Meet the Bulb Gals (and Modernize Your Workplace)
Hey, guys. Welcome to a special episode of the Make Others Successful podcast because we have the bald gals on today. This has been a little bit in the making. We've been talking about it for a few months, actually. And then Mitch actually, shout out to him, was like, you guys, you're gonna do it.
Speaker 1:So we're here. Today, we're gonna talk about actually kind of a unique topic. We all were kind of hired in line of each other within what? A span of, like, three months?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Two or three months. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And we have all come from different workplaces, different backgrounds of work, And now we're all here, and we work in a modern workplace. And our experience has been so great, and we kind of wanna talk about what that has made our everyday work life, what we probably could have changed in our previous jobs to make our work lives easier there, and some more topics based on that. So let's get started. We need to set the scene of how did bald gals come to exist?
Speaker 2:It's a good question. Yeah. I guess I was the first of the three hires, and then Mikayla very shortly after. And then, Libby, you joined about two months later. So our company was going through a big growth spurt, and all three of us got hired.
Speaker 2:And it's a tech space company. Right? We work in tech, and we work with a lot of guys lot of guys who worked with a lot of guys for a lot of years. They didn't have many females, women working with them for a while, but it's been really fun to shake it up and have all of us on the team.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We a lot of you guys know we use Slack here. We don't that's our internal messaging system. And I think, what, within, like, the first month of me starting, we made a private bald gal Slack message, and that's that's where we coined bulb gals.
Speaker 1:That's where that name kind of came in. So let's do intros. I'm Libby. I'm our marketing coordinator here. So all the newsletters, blogs, all that comes from me, and I started about January.
Speaker 2:How about you? Great. I'm Emma. I'm our delivery lead here, and I started a little over a year ago, and I do everything project management.
Speaker 3:Nice. And then I'm Makayla. I'm our power platform developer. I started a year, I think, to the date. So
Speaker 1:Woo hoo. One year.
Speaker 2:One year anniversary. Congrats.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, I'm gonna just, like, work this way. But, Emma, since you're kind of the first one hired from this trio Sure. Give your background, what you worked in, and talk a little bit about the environment of your previous workplaces.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this topic, I feel like it's really near and dear to my heart because the the first week and month here, I realized, wow, Bulb Digital does it so differently than every other workplace I've ever been in. So I've sort of really run the gamut of workplaces. I started as corporate as you can go at one of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in the country or in the world. Worked for a major credit card processing company bank in New York, and we had thousands of employees.
Speaker 2:We were not very modern. I wanna say those companies always feel like they're modern. They have all the money and the resources, but it takes a long time to change the way they do things. So looking back, I recognize that although we had all the technology, I don't think it was always well adopted in the different teams. And obviously, this is going back a decade now.
Speaker 2:Remote work wasn't quite what it is today. So that was an interesting experience to start my career in. And then I worked in a startup where I was one of three employees. So it was really small, a little less important to use software and technology. But at the same time, we definitely were not modern.
Speaker 2:And then I moved into a small business and again, just a different industry. It was in the construction industry and as everyone knows about construction, very slow moving industry as far as change. So I've really worked in these non modern workplaces. So bulb to me felt like the most modern workplace I'd ever come across. And, yeah, I'm excited to get into just how it's changed my work life and makes doing work so much more efficient, which as an efficiency minded person has been a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 2:Nice. Nice. What about you?
Speaker 1:So I am quite young. I'm only 24, so I didn't graduate that long ago. And I went to art school. I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I just kind of fell into my first job out of college, which was at an advertising agency doing social media content design for really big brands and just kind of working through the agency pyramid, which if any of you listening work at an agency, you know the pyramid that is has to go through a million rounds of edits, client calls constantly, crazy hours.
Speaker 1:And we were not modern, my agency. And with so many moving parts, I feel like I don't know how we got anything done, honestly. So then moving to a job where I worked in house, which is just, like, a term to be like, I didn't work for clients. I worked for a company and designing their social media. It was a lot smaller of a team, still wasn't modern.
