Why Teams Double Their Productivity Thanks to Nozbe

Hello, hello, hello. This is the 53rd episode of our No Office podcast,
where we talk about some smart tips and methods to make your life and work easier.
Oh yes. Today, Michael has a special scenario and a special idea for this episode.
I will let him share this idea.
So we've had inquiries from our listeners,
"Hey, I like Nozbe, I like your app, I like what you're doing, but how do I
convince my boss or my manager to give it a try to start using Nozbe or different
version of this? Hey, I'm overwhelmed with emails in our work. I use Nozbe
privately, but I would like us to adopt Nozbe. Where do I send my boss? I'm gonna
ask them to give it a try. So we thought about it,
and I even created kind of a sketch, like kind of a discussion between between the
employee and the boss. And yeah, it's, it was very interesting,
but a little bit cringy. So we decided that we will use this idea for something
else. So stay tuned and subscribe to our YouTube channel if you're interested and if
you're curious. But today, we just discussed, we just decided to create this post
episode of the podcast, of the no -office podcast, where we basically, you know,
answer everything, all the doubts that a boss, you know, manager might have when,
you know, going with Nozbe, and we're gonna address all these questions,
all these doubts, and we're gonna address them all. And once we address them.
I hope that after watching this episode or seeing or listening to this episode, they
will, you know, they will be convinced to just give Nozbe a try.
That's right. So let's start from the use case from everyday's life of a normal
person who has a company who runs a team. Damn, I lost half an hour again,
looking for this offer for a client. And the worst thing is that even I wasn't
sure it was the current version or maybe the old version. How is that possible? And
in our company, we take care of everything. We have Google Drive, Cloud Drive,
email, chat applications, even three of them. How is it possible that it still feels
like a mess? And this is like a typical use case, typical situation where Magda,
where she's running the demos for Nozbe, is that people are like surprised that even
though they have all these technologies, they have the best smartphones, the best
laptops, everything the best, they are still kind of lost. They are just don't
know-- - It's struggling with cows. - Yes, so one of our solutions is like,
yeah, 'cause you're using too many tools because if there are too many channels of
communication, too many ways to communicate,
it's a mess because you just forgot. Okay, so where's the file? Is it in this
folder or did you send it to me via this messaging platform or was it an
attachment in an email or which email was it? So it's all a mess because there are
just too many tools. And our customers who have been successful using Nozbe, they
have realized that when they make Nozbe, they're like central hub of information.
Then they start succeeding. Then everything starts to make sense and everything is
very easy to find and to manage and to just get organized. So that's the key.
- Yeah, this moment of weakness of your boss, of your leader is the good moment to
mention Nozbe or other application that just will help you to centralize whole
communication processes and exchange multiple communication channels into just one
efficient app. - Yeah, and Nozbe, if you sell,
but I'm gonna ask you like, what is Nozbe? And you're going to say, like, it's a,
you know, project management application, then it's kind of a boring answer. And
that's why our new answer is that Nozbe helps smart business owners get their
personal and get their personal and business life of themselves and their teams get
organized in a simple way. So Nozbe is not only a, you know,
a to -do app, although it was born as a to -do app 18 years ago, inspired by
getting things done by David Allen. But it's not a to -do app because on one hand,
you have projects, tasks, so yeah, typical project and task management, but then you
have comments to these tasks, which means communication. So, Nozbe is an organization
and communication app. >> Yeah. For me personally, I call Nozbe,
my work application. Because for me, it's where I do my work,
where I note down things, where I communicate with my team, when I set reminders,
where I manage my deadlines. For me, everything is happening in Nozbe. So for me,
Nozbe is actually a work app. >> Yeah, Nozbe is like no office. It's your office.
Nozbe the place where work happens. And this is where you get organized,
where you put all these projects, put on these tasks, and then you comment in the
comments. And we've had customers when there was a pandemic and everybody had to go
home to work remotely because of the pandemic. And one of our clients said that
they were all in the office, they were all working from the office. And what
happened was that when they had to go to their home offices, they were like,
nothing has changed because they've been using Nozbe all this time. So they still
had everything in Nozbe. So like kind of they took their office with them because
their projects, tasks and comments, everything was there.
