What We Use Trello For | Ep. 25

Ty Smith0:04

Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith and with me is TJ and Kylie, and today we are discussing Trello. Trello is a tool that I think everyone needs to look into. It was something that transformed me from kind of a really scattered person into a really organized person capable of doing things at a much larger scale.

Ty Smith0:17

It helps you get things done way more effectively. It helps you create scalable work processes. It helps your whole team collaborate on projects, and it reduces just the whole overwhelmingness of managing multiple projects or a large-scale company, and it has been really, really vital to Coinbound's growth. So, Kylie, why don't you tell us what Trello is?

Ty Smith0:18

It helps you get things done way more effectively. It helps you create scalable work processes. It helps your whole team collaborate on projects, and it reduces just the whole overwhelmingness of managing multiple projects or a large-scale company. It's been really, really vital to Coinbound's growth. So, Kylie, why don't you tell us what Trello is?

Ty Smith0:18

It helps you create scalable work processes, it helps your whole team collaborate on projects, and it reduces just the whole overwhelmingness of managing multiple projects or a large-scale company, and it's been really, really vital to Coinbound's growth. So, Kylie, why don't you tell us what Trello is?

Kylie0:30

Well, per Trello's description of themselves, they're a collaborative project management tool that allows you to organize your projects into boards. And it can tell you what's being worked on, who's working on it, and where something is in the process of completion. So, you can organize, you can really organize it any way you want, which is one of the reasons why I really like Trello, because obviously everybody has a different way of working and a different way of how they like things. So, when you can decide what you want a specific board, you can decide how you want it to be organized through lists, what card means what, you can have labels, you can really organize it and personalize it any way you want.

Ty Smith1:23

Super customizable.

TJ1:24

Yeah, it's really neat. So, basically, the way it was set up when you get a what they call a board is a blank space, and then the lists are more or less somewhat like columns. And you can, like she said, you can title them anything you want. And then each card represents a task or a project. Like she said, you can put labels on it, you can put checklists on it. There's a lot of different customizable things. And what's nice for us is there's a lot of also built-in automation. So, as you start to realize, 'Okay, this is a task I do a lot,' or, 'This is a project that comes up once a week, once a month,' you can build a card, and a lot of automations through the tool that help kind of create an entire workflow will help you stay on top of like a work process as well as tasks and individual things.

Ty Smith2:15

Yeah, so one example would be sort of it automatically will populate checklists and stuff on that. So, if we have a campaign that there's some repetitive actions to, we can make sure that every part of that checklist is hit automatically without manually putting it in. It saves us a lot of time.

TJ2:25

For sure.

Ty Smith2:26

So, let's discuss a little bit how we as Coinbound use Trello. Basically, we organize everything with Trello. If there's anything that we're working on, Trello has a note of it. We put out a lot of content, obviously, the podcast being part of it, as well as social media and blogs. And Trello helps us manage the whole content schedule and lets everyone see where in the content life cycle each piece of content is. So, some boards that we have set up are content management, which, like I said, tracks content from its creation to publication to distribution.

TJ3:15

Like, for a perfect example, right now on our content management board, there's a card for this specific podcast episode with our notes for this episode on there. And as soon as we're done with this, it's going to move from recording over into ready to upload or editing or wherever the next step in the process is.

Ty Smith3:25

Yeah, and before it was on this board, it was in our pre-production board, which is where we are constantly jotting down ideas for the podcast or for blog posts. And then at the beginning of every week, we go down that list and as a team decide what we're going to produce that week.

TJ3:33

Correct.