Speaker 1:Things fell through the cracks constantly. That's kind of when I had the realization. Doesn't matter if you have a million people to work with or three people to work with. If your systems aren't modern and they're not strategic, work's not gonna get done very well. Right.
Speaker 1:And then I come to Balb, and it was like this, like, slap in the face moment where you're like, how did I get work done? Anywhere. Right. Mhmm. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I have no idea how any work got done. And, yeah, kind of just to say what or resay what Emma said is it's just such a breath of fresh air to work at a place that prioritizes modernity and making sure processes are staying updated as they hire new people. So that's a little bit of my history, Makela.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess how far back are we going? I
Speaker 1:Right. Sorry. You know?
Speaker 3:So I'll just focus on my last job where I was there for five years, started in a fairly, like, low level role, and just kind of expanded my job as it went on. It was in higher education, working for facilities. And when I came in, the building that I was working in had just opened maybe a few months prior. So, there was it was a little bit of chaos from our side of things. We had to organize, like, hundreds of people and put new processes in place.
Speaker 3:So I was kinda working with a blank slate, but at the same time, we didn't have the capacity to, like, get all of these things in place while we were trying to get our jobs done, you know, we didn't have that spare room because it was kind of like putting out fires when
Speaker 2:So, you couldn't actually work on the strategy.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah. And so, by the time I left, I had tried to implement a few things that, like, a few systems, and that's how I got involved in Power Automate and had tried to push toward a more modern workplace and implement the things that we do here. But that was the most challenging part was the adoption and the actual deployment of these systems. Because folks are, after five years, stuck in their way of, I need to email this person for this form, well, that form's outdated by two years, when I've got it hosted the most recent update on a SharePoint site that no one uses. So, that was the most challenging part.
Speaker 3:So, coming here, seeing the ways that we try to push for that, yet still encounter those same issues has been, I guess, validating, but also a little eye opening that it wasn't just me encountering those things.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. And I'm sure you left a legacy there. You started the work, and others will hopefully pick it up move in that direction.
Speaker 3:We'll
Speaker 2:see. Because I do feel like right? I mean, if you're not changing and you're not moving forward and you do start to realize, well, our competitors are using these tools to, you know, their best of their ability. And all of a sudden, you look around and although I think some industries move slower than others, eventually everyone's going to figure out, wow, everyone else is using this platform and they can collaborate on documents really easily and we don't have that and what's wrong with us. And so, if you're listening to this and you are in one of those businesses, getting your leaders on board is obviously one of the biggest steps.
Speaker 2:It sounds like that's one of the ways you were trying to do it of implement systems and then get people to come around alongside you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And it's also challenging from say like internal communication like an intranet SharePoint to get folks to collaborate on that to then have content to hand out to people to give them their places within that intranet where they are, like, responsible for that content. Yeah. There's yeah. Not just from, like, higher up folks Yeah.
Speaker 3:Adopting that leadership. Yeah. But also from your peers to help you push this thing forward. Sometimes it does feel like a one man thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And when there is a lack of accountability there, people don't feel like they're the owners. Mhmm. And they sort of share responsibility and
Speaker 3:say, oh, I wanna really deal
Speaker 1:with that. Your story is not unique either because I think you speak to previous past, Livy, who where you know something needs to change, and that's how you said you got involved in PowerApps was recognizing, wait. Maybe I can start making things a little bit easier and more modern. Did you run into where it was harder to get peers on board or leadership? Or since maybe leadership wouldn't get on board, then how could you expect your peers to do or to adopt any of that?
Speaker 3:That's a good point. I think it was more so just have like, it's the communication aspect. Yeah. We didn't have strong communication to begin with. Everything was over email until 2020.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't do that.