- Okay, so once you explained everything to your boss about projects and tasks and
comments, then he will go like, okay, comments to task and like,
how is it better from our good old emails and text messages?
- Yeah, exactly. So one of the things is that, of course, if you have a comment
thread to one particular task, it's, you know, the comments are about this particular
task. And as in previous episodes of this podcast, we have explained explained, email
sucks for collaboration. Email is really bad for collaboration because in the email,
you can have several attachments that you can be efficient writing an email about
several things. And then don't get me started if there is one attachment or one
document and three people are working on it. Then who has the last version? Who has
the newest version? Who edited or touched the newest version? Like you never know,
like it's just a mess. So that's why commenting to a task is so much superior
because you're commenting on one topic to this thing, you're giving feedback to this
task, you're ironing out the details of this particular task, you're sending
documentation to this task and there is no doubt that this task is about these
things and nothing else. Yesterday I had a consultation with a man who wants to
convince their, I think he's kind of a freelancer or maybe a part of a team who
collaborates with bigger companies. And he wants to encourage these clients, these
bigger companies to work with them via Nozbe. And like I explained all the features
to him and he was really amazed with Nozbe. But then he said, "At Magda,
the boss of this company, he's so used to their,
I think Google teams chat, like a group chat." And apparently,
this guy is totally addicted to this. And he said, "Maybe for the beginning,
we could just create a task, and I would call it a group chat and they would
exchange comments there and I said, "Oh my God, it's so counterproductive.
Why this person can't discuss and chat, but inside the project,
inside a specific task? Why they need so much to have a general chat?" The whole
idea is to do this in context, to do this in theme and not to spread
communication, like not to have everything in one pot,
mixed and unsearchable, but to nicely arrange it. - Yeah,
but old habits die hard. So that's why it's for them, it's really difficult to do
that. But actually this is a very smart thing to create a task, which you will
call group chat, and then we'll be comments there. The boss will comment there, but
in NotSpeak, in the comment, you can also link to projects and tasks. So this way,
the rest of the team can start dividing the work into projects and tasks,
while the boss is still enjoying the group chat. Then at some point, he might
realize, "Oh, there are projects, all there their tasks or I can actually go there
and review them instead of shouting from the rooftops to my group chat.
Yeah, maybe you're right, but for me it was so painful, this idea. And also I'm
really anxious about introducing the group chat ever in the future in Nozbe.
This is still something To be careful about
Okay, so how how knows please better from email and messages now, you know how
Yeah, also also, you know the the Boss, I mean just like with the guy with the
group chat The bosses very often are used to the fact that if they need to know
what's going on What is the status of the of the situation of a project, whatever,
they can send a message or to a group chat, for example, "Hey, what's the status
of this? How are we going with this?" Right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. We will move on to this topic of checking the status. But for
now, once we convince our boss, how Nozbe and this our structure of project tasks
and comments is better from regular emails and chats and text messages,
probably he will want to know, okay, but explain how we will collaborate, how the
workflow will be. So then probably you should go with explanation of the structure
of Nozbe. We have projects, tasks, and then comments. Projects are any aspect of
your business. Project and a project you do. Project can be a campaign that you are
running. So anything that actually your company is working on will be a project.
Then you will populate this project with tasks. Tasks are single actions,
something that you want to delegate to your employees. So something that one person
can do or something that you want someone to take care of. So that's a task. And
then if you want to give people feedback, if you want to communicate with them in
regards to this task, that's where comments come in. And that's where you start
discussion and start the group chat or whatever you want to call it.
But in the context of this particular task. And that's how the Can Nozbe works?
- Yeah, and it's actually pretty simple. So of course, the tasks also have some
parameters. So you can put dates, Udates, you know, all that stuff. So this way you
don't forget about these tasks. And you can delegate tasks as you mentioned. But the
cool thing is that the projects are very broad. So in Nozbe, we don't adhere to
any definition of a project. So for you, your industry, your use case, projects can
be something that you're doing and it's how it has a start and a finish and you
have to do it and when you complete the project, the project is done. But it can
be just ongoing things or just grab bags, tasks of a department. So for example,
we work in Nusby's marketing department, so we have a marketing project which is
like just general marketing ideas and things, and this project never ends. It's just
there with just things we are working on, you know, ideas we have to discuss with
our co -workers. Also, depending on your field, the project can be your customer.
