What OnlyOffice includes

When you're creating and sharing your documents, is security near the top of your list? Do you wish that you had a few more controls when it came to sharing your documents or your files with others?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at an office suite that will allow you to be more secure and keep your files hidden from, let's say, the big guys like Google and Microsoft so that you can have full control of all of your documents.

But it also allows you to share and be more collaborative when it comes to working with others. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Today we're taking a look at OnlyOffice, a full office suite that, yes, allows you to run it on your own server. What does this mean?

Well, if you don't want Google, Microsoft, or some other document provider to have the ability to scan and search and look at all of your files, you can run OnlyOffice locally or on a virtual server so you have 100% full control.

However, if you don't need this level of security or if this sounds a little too advanced, no problem. You can use OnlyOffice in the cloud as well.

So let's dive in and take a bit of a deeper look. First off, OnlyOffice is a part of a larger collection of tools called OnlyOffice Workspace, where you can manage your mail, create a CRM, manage your projects, and schedule all in one place.

But for the sake of today's video, we're gonna look at OnlyOffice Docs, which is on par, if not better, with what you would find in Google Drive and Microsoft, specifically documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

And as mentioned, you can use OnlyOffice in the cloud or choose to download it for your desktop or iOS or Android devices.

What OnlyOffice looks like

So here we are within the OnlyOffice document editor, and right off the bat, you'll notice that it has a very similar look and feel to Microsoft Word, which is great for anyone transitioning to OnlyOffice.

You'll recognize many of the same icons and even many of the same locations of these icons when it comes to the ribbon and menu up above.

I might even add some things like this header option here on the right-hand side, and if I want to choose to make adjustments to the images and other such things that I click on the document, here are almost easier to access.

I don't have to minimize and expand so many different things as I would in Microsoft Office. It lets me know what I can change right off the side of my editing window.

Google Drive sharing comparison

But one of the additional features that really sets OnlyOffice apart is its collaboration opportunities and things that you don't normally see or can find elsewhere.

Let's actually jump back to Google Drive for a moment just so I can show you what I mean. So here I am within a docs file within my Google Drive account.

And I'm going to go up to the top right-hand corner and select the share button. Now, if you're already familiar with Google tools and services, you're probably familiar with this share dialog.

Here I've added someone that I'd like to share this document with, but if I go over to the right, I only have three different options.

Now, I can choose to give them editor permission so they can basically do whatever they want with this document, and that may be appropriate depending on my needs.

I can choose to make them a commenter so they can add comments, but they don't have the ability to edit anything on the page. Last but not least, I can choose for them to be a viewer, so this is a read-only option.

At first glance, it may seem like this is all that you may need, but OnlyOffice gives us so many more flexible options. Back inside my sample document, I'm gonna go over here and click on the collaboration tab and I'm going to click on sharing.

Now, first off, I've got a lot more options here that I can choose from, including adding groups and users right from this screen.

Advanced collaboration options

But where I really want to pay our attention to are the sharing options. So if I click on this dropdown, you see that we have much more than just three options.

The first one is full access, which would be the equivalent of an editor within Google Drive. But the second one down is a reviewer.

This is so much more than just a commenter, which we also have that selection here as well. As a reviewer, they can come in here and edit anything they want, but of course, everything will be tracked.

And you, as the author or owner of this document, can approve anything that you want, but you can also decline things in which they have changed. This can be a really powerful option when you're collaborating with others.

The third one down I think is rather unique but can also be very, very helpful. This is called form filling.

And this is where you choose certain pieces of text or sections of your documents where you're going to allow this individual to add content. Let's take a quick look and see how this works.

So if I close this sharing dialog, maybe I want them to fill in the title or the name of this line here. So I'm just gonna highlight this particular line, and I'm gonna come over here to the insert layout option.

I'm gonna come over to content controls, and for our example, I'm just gonna say plain text. By applying this option, I can add as many different sections or different areas of my document where I only want to allow other people that I share with to fill out this form.

So if I go back to collaboration and I choose to share this with someone else, I can set them as a form filler only, and that means only these types of sections of my document will they have access to.

Again, giving me just a more control, maybe a little more freedom, and I can sleep a bit easier sharing this document with other individuals, knowing that they can only fill in certain areas.

The comment section is gonna be very similar to what we've seen in other programs. Yes, we do have a read-only. This would be the equivalent of a viewer.

But I especially like that they've added a deny access choice. Why? Because then I can keep a record of who did have access at one point, but now I have denied them access to this document.

Unlike other tools such as Google Drive and others, you can simply just remove that user and you won't have that same history or remember who you've shared this file with in the past.

So a lot of additional options here within the sharing settings, but it goes one step further. Besides sharing, you'll also see something called co-editing mode.

Co-editing mode options

And this can be really helpful depending on who you're sharing your files with and how you plan to update and edit the content.

So here by default, we have what's called the fast co-editing mode. And this is very standard, what you will find in other areas including Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, where everything is real-time.

For example, if I'm editing something and I choose to delete something from this line, anyone else that I'm sharing this with is going to see that immediately. And in some cases, that may be okay.

However, there is a second option called strict mode, and what this means is that you will need to use the save button to sync the changes you and others have made.

So for example, maybe I need to rework these next two paragraphs, but I don't wanna see others having me work on this in the process. I'm gonna make some mistakes, I'm gonna write some things, I'm gonna edit it, I'm going to change it.

Instead, I can choose the strict mode, and now I can choose to edit whatever I need to here and then hit save when I'm ready, so they can see the final piece or the edited version once I'm all done.

Again, just giving you some further flexibility when it comes to collaborating and sharing and editing with others.

Now you can start using OnlyOffice Docs free for 30 days, but if you choose to upgrade to their business plan, you can receive 50% off your subscription with the coupon code simple15.

For full details, be sure to check out the link in the description below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

How I rank the books in this list

I've read an awful lot of productivity, business and psychology books over the past year. So in this video, I want to rank 12 of those books so you might find further insight,

maybe find the next great book for you to read. I'm also going to highlight maybe one or two that I think you should skip all together. So let's dive in. I'm going to be ranking all of these books on a scale from must read all the way down to skip. Now, of course, this is based on my own personal preference, but I'll give you a bit of a summary and what I learned from each book along the way. And we're going to go through this exercise in chronological order Meaning from the first book I read in 2021 all the way to some of the latest books that I've just finished reading in the last few weeks. Now, I have read a lot more books than just these 12, but I wanted to focus on these 12 for this particular video.

The Practice

So let's get things started off with "The Practice" by Seth Godin. Now I've been a fan of Seth Godin for a number of years. I've read several of his books in the past, and this was actually a really, really good book to start off the year because it really gets you motivated about your work and maybe thinking about doing your work in a few different ways. So I'm going to start off with really a great one. I was debating between good or great, but I'm going to put this in the great category. Some of Seth Godin's books are a lot more blog format style. This isn't that much different.

‍

They're very short synopsis, very short words of inspiration and things in which you can do. But even if you don't think you're in a creative industry or a creative role, I would highly recommend this book because really, if you're not innovating, if you're not thinking of new ways of doing things, this is precisely the type of book for you.

"The practice" in at great.

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Next up, we have the book, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" by Amy Morin.

Now I was looking forward to this book because it has a very catchy title. However, just a few chapters into this book. I was actually relatively disappointed because I didn't think there was an awful lot of meat here. There wasn't an awful lot of things that I hadn't read or learned before and on top of that each and every chapter seemed very much like a formula. It started off with a nice sort of three paragraph story. Then there was some bullet points and then the summary, I mean, it just seemed like each and every chapter felt very much the same, even though the topics adjusted slightly over the course of it. So I'm actually going to put this right in the skip pile. This was not a great way to start off the year. I would say you could pass on "13 Things."

The Champion's Mind

Next we have the book, "The Champions Mind" by Jim Afremow. Now this one may be geared a little bit more towards those who are looking for athletic excellence, but I find that you can learn an awful lot from the sporting world. And as a sports fan I've learned some very valuable business lessons from books such as Phil Jackson's books over the years, the championship coach of both the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. I had pretty high expectations for this book as well, hoping that I could apply some things both to my business but also to some of my athletic pursuits but I was a little disappointed as well. I felt that things were sort of glossed over, there wasn't as much specifics and I hate advice that is just simply saying,

hey, just, just do it. You know, just get up and say to yourself, you're going to do it because it's important today. And I found that this was full of that type of advice.

Now you may think a little bit differently but there's no way I'm putting this book any higher than okay.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Next on my list is a book which was somewhat of a surprising entry to my reading list.

Titled, "Maybe You Should Talk To Someone" by Lori Gottlieb. Now this particular book I had seen on bestseller lists for the past year or two. And finally, after I read the summary, I said, you know what, let's give it a shot. Let's see what this book is all about. Lori is a trained professional and the story sort of falls her real life experiences

including some of the traumas and the circumstances that she was engaged in over a several year period, but also you get to know her patients. It's a fascinating look at the world of psychiatry and psychology and how the human mind works and how we need to heal ourselves and how we can heal ourselves in a variety of ways. This was really a surpriser on my list. I'm going to put it in the good category. I didn't absolutely love it. It was very, very entertaining, almost felt a little bit like a fiction book, even though it's completely nonfiction, but a very good read for me in 2021.

Thinking in Bets

Another book that I read this year was titled "Thinking In Bets" authored by Annie Duke. Now Annie Duke is a former poker champion. So she knows an awful lot when it comes to statistics and numbers and odds, and of course betting. And this book is not all about card games and poker or gambling, but just thinking about how we can reanalyze ourselves when it comes to numbers, when it comes to pricing, when it comes to negotiating of any sort. Now, as someone who is very analytical in nature

I found this book quite fascinating. It may not be the most entertaining read for some of you, but I found that it really helped me look at numbers in a slightly different way.

So I'm going to put this one in the good category. Again, depending on your interests,

you might like it more or less, but something that has some really tangible and solid information.

Limitless

Next up is a book titled "Limitless" by the author and well-known speaker Jim Quick. You've probably seen Jim Quick in a variety of YouTube videos. He's an excellent guest, an excellent speaker, and he runs his own YouTube channel along with other offerings online as well.

Jim focuses on maximizing the use of our minds, including how to concentrate more intently on what we want to achieve. This book was interesting for me because it offered some very good and tangible pieces of advice. However, there were other chapters that I felt like glossing over.

