at FOWD, he and I got chatting about how they run things at 37signals. He gave me an amazing idea that we now use at CS, and I’d like to share it with you all.

Any of you who are managers will know that you need to keep up on how your team is doing and what they’re doing. At the same time, it’s never helpful to micro-manage and constantly bug your team.

Answer: A company chat room!

We use Campfire for this, and it’s perfect as it’s cheap and simple. We have a room called ‘The Howdy Room!’ (for no other reason than I think the word ‘Howdy’ is rad).

Daily check-in

Here’s how it works: When you get in the office, you log into the room (I have it set as my home page) and I post a message starting with ‘[IN]’ and I then list what I’m up to that day. Here’s an example:

Then right before we go home for the day, everyone enters a check-out message, starting with ‘[OUT]’, like this:

Weekly check-in

In addition to daily check-ins everyone does a weekly check-in. It starts with ‘[THIS WEEK]’ on a Monday morning, and ends with a ‘[DID THIS WEEK]’ at the end of the week.

We have weekly Tuesday meetings (for the Bath office) at a coffee shop and by doing this weekly check-in on Mondays, we already have a good idea of what everyone’s up to for the week, when we start that meeting.

Extra benefits

In addition to helping Gill and I know what everyone is up to, doing a daily and weekly check-in also helps everyone else know what they’re up to. It keeps everyone informed without having long meetings and lengthy unnecessary conversations.

We also use this room as a place to chat about interesting things. As you all know, when someone starts talking about something so everyone in the office can hear, it can be quite a distraction. You have to ‘come out’ of whatever you’re doing, listen, and then respond. After that, it takes a good 3-5 minutes to get back into what you were previously doing.

By saying things like ‘Hey, has anyone seen the site www.xyz.com?’ in the chat room, only the people who have time to answer will choose to jump into the conversation. If someone is super busy, they’ll just ignore the ‘Beep’ from the chat room. It’s great!

If you have any tips for keeping your team running smoothly, please share!