The project can be your property. The project can be your construction, investment,
anything. Yeah. I mean, we have companies from different industries, you know, and
some, yeah, identify their clients, I mean, the law firms, they like to have one
project per client. Other companies have like several projects for one client and
then the group the projects because you can do that also in Nozbe. So all these
things, it's completely flexible. But the idea is that there is a big thing,
there are tasks for it and there is discussion and around the tasks.
Okay. So now your boss will want to know the progress. That's what the topic that
you have started. Okay. Until now, I wanted to know what's the progress.
I either sent you an email asking what's the progress, or I organized a status
meeting. What will I do now? People love status meetings,
right? So The change is this, I'm gonna ask a question.
So you as a boss, do you prefer to ask for status or do you prefer to know the
status, know how things are going? Personally, as the CEO of our company,
I prefer to know. I kind of feel embarrassed very often when I have to ask how
things are going Like it feels like I don't have my hand on this. Like if I
don't, you know, if I'm not really... - How to control? - You're controlling this
thing. So for me, it's actually better to know the status. And I have this very
cool example that after like a two weeks vacation, I was two weeks completely off
the grid. Like I wasn't checking Nozbe. I didn't know what was going on in the
company. I mean, we have planned things to do. So, to do. So I knew what, in
theory, people are working on, but I haven't seen that. I haven't been following up.
And then I came back on a Monday. And instead of calling a status meeting now,
all the directors tell me what's going on, marketing, tell me what's going on, like,
programmers, give me, tell me what's going on. Instead of that, I just went to
Nozbei and checked the projects, checked the status of the projects, checked what's
going on. And And after like a two, three hour deep dive into our Nozbe projects
and tasks, I was up to date. I knew where things have progressed.
If I didn't know, if somebody hasn't posted their update, I just asked them in the
comment to a task, "Hey, how is this going?" So I would receive an answer pretty
quickly. So this way I could check for the status without interrupting anyone,
without interrupting anyone, without taking them off their work to do a meeting with
the boss. And this way, after a few hours, I knew exactly I had the clarity of
what to do next, what to focus on next. Yeah, and the tip here is to maybe just
agree with your team or introduce kind of policy, communication policy, that People
who are working on given tasks, they regularly post a comment how things are
going, what's the progress, what's the status. I think it would really work fine for
any type of company if they, for example, at the end of the day or at the end of
the week, they just write a quick note, hey, so far I managed to do this and this,
or today there was a big breakthrough, I managed to do this. So this way your boss
or your colleagues can see without asking you and without taking your time how
things are and they can even give you a feedback or maybe advise you or just say
okay and give you a thumb or give you a small heart reaction. Yeah and here we
have as we're recording this live there is our audience and Robert Coulton,
hello.
He's a long -time user. He's commenting that there are many things that make Nozbee
great, but he likes the calendar view. And this is the cool thing, that as we say,
we have projects, tasks, and comments. But if tasks have their due dates or
reminders, they show up also in the calendar view. So this way, you can see them
in time. So in Nozbe, you don't have to use due date or reminder for every task.
But for the ones that need their specific time and date, you can do that and this
way, again, you can filter out what's important today and what's important tomorrow.
- Another view that Robert recommends, as I can see, is the view of a specific
user. And this is a good tool for managers to check how specific person is doing.
So you can just view all the tasks of a chosen person in one list.
Yeah. And this way you can see, okay, he has one task in this project, several
tasks in this project, and here he has nothing. How come this guy should be in
this project? Why he's not contributing? So this is also a nice way of kind of
controlling and staying in control. Yeah, also seeing, you know, what's on people's
plates. Like, again, you don't have to call them.
and you can contribute to that. And I prefer that this kind of way because then as
a boss, I prefer to go to your task, Magda, and just comment on it and say, "Hey,
I like that." Or, "Hey, I have an additional question." Like, so this way, we're
working together instead of just demanding answers from you. - Yeah, that's
collaboration.
Okay, another sentence from a boss. And What if I see that there are more things
to do in a given project, that what is already listed in Nozbe.