Another thing is that I felt Jim maybe wasn't giving as much actionable advice as he could have in this book—advice that we can start to apply immediately. As I got past the halfway mark, I started feeling like this book was more of a pitch for some of his more expensive courses or other programs online. Now, there's nothing wrong with that—you'll probably get a lot more out of his training if you take a several-hour or a four-week course—but I really dislike when a book feels more like an infomercial or only gives you a taste of the content. So, I was a little let down by "Limitless." I'll put this one in the "okay" category.

Now, if you're curious about how I find what to read next, and sometimes I don't even read the entire book because I just want the good stuff, I use Shortform. In my opinion, Shortform is the best place to get the best book summaries, which you can not only read but also listen to.

Here we are within my Shortform account. These are some of the books I've been reviewing or just taking a look at their summaries. What I love about Shortform is that it summarizes not just what the book is about but also gives you the key points—things that you can start to apply right away. So, if you don't have time to read the entire book or just want to see if it's worth reading, you can come here and get these fantastic summaries.

Each summary starts with a one-page overview, giving you a clean summary. But as you can see below, it also provides actionable items. Don't have time to read the summary? You can listen to any of these summaries as well. So, Shortform has you covered regardless of how you want to consume your information.

If you'd like to get a five-day free trial of Shortform, just go to shortform.com/simpletivity or use the link in the description below.

Now about halfway through the year

Beyond Order

I had the opportunity to read Jordan Peterson's latest book and follow up to his best seller, "The 12 Rules For Life." This one titled "Beyond Order; 12 More Rules For Life." Now I recognize that Mr. Peterson is a bit of a controversial figure, one of those individuals that you seem to either love or hate and I wouldn't put myself on either of those extremes. I do find him a fascinating individual and I really do enjoy watching him go through the thought process of actually formulating his arguments and responding to questions. This was certainly not an easy book to get through, and I don't mean about the topic but just really the way that Mr. Peterson writes. It's something that you can't just sit back on the beach and read casually. You sort of need to dive in and really digest the content here. Overall, I found it an enjoyable read. While I don't certainly agree with all of his viewpoints it certainly made me think and I think that's what most books should do is aim to make you think and maybe even question some of your own biases. So in this case, I'm going to put this as a solid good rating.I had the opportunity to read Jordan Peterson's latest book and follow-up to his bestseller, "The 12 Rules For Life." This one is titled "Beyond Order; 12 More Rules For Life."

Now, I recognize that Mr. Peterson is a bit of a controversial figure, one of those individuals that you seem to either love or hate, and I wouldn't put myself on either of those extremes. I do find him a fascinating individual, and I really enjoy watching him go through the thought process of actually formulating his arguments and responding to questions.

This was certainly not an easy book to get through, and I don't mean because of the topic but just really the way that Mr. Peterson writes. It's something that you can't just sit back on the beach and read casually. You need to dive in and really digest the content.

Overall, I found it an enjoyable read. While I don't agree with all of his viewpoints, it certainly made me think, and I think that's what most books should aim to do—make you think and maybe even question some of your own biases.

So in this case, I'm going to give this a solid "good" rating.

‍

Not great, certainly not one that I was going to skip, but something that I did enjoy and really had to work at over a few different weeks.

A World Without Email

Next on my list was one of my favorite authors, Cal Newport. And I'll admit, my expectations were quite high for his latest book here in 2021, "A World Without Email."

But I was a little concerned with that title, that the whole book was going to be about email. Well, here's the good news. It's not really just about email. It's about digital communication as a whole. And I think Cal has perhaps written another classic or in my case a must read. So this is going to be the first book that I give it a must read rating. In my opinion, this is exactly the type of book that we need now more than ever. If you're wanting to work at your productive best and get some concrete models and a concrete framework in how to do so, Cal Newport's "A World Without Email" certainly fits that bill. So if you haven't read Cal Newport before, you might want to check out something like "Digital Minimalism," or maybe "Deep Work" for example, but you don't have to read either of those books to dive in and get valuable information from "A World Without Email."

Effortless

Next on our list was another author that I really enjoyed his first book which was "Essentialism," and we're talking about Greg McKeown. Now his follow-up took several years to write but it came out earlier this year titled "Effortless." And again, I would say that this is a winner. Greg really has this amazing way to weave stories and real-world examples and show us that, listen, we don't have to be caught up in the rat race and live up and be disappointed by all of these expectations. He's continually asking ourselves when is enough enough, and when do you get to fully enjoy your work and really enjoy your life. So "Effortless," I'm not going to put quite as high as a must read but I'm definitely going to put it in the great category as another fantastic book, whether you're focused on improving your productivity or just your wellbeing as a whole.

Think Like a Monk

I next started reading, "Think Like A Monk" by Jay Shetty. Now, I actually hadn't heard of Jay Shetty before. Although I quickly discovered he has a massive online presence.

And if you happen to follow him on Instagram, as I started to do, you'll see just how much content he's producing at a very, very rapid rate. This was a very interesting book as someone who grew up in a pretty standard, a pretty standard home sort of middle-class home. But then instead of going on to study business and sort of take the traditional route, decided to become a monk, despite the lack of encouragement

from both friends and family. This was an interesting book because you not only follow his journey, but Jay really makes you think of some questions within your own life. I might say that reading this book immediately after "Effortless" was probably a good selection because they both have some similar themes in terms of, you know, what is really valuable to you and where are you going to be putting your focus?

It also talks a lot about personal relationships, whether that's your family relationships or just working with others within the world itself and making you think about our relationships in a slightly different light. As far as its final ranking, I'm probably going to put it sort of middle of the row. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it,

but I just don't feel right giving it a great ranking or the same level of the other two books that we have listed here. Now, nearing the end of '21 I found a neighbor of mine

Range

who happened to recommend the following book online. "Range" by David Epstein.

And I really didn't know much about this book or this author at all. But very quickly within the first few chapters, I became fascinated with the subject material but also what David Epstein had to say about specializing versus generalizing when it comes to our careers. Basically David Epstein puts forward the argument that we should not super specialize in any particular topic. In fact, that that often brings with it a number of blinders and may not make us open for other more innovative or creative or financially beneficial ideas as well. This book I would have to put in my must read category. It's the type of book that is not necessarily just timely for 2021. You could probably read this book anytime in the next decade or maybe anytime in the future

and you're going to get a lot of great benefit behind it. The key message here with "Range" is don't feel left behind. Don't feel if you haven't done something or accomplished something by a particular time that you're a failure or that you're not going to make it to those end goals. A very uplifting book without sounding overly motivational. So I would certainly put "Range" in my must read category for 2021.

Show Your Work

Last but not least, the most recent book in which I've read is "Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon. Now this particular book is almost looks like a flip book. It's perfectly square and you can read it in basically under an hour if you want to. He gets straight and to the point and gives us 10 different things to think about when it comes to showing our work rather than just being salesy and having people encourage us to buy, buy, buy. Now, Austin Kleon is an artist himself So this is very much geared towards creative types and creative people, but you can find a lot of great benefit

from this one as well. In my case, I'm probably going to put this sort of middle of the road as well. You know, it's one of those books that you might want to pick up for some short or brief pieces of inspiration but it's certainly not going to change anything in your world. Now, I would absolutely love to hear what were some of the books that you read in the past year and what would you put on your must read list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Intro

Finding and hiring the right people for your team is never an easy task. It can also be very, very time-consuming.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tools that are going to make hiring, interviewing, or onboarding much easier for you so you can spend more time growing your business and less time in the hiring phase. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Now, the first tool that we're going to look at is the Salary Calculator by Glassdoor. Glassdoor Salary Calculator When you're hiring for a new position, especially if it's a role in which you have not hired before in the past, you're probably curious as to what you should be paying for that, or maybe can you even afford to hire someone in that particular area?

Now to get started, all we need to do is enter in a job title. So let's say that I am looking for a graphic designer.

Now it's going to give me a number of different related options here or things pertaining to that word. I'm just going to stick with the basic graphic designer.

You can change your location, but it's already identified that I'm here near the Seattle, Washington area. And then this one is really more designed for those who are maybe seeking a job at a particular employer.

I'm going to show you how you can see this information on the next screen anyhow. I'm going to hit get started.

And what Glassdoor is going to do is it's going to take all the information that it's collected and give me a very accurate number. In fact, it's telling me right here at the top that they have very high confidence that the average base pay for a graphic designer in the Seattle area is about $57,000 a year.

Now you can see a lot of the other income and data statistics that they include here, including different seniority levels. So if I want to see the difference between a graphic designer and a senior graphic designer in this specific area, it's roughly $20,000.

So a lot of great information as I plan to either put together a job description or start interviewing possible candidates. Now, if I scroll down, you'll see that Glassdoor gives us some other great helpful information as well, including related job titles and their average salaries so I can compare as well.

But I can also keep scrolling down further and see if my business falls into a similar category. Now, these are pretty significant corporations here that we see here, including things like U of W and Amazon, which of course are based in the Seattle, Washington area.

I'm going to have a much smaller business, so maybe it's not directly comparable, but you can see where these prices are coming from. The next tool on our list is a website called Willo, which completely changes the way in which you interview Willo your prospective candidates.

You probably realize how time-consuming it can be to set up and schedule those interviews, to have them come in person, or maybe schedule a Zoom or video conferencing meeting only to find out in the first few minutes that, oh, you know what? This person is really not a good fit for this role or for our organization.

Well, what Willo does is allow you to set up specific questions and then have your candidates record their answers at their leisure at their time, and then have you review them at your leisure or at your time so that you can quickly and easily whittle down that list to just maybe your core candidates that are worth your time for an actual in-person or live video.

Let me show you how it works. Here I am within my Willo account, and I've set up a sample job description. I'm looking for an assistant store manager.

If I click the edit button here, I can just copy and paste my existing job description, or I can add it from scratch right here. But on the very next screen, we have a list of questions so that they can record their answers when they want to, and then I can review them and see if they're a good fit for my organization.

If I go back to the interviews tab, and if I click on the assistant store manager, you can see that I've got three responses already. So I can come in here whenever I want to.

I don't need to schedule time. I don't need to call them and find a time that is suitable for both of us. What I can do is I can click on this response here and hear this applicant… I've got the details of the applicant here, but I've also got his video replies.

