Simplify Your Business Tech Stack by Unlocking The Full Potential of Your Google Workspace

In this episode of the Redefining Fabulous podcast, host Jessi Cabanin chats with Amy Novick, professional organizer and Google expert from Clutter Care Inc. They explore how to simplify business operations and maximize productivity using Google Workspace.

Amy shares practical tips on managing multiple projects, staying organized, and streamlining workflows with Google tools. Jessi and Amy discuss embracing simplicity, learning from tech hiccups, and making your tech stack work smarter for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Simplify your business tech stack with Google Workspace
• Manage overwhelm and boost productivity
• Leverage Google tools for streamlined workflows
• The power of organization and simplicity in business

Tune in for actionable tips and motivation to run your business with confidence and efficiency.

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PREFER TO WATCH? Catch this episode on YouTube!

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𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝘼𝙢𝙮!

𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 // amy@cluttercare.net
𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 // cluttercare.net
𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 // @cluttercareinc
𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲 // @cluttercareinc

💡 Digital Organizing Workshops Take a Class with Amy! 

🗂️ Downloadable PDF - Amazing visual Google Workspace Apps

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𝘼𝙡𝙨𝙤 𝙈𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙄𝙣 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙀𝙥𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙙𝙚:

👉🏽 Amy & I actually met thru a mutual friend (Breanna) who found me via SEO. You can listen or watch that fun (and totally candid) conversation!

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Transcript

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How many hours for that and I start like listing stuff and then as I'm deriving and she's writing on her you know putting it on like a note in her phone I'm like wait oh I forgot about this player oh don't forget this I had back before this one and add this and that's add it and by the time she was like after half an hour she's with none there's a lot of hours. Hey hey hey welcome to the redefining fabulous podcast I'm Jessie your host and ultimate hype woman one size fits all rules for success have no freaking place here we're all about taking risks owning our quirks and collaborating our way to the top think of this show like a weekly coffee chat with your business bestie where we spill the tea on the messy truths and unpredictable ride of being an entrepreneur after 15 years of building numerous creative brands from the ground up it's time to get real about what actually goes on behind the scenes of building your very own empire we don't hold back around here so if you're ready to ditch the rule books step into your power and create a life that lights you the hell up then yes you are in the right place let's get real let's get honest and together let's redefine fabulous all right all right all right all right all right guys welcome back to another episode of empowering coffee convos this is a amazing amazing sector of our redefining fabulous podcast and this is kind of where we have you know other people in business come on to just chat about whether at right now really kind of discuss and deep dive into some of the things that we're struggling with because we know you guys are struggling with it too and if we can be any kind of help or a beginning of light for you that is our ultimate goal so I'm here today with Amy Novak she's a great friend of mine and she is a professional organizer she's a Google certified trainer and she is owner of clutter care organizing okay so she is in business to empower business owners with Google solutions and fantastic organization so she loves teaching everyone about Google tools I am so excited to have this conversation today because I know from my own experience that you guys are going to have some mind blowing moments today when you realize how much Google workspace can do for you like if I could count how many times Amy has told me you're already paying for that I might not be in as deep of debt as I'm in right now but if I am able to bring this to light for you guys and you know help you maximize you know where you're putting your money then I feel like I have done my job so before we get started too deep in here Amy why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself maybe just a quick synopsis of kind of who you are and where you are in life right now sure so I am a mom of two teenage girls as of last week and a 12 year old and a 14 year old one has a beauty and one has a disease which means she can't eat any gluten and I found out that I have both of those lovely things so I'm in it with them I wasn't orchestra teacher for 16 years my husband and I are both musicians and I have a master's degree in instructional design and education thus the teaching and I love to teach organize and make me work so yes I love that and I feel like we're gonna dive into that a little bit because I'm really really curious about the you know kind of entire evolution of that fun fact my word for the year in 2025 is evolve so if you guys are on the podcast this year or you're listening to the podcast you are probably going to see and feel a little bit of a common theme happening here this year and it is truly about you know evolving who you are as people as well as are in our businesses and as business owners so I'm really excited to kind of dig a little bit deeper into that but before we kind of you know go too too deep you know let's talk a little