Once the project is done, it's done, we can't add anything because in normal life,
I would call you and I would just delegate to another thing to do, or I would
email you with another task. >> Yeah, that's the cool thing. Again, projects, tasks,
and comments. If you open a project, you see all these tasks. Not only the boss
can see, hey, there is something missing here. We have all this, but we are not
working on that. And you can just add a task. And it's, as a Nozbe creator,
from the very beginning, I wanted to make sure that adding a task to Nozbe is just
tap, click, go. Like, it's so easy. Like, it's very inconvenient. You just tap,
hit on a plus, write the task name, hit Enter, and the task is done. It's added.
So that's really simple. And the cool thing is that also your employees,
your coworkers, they can open the same project and they can look at the project and
be like, "Hey, yeah. I think we should also do this or that." And they can also
add their tasks. So this democratizes work. It helps not oversee you know,
not see something. So when you're doing a project for a client or you're doing
something for a client, many other people have the insight, have the view to the
project and can contribute and this way nothing falls through cracks. Exactly.
So together with introducing a new tool like Nozbe, it's also important to introduce
a new role and the new policy that Not only the boss is the person who creates
and delegates tasks. No, everyone in a team can create a task for themselves or for
someone else or even for a boss, because that's how the work continues and how the
project moves on. Sometimes we plan the strategy for the project,
but then things just come out and you need to be reactive and work more and add
something so in Nozbe everyone can add tasks and I know that for some probably
bosses and also generally for some companies especially with more traditional approach
they are afraid. How come you don't have those levels in Nozbe?
There is like a best user, user, regular user, super user, admin,
super admin. We don't have this. We have, you can create, there is a person who
creates a project, then they give access to the whole team or just 2000 people.
And then everyone, as you say, there is a democracy, project democracy. Everyone has
the same possibilities and the same,
Yeah, they can create task, add task, change deadline, add the deadline, set a
reminder, re -delegate the task, and obviously write comments and attach attachments.
Yeah, and that's the key because I know traditional companies prefer that you
employee, when you go to this project, you just do what you have to do and don't
touch anything. Okay. They can still do that. They can still not touch anything. But
also, in Nozbe, we have introduced a cool history of the task. So we can even see
who completed the task, who added something, who changed the task parameters. So it's
like, if I set a deadline for you, Magda, and you changed the deadline, I will see
it in Nozbe. >> Yeah. No cheating. >> So no cheating. Yeah. Well, in your case,
it's the other way around. I'm telling you in deadline for tomorrow and you're doing
it today. But in many cases, if I set a deadline for tomorrow and you're changing
the deadline for Friday, I will see that. So again, this prompts a communication.
Hey, why did you change the deadline? Hey, what's going on? So this way, again, you
can work together better.
Another goal from the boss. As a boss, as a manager, I'm often on the go.
I'm driving from one place to another. I'm at the meetings, conferences, I'm on the
plane, at the airport. I'm not always in the office in front of my computer to
work on this desktop application, Nozbe. Yeah, and again,
this is why we have doubled down on the mobile phone, smartphone first design of
And like many competing products, which are on the market, and Nozbe smartphone apps,
they are not companion apps. They are fully blown Nozbe app in your pocket.
You can manage your company from your pocket. We have a tagline for this.
So your company in your pocket. And this way, when you're on the go, you can check
your projects, reply to comments, change the delegation, set up new projects, add new
tasks. It's so easy. It's like a very easy end. Actually, when you reply to
comments, you can even dictate the comments, right?
Yeah, and I think the firm in my pocket, it's a quote from one of our clients.
Yeah, it was the law firm. Yes, Yeah, we had a we had a we have a customer who
has like it's a fairly big law firm I think you know medium -sized law firm and
the managing partner has never used not be on the desktop He has just been managing
the whole company from his smartphone like for him The smartphone was the most
important Component to to being able to to manage the company because this way he
could see and they had the the structure that for example, for every case they were
dealing with, it was a different project, so he could see all the cases, he could
see all the deadlines. And for a law firm, deadlines are really important. If you
don't send your documents on time, you're basically screwed. So he could check all
that, he could make sure that everything is on time from his pocket, from his
smartphone. And in Nozbe, we have engineered the application like this, that it also
works offline. So even if you, While traveling, you have a weak internet connection,
you can still open a project, open tasks, you can still use Nozbe if nothing
happened. If you add something, then once you have a better connection, it
synchronizes in the background and it just works. I, to test this, sometimes when
I'm traveling on the airplane, I'm actually doing my weekly review on the airplane.