So I can sit here and say, "Hey, you know, tell me a time when you were the hero in your workplace," or, you know, "What motivates you to work in a LEGO store?" I can hit the play button and then I can listen to his response and evaluate and see, "You know what? I think this would be a relatively good fit. I'm going to put this individual as four out of five stars."

The great thing is that you can work with Willo with a number of your teammates. You can quickly and easily toggle through the people who have submitted their responses here and watch their videos and evaluate them at your leisure.

And then when you've whittled it down to what you feel are the really good golden core candidates, well, then you can schedule them in for a real interview. Now, another tool that can help you with the hiring, interviewing, and onboarding phases is Trello.

Now Trello can be used in so many different ways, but I've seen so many teams use Trello as a part of their interviewing and hiring strategy. So here you can see we've got a fairly simple workflow, but a great way to keep everything organized as you go through the hiring stages.

So in this particular example, you can see how this recruiting pipeline is working for this particular organization. We've got future needs. So here we have a few titles, a few positions that we think we're going to need in the future, maybe not immediately, but we're just thinking ahead.

Next, we have a list called paused. Maybe we thought that a designer was a future need, but once we started looking, once we started maybe interviewing or just discussing with the team as a whole, we decided, "You know what, maybe we don't need a new designer at this point."

Next up we have a need to post. So these are the things that we need to get ready. Maybe we need to draft the job description. Maybe we need to do that salary research at this point in time so that we can get ready to post.

Next up, we have our open positions and keep in mind, these things are meant to move from left to right. So once we've got all the information for our iOS developer, well then maybe it moves over as an open position.

And of course, the great thing about Trello is not only that we see a high-level view, but we can dive in deeper and add more details. So, for example, if I want to click on this internal software developer role, which is currently an open position, I can see who the lead recruiter is.

I can see who the main team contact is. I can have a link directly to the job description. So all of this detail and information can stay within the card. But then at the high-level view, I can see where everything is going until hopefully they move over as a closed position.

And the other great thing about Trello is that you've got a great history of all the positions which you've hired for in the past. So if you need to reuse any of these cards, you can quickly and easily do so.

Now, when it comes to finding the very best talent, of course, you're not only going to rely on job postings, you're also going to be actively searching for the best people. And that's exactly where Contact Out comes into play.

Contact Out Because what if you are searching for someone here on LinkedIn and you'd like to reach out to them. Now you could use the messaging feature here within LinkedIn, but I think many of us know that not everyone responds very timely.

Some people might not even respond at all. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to find Euan's actual email address or phone number, so I can contact him directly.

Maybe impress him with something special and see if he might like to join my team. So what Contact Out is, is actually a browser extension, which works in conjunction with LinkedIn.

Once you have Contact Out installed, here I am on Euan's profile page, all I need to do is come up here and click on the Contact Out extension and look at this. It's giving me three different email addresses.

It's giving me two different phone numbers and even his Twitter handle. I might even be able to find additional emails. I can even save his profile.

Now, all I have to do is click this show button, and it's going to show me the full details. For the purposes of this demonstration, I'm not going to do so right here.

If you'd like to find out his actual contact information, you'll have to install Contact Out, but a great way to find those emails and phone numbers and contact information for the people you really want to get in touch with.

Now, another great tool that can assist you during the hiring process and beyond is SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey And you're probably saying to yourself, "Wait a minute, SurveyMonkey, I know that tool, I've used that tool, but how is that going to help me as a part of the hiring or interview process?"

Well, SurveyMonkey knows an awful lot about what makes people tick and also how to complete very effective surveys. So if we come over here to the template section of SurveyMonkey and come down to human resources, there are several different templates that you can either use right out of the box, or maybe inspire you to create your own.

So, for example, here, we have a template called

Advanced searches can waste your time

When searching and shopping for things online, it can be helpful to use the filter option here on the left-hand side. For example, I have found my location, but it's given me almost 1500 results.

I need to whittle this down. So the filters here on the left-hand side are going to be very helpful.

Or maybe I'm shopping for something, and yeah, I've got nearly 1,000 results, so I'm going to use the filter on the left-hand side. However, many of these websites don't allow you to save these options.

So if I want to come back in a few days and see what has changed with my specific options, I can't do so. Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you a free tool that allows you to record whatever you're doing on a website and then play it back whenever you want so you can quickly come back to your specific search results in just a few seconds.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Shopping filter example

So let's take a look at this example here. Let's say that I'm in the market for a new pair of skis.

So I've come to this website, and it's giving me nearly 1,000 different results. Well, that's way too many for me to sift through, so I want to take advantage of the filters and the categories here on the left-hand side.

However, there's no way for me to save this, so I'd like to save the selections I make so I can come back tomorrow or next week or whenever I want, and it will save the options that I've chosen here. Well, that's where Katalon Recorder comes into play, a free browser extension.

Now, if I open up Katalon Recorder, it may look a little intimidating at first. There's a lot of different options here. There may even be some things that look a lot like development code.

Now, Katalon Recorder is excellent for those who are wanting to test their websites and if you happen to be working in software development. However, Katalon Recorder is just as useful for people like you and me.

So in this example, what I'm going to do, I've got something here called ski search. I've created this label already.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this record button. Now, when I'm returned to this website, I'm going to select my options.

I'm looking for all-mountain skis, and I'm looking for skis with bindings. Yes, I want skis with bindings, and I'm looking for men's skis, so I'm going to select that choice there.

And then I'm also looking for skis somewhere in the 180 to 190 length. So now I'm brought back with something which is a lot more manageable.

I've got 138 results, and I can continue to make selections here if I want to. What I'm going to do is come up here and select stop.

So what Katalon Recorder has done is just recorded all of my actions and activity on this screen. If we refresh our screen and I clear all my filters, we're brought back to our original search results of 984.

Now what I can do is select Katalon Recorder, and with ski search selected, remember, this is what we just recorded, I'm going to select play test case.

Now what's going to happen is that Katalon is going to apply all of those filter settings, all of those options that I made here on the left-hand side. It's going to take a few seconds and apply it and will return to, hey, 138 results. These are exactly the types of results that I was looking for.

Now I can come back in the future, and all I have to do is select play. I don't have to manually come down here and select all these options here on the left-hand side.

Katalon Recorder settings and options

Now, if we come back up and open up Katalon Recorder, we can see exactly what Katalon recorded. Here are the different options that I selected.

So if you need to make some small adjustments, you can do so. Let's say, for example, I don't care if the skis come with or without bindings. What I can do is right-click on this option and say delete command.

Now, the next time I go to play this test case, it's going to ignore that but keep my previous selections as well. So a very powerful yet free tool for us to sift through our results.

Advanced search example

Let's take a look at another example. Here I am on the internet movie database site, and I'm on the advanced title search screen.

Now there's an awful lot of options here, and this is a place that I like to go to search and filter down as to what I would like to watch next. But there's an awful lot of selections here, and I can never save my choices here.

Well, that's exactly where Katalon Recorder comes into play. I've previously recorded a simple test case where I've made a number of different selections, including what year a movie has been released, the type of language it's in, and a number of other choices here.

So now all I have to do is come up here and select play test case, and Katalon Recorder will do everything else for me. It's going to make the selections that I saved about eight days ago, so I don't have to come in here and waste my time selecting and checking off all of these boxes, and this is exactly what I was looking for.

A feature film released before 1978 within the top 250 and is a silent film as well. So I've got exactly the search results that I'm after.

Websites where recording & playback is helpful

So consider all of the places where you spend far too much time repeating yourself and making the same selections. Maybe you're searching for a hotel or a flight or an upcoming vacation.

Katalon Recorder can be a great solution for that. How about if you're shopping, such as amazon.com, and we've got all of these options here on the left-hand side? You can record it once and then play it back as often as you need to.

Now, if you'd like to use Katalon Recorder within your browser, be sure to click the link in the description below. Katalon Recorder is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Email safety check

Doesn't it feel great when you find a website that does that one thing really, really well and it does it fast and it does it absolutely for free? Well, in today's video, I'm going to share with you seven extremely useful websites that you may have never heard before, but I can guarantee you're going to come back again and again because they're just so useful.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's start off with website number one, and it is called Have I Been Pwned?

Have I Been Pwned? My first question for you is how do you pronounce this word? There's a big debate online, whether it's pohnd or pawnd, or do we just say owned because it's based off of someone making a mistake and actually misspelling the word owned.

No matter how you pronounce this word, this is a fantastic website to check your email or phone number to see if it's been involved in a data breach. Now, of course, you've heard of many important and significant data breaches over the years.

Maybe your banking information has been attacked. Maybe other big services, such as Facebook and other social media accounts, have been hacked.

Maybe you've received warnings in the past. Well, you can do your own checks based on your own information.

So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to type in an email address that I use for testing purposes. And I'm going to hit pwned/pwned, you tell me in the comments, and it's going to tell me that, "Oh no, there's been some data breaches."

In fact, there's been 11 data breaches. Now, if I scroll down, the great thing about this website is that it's going to tell me the details of these particular data breaches for my specific email address or whatever you enter in here.

So I can see things like Adobe and Canva, for example. If I scroll down further, Dropbox, Last.fm, they'll even give me the years in which many of these data breaches occurred, and they're telling me that, yeah…

Look at this, email addresses, passwords, usernames, website activity, all of these things were compromised in these data breaches. So what do you do next?

Well, maybe I'm going to log into some of these accounts and change my email address. That would be one thing.

Number two, I should probably go in there for sure and change my password. Even if I want to keep the username or the email address, log into some of these services and change their passwords as well.

Printer friendly mode

The next useful website on our list is called Print Friendly, and you'll find that at printfriendly.com. Now, how often have you been looking at an article or a webpage and saying, 'This is valuable information. Maybe I'd like to save this as a PDF, or maybe I need to actually print out a paper copy.'

So you come up to your browser and you select Print. Now, sometimes this can take a little while because it needs to load all of the ads, images, and other things that are going on in this article.

And even before I saw the preview, I'm looking up here, 11 sheets of paper. Even if this is going to be a PDF, that's, I think, way too long for this article.

Look at all of this menu and website gunk I've got at the top of the screen. And as I scroll down, look at all these advertisement breaks in between.

Here's another Black Friday ad in the middle. I've got these advertisement spaces.

Yeah, this is not very easy to read in this particular format. Well, that's where Print Friendly comes into play.

Let me just copy the URL of that exact same article. I'm going to come over here, paste it, and say Preview.

Now it may take just a few seconds, but here you can see a much more readable file. So here we've got the entire document, and we're done. That's about it.