bit about the journey that got you here because I think that one thing we are really missing in society right now is talking more about the journey to get to where we are or want to go or where we've been like we're so it's so easy for us to talk surface level like I've been to China I've been to Hawaii well like tell me how you got there you didn't just like snappy fingers and get there so I'm really curious to kind of know you know how did you get there how did you get to kind of where you are today absolutely so I got a music education degree and I taught music for 16 years but when I'm in the public school when I was teaching in the public schools we were using Google as our email system and Google Drive for the students and Google classroom which I love to talk about as well which is where my classes are housed and so I wanted to learn more about that and so I had an opportunity as I love tech stuff so I heard about an opportunity to become a Google certified trainer in 2012 I have one of the first ID numbers as a certified trainer I'm in the 1000s so wait what does that seem like yesterday and also like forever go at the same time like why that hurts that hurts more than 10 years so I was one of the very first Google certified trainers and we I spent a summer learning you know getting tested on every app making sure I knew all the things and then and then every year we have to recertify so even when I was teaching I was helping other teachers with Google and of course my students and using Google classroom and all the apps dark sheet slides all the things so that's really where I kind of hold out my skills and then in I think 2018-19 I stepped out of the classroom that's the year my kids each got diagnosed I was like I need a break to figure out how to deal with celiac disease and food and ADHD and moods and starting homework and all the things so I took a break from teaching and I really said to myself well what is it that I love doing the most of all the things what can I do aside from teaching which I love turns out my favorite thing to do is sort things so I could sort paper I could sort clothing I can sort digital files I could sort whatever you want to sort so that is my favorite thing which means that professional organizer is right up my alley and so I started my product time business while my kids I was not in the classroom trying to figure out what to do and then of course soon thereafter the pandemic happened and so I was in home doing paper and home organizing but when COVID hit we can't really go into home so I met up with a bunch of other professional organizers online and started being a part of those communities online and quickly learned that there's a bunch of professional organizers that have Google workspace or a Gmail account and we're trying to use Google for their businesses but did not know what they were doing at all so therefore I became known as the Google lady the guru the whatever so so that's how I sort of evolved pivoted evolved into being you know I'm it's funny because all my friends are like so are you still teaching I'm like that's kind of a trick question because I am teaching business owners about Google I am not teaching students about music at the moment but I am still using my teaching skills my master's degree and all of my Google knowledge to help others so yes oh my god you guys what an evolution right like what what one little tiny shift can do not say that a tiny shift is gonna change everything for you but like being able and being willing to like make a small shift and then kind of seeing seeing what happens there and then taking another small shift and seeing what happens there and like I have known Amy now for a couple years that how I met her is a whole nother funny story I can link that podcast episode in the show notes because it's actually really funny story but I just think it is so cool that I've been able to watch her evolve and as I'm hearing this backstory I don't think I ever really fully knew how she evolved into the Amy she was when I met her and now seeing like seeing how she went from like the middle to here and then like now knowing how she came from here to the middle like this just this is just awesome it's amazing and I think that it's really really something to take to heart that like Amy didn't just stop everything was she was doing and like completely start over she you know took a step back and like she said she wanted to figure out like what do I enjoyed doing the most like what layers can I shed in order to become whoever I need to become to take on the next chapter so that's a really really really beautiful story of evolution and they I absolutely I love that and I know it's it's really painful right now to think about those years because you know I've I've been using Google workspace for over 10 years but not really using Google workspace at all so this is this is really a good topic because for those of you who don't know we actually ran a summit back in September for entrepreneurs and Amy was actually a guest speaker to talk a lot about time time management and just organization in general and the feedback that we got from that summit from those particular sections were like so crazy like people want to know more about this organizational stuff they want to know more about how they can you know make Google workspace work for them and so I'm really excited to have this topic of conversation because I know that is going to help so many freaking people so let's kind of dive in to Google workspace a little bit in like a short short explanation how would you describe the evolution of Google workspace in the last 10 years right like or however many years I don't want to count how many years it was it seemed like a lot more than that but like let's just say from when you first got Google certified to now how would you kind of describe the