Speaker 3:And then we did move to Teams, so that was great. I love I love Teams. I know that we use Slack here, but Teams is the first for me, you know. But yeah, it was more so getting folks to understand this is the new way that we're going to do it, and this is how we're going to do it, and no matter how many emails or Teams messages I would send, like, it felt like too large of a role to not have that teamwork, to not have those folks be on my side from the start, and
Speaker 2:to try to rein people in. And then updating people on what's new or a new process
Speaker 3:or a Exactly. New
Speaker 2:So you almost have to have the communication in place first.
Speaker 3:That's how it felt. That was a challenge in my experience was then, like, communicating this out. And part of it was we were replacing old systems, so people still have those bookmarks and all of that And so it's really hard to break those things.
Speaker 2:So you came from an experience of Teams to Slack. What were you using at your old companies?
Speaker 1:Teams, both times.
Speaker 2:Teams? Okay. Nice. I came from a company where we didn't use any type of messaging software. We used sometimes iPhone group chats, which is really annoying because you're Yeah.
Speaker 2:Very because this is a small business, you know, but we were growing. We grew from I started with three employees and I left at 17. So we had huge growth in the three years I was there. But we did not start building in those systems until I think it was about 15 employees in. I actually migrated us from Dropbox over to Teams.
Speaker 2:So or SharePoint really is with all of our files. But we Teams would open automatically on all of our computers and all of us would go and close the window. None of us used Teams ever because the way that leadership liked to communicate was email. And it was email, email, email or text to our personal cell phones. And I say this looking back now, I wish I could have put more modern tools in place before I left because I know now how much Teams or Slack could benefit these companies or really their this particular one I'm thinking of and their goals and just their communication in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I But, went from just email to then Ball Digital Slack. It's been amazing. To be on the same page with other employees who are working on the same project in real time and not have to worry about the churn that emails bring Mhmm. Yes. Has particularly completely changed my my work life.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That I think the communication aspect or the biggest difference I noticed when I started working here and when I actually got to learn my job role and was performing my tasks at kind of like an automatic pace was, I don't know if you guys felt like this, but at my previous jobs, it felt like not only do I have to get my tasks done, but I have to figure out how to make sure everyone's on the same page when they receive, like, if I need someone to review an asset or, oh, shoot. My one manager likes to email, but my other manager really likes to communicate over Teams. So I gotta I gotta differentiate between that. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Now it's like, I just get my work done, and I know the processes in place. We all are on the same page in some way that it's like actually getting the work done is most of my day now, not how do I make up for that lack of modern communication, internal communication organized. That's just it's just a mess.
Speaker 2:And you're touching on such a great point, Libby, because I feel like from what I said, I was like, well, the tool really changed my life. Having Slack, great. But it's not just having the tools. It's not just having Teams. It's not just having Slack.
Speaker 2:It's not just moving your business away and to be more modern. It's also having some type of system or governance or process that then is clearly communicated when you were onboarded of, hey, this is how we do it. If you think of a better way, feel free to bring it up to us. But this is the process. So that it feels like you've now expectations have been set.
Speaker 2:You know how to follow those. You don't have to figure those out. You just have to do the work. Yeah. Which isn't that what we all want most of the And then if you're a system oriented person, maybe you'll have some ideas on how to approve improve it, which I think honestly all of us have probably done or brought forward and it's an open, you know, conversation.
Speaker 2:Right. You looked like you had a thought.
Speaker 3:I did. So I was thinking about how our Slack is organized by all these different channels, and you were talking about the structure of it, that really, I think, helps facilitate a lot of this, whereas I've been at my previous job, we had a Teams, which was great, but we were so like, we were kind of thrown into it with suddenly being remote in 2020. And so we didn't have structure. It was just one single thread of everything. We were a team of
Speaker 2:Oh, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And we were a team of, like, seven folks spread across a couple different locations. And so, like, it was just everything in one spot and
Speaker 2:it Everything everywhere all at once.
Speaker 3:It's similar to email in that way where there's this ambiguity of organization within you have just one inbox. You know, you can put your stuff in folders, but really, it's just one inbox where these threads of communication are taking place. And the way that we have our Slack channel set up actually encouraged me to create a Discord chat with me and my partner, and I've broken it out into, like, this is finances, this is, like, date planning Yeah. And things like that. So that we smart.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So organized.