So I'm changing tasks, completing tasks, adding comments, doing all that. And then I
see when we land, it just synchronizes beautifully and everything is done. So it's
glorious. And this way, it doesn't matter if you have a laptop, if you have a
desktop, if you have a tablet, if you have a smartphone, Android or iPhone, it all
works. And also probably many bosses would be concerned about data security and Maybe
they would be afraid that, okay, everyone can carry our law firm in the pocket. Is
it safe? So, yes, it is safe. We are really concentrating a lot of efforts to make
sure that we have everything under control, that we have,
okay, apart from our efforts, it's also, of course, important to give your team some
guidelines that they should have really strong passwords, that they should use to FA
a double authentication format, not to let anyone get to your Nozbe.
But it is really safe if you take care of it. I mean, we've been in business for
18 years, and we have backups and backups of the backups, and we have great
customer support.
We said to some clients who rely, for example, on Google services, we're like good
luck emailing Google customer support and having a reply. In our case, we have great
customer support teams. So this way, even if you accidentally delete a project or a
task, you can ask us to find it for you and bring it back. So really,
we can save you from a major disaster. And that's our promise. This way,
Nozbe can be your trusted system and in this way, it's just,
you know, it's, it gives you the peace of mind that, you know, everything is there
and you can get stuff done together with your team. - Yeah. Another strong point
that a boss, reluctant boss would have is, okay, we have this project tasks and
comments. That looks like a lot of writing and writing takes more time and more
effort than weekly arranging things like verbally calling to each other or calling a
quick meeting.
Won't we waste time because of it? Yeah and this is a common misconception because
on one hand you think oh I'm gonna have to journal so much, I have to write so
much, I am not a writer or whatever but look when you're sending emails you're
writing as well. And very often when you're sending emails or messages, you're
sending much more than you think because you're sending messages there. For example,
I'm sending a message to your magba and then I'm sending the same message, but then
to Amelia to ask her about similar thing. And then I'm asking a message to Pavel
and then something else. So I'm just, keep sending different messages. In Nozbe, you
write a comment to a task once and then it stays not only for this person that is
working on this task. But for everyone else who has access to this project, they
can check on this comment. They can chime in on this comment or add their two
cents, or they can reply to this comment because they have like additional
information and you don't have to remember, oh, I have to CC this guy or BCC this
guy. I don't have to send copy. They have access to the project. So they have
access to the tasks. So they have access to all these comments. So once you write
a comment, you write a comment basically for the entire team, even though you're
writing... And for the future generations as well, for the future employees. And this
is the key. This is the key. Once you make Nozbe your trusted system, your central
point, then the knowledge stays with Nozbe. So even if your employees changed your
jobs, they... Because every company at some point has this thing that people change
jobs. It's normal. Even the best companies, people leave the best companies because
they have other different goals and they want to work for someone else. So the
moment they leave the company, the knowledge stays, their comments stay, their tasks
stay. And recently we've Rafał, who was co -host of this podcast,
he left the company. And I don't have to bug him about things that he was working,
he was doing for the company because I can check his comments and I can check his
tasks. And this has helped me a lot, you know, in the transition when he moved on,
he wasn't working with us anymore. And I could check his past comments and to see
what he was working on, where he finished something or not, and what I should pick
up or not. So this way it's just stays the knowledge,
the company knowledge stays in the company. - For me, it feels like every comment
can be a small beginning or even a part of serious documentation. When we write,
we tend to analyze things more than when we speak. The written messages,
as we explained two episodes ago, are better, are more thoughtful,
are also maybe more compressed without those, let me think. No,
when you write, you just write exactly what you want to say. And it was, as you
said, it will stay forever, even if someone leaves the company, their contribution,
their tasks, their comments will be there, just the avatar and the name of the user
will be set as unknown. But it's there. So that's another advantage of having Nozbe
and communicating.
No, the avatar actually would not be a no, it will be just archived. I'm like the
grayish. It will be just grayed out. Yeah, and here Robert, our listener is saying
that one of the cool features, and this goes basically with this, is templates.