evolution of the Google brand that is a great question I feel like well I mean it definitely started as a search engine right like Google it search it up so that's one thing the way I like to think about it is that Google the company runs on Google so right they they use Google workspace in their business so if you think about all the things that a business needs they look to their internal people to build that for themselves into their system so they all the all the tools that we need and all if I mean if they don't have it they will find somebody to build it so I kind of feel like we forget that that they're using it and that that's you know that's where all the innovation comes from in their company is they're like hey I need this I need it to do xyz and then one of their people builds it Google is also one of those companies that gives their people I think it's like 20% of their time to do creative projects and that's where a lot of things come from internally and also a bunch of the apps that we now know are standard probably started as somebody's pet project yes so what a like teaching moment right there you know I mean like we know so many big brands we've evolved over the years but you know like knowing that big companies utilize internally to kind of grow and that gives us the kind of validation that like we can do the same maybe we don't have a million employees to like do that kind of an internal but we do have communities we do have client bases and we should be using that and I think that I'm not trying to compare any of us to Google because that would just be a silly thing to do but I'm curious what your thoughts are on you know what apps were available back then versus what's available now because I think it's it's wild it is totally wild as I'm looking at my screen full of apps that I have here I would like oh I should talk about some of these so I will say that some of the newer ones I mean I will not newer even like the the fringe ones and and I maybe I'll show my screen in a second but like so Google business profile probably was not a initial thing right there was Google on like you found a business on a map but now Google business profile and maps are merged they're connected that just happened really recently to didn't it yeah yeah yeah so right so those things work together long ago Google did not own YouTube but they do now and so it's the top two search engines are in the same company right low that's huge classroom has been there for a long time people don't know Google sites exists and there's that so you can make a site I would say blogger has been around a long time and actually somebody was surprised that it still exists but blogger is there and it's a Google thing you never knew that you can do a blogger it's connected to your account it's right there they of course they have on a Google Meet has evolved and meet and chat are kind of two of their meet is there zoom or you know video conferencing and chat is their internal messaging system so what's the like Slack so it's if you have a Google account and you're in Google then you can message back and forth so that exists is the chat only within your organization or is that with anybody anybody okay yeah yeah it's it you can chat across correct and then the other thing I like to remind people and people think of think about it but they don't really think about it when you're making your website Google Analytics is part of Google and it feeds the algorithms when they're searching things but it's working in the back end of your website so if you have a website you should have Google Analytics attached so that's that's if you guys have a Google site or any site like that is not a Google I will say as a web designer that is something that I I am familiar with but I was surprised how many people were not familiar with it how many people did not have any of this data from not knowing that yeah it's pretty wild so these to me are the core of the system I called the core apps the Gmail calendar and drive and noticed a little search in the middle because you can search in almost any of the apps because it's Google search engine right so important Google Chrome kind of holds it all together and I need to talk more about that in 2025 because people don't use it well enough and then if we add the next layer those four are kind of like like the Microsoft office but yeah inside of Google Drive so you don't need more software it just is part of Google Drive so those are really huge for us Mac people because I remember in college and like after college how annoyed I was that like we had to like buy Microsoft like we to buy all that ship because that was not I'm a and back then now most Mac or now most Microsoft stuff is compatible with the Mac software that is the you know the same type of thing but for a long time it was not and I never really like thought about this that I had access to it all along yeah it's right here it's in there and I will stay speaking of evolving one of the things Google has done very well is now it is compatible with Microsoft documents sheets slides all of it and you can either just house them in your Google Drive like Microsoft files just house them in there to save them as a storage but or Google docs sheets and slides can actually open those files now and edit them so do not need all the software so that that's huge so there's that and then if I go to the next round for those of you listening and not watching I'm going to make sure I put the YouTube link in the show notes here because I would highly suggest going to this but I'm also am into you think that we can get like a screenshot of this that I could also maybe yeah okay so if you are listening to the podcast and you really need to see this visual head into the show notes and either you know take the link to go watch us in YouTube or to download this because this is