Hello friends welcome back to the dream biz podcast, that business podcast that helps you automate, streamline and grow your business. So you can work less, make more money and flourish beyond what you thought possible. I'm your host, Christy Johnson. I'm an online business manager and a launch systems architect dedicated to helping you make your dream biz a reality. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to choose a project management system. So let's dive in and make your dream become a reality, shall we? The most important thing to think about when it comes to project management tools, is to not get stuck, not get lost in all the options, there are literally so many options out there, and everybody you meet will tell you that they have found the best project management tool of all time forever, and that you should definitely be using this and yours is dumb. That is not true. I'm a firm believer that the best system is the one that you actively use, and the one that you consistently use. So I always say the best tool, it's the one that you're using. So if you are all in with one system, and you're like, Wow, this is very frustrating. It's like I can't do this, maybe you can find some features within the system that you're using to help it work better for you. Or if it's totally, completely frustrating, and you know exactly why you don't like it and you know exactly that your system that you're using doesn't have that feature that you need, then it might be a good idea to switch things up and try something new. It's kind of like when you let's say you're starting a new business. My first business was a photography business. And I started with a very basic camera with like the kit lens and everything like that. And I would always hear people saying, Oh, you got to get the full frame camera, you got to get the canon, you got to get the Nikon you got to get the D 90. That was the big one that came out when I was in high school. And I don't even think that was a full thing frame camera, but I just didn't even know. So I would get stuck in all the details of of wanting to be like, well, I need this one, I need the best one. Well, the truth is, I didn't really know how to use my own camera that I had. That was like pretty basic. So I decided to keep that one for a while until I knew how to clearly articulate why that camera wasn't working for me and what I needed to improve my skills, my art or whatever, because I don't know if you guys have seen but you can create fantastic photos just on your phone, if you know how to manipulate the software and, and know about lighting and all that good stuff. So keep in mind, the best system is the one that you are going to consistently use, I would not recommend spinning your wheels. And starting over with a brand new system, I would definitely recommend trying yours out until you can articulate why don't like it. Now, you might be at the very beginning of the stages, and you don't know what you need. So let me give you some things to keep in mind for your project management tool. If you want to try out a new one. First of all you want to talk think about how you're going to use it. What will it be used for? Are you going to be organizing content on there? Are you going to be just planning out your projects? Is it just going to be like a vision board Dreamspace for you? How are you going to use it? Secondly, think about if you're going to have team members using it as well, because that's going to make a difference as far as which project management tool that you want to go with. There are some that work really, really well for teams, or some that give you a lot of team members within their basic plans. And some charge you whenever you add another team member. So think about Will you have team members using it because another thing is, they may have different ideas of how it should be used in you. So it's important to have something that works for everyone. Which leads me to point three, what way does your brain retain and store information. And if you have a team this way, their brains retain and store information is going to be different from team member to team member. So you probably need something that's going to be way more versatile and have options among the team members and how they control their information and the way that it looks for them so that it works for them. But you should also think about what does your brain want? If you're going to be the one who's using this mostly, then think about what do I need? Do I need basic? Do I need complicated? What what do I need and think about that and just explore the options? And then fourthly, how much time do you have to spend setting it up? This is a big one. A lot of people think oh yeah, I'm just gonna get into a project management tool. And then they're like, holy moly, this is like very time consuming. Yes, it is. The questions to ask yourself are number one, do you want something easy from the get go? Where you can just jump in and start start going? Or do you want something sophisticated from the get go with a lot of customization so you don't really have to do anything you can get there and just dump your your projects your brain dump and go from there, and then customize it along the way and then have those options? That is something to think about? Or do you need something so complex and amazing and wonderful that you need to build something yourself to your needs. So you need like full customization. All of these questions are really important as we get going. So let's talk about some recommendations in order of spiciness So I like complexity to go along. And also, I want to give you some use cases for each one. First of all, we're gonna go with Google Keep. Yeah, Google Keep. It's literally just a to do list app. And so you might be thinking, Christy, that's super dumb. That's not a project management tool. Well, you're right. It's a to do list app. But when I was a very beginning photographer, actually, not even very beginning, I was like, seven years into my journey. I started developing client workflows and project workflows. But I didn't want to spend, you know, $30 a month on a tool that I wasn't going to use, because I didn't really know what I needed, or what I needed to do. So I created lists in Google, keep that were my client