Productivity

By Norio De Sousa

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We all have stuff we have to do that we hate to do. I love writing but I don’t love writing about boring tech topics. So when I add a task to my “To do” list that says, “write a tech post” then it sits there for days — not getting done.

But eventually, something comes along that reminds me of something I love to do that ties in perfectly with the stuff I hate.

I love writing about my life experiences. And I love telling stories.

They are both things I probably suck at but I love them all the same. Continue reading

Automation

By Norio De Sousa

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Do you use some service or software that says “API” anywhere on their website?

And would you love to integrate that service with some other service or software that also says “API” somewhere on their website?

Does Zapier not support one of those services? Or worse… neither?

Or do you just wanna save money on those monthly Zaps? (They can add up.) Continue reading

SaaS

By Norio De Sousa

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Would you mind doing me a very quick favor?

If you’re an internet marketer trying to break into the SaaS (paid web app) market would you mind taking 30 seconds to tell me:

What’s your biggest frustration right now?

Just contact me here and I’ll receive your answer direct to my inbox.

Thanks!

Conversion

By Norio De Sousa

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One of the most effective ways to make a website load faster is to “crunch” the images. But there’s a right way and a wrong way.

There are 2 parts to doing this the right way.

You need to resize your images smaller. Using them straight out of the camera or your phone is going to lead to disaster and a slow website. Don’t do that.

Crunching it further using a tool made for image-crunching.

This post is about the second step. Continue reading

Conversion

By Norio De Sousa

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Small, simple things make big differences if you time them right. What do I mean?

1 – When I was a little boy and I was super-duper sick, my mom went out and got me an el cheapo green plastic dump truck toy.

Thinking back, it must’ve cost her almost nothing. But because she gave it to me when I was sick, I guess I was 10x more “receptive” to receiving it. I “needed it” more and it became my favourite toy ever.

To this day, I think of that dump truck. No idea what happened to it and I wish it was still around.

2 – My wife was recently sick. Continue reading

Outsourcing

By Norio De Sousa

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Here are my favourite tools for managing my brand-spanking new team. Maybe this will help you and your team, too!

Slack – “Chat” for work. This sounds like the stupidest thing but I tried it recently and was instantly converted.

There’s no “personal” distractions like you get on Facebook, Hangouts, Skype and all that crap. Just your work colleagues (or employees) and you. So you can get shit done. Lovely!

Plus you get phone apps so if you’re on holiday, you can still reply and delegate but without going into some major project management software.

(You should hire a project manager so you don’t have to deal with daily crap.)

Trello – Super-flexible task and project management. This is almost too flexible. You can end up feeling like you don’t know what to do because you can do anything. So check out their blog for tips and follow along.

My favourite way of using this is to have one “board” per project and lists for: To Do, Doing, Done, Waiting and Resources. You then add “cards” which are like tasks. And you can add checklists to each task. (You can also assign staff to specific tasks.)

I can go more in-depth with this if you like. (Let me know.) Continue reading

Outsourcing

By Norio De Sousa

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Have you seen the movie “Inside Out”? It’s a really cute but also very deep kid’s movie. Its characters are the emotions inside the mind of a little girl.

There’s Joy, Fear, Sadness and Anger.

And it’s really cute how the movie shows how these emotions play out in a baby, a toddler and eventually a young girl. But there’s also a really deep lesson in the movie. I won’t spoil it for ya.

Anyway, one of my favourite quotes in the movie is Fear saying:

“All right! We did not die today, I call that an unqualified success.”

And that just reminds me of how we live our lives some times. Continue reading

Outsourcing

By Norio De Sousa

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When I first started sending daily emails, I’d write the email, then write a subject and then take that subject line into Photoshop and make a “Blog Title” picture to post to my blog.

Designing those images was kinda fun at first. An interesting challenge. But it looked kinda shitty.

And one day I noticed it sometimes took me 1 or even 2 hours to make that damn blog title. And I started hating it. It’s just not a strength of mine.

And just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

So I wandered over to Fiverr and started looking for designers for my blog titles. At first I came up short but I tweaked my search to look for people with experience designing ads and WHAMMO! Found someone awesome. Continue reading

Outsourcing

By Norio De Sousa

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Howie emailed me asking for a quote on a simple survey. Thing is, he had no idea what he wanted his survey to look like, the fields he needed, how the PDF should look or anything like that.

This happens all the time. People go to a techie asking for a quote without even knowing what they want.

Imagine going to a custom car builder and asking for a quote on a car but not telling them anything else? You could get a quote on anything between a VW Beetle and a Ferrari. And depending which one you got, you could either be relieved at the price and disappointed at the result or gob-smacked at the price and walk away without realising you were buying a Ferrari.

And so I give this advice to every single person who comes to me without knowing what they want… (This is a real time-saver!)

“Draw up a spec. Even if you don’t use me, a spec will be useful no matter how you end up doing this thing. It breeds clarity, direction and even creates a small bit of momentum.”

So how do you write a spec? Easy… Continue reading

Outsourcing

By Norio De Sousa

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If you’ve got a dog with a long fur coat, you know you need to wash and brush that dog regularly.

Because if you don’t, then their coat becomes a mangled mess and it’ll be impossible and painful (for you and the dog) to brush out all those knots.

Here are 3 ways your website is exactly like that.

1. If you keep installing plugins on your website, that’s like your dog running around in the mud. Constantly adding crap to his coat and getting it all knotted up.
2. If you don’t regularly remove the plugins you don’t use, it’s like not washing and brushing your dog. Eventually you’ll have a “knotted” website and you’ll need to call in a professional to help “wash” and “brush” it. (And that gets more expensive the longer you leave it.)
3. A mangled messy fur coat is actually dangerous for your dog. Things can live in his coat and make him sick. Your website is exactly the same. The more crap you have in there, the more likely it is for your site to get “sick” and die.

Continue reading