an amazing visual representation of this okay can take thank you so this is my sorting organizing and teaching all all smushed together so I will say that there are two organizing things in here well Google photos is in here and Google keep and tasks that's a video for 2025 Google keep and Google tasks are sort of task management things we can talk about later those are two things in here I already said meet and chat are up there but then the other two are Google voice which you can have a business line and if you don't answer the phone it will and somebody leaves you a message it will leave you an email in your email so it will transcribe it dump it right into your inbox so Google voice is an option for business owners and then contacts is a huge one people do not know that Google contacts is running in the background so when you're typing an email and it populates that name like I start typing just again your email pops up it's because it's pulling from Google contacts like it has stored that information in the background and it's pulling it but that means that you can go into Google contacts and either upload stuff or edit the things that are wrong or merge contacts that you have five of or whatever so Google contacts nobody know literally nobody knows it's there but it's huge it's important and it will free it into something else we'll talk about later so yes okay is there any more or is that the end okay there I was gonna say I feel like there's maybe one more like layer to this whoo I know all the fringe stuff around the edge so we have well the the hexagon is not fringe it's the admin panel is the blue hexagon so if you have Gmail just an ad Gmail account you don't have an admin panel if you are paying for a Google workspace somehow or your nonprofit or education you get it for free but that admin panel is like your own IT department for your business so that's a whole different conversation YouTube is in there Google groups is in there which can be used for emailing and lots of things Google classroom is in there and on the other side we have sort of your marketing end of things with the Google business profile Google sites blogger and analytics so that is all in there and I'm still missing some I was gonna say I mean like I feel like that's still probably not everything and it's definitely not including things that are in the pipeline for Google in 20 25 no let's hear yeah so there's so there's a lot there's a ton there's a lot more that I don't even know about and I can't even use but there's a ton so just know like well what can I do with my business right there's just so many and because this is like a lot and I still like to start from the core and work my way out but the last slide and I'll send it all of these to you this is fantastic this is exactly how the me type brain this is how Jesse understands things okay guys so like if you feel like you relate to me on any like on any level you guys need to go down the screen shots because this is exactly how I learn so we're gonna go from the left to the right if you need to buy and set up your workspace then you got to make sure you know how to use the core system then we talk about the tools and drive it's kind of the same but it works a little it's it's a little more visually simple and then connecting is like your media and marketing kind of and then there's actual marketing to the outer people and then how to stay organized and then of course more stuff so so what I think is fantastic and correct me from wrong but is this almost road map ish I mean in this yeah this is fantastic this is exactly how I love to like set things up when we do multiple things as business owners we know it's kind of chaotic but we also know what we're doing so we're kind of like and nobody else needs to know but the reality is the clients do need to know they need to understand and building a road map is one of the easiest ways to like truly bring your client on the journey that they may or may not embark on and this visual that she has up right now is a fantastic way for me to it's broken up too so it's like okay I can do with four things in a time like I can I can do with like just this part and then when I get this part done now I'm ready to jump to the next part and then when that part gets done we're ready to jump to the next part and you know how many of us as business owners are so guilty of trying to get to the last column right she's raising her hand so am I like we are so obsessed with like the end that we forget about the middle and then when it happens is we get to the end and we're like oh cool but like how do I do this and you're like well if you would have gone in order you would have learned this on the second phase and you wouldn't be at phase 10 yet and oh my god this is so this is so so good if you are listening and you are not watching make sure you head to the show notes to get this to get this document because this is fantastic Amy is this also like that that graphic is that how you kind of work with your clients as as a roadmap and as a kind of explaining to them the order and direction of things they need to work on well I definitely like to start I am in 2025 I mean so yes yes to some degree but I want to do sort of my own like you said roadmap and more of a checklist yeah to make sure that they have started the beginning and they do understand the core system and they do know how to use the you know Google that she slides and and forms because those we need those for our business so I kind of instead of a roadmap necessarily I feel like it's more of like a checklist to see where their holes are like they know how to use docs but they didn't use forms or you know they're using Gmail every day but they forgot to set up their Chrome profiles so you know I do want to go back to the beginning and make sure that they're all you know set up the right way