That looks more like two, maybe three pages at most. I've just got the goods of this particular article.

Now, Print Friendly is perhaps even more friendly if you install the browser extension, then you don't have to be coming back to this website. And the good news is that Print Friendly is available on all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

So if you want to print just the goods, be sure to check out printfriendly.com.

Bypass content paywall

Now the third website on our list may be a little controversial, but I'll let you decide if you want to go forward and use it or not. The website that we're talking about is called 12ft.io.

And here's the tagline, 'Show me a 10ft paywall and I'll show you a 12ft ladder.' So here's the idea: you come across an article, and maybe it's from a magazine such as Harvard Business Review, maybe it's a news publication such as the Boston Globe, or really anything which is requiring a subscription.

So here I've found an article. I've been searching online, and this looks like a great article, really what I'm interested in or what I need to know.

But as I scroll down, I've only been given about a paragraph, and then it's telling me that I'm out of free articles for this month. And this is going to change depending on the website that you're on, right?

Some may give you a few free articles per month or per day or whatever the case may be. Now, I want to be very clear. If you're getting real value from any publication or any website, I think you should be paying for those services.

That's how you're getting quality content and quality information. However, you might stumble across a website where there's just that one article, right? Just that one piece of content.

You may not be interested in any of the other content that this website is providing, but you would just like to see what's going on here. Well, this is perhaps where 12ft Ladder comes into play.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to copy this URL and I'm going to come back to 12ft Ladder. Now, you actually don't even need to come to the website itself—all you need to do is actually put this little URL in front, the 12ft.io URL in front of it.

But I'm going to paste it in here just for our example here. And I'm going to say Remove the Paywall.

And what it's going to do is stay on that same tab, but now as I scroll down, I have no restrictions. I've got the entire article here in front of me.

And the nice thing is that usually, it will remove everything else, including the ads. So why is this working, and how does this particular website get around this?

Well, if we scroll down to the bottom of the 12ft.io page, you can get the what, why, and how does it work? Essentially, the developer of this website says that he thinks that AdWords has killed the web.

And so that we're too often being served up with things with keywords and things just to grab our pieces of information. But how is it working behind the scenes?

Well, Google is indexing all of their content. So new sites and other publications are giving Google the entire article so it can scan through it and do its Google crawler business.

However, this website is making you somehow, I guess, of the crawler or access to that same information so that they can cache a copy of the site each and every time.

Original headshot images

Now the next website on our list is very interesting and also comes with a very peculiar name. Here we are at thispersondoesnotexist.com, and yes, you read that right, the person we're looking at right now does not exist.

What we're looking at is a headshot or an image made up of many other faces. So this is not a real human being.

This is someone that a computer has put together from a variety of other random images. Let me just hit refresh.

Here you can see someone with some type of hat on top. It's a very interesting website, and the way that you might find it useful is if you're looking for some headshots for your website, if you're looking for something for your demos or maybe a database, especially if you're giving examples to your clients or customers.

I know for myself, I'm often needing a few headshots if I'm putting together a database or wanting to put something together where it looks like I've got some actual avatars or actual profile pictures here. And it's almost eerie on this page because this person, and everyone that we've seen so far, does not actually exist.

These eyes are probably from someone different than the nose, than the mouth, than the hair, the ears, and the chin profile. Let me refresh this once again, and again, someone else who does not exist.

Now, you're probably already recognizing that it's not the most diverse collection here. There tends to be a lot more women in this particular collection and a lot more fair-skinned women as well.

So if you are looking for greater diversity, this may not be the website for you. But even just for a few moments of entertainment, you can refresh this screen and look at an image that looks so lifelike, that looks so real, yet this person does not exist.

Something that may be helpful to you if you're looking for images and not just want to repeat all of the stock images and all those things that you see time and time again, you can go have some fun or use it for your own purposes at thispersondoesnotexist.com.

View old websites

Now, speaking of things that no longer exist, here we are at archive.org, and we are going to take a look at the Wayback Machine. How often have you wanted to go back and see what your website or maybe a competitor's website looked like many years ago?

Or maybe you just want to have some fun and take a look at a website from the past. What the Internet Archive does is actually cache most webpages or at least a large variety of webpages over the years.

It's like taking a snapshot of different websites over the years. So let me give you just a quick example.

I'm going to actually type in my own website because I'm in the process of redesigning it. Maybe I'd like to go back and see, well, how did things get started?

Were there things that were working better in the past or not? Let's go back and take a quick look.

So here you can see, we've got a bit of a timeline here at the top. Yes, my website was actually launched in 2015, but it looks like the Wayback Machine didn't start archiving it until 2016.

These little bars represent the different points in time where things were snapshotted, where things were grabbed over time. If I click on 2016, for example, down below, then I'm given a yearly calendar.

I can see the different months to see what things looked like at that time. So let's take a look at, I don't know, November 27th, 2016.

If I go here and click on the time, that's going to be the specific time when they took that snapshot. What it's going to do is actually bring and present that website to me here within the browser.

And things look quite a bit different than they do now on my home screen. Now, keep in mind that some of the fonts, some of the layout may be a little bit different.

So, for example, this Simpletivity link is actually a logo that was over here. It didn't actually look quite like that.

There might be a few things out of alignment, but I can actually go back and I don't have to save a copy of this or necessarily back up the website if I want to come back and review it.

I can come here and say, 'Oh, wow, so this is what I did. This is what things looked like way back when. Was there anything that I want to come back and revisit?'

Terms of service

Now, the next website on our list is for all of us who don't have the time or effort to read all of those terms of service. And you know what I'm talking about.

Regardless of the software, website, or apps that you use, you're often presented with an extremely long terms of service that, even if you did read it all, would you be able to understand all of the terms and the legalities within those terms of service?

Well, here at ToS;DR, that's termsofservicedidntread.org, you will get not only a summary of the terms of service, but it's actually going to tell you what it means.

So, for example, if we go here to Facebook, it's telling me that Facebook stores your data whether you have an account or not. Your identity is used in ads that are shown to other users.

Now this is the plain speech that we understand. But if I hover over it, it's actually going to give you the specific wording, showing you or referencing the actual terms of service.

On the front page here, you're going to see some of the bigger names like Amazon and Reddit and Wikipedia, for example, but you can search for anything here.

So, for example, if you want to type in one of your favorite tools or one of your favorite services. Let's type in something like, oh, I don't know, maybe something like Todoist, for example.

And here we can see Todoist doesn't have a grade yet. Many of them will receive an actual grade, but here are some of the things that you may want to consider if you want to go forward with using that tool and if there's anything that maybe stands out to you.

So, if you want to go and preview or read some of the things that you couldn't have read in the first place, or let's be honest, you didn't read in the first place, you can always come to Terms of Service; Didn't Read and catch up and determine if you want to proceed or maybe hang back.

Amazon price checker

Last but certainly not least, we are on a website that's going to help you save money and make you feel confident if you are getting a great price on a particular item. Here we are at camelcamelcamel.com, and CamelCamelCamel is all about looking at Amazon products and seeing the price history of those particular products.

Now you can use CamelCamel in a variety of different countries. So even if you're not using the American Amazon site, you can look at a variety of countries down here, including a German flag with a blue on the top.

I don't know why they chose that there, but, anyhow, let's stick here with CamelCamelCamel, and we're going to type in something here like, oh, maybe something like a Blue Yeti microphone, for example. I get a lot of questions about, 'Scott, what type of microphone are you using?' And yes, I do use a Blue Yeti microphone.

So if I scroll down here, here you can see there's a few different models and things that are going on here. And let's click on this first one here.

It's telling me the Amazon price currently is 129.99. But if I click on the item itself, we're going to get so much more detail.

So how am I going to determine if this is a good price or not? Well, if I scroll down, I can see a full price history all the way back to 2014.

And you know, like most products, there's ups and downs, right? There's sales, there's Black Friday, there's a variety of other things here as well.

So there's quite a gap between when it was cheapest at a mere $85, but that was also several years ago, to its highest price of 131. So, really, if I look at this, the average price has been $116.

Maybe right now is not the time to buy this particular item. In fact, it's very close to the highest price it has ever been.

Let's try another product for our example. Maybe I'm looking for an RGB keyboard, in this case. I'm just going to type in those keywords.

It doesn't have to be a specific product. You can actually do much of your shopping right here at CamelCamelCamel.

And let's take a look at this Razer gaming keyboard, which says it's 34.99. Well, is that a good price? Should I pull the trigger and purchase this today?

Well, let's open it up and see what the data has to say. So, once again, I'm going to scroll down. And even before I do, it tells me, 'Hey, this is the best price.'

Well, show me the data. Why is this the best price? Well, look at this chart. Things have seemed to continually come down over the years and I can see that, yeah, this is rock bottom.

This is the lowest this particular keyboard has ever been listed on Amazon. So the average price has been 48.91, the current price is 34.99.

Yeah, let's go ahead and buy this keyboard. Now, if there's a particular item that you're waiting for, the other nice thing about CamelCamelCamel is that you can track those prices.

So if you just enter in your email address and say, 'Listen, I want to be notified when it drops to a certain amount,' you can do so right here.

Now I would love to hear from you next. Which of these seven websites were your favorite? And do you have anything else that you would love to share and add to this list?

Please be sure to do so in the comments down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult; in fact, it's very simple.

Problem with the traditional interview process

Would you like to spend less time managing the job interview process? Would you like to make it easier for both yourself and your candidates so that you can hire the right talent in record time? Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at Willo and why thousands of organizations are using it to hire faster and in less time. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

One of the most time consuming parts of any hiring process is the job interview.

You have to schedule it with the prospective candidate. You have to whittle it down

from a number of different resumes and then you have to organize that with other members of your team. Where Willo comes into play is to reduce the amount of time involved so that you can have your candidates answer their questions in a recording

and then have you review that in your own time. So both parties do not have to connect at the exact same time and then you can zero in on those candidates

that are worthy of a real time or in person interview. So let's take a closer look.

Getting started with Willo video interviews

So here I am within my Willo dashboard where I can both create new postings, but I can also review the video interviews which are coming in. I'm going to start out by clicking the interview section and although I already have something in progress, let's start with a fresh one by selecting the create button here. So first off, we just need to give it a title, right? What type of position are we hiring for? We can include a salary if we want but that is optional. In this case, I'm going to attach it to my sample company, Simple Incorporated and then I can either upload my own video,

‍

I can add a link or record my own right here within the Willo interface if I want to give them a bit of an introduction or a bit of a welcome. Down below, we have a description area where we can list the entire job description so the individual who is answering these questions knows exactly all the details about this position. In this particular example, I'm going to leave it blank and I'm going to hit next.