workflows, and I would duplicate them, every time a new client came on board, I would put their name, I will put their wedding date and like all that information that they needed. So it was very helpful and beneficial for me at that time to just use Google Keep, because I didn't know what I needed. So I just made it work for me, you can also look into other things like the things app or any type of to do list app, you can really make work for you and your needs, if you just need a place to collect your information. And, you know, maybe duplicate some things and start to create some templates for yourself. Okay, the next one is going to be Trello. I really, really like Trello. A lot of people like to hate on Trello, because it's too basic. Well, that's why I love Trello. Because it's basic, you can organize your projects into different boards, which is not something that you can do with Google Keep because Google Keep is literally just lists. So you can organize your projects into different boards. So you can have like, a client board, a project board, a dream space board, like whatever you want. And then within there, you can have lists, lists, and cards. So this is I think, like the Kanban method, don't quote me on that that's literally just inside my brain, I think that it's what it's called. There's also like a NAT method G and ATT, which is like different, I don't really know what that is, but maybe you all do. So Trello is going to be something where you can literally just dump in your stuff and get going right away. It's very easy, very intuitive, in my opinion. And it's great for people who don't need a ton of customization. All right, next would be Asana. Asana is a great project management app very popular, a lot of people use it, it's really cool, because you can customize the views. And you can customize it for each team member. So they have the Kanban, they have the net, they have the timeline, they have the calendar. By the way, let me go back for a second into Trello. Because my brain is wild and didn't think about this when we were talking about Trello. Speaking of calendars, you can actually do power ups with Trello. A lot of people don't know this. But there are power ups that you can add on like a calendar palette power up, or a Google doc power up. Or you can even do some automations with their tool called Butler. And if you upgrade to the like 999 a month plan, it might be a little bit more expensive now, then you get access to some of those things on a limited basis. And if you invite people to join Trello, then you get like Trello bucks or whatever. So it's really cool. And there actually is a lot more customization than people realize it's just you kind of have to go hunting for it. So I've done a lot of automations on Trello when I was doing my photo editing business, creating some client hubs because I didn't want to confuse them with something like notion. So it's really awesome. And I highly recommend it, to explore it. And I don't know why people hate on it, because I kind of like it. Okay, back to Asana, the calendar, the different views, all that stuff is already included. Whereas Trello, you have to use a powerup. On Asana, it's already there. Keep in mind that some things are not available to you if you have the free plan. So you'll just have to explore and see what works for you. Another one that is similar along these lines is monday.com. It works really, really well if you have teams and you need specifically tasks, because that's like their basic thing is the lists. And instead of the boards, it's a list, which is really cool. And they have a lot of color coding. So Visually, it looks really great. So people like it, and it works really well for them. So again, it just depends on your needs and your team and how you're going to be using it. Okay, let's move on to another more powerful one, in my opinion, clickup I love clickup I could I'm like obsessed with clickup It's so fun, it's super great, I could really go down the clickup rabbit trail, they help you like you can organize things by priority level very easily. You can do lots of things just super easily and intuitively in a way that you can't really with Asana or Trello. It's like not very intuitive to do it. Whereas clickup I feel like the user interface is way better. And it's a lot, it's a lot easier to navigate. However, they are pretty limited on the free plan. And so they wanted me to start paying money for the stuff that I was doing. And I was like, no. So I moved on from clickup pretty quickly because I am all about making my own things work for me with as little money as possible because that's how I roll. So
clickup is very cool. A lot of people are obsessed with it. A use case for clickup would be if you have a lot of projects going on if you have a lot of team members. If you have maybe you want to cook Create a client task management hub for your clients that you're working with and pass it along to them. And you really want to make sure that you can keep track of like priority level of tasks. It works really, really well. Asana is great if you have a lot of projects that you need to keep track of. And maybe you need to utilize different views, whereas Trello pretty much just has the board in ListView. With the cards, Asana, you can do anyone for different projects, it's very cool. So just depends on what you need. All right, let's talk about the one that I personally use right now, which is probably going to surprise you, I use air table. Air table is not really meant to be a project management app at all. Air table is really just like Google Spreadsheets, but with a lot more customization and kind of like way better. So I use air table for my project management, because I can have five team members for free, I can invite 50 people to comment, I can create a ton of stuff in there and really just like go crazy with my lists and spreadsheets and ideas that I have. It's like super duper cool. I really, really like it. However, it is something that you kind of have to set up on your own. If you want to make it work for your project management, they actually do have templates, a template is really, really great. And I love it, it's just you have to kind of use your brain a little bit more to figure out how the things are working together to make