but also I get people coming to me like you said I need step eight could we please just start thinking like well we can aim for that but we're gonna have to back up and make sure you didn't miss anything between the beginning and eight you know so yeah I mean it's more of a I don't say a checklist but like a let's make sure you've got everything to get you from here to there if that's your goal yes let's just make sure we didn't we're not there no gaping holes in the middle so yeah yeah I mean this is so fantastic here because I feel like me and Amy are very much on the same kind of mission in 2025 are really kind of like helping people focus on making sure that the basics are strong if the foundations are built before you go and try to fly the plane because if you did not like if you don't know what all the buttons mean and you don't know you know you didn't go to flying school and you know whatever like you're gonna crash the goddamn plane I don't want to be on the plane like no you may not pay me to get on the plane that you do not know how to fly you know I think it's just so important and I'm so passionate about making sure that people understand how important the letters are between A and Z I mean there are just so many things we've got to stop focusing on like these destinations that we build in our mind like we've got to focus on the things that we learn along the way I love this mean Amy are so in sync for 2025 fun fact about that is that if you guys have not heard yet we opened a free community for action-focused entrepreneurs it is called the Spark Society and if you are not a part of it yet head on over to join spark society.com and join us in this community Amy is one of the founding members and she is actually going to be a guest speaker at least one time this year I would guess maybe once a quarter she's got so much amazing knowledge to share with us that if you are feeling like you're vibing with this Google stuff and you're like oh my god yes I need more help with this go to www.joinsparkssociety.com and join us in there is totally free to join in the community we have monthly meetups and we do additional like workshops and summits and challenges and all those things so head on over to do that because like we would love to see you in there okay so when it comes to Google and all of these pretty shiny objects Amy what are your top three I know this is gonna be hard for you what are your top three like I don't know if I want to go the road of favorite or like most useful I'm gonna go with most useful okay so what are the three like top most useful apps within Google like from running your business oh from running your business okay I was just yeah okay running your business outside of like mail don't worry about email that's like that to me is not a thing so I will say that one of the I did a class over the summer and I'm working on doing this class again but basically how to use the contacts that I talked about plus email templates and layouts which do exist and there is a mail merge function so you can actually do your email marketing from your Gmail if you want all I'm hearing are like dollar signs like going like just flying away like oh my god yeah wow and definitely mail merge and and of course it's it's Google so they do comply with the new rules about unsubscribe so if you do it the right way and you've got your email set up the right way then your your people will get an unsubscribe button which is now required and they can unsubscribe and next time you send out that email to those the mass email to the same list it will not send it to the people who have unsubscribed yes and guys email marketing is a whole nother topic for another day and I promise that will be at least one other episode but yes there are so many laws and regulations and all all of the things about that okay so that's kind of like one I it's like one stack yeah contacts templates layouts and mail merge kind of altogether is one tool to do your email marketing so there's that the other one is you know forgetting yourself seen and noticed is Google business profiles because it's search engine foundable and right now and then the other one would be YouTube because I am I have learned it worked really hard this year put out one video every week and now I have over two thousand followers over four thousand hours of watched video time and I'm that is my main place where I'm actually getting clients from at this point yes and I am back that really quick can I like stop this conversation right here for a second like unpack that so that's amazing and it sounds awesome can you tell us about the journey of that though can you tell us like what sucked and what like was hard and what like struggle you had with that because that is not an easy feat to do something like that so can we unpack that and not make it look so shiny yeah absolutely yeah been working for 18 months really hard on that the first six were not awesome was not consistent so my goal for 2024 was to put out one video a week and I have worked really hard at batching the videos in groups of four so I can do one month of it at a time now I will tell you that I've done really well at recording for videos at a time but editing them and putting pushing them out to social media and all the other things not so easy to batch I mean I've tried doesn't always work I have a what you know unlimited amount of topics I'd love to talk about so and and I always get stuff from clients right I having a client call and they're like how do you do blah blah and I write that down quick I'm like oh next week's video right so always getting client topics or topics from clients is really fun and I enjoy that because that's the teacher and me and I'm like clearly they're not the only person that has had that question so I don't know my self and the awesome part is that because I don't want to