Speaker 3:I know, and it feels so much better because now it's not just our text chain going back and forth, which we still use obviously, but it's much more structured and has been really helpful for organizing my relationship. I love that.
Speaker 2:So You're using topic based messaging Yeah. To level up your relationship. Yeah. Real life. Well done.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 2:I that. So I feel like what we are really touching on here is topic based messaging in itself isn't necessarily the answer, but you do need to bring in some strategy and some structure around, okay, how are we gonna organize topics? How are we going to actually use the structure to the best we can't just have one thread. Right. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And to what you were saying, Makela, a lot of people might resonate with that of, well, I have so much work to do. When am I gonna find time to go sit in a room with a whiteboard and whiteboard out the structure of all of this? Right. What would you say to someone like that? How would you kind of encourage them?
Speaker 3:Well, the whiteboard thing actually makes me think of what we would do at our previous job was we would literally bring in a rolling whiteboard into a conference room. And on a regular basis, we would make out lists of all of the things that we had to accomplish Mhmm. And where we were at with, like, updates to projects. It's Is that the only spot it lived? Yeah, and then we took a photo of it and we posted in Teams.
Speaker 3:So, and it worked for what we needed, and we would do brainstorming things that way. But if we had in place already a system where these things lived and we didn't have to remember them and then write them down and refer to these lists Yeah. So maybe they were done already.
Speaker 2:Own channel or each its own topic or each its own however you wanted to organize it, but that could have potentially helped as well.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Yeah. So it was like recreating all these threads and taking up an hour or two of our time every couple weeks. And so when I could have posted a thirty second message in a thread Mhmm. And then continued on with my day.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know? So it was like instead of taking the two hours to build the system, we were spending two hours every other week to try to remember everything. Work without a system.
Speaker 2:And I think you're hitting on such a good point because everyone feels like we don't have time to stop and think through the strategy. But if you just can convince a couple people, whether it's just your manager or a leader in the company or even just a peer to be like, hey. I really think if we just look at this, figure this out, structure this, and get some topic based messaging channels in place, it's going to help us in the long run. Let's take half a day and do this, and it's gonna save us weeks of time in the long run. That's been my encouragement.
Speaker 2:Like, looking back at the businesses I've worked at, like, man, if I had just sat down and, like, thought about it for a little bit and thought about the strategy and thought about the power of the tools and then put those two things together instead of just trying to keep swimming and, you know, in the amount of workload you usually have, I think we could have really made some powerful pivots for those businesses. And I almost want to call some of them and be like, hey,
Speaker 3:you should use this tool this way. Like, you know, there's a better way.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:You wanna share that wisdom, which is what part of what we do here at Bulb, which is why I love what we do. But you wanna share the wisdom once you learn it on that there's a better way of working. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's actually a good point to girl math. What you just said, if you'd spend a lot of time now Yeah. You're spending less time later.
Speaker 2:100%. Hashtag girl math.
Speaker 1:Hashtag girl math. That could be the sponsor of today's video.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes, though, people do underestimate the power that if you do think through the communication side of it, that is what ends up helping with the the tech adoption. That's the other piece that I'd I'd love for us to chat more about as well because, specifically the construction industry, we were looking at a lot of people who didn't want to change the way they use technology at all. They were slow to adopt even apps on their phone type thing for work. So it's really hard to think about a project manager or superintendent out on a site actually using the Teams app when they don't really even want to use email.
Speaker 1:Just want to text. What was their default if not those things? Texting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Direct text or once in a while, once a week, they check email or phone calls. It's all phone calls in that industry. What's been interesting is one of our main clients here at Bulb is actually a construction company, and I've seen how they've embraced modern tools. And they're an example of you can't really just say, well, our industry doesn't really
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Change. Because when you do see players in that industry changing and modernizing and just saving a ton of money, time, effort, all of it, you built an app for one of our clients that that's in that industry. And it's it's so fascinating to see how it changes. And I almost wanted to make that a case study and send that to my old company to say, hey, these things could really make a difference.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I almost feel like I dropped the ball at these old places, but I didn't know. I didn't have the knowledge about how it could actually shape these specific businesses. Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. And, hopefully, people who are listening right now know that it's not always I kinda call it, like, a death sentence. Like Sure. Like, Mikayla was talking, making a couple Slack channels, like, I wish I could tell old Livy, hey. In your social media department, just focus on those 20 people.