It's the same that in Nozbe, you can have templates. So this way, when you do
something repeatedly, you can use templates. and this way you don't have to reinvent
the wheel over and over again. For this podcast, we have a template. Every two
weeks, we're launching a template to prepare this podcast and promote the podcast.
And with every week, every two weeks, we actually iterate on it. So we can go to
the template and improve the template, change something, you know, add a task, remove
a task or whatever. So this way our template, our Modus Operandi, changes as we
improve this process, as we record more podcasts, as we get better at podcasting.
So having templates is great. Like, for example, again, when people move on from the
company, we have a whole outboarding in and outboarding template where we check off,
you know, if we have removed them from this service, from this thing, from this
thing. So we can check really off if they have been removed from all the services
that they've been using as a non -SB employee, or we can onboard them the same way.
So it's just a great way for our customers, when they have new clients or the law
firms that I mentioned, when they have a new clients, very often they have a
template. Okay. Once you have a new client, you have to ask them for this, check
this, check that, and prepare the job for the client. So having templates is just
amazing. - Yeah, it's a great time saver. Today I was talking to a lady who runs a
real estate agency and she also wanted to start with Nozbe and together with her we
prepared a template, a project template for her for the new property that is for
sale in her agency. So she will just be able to activate it, create a new project
out of it, and she will probably save many, many minutes and hours. Also,
just writing things down and communicating in comments,
let's organize less meetings. And meetings are, as we know, usually counterproductive
and pretty toxic. Yeah, If you are meetings, thanks to the fact that we have
everything in projects, tasks, and comments, everybody. And everyone has access to
this. And everyone has access to them. People know what's going on. So they don't
have to have such long meetings or meetings at all. All these status meetings are
gone, basically, because you don't have to explain the status because it's there in
the comments. So everybody can feel free to read. So we in our company as only for
new ones to just explain something that is really hard to explain in a written
form. You just want to understand somebody's motives or something like this. But
also, we have meetings to just bond because we work remotely. But apart from that,
you don't need so many meetings. So again, if you want to convince your boss, tell
them, "Hey, there will be fewer meetings. You will have more time for your work and
we will have more time. We, who you pay, we'll have more time for our work that
you're actually paying for instead of calling us out for the meetings. Another doubt
also not only our imaginary boss, but also declined for from my today's consultation
head. Okay, we have so many properties, we have like flips, we have for sale
property, we have for rent properties, we have so many of them, I will end up with
like millions of projects and tasks.
Okay, that's true, you will have many, many, many projects, but that's good, that's
how your work is structured. And in Nozbe, there are many ways to deal with it and
not to have any trouble because of that. - I mean, in Nozbe, you can organize
things, you can group projects, you can, there are just many advanced features which
we are not going to cover today. We have tags, you know, there are many, many ways
to, you know, in projects you can have sections of projects, like there are many,
many ways to get organized better. But just listening to you,
Magda, I'm thinking, if this client of ours, if they have so many things,
so many properties, how are they managing it now. They are using WhatsApp groups,
messenger and email. Oh, man. But they couldn't because before they were just a
small and now their business grew. And she said she's not I mean,
you cannot be with it anymore. In her case, you cannot afford not to use Nozbe in
that case, because it's really you have to get it organized, you have to put it
somewhere. And then we have great search, so we can search by, you know, so our
customers are really good in inventing, for example, keywords and words they use, for
example, again, the law firms very often they have case numbers. So in the project,
there is a case number. So this way they can search by case number and find the
project and know exactly what's going on. There are many other, you know, keywords
that we might use. And sometimes, as you use Nozbe, you start improving your system.
Like just today, for example, I had trouble. I asked you, I had trouble finding one
task. So I renamed it because I was using a different keyword to find this task.
So I decided, okay. - You renamed this task? That was my keyword. Oh, okay. - I
added, I didn't, I didn't remove anything. I added one more word for myself.