it work for you. Because it's not really intended to be a project management tool. So it's just something that you have to kind of piece together. But it can be very, extremely, very, very powerful. I love it. You can organize things into projects, you can group it by who's working on which tasks, you can group it by multiple things, again, think of like a spreadsheet and how powerful a spreadsheet is. But airtable can do so many more things. I haven't really gotten into the formulas, I don't even know if they do that for like numbers and accounting and stuff like like Google Sheets does. So if they do and you know about it, send me an email, let me know, my email is Christy at Christie Johnson creative.com. I would really love to to know about that. So what's really cool is they also have a grid view, calendar view, gallery view, Kanban view timeline list. And then the net I don't even know how to pronounce that someone told me, I should probably look it up since I'm a podcaster talking on the public square. So it's really cool. You can create forums and like pretty much everything that you can think of. Now what's amazing about an air table that I love so much is you can do so much amazing stuff on the back end and make it like wow, amazing and powerful. And then you can create an interface, a front facing interface that you can use to ingest the information with graphics, visuals, you can present it to a client, you can do like a presentation with spicy, amazing visuals. And it's live updated. So when you edit the data on the back end, it will update the interface. It is so stinking cool, I love it so much, highly recommend just like going down the airtable rabbit trail because it's awesome. But also be careful. If you like, go down rabbit trails a lot like I do, you could really get lost in there. But what's crazy is I was sleeping on air table for so long. My husband is a software engineer and he said, Christie you should really try air table we should actually use it to organize our entire personal life and our home projects and our budgeting and like our fun times. And I was like, That sounds terrible. Because I am here divergent. So I'm very motivated by fun and challenge. But only if I want to do the challenge. If I want to do the challenge. I'm like totally into it. If it's something that someone else says that I should do. I'm like, No, thank you, I will do it myself. That's just how I am. So airtable is phenomenal. All right. Last but not least, I want to talk about the elephant in the room notion notion is really going places making a name for itself. Everyone's into notion these days, except for the people who are like, Oh, my gosh, notion is terrible. And I don't know what I'm doing. I totally feel you. notion is amazing. It's it's like everything all in one. It's like everything I just mentioned. But together and amazing and fun. I love it so much. I'm not using it currently. But we do have plans to create some amazing client hubs and like organize all of our Doc's, it's literally like the best one out there, in my opinion. But a lot of people are scared of it, because there's so much that you can do with it. So they get on there. And they're like, What do I do, I don't know what to do. So if you are someone that is like, I need a dream space, I need to write notes. I need to keep track of tasks, I need to build interfaces and bloody bloody blah, the notion is probably the one for you. Because you can do so much Oh notion or airtable airtable. Like the base thing is the spreadsheet view. So like, when you're trying to write docs and stuff, it's not that great. It's very, like hard to find the information. So notion is really like kind of everything. So if you're like oh, I need a doc, oh, I need to have a spreadsheet. Oh, I need to do this. Like you can do all that in notion. And you and they're like really fun. They you can do emojis that's like kind of their thing. It's putting emojis and I just love it. My husband once he got over airtable and realized that it couldn't work as well as he was hoping then he went real hard on the notion train. And he has like All these notes that are incredible. And I'm like, How do you do this? Like if I just asked him yo, show me what's on notion board right now. It's like, Wow, your brain, how are you so amazing. So it's amazing. It's like the ultimate space for nerd dreaming or non nerds. Like if you're just like not a nerd on your, whatever you're into, you can make notion work for you. It's so fun. Wow, we covered a lot in this episode, very jam packed in this 15 minutes. But I really, really, really wanted to give you all the options. So if your paper planner is not cutting it any longer, and you're ready to upgrade how you manage your business, I highly recommend checking out one of these options, just depending on your needs and how you're going to use it. My best recommendation is to just get started, open up one of them, get started to play around with it and just see what works for you, you know, so I would definitely recommend playing and seeing what you like, if you want help setting up your project management system. If you're like, well Christie, this sounds amazing. I don't really know which one is the best for me. And I'm just very overwhelmed or I don't know what to do then book a consultation call with me. I can help you I offer a service where we build it together we dream it up together. And then I can help you manage it and run it and then you can talk to me on Slack or boxer whatever you want. Well it's really slack but I don't like to say that because people are scared of slack. But I might the pro of helping people realize things that they were scared of are not really that scary. So talk to me and let's do it. You can book a consultation with me anytime at Kristi Johnson creative.com forward slash Connect. There's a lot of options for you there because I'm all about the options you can do a connect call you can do a discovery call or you can book a full fledged consultation. Doesn't matter just let me know I would love to connect with you. Kristi Johnson creative.com forward slash connect and again my name is spelled Christie with n i ch ri STI Kristi Johnson creative.com Ford slash Connect. All right, thank you friends. I will see you next week on the dream based podcast.