Speaker 1:You don't have to do the 200 person company.
Speaker 2:That's great advice.
Speaker 1:Be like, hey. You guys been thinking we should make like, I'm using Slack channels for an example. An Instagram or a client based one, you can separate it out however you want. But even just that freedom from your mind of knowing, like like, I know exactly where a message is that I need to refer to. Or, like, you talked about how you just had, like, kind of like a stream of consciousness, it sounds like.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. You know, we'd have the random, like, hey, check out my kids at their soccer game. And then, hey, I have an upcoming deadline. I need a response on this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay, Sharon, we can't look at LA right Like, oh, that's cute, but it's getting in the way of my work. Would like to shove it to the side, but I don't have the luxury to do that. It's all in one place.
Speaker 2:No, you're so right, though, Olivia, about starting small because looking back, there were three of us who worked on the accounting side of operations and everything as well. We should have had a channel just for the three of us. And I know those two women would have gotten on board. They were office workers in the sense that they were at their computer a lot. That's where I could have started it.
Speaker 2:Like, find the in Right. Who will be a tech tech adopter and then start small with that. You don't have to do the 200 person company
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To begin with. Right.
Speaker 3:And that's the champions model of things. Right. And so I was part of the champions model at my previous place.
Speaker 2:And Of course, you were. Know.
Speaker 3:It was the Microsoft Championship. Yeah. And so we met, like, once a month. I had to travel, like, an hour to go to the main campus there. And it was so fun.
Speaker 3:I got to learn about Teams and all this jazz. So when we were forced to go remotely, I think me having that knowledge did help our team. I remember I gave like a little presentation. It was like the day before we had to be remote, and I'm like, okay, This is how we use Teams. This is how you send a message.
Speaker 3:Had like a little, you know, like PowerPoint ready. Cleaning all of it. So I like, from my own experience, being a champion, I think that is a very successful model. Mhmm. It's still challenging for those people, but you kind of are building a workforce that's spreading that, you know, that adoption.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like a wave.
Speaker 2:From the ground up. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How would you guys because I know if I was listening to to this podcast, like, a year, a year and a half ago, I would have been like, that's great. I understand how I can do it, unfortunately, and I feel you. I know Emma and Mikayla probably feel your pain. Sometimes you work with people who just it's sometimes an ego thing.
Speaker 1:It's an ageism kind of thing where it's like, I've been doing it this way for twenty years. Why would I do that? Mhmm. What would you tell those people if they wanna start trying to maybe, like, put in a little just some more modern ways of doing things when you kinda feel like you've hit a brick wall?
Speaker 2:I I feel like on the one hand, I would go back and tell myself this, if I could go talk to past Emma, that I feel like where your mind normally goes with these sort of modernizations is it's gonna help the bottom line. You know, you go talk to your leader and you say, well, we'll save time. So we'll be more efficient. So we'll save money. And so then you think that will actually move the needle.
Speaker 2:And depending on the person, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. I wish I could go back and tell past me, you will enjoy working more if you're able to get Yeah. These these because it used to be, in my head, be like, well, you know, too bad my leader won't listen. He could be saving so much money, but it's his company, not mine. But that's such a shallow sort of reasoning.
Speaker 2:It's I actually think you just end up having more joy in your workday Right. When things go more smoothly. And maybe that's cheesy to say, but I've experienced it the last year of enjoying work much more when you feel like you're on the same page and you're actually rowing in the same direction with all your coworkers. So given the communication topic we're on, I think that one's top of mind. I would almost take that angle of if you can convince yourself of that, it gives you a lot more intrinsic motivation to get other people on board with you in whatever way you need to.