repeat myself now that I had those videos out there and somebody asked me the same question I'm like hey just go watch this video yes yes yes yes yes so much yes yes yes and then I know it's 2025 for me right there yeah so it's it is excellent yeah so learning different software has been challenging right recording software editing software that's tricky my good thing my husband's a really good video editor I've my my 11 year old daughter was doing a lot of it too some of it you know some canvas stuff like there's so many pieces and parts making my checklist have spent challenging and then just making sure that I do all the things and of course time blocking for it is always a challenge so the idea is great at the front end and then you know the execution takes a lot of of work and what's the word grit is the word I just have to get the video out like get it out consistency consistency consistency so progress over perfection like that I'm on that train this year of like just get it out I can always go back and rerecord it if I really think that it's really bad but more than likely I'm gonna move on to the next topic and it's gonna be fine exactly yeah I want to know a little bit of like how much harder was it then you thought it was going to be that's a great question I the teacher in me can write the bulk of the content of the video in no time I'm like oh I know these are the three to five points I'm gonna talk about I know in my mind the screenshots I want to put in there that's cool for me it's not coming from a marketing background it's figuring out the keywords the title the hook the the emotional connection with the clients like with an audience and making that hook so I've actually gone back to some of the things we talked about in the power workshop right this the and and I I've galed more into chat GPT since that workshop because I'm I'm better with a starting point say edit that's the 80 HD me right there is like just give me something exactly right so I can throw a bunch of keywords in there it'll spit out a couple things and then I can tweak it as needed so for me the content of the video is not hard it's the front end hook and it's the okay and now the sales funnel okay well where am I gonna link it to that's gonna be helpful for them and get them into my you know ecosystem of stuff in my sales funnel so the the beginning and end are really hard the content is fine so yeah for me that's what most people overlook they they have this idea that well all I have to do is make a video and put it out there and you're like bitch there is so much more to it than just making a video and putting it out there like so much more like you have to do go through ideation you have to go through creation you have to go through execution then you have to I mean like you truly have to have to have in order to make things equal easy right and easy is such a vague term but I mean like to make things smooth let's say you got to build out that S.O.P. and if you don't have the S.O.P. or the checklist to go through every single time it's hard it's really hard it is nothing like just recording of anyone putting it out there like really recording video takes the least amount of time of and it was the same when I was a wedding photographer people were like man your life is so great all you have to do is show up one day one day a week and I'm like whoa you better back the fuck up because the wedding day is the easiest part of this entire process so like no so yeah it's oh that's the fun day in your lane and talk about what you know because you don't know this oh man totally same yeah so that that definitely has been challenging and slight side story but not really the this is the ADHD in us guys so I track squirrel shiny object well yeah but so the ADHD right so my daughter we were starving up for Thanksgiving to Madison Wisconsin and my daughter's like still how long does it take to make a YouTube video I was like and she's the math with the she loves math so she's like well how many hours how many hours for that and I start like listening stuff and then as I'm driving and she's writing on her you know putting it on like a note in her phone I'm like wait oh I forgot about this player oh don't forget this I had back before this one and add this and that's added and by the time she was like after half an hour she was with mom there's a lot of hours I'm like yes mm-hmm it took us the whole two hours of us driving up there and me talking it out and her adding up the hours and by the time we got there I had the whole list topped at bottom and she was like this is a lot of hours mom and I tried to do it for the batch of four hours or the four videos together like how much time you need me to do four videos four of everything yeah it's way too much time I'll tell you now so my one of my goals is streamlining and pairing back and like it done is better than perfect yes like so that's all of that for the whole S.O.P. for this year like just get it out there yes and I highly suggest anyone who's listening that is like yes I spent so much time and I don't even realize it in the moment because I like doing it right like you're like kind of but then you realize you look back and you're like oh not only that but then you have to like try to sell what you're doing by and people don't understand the amount of time that goes into it and it's just like a really slippery slope so like if you're listening and you kind of relate to that you know I would challenge you in the new year to really kind of focus on simplifying a little bit really kind of like take a step back because if you were anything like me because I feel like I attract my tribe right so if you are anything like me you overcomplicate the shit out of everything period I'm sorry I said what I said it probably hurt but you know I'm right and I really challenge you in this new year to take a