So I didn't. So don't worry, you'll find the task anyway. So no, no, no. So I
have improved the system. I haven't. Okay, I thought you destroyed my life. No, no,
no, I haven't destroyed your life. But again, this is communication, you know, if I
rename it, rename it, and then I rename it something that you don't like, you can
rename it back, or you can ask me and comment, Michael, what did you do to my
life? So, so that's also possible. But that's the key. If you have so many things
to do, it's really important to get it organized because, as you mentioned, the
client that you talked to today, I can't imagine her managing many properties in
WhatsApp groups. Yeah, that must have been exhausting. Okay,
another thing, will people want to try using a new tool? Probably they or you say
that, "Oh, the boss is crazy. He came or she came up with another app. We'll have
to learn again. We'll have to implement another unnecessary tool." How,
what advice can we give?
- Yeah, so the thing is that once they see how simple Nozbe is,
they will. But before I do, I can just, I don't wanna speak I'm gonna ask Sarah
to explain, you know, how she uses Nozbe this way, you will know what I mean.
- When we've been around for about 10 years, our business has, and we've been using
Nozbe for about eight of those years. And as we grew, we kind of got to the point
where I just couldn't remember everything anymore. I'm pretty organized. I would just
kind of keep everything in my head and with posts and notes and things like that.
And it just got to be too much. And so I started looking around for some sort of
project management software that could help me have a set up really trusted system.
But really I just wanted a system where I could know that I had everything in
there. I wasn't going to forget anything. I wasn't going to drop any balls for
clients or missed deadlines.
So there you go, Sarah told you like you have to have everything in one system.
- Yeah, and also I think you spoke to a CEO of a huge Polish company, and he also
said that, yeah, my team did exactly the same, but now they just can't imagine
their lives without Nozbe. For the first period is going to be hard.
You'll have to force people to use it, to change their habits. And as we spoke in
a few episodes back. It's really hard to get rid of habits. If people were emailing
for tens, like yeah, decades, it's hard for them to now change and go for an
hospital. But they will love it. - I mean, we have, you know,
we have put, we put Sarah's short version of this conversation. We have We have a
longer one -hour blog where she explains that, thanks to the fact that she has all
these projects and everything in Nozbe, onboarding a new person is actually easy
because you give them access to Nozbe, you delegate a few tasks to them, and they
get the hang of it very quickly. Because again-- - Yeah, but I think it's easier
where the new employee comes to the company and you say, okay, we use Nozbe here,
they are forced to do this. But I think the more difficult situation as with the
people who are already used to another work style and now you want to change it.
So for me, you should start small. You should maybe try with one or two projects
and first try with one or two people. For sure, let people give people a really
good
training in Nozbe to show them how it works, how the application functions,
what are the features. And we do this in Nozbe, like you can sign up for the
consultation with me or we have many, many materials, educational materials.
And then once they know how it works, you just have to really push them and tell
them that now it's going to be our communication tool. Please, if you want something
from me, don't email to me, don't write, don't call, please just put a task or put
a comment in a proper place. Let's communicate like this. If you don't like it for
a month, for three weeks, for a month, okay, we'll revise it. And we,
as an Osby, will give you back the money if you totally find it useful. As an
employee, if you want to, like kind of, if you're talking talking to your boss
about this, really. Then you can convince them, hey, I'm going to set it up for my
group. And you, the boss, will have access to it, so you will see what we're
doing. And I'm going to set these certain projects that we do only them exclusively
in Nozbe. We don't do them via email. We don't do them via chat. These things we
discuss only in Nozbe, only in this group. So this way, the boss can see how it's
going, they can chime in if they want to, but these people who, you know,
this person who wants Nozbe, he has more pool with the people who are working with
them. So this way, it gets easier to convince just his circle of co -workers to
start. So I would advise this, Nozbe We'll talk about the price because Nozbe is
really not expensive. So you can really give it a try for a month and just set it
up for this group. Start working exclusively in some projects only in Nozbe. And
this way, these people will see the change. You will see how it works. The boss
will see how great it's working. And the boss will be much more motivated after a
month of this kind of trial to push this trial to more people in the company and
to invite more teams from your company to do this, to work together like this. So
again, starting small, it's the way to create new habits. And totally,
starting with Nozbe, starting with a tool like Nozbe, is a way to create new
habits. So you have to do that and you have to do it small, but it's not a big
investment, but it pays off really quickly. So now I - Yes.
- The price, the money, the financial aspect. - So in my last episode, the whole
podcast, last podcast episode was time equals money. So I explained all the math
there, but basically a price of one Nozbe seat, of one Nozbe account is basically
the price of an hourly rate of a not really well -paid person.