Creating video interview questions

Now we move on to the questions area, which is really the nuts and bolts of Willo.

These are the questions that we're going to pose to the candidate and then expect them to answer via video recording. So I can enter in any question that I want, but the great thing is that Willo will actually suggest a variety of questions for me as well. So maybe I want to start off with a tell me about yourself question. Before I add a new question, I do have a few options available to me. By default, it's going to choose video answer as the type of answer, but you can also allow your candidates to upload a file themselves and then on the right-hand side, you have two other choices. The first one is how many times that they can retake their video. Now by default, it is set to unlimited and I would probably recommend that you set it at this limit so that if they make a few mistakes, maybe to make them feel more at ease of using video recording, they can retake as many times as you want. Again, the participant will get to choose which one they want to send to you. You don't have to sift through the many or multiple takes and then lastly, we get to choose what the maximum length of that video will be. Now, keep in mind, if you choose a longer length such as four or five minutes, that expectation may be built right into the question. So if you don't want a five minute answer, you can reduce this down to one or two minutes. Let's ask another question here as well and in this case, I'm going to say what, maybe what motivates you? For example and again, I can adjust it for each and every question. I can add as many questions as I want.

Publishing options for your job posting

When I'm happy with the order and the number, I can hit next and move on to the publishing stage. Now, I can choose a particular end date for this question and for my ability to receive and for participants to record their answers or I can just say no end date at all. Lastly, I can say if I want to request their availability for follow-up

and I'm going to show you in just a minute how they can choose when would be a good time to follow up if you decide to continue with the interview process. Last but not least, all I have to do is select publish and now I've got an invite link which I can send to my prospective candidates directly. I can attach it to a job description. I can post it on my website. I can put it anywhere that I like. So in this case, I'm going to hit copy link and I'm going to paste it in a new incognito window so it looks and feels

Job candidate experience

like what the participant would experience. So here we can see the name of the position, the name of the company and location and the description would be listed here as well if I chose to include it. All the participant needs to do is select get started.

Now, first they're going to be greeted with a how to record a great video and I think this is a great option here just to make the prospective candidate a little more comfortable, especially if they haven't prerecorded a job interview in the past. They can either watch this helpful video, or read these tips down below, or they can simply select get started. So now all we need to do is give permissions to use our cameras and our microphone. In this case, I'm just going to close this helpful hint here, they may need to choose which camera they wish to use. Let's see if this is the right one, there I am. So now I'm ready to go and I can proceed with answering this first question. Tell me about yourself? The great big, purple record row button is here

and it's telling me that I have a maximum of a minute to answer this question. So I'm going to hit the button. (timer beeping) I'm a very energetic individual who is so looking forward to working with you and your team and providing satisfaction to all your clients. They can hit stop record when they're done and then they're immediately brought here with a preview of the entire recording. So they can play it back if they want, see if they're happy with it, or if they're not, they can choose to rerecord it. In this particular example, I'm going to say done and then I'm brought to the second question, which in this case is what motivates you? (timer beeping)

I am strongly motivated by candies such as Skittles or Mike and Ike's. In fact, I can guarantee results if you have candy such as these available to me at all times. Once again, just like we saw in question number one, they can review that video, choose to rerecord it as many times as they'd like or hit done in this case. Now, the video is uploaded, but they will have one more chance to preview all of their answers. So even if you have seven different questions here for example, they can choose to watch and play back any of their answers, choose to retake any of them before selecting next. In this case, we selected the your availability toggle in the settings.

So now the prospective candidate can give us three different options or three different times and when it would be good for us to follow up with them. So again, some additional functionality, some great ways so that you can connect with those candidates when it's best for them and hopefully best for you as well. They can either choose to skip this step or to confirm and now all they need to do is enter in their details and now you can review it on your end.

Reviewing and rating interview videos

So let's go back to our interviews tab where we are managing the interviews that we have sent out. In this case, we're going to take a look at the assistant store manager for Lego and we can see that we already have three responses waiting for us. So if I select on this particular position, it's going to open up and show us all of the results,

including some other information for this particular position. We can always click the invite button if we need to retrieve that link or we can choose to edit it as well. So in this case, I can see that there are three different candidates who have submitted responses. So now I can go into this on my time. It could be the middle of the night,

it could be first thing in the morning and I can review these responses. So in this case, I'm going to take a look at Emma and I've asked three different questions. I can see that she's answered all three and if I want to know what her favorite LEGO set is, well.

- I would say my favorite LEGO set is the Harry Potter Mansion as I am a huge "Harry Potter" fan. - Fantastic, so now I can see the person, I can see how they respond and most importantly, I can see what they had to say about the questions that I'm asking.

Up above, you can also see the availability that she has set for herself, so I can choose an ideal time to follow up with her.

In addition, Willo gives us a variety of different tools so that we can rate or share our notes with other people within the organization. So for example, here, maybe I'm fairly impressed with Emma's responses here, so I'm going to give her four stars. Maybe later on, I can choose to accept this candidate, which would mean that yes, I'd like to proceed with having Emma come in or for us to set up a live video interview, or I can say maybe she's just not right for this position and I can choose reject. Down below, we even have a note section as well so that you can share your own personal feedback, your own personal feelings, with other members of your team, other people within your business who are included in the hiring process. On top of that, Willo integrates with more than 2000 apps,

Willo integrations

including many of the tools that you already use. So for example, if you want to get a Slack notification when a video response is recorded, you can do so. If you use Trello to manage your hiring process, you can integrate Willo with it as well. So if you're looking for a more efficient and effective way to hire the best talent for your team,

I'd recommend that you check out Willo. Be sure to click the link in the description below to learn more. Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Visual Collaboration

Do you have a product or service that you need to share with the world? How are you going to do that? Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you seven marketing and sales tools that I think you should be using right now, so let's dive in.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen, here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress, and the first tool that we're looking at here is Miro.

Now, Miro is known as an online whiteboard or brainstorming tool, but when it comes to marketing and getting that information out to your clients or your prospective customers, you need to be as clear as you possibly can, so I've been using Miro more and more often to communicate and also work with my clients.

So for example, I was designing a workshop not too long ago and I shared this with the client so that we could work through how the different components and the different areas of that workshop were going to play out.

Miro makes it so easy just to drag and push things around and also create relationships between certain things that you have listed here within your projects. Another good example here is a current website redesign that I'm involved with at the moment, and again, it just makes it that much easier to lay out not only my thoughts, but convey these thoughts with others.

Miro makes it extremely easy

For you to share your information with others, whether you want them to collaborate with you or maybe you just want to send them the link so that they can access and see what you're speaking of.

And speaking of sales, you can use Miro to create a full product roadmap or a user story map, or a variety of other templates which come included with Miro, so this can be a great way to share your ideas and communicate and collaborate with others.

Digital Flipbooks

Now, if you really want to impress your audience, don't just send them a PDF, why not send them a FlippingBook instead? FlippingBook allows you to upload any existing PDF and make it that much better.

Let me show you what I'm talking about. So here's a finished result here. Instead of sending a PDF, which is going to have 28 pages with it, and you know no one's going to be scrolling through 28 pages, why not send them something a little more dynamic and something that actually looks and feels a bit more like a traditional brochure? What I love about FlippingBook is that you'll notice

that we have dynamic images on the screen. Yes, you can have .gifs for example here, you can have links anywhere on the page, you can even embed video. So for example, if I want to play Gail's story here, all I need to do is hit this play button

and now I can go directly to this particular video. So it's an incredibly dynamic experience for those who receive it. Here's another example here, which is a product catalog, which again, instead of just sending them something like a long list or an inventory style website, why not wow them with your products? You can even allow them to click on things, expand the view, and see the other options that are available to them.

On the left hand side, you have a full table of content so they don't have to sift through everything, they can go directly to the area that they're looking for. Over here within my FlippingBook account, I've actually just recently uploaded my own PDF.

Now this is a traditional PDF that I created a few weeks ago, but it looks so much better here within FlippingBook. This is just a tease of a new PDF that I'm putting together, but doesn't this look a lot more enticing? It even highlights the things that I can click on when I'm entering in this particular document.

Not only does FlippingBook make your PDFs look amazing, but you can share them with just a single link. That's right, no more attaching a big, bulky PDF to your emails.

On top of that, everything within a FlippingBook document is absolutely trackable so if you want to see how many people have viewed it, how many people have clicked on something, how many pages, how many time they have spent within the FlippingBook itself, you've got all that information here.

Try doing that with your traditional PDF. Yeah, you have no clue how often it's been shared or how often someone is actually clicking or accessing that information. You get all of these details right here within FlippingBook.

If you'd like to learn more and start using it for yourself, be sure to check the link in the description below.

Free Stock Photos

Now, of course, no matter what type of content that you are creating, whether it's for a email newsletter, whether it's for social media, you're going to need some amazing images, but preferably on the cheap. Well, that's where Pexels come into play. Yes, P-E-X-E-L-S.

This continues to be my go-to for finding the majority of the images that I either include on my website or sometimes right here within my video. So you can type in absolutely anything that you want, it's remembering some of my previous searches here.

So here I've taken a look at digital marketing photos and everything here within the Pexel site is of high quality and absolutely free for you to use. So let's say I actually like the way this is looking, but I want something maybe just slightly different.

One of the things that I love about Pexels is that if I scroll down below, it gives me a lot of other options that are related to this particular picture. If I scroll almost all the way down to the bottom, you can see I can also search by certain tags as well. So if I'm looking specifically for an Apple iPad, I can go directly to that result.

Maybe I do want two people sort of looking at technology, well, I can look at some of these suggestions down below and here it's going to give me a suggestions of other people who are grouped together, maybe even these same two actors here that are in this particular picture, so a lot of great choices here.

When you click on any of the graphics, you'll also have the ability to download it in a variety of different formats.

Maybe you don't need something this large, but you can do something either as a custom size or as one of the other defaults, so quick and easy, a great place to find content for your next promotion.