Speaker 2:But don't just think of it as only a money saver because that can be kind of a shallow I I lost motivation with that quite quickly. So I was like, well, that's not gonna really affect my bottom line. You know, I'm paid what I'm paid. And so that's me being super honest. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's a good point because I think I mean, I've been here too where it's like, you know, it's just my work. It's just it's just my work.
Speaker 3:Well, that's
Speaker 1:fifty, forty, 60, depending on what you do hours of your week. You should be happy Right. Majority of the time.
Speaker 2:And and just be able to get more done. And that really, I think, provides a lot more motivation. But, yeah, when you hit a brick wall over and over again when you're trying to change something, it's hard to find more motivation. So that deeper motivation of knowing you may enjoy your day more, I think that actually can be really encouraging.
Speaker 3:It reduces the friction of getting my job done, of doing my job. Of doing my It makes it a more, like, smooth process. Right. So you don't have that daily frustration of, like, Susan didn't respond to my email yet. Has she even read it?
Speaker 3:Don't know.
Speaker 2:Or again, this person didn't come to this meeting because there was no communication about when we were having it. Now we're not even gonna have the meeting even though 16 of the 17 people are there. You know, these things affect the whole team because then the whole team is upset and frustrated. And then, you know, how do you think that then affects the product you're putting out there and their interactions with the client? And it's just a downward spiral.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But, yeah, how do you sum all that up in a conversation with your boss? It's a challenge.
Speaker 1:We've all done
Speaker 2:it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's hard, and it's never easy. And just because I think the other thing I would tell old Livia is because you might get pushed back, there are some bosses who just aren't gonna change, and we can acknowledge that, I think, here. But those difficult conversations could lead to a really big payoff, and I sometimes wish I would have done that more knowing the people that I worked with.
Speaker 3:My challenge in suggesting these new ideas is that they look so drastically different from what people expect. I always think of the end result. Like, I'm always, you know, 500 yards down the road being like, ah, yes. This is what it will look like, but it looks so foreign to folks because they haven't followed my train of thought to get to this place. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so when you hand someone something that doesn't look like anything they're used to, they don't wanna touch it. Like, oh, no. I can't learn this. This is the new user interface, whatever it is. I think part of it is to be sneaky and start small and make it look like what they already know.
Speaker 3:We had, I think, someone on office hours or within our community ask something about using Loop within email so that people who use email can start using Loop and not even know it. And so I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2:Oh, know. Right?
Speaker 3:That's cool. Yeah. To get people to adopt things that maybe they don't realize they're adopting a new tool.
Speaker 2:Or another one that's just just such an easy example is if you have an event coming up and you usually would send an email with all the information in it, send a message or if you have to the email, but don't have any of the information in the message. Have a link to your SharePoint intranet if you're trying to get people to start exploring that. And so don't always spoon feed everyone all the information. Make them have to go find it and so that they start to learn the tool, whether it's a intranet or they have to log on to Teams to go see the information if that's where it's posted.
Speaker 1:Something that's doable. Like, it's not like this massive, oh my gosh. I can't even fathom trying to do this to everyone. But just like, oh, I'm just gonna do it once and, like, see what happens. Let's see what goes on.
Speaker 2:So let's leave everyone with, like, the one or two things that we enjoy most about our modern workplace that we think they could adopt. Adopt. Love it. I probably have my two, if you want me to. Go.
Speaker 2:Go. Go. But again, because I came from such nonmodern workplaces, this will probably seem elementary to some people. But if you're hearing this and it sounds new, you need to use it. So within SharePoint, just a couple years ago, I didn't understand how document collaboration worked.
Speaker 2:So I didn't realize I think years and years ago this is going to show my lack of Teams knowledge from years ago, but you used to not be able to collaborate on a document in the desktop app. You could only do it online. And so that turned a lot of people off to being able to collaborate because if you had it open on your desktop and someone else had it open on their desktop or when we had Dropbox, that's how it was. Anyway, Teams allows you to collaborate in documents when you both have it open in the desktop. Nice.