So If you, thanks to Nozbe, I can promise you, you'll get at least one hour back
in a month. So a monthly fee of Nozbe will pay for itself, you know, very quickly.
And you will, and apart from that, that you will have more time to do your work
because you will be more organized, you will gain less stress. And stress is a big
contributor to, you to quality of work. You will be more in control.
Everything will be more calm and you will have everything under your supervision.
Everything will be more transparent. Your people will be working better. They will be
working more like co -workers, like partners in crime instead of one for each other.
The communication between your employees will not be an issue anymore.
There will be other issues, but communication will not be one of them because people
will know where things are. So that's why I encourage you to give it a try because
really, we have designed Nozbe to pay for itself so quickly because we want as many
teams to use Nozbe as possible. And we have thousands of paying customers and all
over the world. And for us, we are not aiming at the big companies. We are not at
the big companies, we don't want Nozbe to be this million dollar solution or
something. We want Nozbe to be really inexpensive so that small companies,
large and small, can start using Nozbe right away and it's not much. Yeah,
if someone asks, "Okay, but it's too expensive. Too expensive comparing to what,
like in the name of what? Of your efficiency? I think people really don't realize
how much stress, nerves, energy, efforts, resources and time they are wasting every
day on simple things like looking for the information, conflicts, spread
responsibility, people looking for the things that someone told them via phone or
people fighting who was supposed to do what and what was the actual deadline.
In Nozbe, that doesn't happen. You save like really so many hours and so much
energy for that. Exactly. So that's your ultimate selling point that work will be
better and you will, I mean, it will feel like you're working twice,
twice the efficiency. You're working, you're doubling your productivity thanks to using
Nozbe because it will feel like a big change. You will gain time, you will be more
organized, you will be more in control, and not only the boss, but everyone else as
well. You will feel like you're contributing more to the company, to the work. It's
just a different way of working all together. That's why,
hopefully, if you're the boss listening to this,
if you want to give it a try, I encourage you to go to Nozbe.com/guide. This is
our page where there is a five -minute video showing you how you can set up Nozbe
in less than five minutes. So it's really, really easy to show you that it's
really, like from zero to hero, it's less in five minutes, so it doesn't take so
much time. And then you can read more about our philosophy, what we just explained
in this podcast. Later, once you get on boarded your first people and you start
using Nozbe, I encourage you to talk to Magda, so to just schedule a demo, nozbe.com/demo. And this way, Magda can explain how you can use Nozbe in your industry
for your team, like to adapt Nozbe to the way you work.
Yeah, and the last point actually, or the first actually, is to set up your account
via a proper link and Nozbe.com/podcast and with that, I would like to say
goodbye and just go there and set up your Nozbe account and hopefully this video
and this podcast has been helpful to you and your team. Yeah, I hope so too,
bye. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the NoOffice podcast.
Every other Wednesday we meet to talk about productivity and hybrid lifestyle, because
we believe that work is not a place to go. It's a thing to do. A special gift
only to NoOffice podcast listeners. When you sign up for Nozbe using this link,
Nozbe .com /podcast, you'll get 30 bucks of credits which you can use to upgrade to
Nozbe Premium. Nozbe helps thousands of smart business owners and their teams get
their professional and private life organized in a single app in a simple way. And
Nozbe is free for up to three active projects and three people on your team. So
start today and claim your free bonus credits, which you will later need to upgrade
to unlimited projects. Once again, Thank you for being an amazing listener. Thanks
for your support and for spreading the word about our NoOffice podcast and Nozbe.
See you and hear you in the next episode and in the meantime, claim your bonus
credits here.

Creators and Guests

Magda
Host
Magda
One of the Nozbe team "dinosaurs" - #NoOffice practitioner since 2013. Extravert, neurotic & vegetarian feminist with 189 imperfections.
Michael Sliwinski
Host
Michael Sliwinski
Leading @Nozbe #productivity app | Writing #NoOffice book on #iPadOnly | Blog: https://t.co/vRZY2YrzsE | Husband & father of 3. 🐘 Find me at https://t.co/hHsFpUHwle
Why Teams Double Their Productivity Thanks to Nozbe
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