Infographic Maker

Now, if you'd like to combine some great graphics and animations with your data,

then you're probably looking to rate an infographic, and for that purpose, we're taking a look at Venngage. Venngage is all about creating things in short order,

but things that are actually interactive and things that people can click on and do so much more with. Now, there's a large collection of different templates that you can choose from, so, no, you don't have to start from scratch, you can something right here and input or change some of the data.

For example, I started with this basic template, but I've removed a few things here on the right hand side because I'd like to add a map of some detailed data. Now, everything is click and drag and drop,

so it's very, very simple to edit, but what sets Venngage apart from many infographic design software is all of the engaging widgets you have access to here on the left hand side.

So for example, maybe I want to include a map of the US here, and I'm just going to resize it so it's going to fit in this space. Now, you can see that some of the states are shaded differently here. Well, what I can do is I can select Edit Map and I've got access to all that data.

So maybe I can copy and paste something within a spreadsheet that I already have so I can tell what my viewers are actually looking at.

But it actually gets better than this 'cause not only can I adjust all of the settings

and the colors, but when I go to publish it, let me just show you a quick preview. It's more than just colors, it's actually going to be interactive.

So when we see this map here, as I drag my cursor over top of each state, not only does the color change, but it tells me the actual number represented for that state.

`And you can do this with almost anything within Venngage, so if you'd like to really spruce up what you are sharing, especially if you're dealing with data and figures, Venngage may be the solution for you.

Graphic Design

Of course, when it comes to promoting and marketing your products or services,

you don't want to forget social media and a great place to produce your social media content is Canva, even if you just use their free account. Now of course, Canva has a variety of different things that we can produce and convert, but the great thing when it comes to social media is that it has the defaults built right in so if you're creating an Instagram post or a Facebook post for example, you don't have to worry about the specific dimensions, let Canva worry about that as you can create your content.

For example, I recently created a variety of Instagram posts right here within Canva to promote my reset productivity masterclass. All I did was take an existing template that I thought would work well and then simply changed some of the text.

So in this case, it encouraged people to click through and scroll to the right, so that they could learn more about the program, they could learn more about this particular course.

The only thing that I changed were some of the colors so that this blue matched my Simpletivity blue, and then of course, the text so I could outline what they would learn and what I was trying to convey in this message. So whether you're just looking for inspiration or you need to produce your own digital content,

be sure to add Canva to your digital toolbox.

Form Builder

Now, when it comes to marketing and communicating with all of your clients and potential clients, you want to be collect information, so you're going to need a form,

whether that's on your website or maybe just a standalone landing page, and for that, I recommend Jotform. Why Jotform? Well, Jotform is not only one of the most flexible and easiest to use, but Jotform has so many amazing widgets and addons

and integrations that you can add to any of your forms. So for example here, I've created a student registration form where I can customize all of these fields, but on top of that, I can add payments directly to this form so I don't have to send them somewhere else, I don't have to wait for their email and then send them an invoice,

I can actually add that directly to the form. But Jotform also can create some pretty fantastic and pretty amazing-looking forms at the same time. Let me preview this form for just a moment to show you what I mean.

I mean, you're used to some traditional forms, right? And probably most of your clients are, but why not wow them with something like this, where they they can hit the start button, where they can enter in their name, let's enter in a dummy email address and hit submit, and then maybe wow them with a big thank you? Something that guides them along the process and also makes it a little more intriguing when it comes to your product, your service, or your brand.

JotForm has a variety of different tools to help you and your business, including tables and an ability to create your own mobile app. So if you'd like to learn more, be sure to click the link in the description down below.

Email Marketing

Last but certainly not least, when it comes to marketing, you absolutely need an email marketing solution. Now for many years, I was a Mailchimp user and you're probably familiar with Mailchimp, at least with that name, but in the past year, I have found something so much better, so much simpler, and also more cost-effective.

So I am now using MailerLite and I recommend it to you as well, especially if you're just getting into email marketing or if you are tired of some of the limitations of what you're currently using.

Mot only does MailerLite have a very simple interface here that really anyone can use, but really the form builder is what is so powerful here. I can create as many either embedded forms or popup forms as I like, so I can capture more email addresses and then be able to reach out and communicate with those who are interested in my products or my services.

If you'd like to see my full review of MailerLite, you can click the link in the description down below. So if you're ready to wow your audience with your marketing materials, be sure to check out some of the tools mentioned in today's video.

Thank you so much for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Great copywriting is not easy

If a website can do something faster than how I can do it, that's great, but if it can also do that thing better than I would ever be able to do it, that's fantastic because that means I can spend more time on other areas of my business.

So in this video, we're taking a look at a website that creates amazing copywriting and marketing text using artificial intelligence. So whether you're wanting to create Facebook, or LinkedIn ads, or maybe a landing page or even a blog post from scratch, Anyword has you covered.

So let's dive in and take a closer look. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen in here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And I know when it comes to my own marketing efforts, I often find it very very challenging.

Why? Well, I don't have a background in copywriting, I'm not sure which words or which phrases

are going to help convert my advertisement or my content and encourage people to click and learn more. Well that's exactly where the website Anyword comes into play.

Anyword is constantly analyzing millions of ads, landing pages, product listings and many other sources and then you get to tap into what is working best.

Creating a Facebook ad with Anyword

So let's take a closer look. Here we are in the first screen which is called data driven copyright, and we've got a few different categories here including advertisements, landing pages, including social media posts and even emails as well.

Let's get started with perhaps a Facebook ads. So I'm going to click on this and I'm going to say let's start a new project. Now, the great thing here is that

I only need to tell it a small amount of information. So for example, I'm going to use my own course, my own online course, as the example here, I can tell it whether it's a product or a piece of content, I can choose from a number of different categories.

So it can use that experience. Remember all of that data that Anyword is collecting to my advantage. Here's my URL, here's the name of the course and the product description.

So I've given it very little information as you can see, I've only given it a small amount of information but what I'm going to do next is I'm going to select create a project. So it's going to take that information including some of the text,

some of the existing information on my website and bring it into Anyword. Now on the left hand side, we have a few different ways in which we can create or view that content. Now, remember, in this particular example, we're looking at a Facebook ad,

so there's not going to be a ton of texts, we're going to look at some other examples a little bit later but already you can see I've got a wide variety of choices here

Generating copywriting examples

in terms of the type of style or the type of tone that I would like to use. Let's just get started with the default here, and all I need to do is come all the way down to the bottom and select generate. Now I can choose how many want them to generate at a time, I'm just going to stick with the default of five and then we'll play around and look at some of the other options.

So I'm going to select generate here and in a matter of seconds, it's going to analyze that information, that small amount of information, which I gave it and it's going to produce some Facebook ad copy. Remember, I haven't created any of these myself.

So let's take a look, forget about everything else and focus on yourself. If you're feeling burned out, this course is for you, click here to learn more.

Work smarter not harder, no more struggling to stay productive, join us for reset and learn how to take control of your time management and productivity register today.

So what you'll see is it's producing great and proven Facebook ad copy which I can use as I'm putting together my next campaign. And remember, I didn't give it all of these words and terms, it's actually pulling it partly from the landing page itself, but also from looking at other successful courses and other successful Facebook ads.

Copywriting scores and data metrics

Here on the right hand side you'll also notice that Anyword gives us a score. So it's giving us a predicted score based on the information here. If I decide to click on any of these scores it's actually going to pull up some additional information here as well.

So for example, is this going to appeal a little bit more to a younger demographic

rather than an older demographic? Does it have slightly more of a feminine tone of voice? You may not be thinking about this when you're creating your own copy from scratch, but trust me, professional marketers certainly are.

So is your target audience more female than male? What's the age demographic of your target audience? That's all going to come into effect here as well, but let's say that I'm not totally happy

with any of the results here, or maybe I just want to save one of them. I'm going to save this first one here at the top, why don't we look at some of these other options here as well. So in this case I'm going to choose the one that's called conversational. So I'm going to select that one, and once again, I'm going to hit that button generate.

Now it's only going to take a few additional seconds as it takes that same information and say, okay, you know you need to get more done in your day but you're not sure how we've got the secret to making it happen.

So you can see that this doesn't have that same register now or click here to learn more, it is more conversational in tone. Now, as I'm going through these options and perhaps I'm missing some key details, I can always go back to the brief by selecting this button.

Here I can change the name of the product or content, and I can give it a bit more of a description to go on,

Adding keywords to include in your copywriting

but I can also add some keywords as well. So in this case, I'm going to add the keyword focus. So I want to see this in my next selection. I really want that word focus to be included. Let's go with a hard sell, let's this time around, I'm going to hit the generate button and let's see what it comes up with.

So now in my results you can see how do you focus on what really matters, imagine the freedom of being able to focus on your work. Are you ready to focus on what matters most?

So I can add some tweaks, I can add some further customization to make sure I'm getting the right copy for my needs. Let's take a look at another example and how we can use the whiteboard feature

Write an awesome landing page from scratch

so we can create an entire landing page in just minutes. So in this case I'm going to select the new landing page copy option and I can either tie this to an existing project like the one we saw before, or we can create a new project.

And when you're thinking of projects, you're really thinking of either campaigns or certain products or services in which you're offering. So I'm going to say new product in this case.

This time I'm going to pretend that I'm a realtor, I'm going to call myself Friesen realtors,

for example and product description, let's just give it something brief to go on, the one stop shop for all of your real, all of your home buying and selling needs. How about something like that? I won't stop here, I want to add something in there.

Perfect, so I'm going to create project, very very simple, you'll notice this time around, I didn't even give it a website. It's just basing it off that text. Now on the left hand side, you can see because we're dealing with a landing page, it's actually separated out

into five different components, right? Because you're going to have a headline, a subheader, maybe some call to action, benefits and features. So we can go through this one at a time but then use their whiteboard feature to easily bring it all together.

So here are some of the results and this one stands out to me,

Anyword whiteboard for saving and editing your copy

we'll take care of everything. So when I'm speaking of the whiteboard, if I come up here to the top right hand corner, here is our list view, but if I bring over the white word view what I can do is start to craft and put these different components together.

You can think of this as sort of a notepad where you're actually doing the work and pulling these ideas. So I'm going to say, yeah, we'll take care of everything,

I like that as the header, let's move on to maybe some of the calls to action.

So I'm going to select generate here, once again, it might take a few seconds

to generate some ideas, but it's time, yeah that's a call to action. Sell your home now these are maybe some bullet points that I'm going to add to it, or maybe I'll have some images around it. Let's add get started.