Speaker 2:If you don't know that, it is a thing and we use it here all the time and it's a lifesaver. I think it's been around for a couple of years. And if you're not using it at your company, which I know there are companies that aren't using it because I've worked for some of them, you should start using it. So document collaboration is huge And then topic based channels, which you guys are probably going to echo. But, yeah, just changed my life being able to know where to go to talk to who for which topic.
Speaker 2:Right. And having that structured. And you don't have to think about it then. You don't have to think about who in marketing needs to know about this. We just have a marketing channel.
Speaker 2:Right. So those would be my two.
Speaker 3:Those are good two.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My two, I would definitely I'm gonna say topic based communication and obviously, for the reasons of just being able to find your messages. But I think what happens a lot of the time in workplaces is there is secret pettiness, secret ego that no one's even gonna acknowledge. And people are people. You can't always avoid that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The biggest benefit of topic based communication that I have found is nothing's technically yours or private, which Matt Dressel, one of our cofounders, talks about this. You just throw out your information into the void, and it kind of starts to build this camaraderie, trust between coworkers, and it's something that I'd never experienced until working here that I was like, wow. Everyone's just so, like like, in our random we have a random channel where it's like, hey, or general. I'm gonna be out for thirty minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's not a secret. It's not like someone has to tip it.
Speaker 2:Communication. Doesn't feel like there's all
Speaker 1:these, yeah, secret. And same with, like, oh, we have a marketing team channel where it's just, like, being able to have people review my work. I can review other people's work. It's just created this, like, such an evil I mean, even level evil, not evil, even level playground where you can just be like, here's my work. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That and then I don't know if this is necessarily here, but if you're in a place where you're really, like, I just don't know where to start, my advice to you would be make out a list of the things that you do every single day, every day, from menial tasks to your big tasks to what you have to send, and start breaking them out into areas where you're like, okay. This, I can definitely make more modern, and I can start somewhere small. That's not gonna happen until I get pretty big leadership on board because even though I don't have to do that here, that would be what I would have told old Livy to do. Because you can implement it. You can really do it, I promise, even if it's not everything.
Speaker 1:Those would be my two things.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's I guess it's tricky for me to follow-up with that because I that's Yeah. Kind of what I wanna say as well. Something I do really appreciate about using Slack, and maybe for me, it's the connection to Discord because I've always used Discord for, like, video game messaging, and Slack is structured very similarly. And so maybe it's my connection to it there, but to me, it feels more casual and, like, I actually know my coworkers more.
Speaker 2:So true.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We can create a quick response. We can respond to something with an emoji, you know.
Speaker 1:A gif. Yeah. Custom emojis.
Speaker 3:Custom emojis. I'm always uploading new emojis. And I feel like it creates a more casual way of communicating with folks. Like, I know that someone has seen something when they've tossed a check mark emoji on there, you know. Yes.
Speaker 3:They don't have to respond, noted, thank you, you know? Like, it's not as formal. You don't have your signature on an email of like, thank you, here are my 20 ways to contact me with my personal phone, and, you know, it's just a lot more fluent and smooth and authentic. And so that's, I think, another way it helps you enjoy your job more too.
Speaker 1:Yes. Completely agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a good one. I would echo all of that.
Speaker 1:Well, you guys, I think we did a fantastic first Bald Gals podcast episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was fun. We talked about a lot of things that we've all felt, and we hope to people who are listening, you're not alone in this. This is a really common thing. And just because our workplace is really modern, we're always improving here, which is a great attitude to have. So thank you so much for listening, and we hope that we could help you a little bit today.
Speaker 1:And we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker 4:Hey. Thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulk Digital, and special thanks to Eric Veeneman for our music tracks and producing this episode. If you have any questions for us, head to makeotherssuccessful.com, and you can get in touch with us there.
Speaker 4:You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the most out of Office '3 65. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.