Ty Smith3:34

Another board we have is web development. So, that's where we track basically every feature that we're working on for the website. And it helps us stay on top and not forget what needs to be done. And then we also all have our own personal boards. So, we all have them configured slightly differently. I think we basically all follow a relatively similar pattern, but I'll walk through how my personal board is set up. So, I have in my board 10 lists, which is columns. We have 'To Do in the Future,' which is just things that I need to do in the future. I don't have a set deadline or anything for. 'Incoming,' which, based on the automations we've set up, other people in the team can assign to me. So, if there's something that needs to be paid or whatever, something that needs to be accounted for, people can tag me, and it will automatically create a card on my board in that incoming list, and I can assign it to whatever column based on when it's due. The next one is 'To Do This Week,' which is what I have to do this week. And then 'To Do Today.' So, every morning I wake up, I look at my 'To Do This Week,' and I say, 'This is priority, I'm going to do it today,' and I drag it to my 'To Do Today.' After that, there is a 'Doing Now' list, an 'In Progress' list, which is what it sounds like, a 'Complete' list, things that are unresolved go on an 'Unresolved' list, and then I have sort of a 'Reference' list. So, I'll have like different useful links and things like that, that's all in that list, and then a 'Brain Dump.' So, whenever I'm thinking of anything that I want to think about later, it goes in the brain dump column.

TJ5:21

Well, and that's a good point. That's really, in a nutshell, that's really what Trello is in its entirety. It's a brain dump for everything. The more you can get out of your head and onto a piece of paper, or in this case, a platform, a website, the easier it is to organize, the easier it is for other people to see what's in your head and how they can help and how they can contribute. So, it does allow you to organize your head and collaborate with other people in a lot of really useful, different ways.

Ty Smith5:38

Yeah, another example is our written content board. So, we'll have a list that is ideas for blog posts. Again, those all lived in the pre-production board before we decided to actually go through with writing them. Then there's a writing section, which will notify whatever author we've assigned. There's an editing column, which will go to the editor of the article, then publishing, and then a currently being distributed column as well.

TJ6:19

And what's cool, this is a free tool to use, too. If you've never, like if you're just using it for yourself personally and you're trying to get organized, this will help you a lot. I think as you scale up and start to add a bunch of more boards and automations and some of this other more sophisticated stuff we're talking about, there is some cost involved. But just to try it out, it's free, and you'll be able to get a lot of use out of it if, especially if you've got a small team or an assistant or something like that. I know a lot of people that have had a lot of success with the free version and liked it a lot. It helped, like you said, make you more efficient and it helps you be able to get more stuff done.

Ty Smith6:38

Yeah, and even the paid version is not that expensive. It's like $16.50 a month.

TJ6:41

It's very reasonable for the amount of efficiency it will add to what you're trying to get done.

Ty Smith6:44

Yeah, in terms of the softwares I would eliminate in order of, let's say we run out of money, Trello is the last thing I would eliminate because it is vital to everything we do.

TJ7:13

Once you start getting used to Trello, yeah, you start using it for your personal life and pretty much everything you do, and then it really just will change how effective you are as a person. And it's very customizable, like they both said. It's really, that's really nice because, like, the way you do your personal board is totally different from my personal board.

Ty Smith7:25

Yeah, but it works for me. That's the beauty of customization.

TJ7:26

Yeah, it's great.

Kylie7:26

Trello is kind of overwhelming when you first start because it's hard, it's even hard to explain for me because there are so many things you can do. It's like, where do you even begin? It took me weeks to figure out how to organize my board, and I love organizing.

Ty Smith7:37

And Trello knows that it's confusing. They have a lot of templates that you can just kind of use from other, so a lot of big brands, for example, I forget what it is, there's some blog out of England that produces a lot of content, and they actually published their written content board, which is what we model ours after, and it's super, super effective.

TJ8:13

Yeah, that is true. That is a great point. There's a lot of guides and templates and stuff that you can use that make it easy, so.

Ty Smith8:16

Yeah, so that is all we have for today on Trello. Remember to rate, review, and recommend this podcast. The reviews, especially on Apple Podcasts, help us grow and continue to put out content like this. So, check that out. Join us on Slack at coinbound.io/joinslack, and follow us on Twitter at @TyDanielSmith, TJ is @YoungDumbCrypto, and Kylie is @CryptoKylie, and then we are @Coinbound_io. That's all for today, guys. Thanks.