And then last but not least, let's identify maybe some features of my particular service, and I want to make this a little more playful. So I'm going to select playful and I'm going to hit generate, and let's see what some of the options are, that Anyword generates for me.

Look at this, look at how detailed some of this is, nothing but the best, we have the best agents, the best marketing, the best technology, our focus is on the people not on the property, a dedicated team, we work hard to make sure our agents are topnotch, they're the most amazing, dedicated and loyal team you'll ever meet.

So once again, if I like this one, I can say copy to the whiteboard and now it's input here. I can either save this or I can just copy everything at once and then paste it on my website, landing page, social media wherever I think this is relevant, I can let Anyword do most of the work.

Managing your copywriting projects in Anyword

And under the projects tab, Anyword makes it very simple and easy for me to find all of my previous projects. So maybe I wasn't quite finished with creating my ad content here, I can always come back into it and also collaborate with others.

So whether you're needing to write high converting sales copy, maybe a blog post from scratch or a product description, Anyword has you covered. You can customize it as much as you like, and know that you're getting data driven results, things that actually convert in the real world. If you'd like to learn more about Anyword

and start using it for free, be sure to click the link in the description down below. And if you like this app review and how to video, you'll love the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

3 reasons to use a password manager

‍

Ah, shoot. What's the password for this website? Ah, is it this? No, incorrect password.

Ah, you modified your password 867 days ago. How about? Could it be that? Ah, incorrect password. Um, what about this? Oh yeah, this is the password I use for so many other sites. Could it be that one? Argh, there has to be a better way. Well, good news, there is. So in this video, I'm going to share with you why you should be using a password manager and sharing with you password manager tools. So let's jump in.

Why should I be using a password manager? Well, here are three key reasons. Number one, you are referencing your password sor you're keeping track of them on pen and paper. Maybe you have a notebook, maybe you have some sticky notes off the side of your desk. This is a big no-no. Number one, of course, it's not that secure.

Someone else who could be visiting your office or walking by your desk could obviously see your passwords. But number two, what are you going to do when you're not near your desk, or you don't have that cheat sheet or that notebook with you? What if you need to log in and access something when you're away from that particular location? You are going to be of no help. Number two, if you keep track of your passwords within a online document, such as Google Keep or a spreadsheet or any other tool that you use. This is also a big no-no. Why? Well, what if someone hacks this particular account, then they have access to all of your passwords, right?

If someone was to access this account, they would see all of my passwords for these particular services. On top of that, it's a big hassle. When I have to go and change any of these passwords, then I got to come back in here and I have to change

and remember to change these passwords here as well. And the third reason why you need a password manager is if you use the same password again and again.

I don't know how many times I meet someone who uses the exact same password,

even though the password itself may be quite strong, a long number of characters, including special characters, numbers, capitalized letters, and everything, but no matter how strong that is, if you're using it for a number of different sites, well, hackers only need to find out the one and then they can go and use that same password to attempt, and probably be very successful, in accessing all of your other accounts.

How a password manager works

‍

So in order to make your life a whole lot simpler and more secure, let's take a look at of my recommendations when it comes to password managers. The first tool that we're going to look at is RoboForm. And really, the RoboForm website gives us all of the key reasons why a password manager is so much more convenient. One click convenience, meaning you don't have to remember your username or the password itself, you can simply click in the field and then log into that service. Multi-platform support. This is going to be essential in all of the tools that we use. So regardless if you're at your desktop, your laptop, or on your mobile device, you can access those passwords. When it comes to security, you want to be able to create stronger passwords, and rather having you come up with something rather difficult, other than just pounding the keys on your keyboard, tools such as RoboForm will create much stronger passwords that you will never have to remember before. Remember, we're letting these software remember these incredibly strong passwords for us so we don't have to. And lastly, the ability to share logins securely. So if you do need to share access with someone else, don't share the password, that's not very secure,

but with password managers, such as RoboForm, you can do so. So let's dive into the RoboForm account

Recommendation 1: Roboform

‍

and let me give you a bit of a tour. So here I am within my RoboForm account. And essentially how most password managers work is that you create one strong master password. And that's the only password that you need to remember and then you can create as many complicated and as strong passwords, or more importantly,

let the password manager itself create those passwords for you, and then they will give you access to those accounts. You remember one master password, that's all you need, and because it's encrypted, you can then safely access all of your other accounts here. So here you can see the collection of tools that I have set up with my RoboForm account. And if I want to log into Todoist, I could come here and say Click to log in, but there's an even simpler way from the screen itself. So here I am within the Todoist log in screen, and the email and password fields are ready for me to enter. But instead of having to remember what I've used, because perhaps I've even forgotten the particular email address that I used for this Todoist account, with the RoboForm extension installed, all I need to do is hover over this logo. I can choose Todoist. Yeah, that's the screen that I'm on. Let's add that there. And now my information is automatically added and I didn't even have to select Log in. It's brought me directly to my Todoist screen. So essentially one click to go exactly where I want to go, and I didn't have to remember my complicated or strong password. The other feature of RoboForm, which I particularly like, is this section called Safenotes. So beyond just logins, when you're accessing information online, you may also need a secure place to keep information, such as pin numbers or a safe combination or maybe just a very detailed note. So, for example, if I want to remember my safe combination here at home, I know that this is encrypted and protected by my master password. So this is so much more secure than writing it down on a piece of paper

or in a tool which is much more open and vulnerable to hacking. Now you can use RoboForm for free, but if you'd like to use RoboForm everywhere, I have a special offer just for Simpletivity viewers. By clicking the link in the description down below, you can get RoboForm everywhere for less than $17 a year. For more information, be sure to click that link down below.

Recommendation 2: LastPass

‍

Next up, let's take a look at how easy it is to create new, stronger passwords when you're first setting up an account. So here I am trying to sign up for the ClickUp service, and I have LastPass installed on my machine. So I've already filled out my name and my email address, but now when it comes to choosing a password, what am I going to do? Use something that I've used everywhere else and make myself vulnerable to hackers or to leaking information? No. With LastPass installed and with many of the other tools that we're looking at today, you can see this little icon here,

which is a little bit of a lock with a arrow around it. So I'm going to click on that, and it's going to offer me a strong password. So here you can see I've got a collection

of letters and numbers, some are capitalized, some are not. I would never come up with this on my own, but if I don't like it, I can generate something else. Okay, let's go with that. And I'm going to say FILL PASSWORD. So now, not only is it added, but up in the top right, it's going to include that information. It's asking me, "Should we add this to LastPass?? I'm going to say yes, add. And now it's locked in my LastPass safe. So after I continue to create this account, and now have a login, I'm never going to have to remember this very strong and unique password. All I need to do is access this LastPass icon and it will fill it in for me. Now while the layout of the LastPass interface

is very different from what we saw in RoboForm, many of the same features are still available to us. And just like in RoboForm, if we need to go and see further information, so if you ever need to reference the name, the username, or the actual site password, you can do so here. You can see that by default, the site password will be hidden, but if you need to see it, we can hit that eye icon, and here we can see this incredibly strong and secure password for this particular site. We can even add some advanced notes down below

Recommendation 3: Dashlane

‍

if we want to. Now the third password manager that I like to recommend is Dashlane.

And yes, it has many of the same features, which we've seen already, but one of the added advantages of a password manager is the ability to access this information directly from your browser or browser extension window. So here, for example, using the Dashlane account, I can quickly and easily access these sites. In fact, you can almost use it as a secondary bookmarking system, if you want to go directly to those pages. Dashlane also has the option to autofill certain information and you can customize in terms of what it will autofill. Do you want it to autofill your name, and address, and phone number, or maybe limited to just log in and passwords, or maybe there are particular websites where you don't want it to autofill information.

Dashlane also has a very robust generator. So if you'd like to use this password for other locations, you can do so. And what I like about this particular setup is you can customize the length. So, for example, maybe I want something super-duper strong.

I'm going to set it to a length of 30. And I can say, if I don't want to include symbols, for example. So here, it's met the requirements that I've set here, but if I don't want to use symbols or maybe I do want to add symbols back in, I can make that choice right here from the browser extension.

Recommendation 4: Bitwarden

‍

Now the last password manager that I like to recommend is Bitwarden, which is a very flexible tool and also very easy to use. And what I want to show you is, when you first log in to any of these password manager services, is how important that master password is and exactly what it does for your account. Now, what makes password managers so secure is that because of their encryption, they actually do not retain information about your master password. Therefore, they can't actually send that master password to you. That's why it's important to not only remember your master password but to include a master password hint, because they can send you a hint, a reminder, maybe to trigger your memory, maybe to trigger some of the key components of that password, so that in the event of you forgetting or having trouble accessing your password manager account, you can regain access. Depending on the password manager service that you are using, they may also have phone support and some additional ways to retrieve your account. But remember, your master password is what's keeping you secure from others accessing all of the other passwords and information contained within. This is a safety feature. This is not meant to make it difficult for you but to make your life both easier, and more importantly, more secure. Now, if you've made it this far into the video, I'd love for you to prove it by including the words strong password in the comments down below.

And while you're there, be sure to ask me a question about passwords or anything related to password managers. And if you enjoyed this video, you might like the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Text explanation

It's a brand new year, and I want you to save time and get so much more out of your technology. So in this video, I'm sharing with you seven free apps that are going to help you be more productive and help you get more done in 2022.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And when I say free, I mean free. Each and every one of these tools is either 100% free

or they have a free forever version. So no, we're not just talking about a trial period.

You can actually use this day in and day out as you try to be more productive this year. So let's dive into app number one, and we're taking a look at Text Blaze. Now, text expansion is probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to save time online.

You can take a very complicated email response or a template and whittle it down to just a few keystrokes on your keyboard and then input it wherever you want. So let me give you a quick example.

Here I am within my Text Blaze dashboard where I can create and manage all of my snippets. Now, a snippet is again, just a few different keystrokes here on my keyboard, but they can contain so much information.

So let's say that I need to respond to a quote and it's always the same question and I'm always giving the same answer, but I don't want to type it all out. Rather, I would just like to put in these three keywords. /qo for quote options and look what I've got.

I've got an entire email here, including links, including bolding and some formatting that I can use again and again, instead of having to write this out, instead of having to go find it somewhere else and then right click and copy and paste it, I can just use these keystrokes and I've got everything here waiting for me, but there's a variety of other ways in which we can use this as well.

How often are you sharing your video conferencing link, for example? Well, how about if I go /vc,

there is my link and I can put this wherever I need to. Now the other great thing about Text Blaze is that you can do more than just having the same information, you can actually customize and actually ask for certain things to be filled out in advance.

So here you can see I've got a snippet called the review process. So I'm going to type that one in here just to show you what's going to happen. Before it inputs it into my email or my Google document, or really anywhere where I want to include this.

It's actually going to ask me a few questions because maybe I want to customize and address this person. So in this example, maybe it's an email response. I'm going to say, "Hi, Jane, thanks for sending over these files.

I will review them and get back to you by January 1st." Now, you'll notice that January 1st is highlighted, that's because I've actually said that my standard turnaround time or my standard response is going to be three days.

So if I come over here and if I click on the review process, here, you can see the nuts and bolts of this snippet. So here I want to customize it. I want to address the individual by name, but I've also put in a very simple formula saying, listen, put this out by three days.

So that's going to be my standard turnaround. I don't want to have to do the calculations in my head, especially if it's two weeks or 45 days or whatever the case may be.

Just put this into my response, save me so much time, make it easier for me to reply and put this into whatever I'm doing. So whether it's email, whether it's social media, whether it's anything else online, Text Blaze may be the ideal text expander for you.

Easy video recording

Now, the next free tool on our list is Loom and Loom is all about video content. You know as well as I do that in 2022, video is king.

In fact, video has been king for quite some time, why? It's just so much easier to record a brief video and to respond to someone personally, but also to maybe show someone, if you're doing a screen cast or maybe a screen recording, if you're helping somebody out or you want to show them exactly what you are experiencing on your end, Loom is the perfect solution for you.

In fact, I've been using Loom a lot more often these days to record a personal message to many of my clients. So here within the Loom dashboard, all I need to do is select the new video button. And in this case, I'm going to select record a video.

Now, on the right-hand side here, I can adjust my settings in terms of

what microphone I'm using, what camera I'm using. I can see a preview of myself here in the lower left hand side of the screen. Now, we can adjust a few things here.

Maybe I don't want myself to be quite as large, no problem. I can make that a bit smaller or a bit larger. I can also change my background as well. So if I want to use something a little more plain or a little more flashy, I can do so.

Sometimes the backgrounds, you know, they don't always work as well. The blur feature is maybe my recommendation because it does a much better job with our faces and our heads and our hair.

So I'm going to say use the settings. All I need to do at this point in time

is say start recording. It's going to give me a brief countdown after I say what I want to share, I'm going to say share my entire screen. Here comes my countdown. And now we're recording, so it will record my cursor. I can go around and highlight things.

I can click on things and show people what I'm doing or what I'm experiencing. In this particular demo, it may look a little choppy because I'm not only making a Loom recording, but I'm recording this video as well. If I wasn't doing so, it would be a lot smoother.

When I'm all finished, all I have to do is come down here and either hit pause, if I want to move to somewhere else on my screen. I can hit cancel or the check mark to say finish that recording.

I'm then taken to a preview of my video where I can edit it, I can trim it. I can even add a call to action button. And the great thing is, is that I can just copy and paste this link and send it to basically anyone.

I can embed it within an email. I can send it via a text message and people are now understanding exactly what I'm talking about, or maybe I can help them that much faster with a solution.

So if you want to get involved with video recording and especially screen recording, quick and easy and free, be sure to check out Loom.

Flexible project management

Now, when it comes to project management or taking notes or task management,

you have an awful lot of tools to choose from, but there's one tool out there that is not only free, but can actually cover all of these areas and allow you to be as flexible as you want and that tool is Taskade.

Now Taskade really allows you to manage your projects or your personal tasks any way that you like Here I'm within my personal project workspace. And I'm going to click on this project roadmap for just an example.

Now, one of the great things about Taskade is that you can view your information in so many different ways, whether you're including links and tags

and other checklists within your notes area, you can really customize the look and feel, yes, you can assign due dates. Yes, you can assign and collaborate with others.

But if you don't like working in this list view, no problem. We can come up here and do a board view. So if you prefer a Kanban style of managing your tasks, working from left to right, you can do so as well. Taskade also has what they call an action view,

which is almost a bit of a combination of a spreadsheet or a database type view so that you can really take action on all of those tasks and projects that you've been creating, but it doesn't stop there.

We also have a mind map view, so you can break things out by different sub categories and really brainstorm amongst yourself or with a team.nn And last but not least, it even has an organizational chart view as well. So if you're needing a very flexible project management or brainstorming tool in 2022,

and don't want to be restricted by a limited number of projects or workspaces, Taskade may be the choice for you. Be sure to click the link in the description below to learn more.

Connect apps together

Now the next app on our list might just be the most powerful, but don't let IFTTT intimidate you. There are an awful lot of options here, but it's actually a lot simpler to use than you may think. Now, IFTTT stands for if this, then that.

And the whole concept around this tool is that you decide what the trigger will be. Let's say, when you receive a particular email, or if something happens on your calendar or maybe something happens within one of your favorite productivity apps, then you want something else to happen.

You want another application to be notified, or you want to receive a text message for example, but let's take a quick look at some of the most popular recipes from the past year.

Just to get some of your creative juices flowing. So right off the bat, one of the most popular ones from the previous year was to get a weather forecast every day at 7:00 AM.

Now, of course you can customize this in terms of when you receive this and maybe you only want to receive it on weekdays, for example, and not on the weekends.

As I'm browsing through some of the options here, you can see that lost phones is maybe a common one, text your lost Android phone to turn the ringer volume up to 100%. You know that when someone says,

"Hey, why don't you just call your phone? And you're like, "Oh, actually my phone was on mute or the ringer was way down." Well, you can actually create a recipe for that.

Tell Alexa to find your phone. Okay Google, call my device. Yeah, losing your phone is certainly a bummer and IFTTT might make it easier for you, but again, you can combine social media accounts together.

If you want to have your tweets and your Instagram photos to be in sync, you can do so as well. So a wide variety of different responses, different recipes, a lot of things pertaining to smart homes and smart devices.

So if you're looking to get so much more out of your tools or want to combine things together, be sure to check out If This, Then That.

Presentation live polling

Now the next tool on our list is one of my favorite ways to engage my audience, whether I'm presenting live in person, but especially if I am giving a video conference,

a webinar, or maybe just a team meeting.And for this, we're taking a look at Slido. Now, Slido is all about live polling, but also allowing your participants to ask questions anonymously, if they want to and make your video meetings that much more engaging.

So here within my dashboard, I can create a variety of different multiple choice questions, word cloud questions, open text questions here in advance.

But when I go to my present view, all participants have to do is go to slido.com, enter in the room number, which you create in advance or use the QR code on screen. And now they can ask me questions here and I can manage those questions in real time.

I can even highlight the question that perhaps I'm addressing here and I can check it off when I'm done. But as I just showed you, I can also do a variety of live polling. So in this case I had 37 participants and this is how they answered this question.

And the great thing is, is that it's live, so these bars and these numbers actually adjust in real time, which really increases the engagement when I'm delivering a training or conducting a meeting. Here's an example of a word cloud, where I asked a question,

in one word, how would you describe your to-do list? And just like any word cloud, you can see that multiple people chose the words helpful and chaos, but then a variety of other words here as well. So a fantastic way to engage your audience.

After the meeting is over, as an administrator, you can even go back and capture

all of this information for later. So if I want to capture all of my audience Q&A, I can do so, Slido even gives me some fantastic analytics. So I can take a look and see how engaged were my participants.

I can copy this word cloud and some of the key words that came out of those questions here as well. So I can maybe adjust and improve in the future. If you really want to engage your next meeting, big or small, be sure to check out Slido.

Meeting scheduling

Now the next tool on our list is already very, very popular, but if you're still new to Calendly, make sure that 2022 is the year that you take advantage of this service.

I can almost guarantee that you have booked a meeting using Calendly meeting,

that someone else has sent you to their booking page. So for example, here, I'm going to click on my 60 minute meeting booking page, for example, and you're probably already familiar with this format and it's just so convenient, right? To send a single link, or you could embed something on your website, for example, and then people can go and look and search for a time that works for them.

So they can click on your calendar on your available dates and then confirm a time for that upcoming meeting. The great thing about Calendly is that it will cross reference your personal calendar or multiple personal calendars so that you are never double booked.

So in this particular example, I've got a lot of open spaces here, but if I decided to, let's say, take Friday off on the 14th, of course, that would not be made available to me.

Now, within the Calendly dashboard, you can adjust the settings for each and every one of your event details. So for example, here, I'm within my 30 minute meeting, but it's already set for 60 rolling calendar days. And maybe that's too much for me.

I don't want someone to book me out a full two months in advance. So what I can do is I can come in here and say, you know what? Maybe the next three weeks works for me.

I'm going to allow them to go within 21 days and how frequently, well I don't want it on the half hour, maybe I want it on the hour itself. So there is so much that you can customize here within your Calendly experience to make sure that you only allow

or accept meetings when and where you want.

Content title ideas

Now, the last tool on our list today is for all of us who are creating eye catching headlines that are going to make people either click or interested in our articles,

our content, our products, our services, whatever it is that you are trying to convey to your audience. And for that, we're going to titlegenerator.com. Now the whole concept around title generator is that you put in some key words and they will spit out 700 unique headlines.

So for example, I'm going to type in real estate in this case,

all I need to do is click the big get headlines button.

And what it will do is generate 700 headlines titles and content ideas. Now, as you scroll down, you'll see there's actually three different pages for you to review, but this is going to give you a variety of different things for you to consider or think about when creating your next headline.

Now be careful, be sure to read each and every one of them, because some of them may not necessarily be grammatically correct. Do real estate better than Barack Obama, yeah, I don't think that really makes sense.

But believe in your real estate skills, but never stop improving, the lazy man's guide to real estate. Got stuck? Try these tips to streamline your real estate.

Now, while a certain percentage of these headlines may not be relevant and may be a little funny as you read through them, many of them will get your creative juices flowing.

So whether you're creating a blog post, whether you're creating a video, a social media headline, whatever it is that you're creating, maybe you're wanting to create a catchy landing page for your website.

You're going to find some interesting ideas here and with your keywords input into those titles. Now, I would love to hear from you next. What do you feel are some of the essential apps or tools that others should be using in 2022?

Be sure to add your recommendations in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.