step back and and really kind of pay attention to how can I simplify this am I over complicating this am I making this harder than it needs to be am I being way too perfectionist over something that doesn't freaking matter my whole household is like that I got four of those in my house oh my misery loves company oh man oh man that that's you know I feel like the whole ADHD things in a really great topic that we should touch on at some point yeah we can I was gonna say yeah we can go there right now if you want you know what let's head back to Google guys I'm gonna make an ADHD topic like we're gonna talk I just about ADHD in business in general maybe we'll even make it a group call because I got a couple other people to that I know are like my people when it comes to this but for the sake of this episode let's head back to Google for a second here okay so let's kind of go back and kind of talk you talked about kind of you know what what ones that you like but what do you think are the most overlooked apps in the Google workspace like what do people what do you find that people like most often we don't know exists well so Google Tasks is is definitely one of them and that relates to the the thing we were just talking about and the and the ADHD and I would say well Google sites also there's there's some little I don't say little issue with Google sites but Google sites you can make for free it's a website you can make it inside of your Google Drive and connect it to your domain and it's just there like you don't have to pay for it so I would not say that everyone should use a Google site I would say if you're just starting out and you need landing page or you need something where you can send people Google sites is awesome it does not have a ton of bells and whistles but it is definitely functional for somebody starting out you know later if you need more things you can move to another platform and and we can evolve later exactly start now evolve later exactly done is better than perfect so like I literally had this conversation with my husband the other day because he is is starting a new thing in 2025 and I was like do I need to build you a site and he was like and he wants to he is a website designer I learned everything from him and he was like you want to build me a Google site and I he has all this you know grand ideas in his head which is lovely for two years from now but if we were at a convention yesterday and he wants to tell people to go find him he literally doesn't have a website I'm like all you need is one Google page like come on so like it's it's a great starting place to and it's free like so literally all you have to pay for is your domain name so go for it so that's that's one thing and then back to the other I said tasks so when you open a Google account whether it's a Gmail account or a Google workspace without doing anything else you have two calendars on your calendar you have your name is your calendar associated with your Google account and you have tasks and nobody knows that that is Google Tasks that is the same as the Tasks app there's a million ways to use that Tasks app from I have I have a couple videos on this and a class but you can add tasks from your phone you can add tasks from your email from a Google doc from your calendar like you can just put all your tasks in there and it's fine so those of us that need to see everything like layered on our calendar Google Tasks will show up on your calendar when you need to do them if you do it right so um Google Tasks people just don't know that it's there and don't know how to use it so I was September of 2024 years old when I learned that fun facts about that too um is that that task follows you until you do it all the sudden all the sudden my like my day had like six tasks and I realized it was because it just it blocks well I mean like whatever you said you were going to do last week it fucking follows you until you do it and you know what that's exactly what I need so I'm like incredibly grateful for that but I was kind of like where has this been on my life right exactly exactly so yeah so I would say Google Tasks are two the things that people just don't know exist but they're built in right in right in there no problem at all so yeah that's that's amazing and we'll do because I mean do you have classes for both of the most topics I well I have some videos on sites I'm working on a Google sites DIY do Google class not ready yet but I've been working on it the tasks is like a 30 minute class and uh yeah you can definitely get that on my site yeah we'll go ahead and link those things in the show notes for you guys um so that if you guys are feeling like oh my god yes um I need this in my life which FYI you do um I will leave that link in the in the show notes for you guys so that you guys can head over um onto that and you know kind of get on get in the now like get the most out of your freaking Google workspace because like man they keep jacking up the price and I keep wondering why and it's really because I have no idea what actually exists in there okay so you want to tell you one more yeah okay one more um it's kind of two but it's really one please do not buy more Google accounts then you have people so like users mm-hmm yeah so I don't know how many people I mean so many of my clients have they're like oh well I need an info ad and I need a sales ad and I need a whatever it is at it's fine but you don't need an account for that and two things there are two ways to do that one so best practice is you have an account per person because then you know who is logging into what right and and it's a security issue so that's fine and if it's just Jesse then we can give her an alias or nickname called info act and it can go right to her inbox and we can filter and we can do all sorts of fancy things but you don't need another account you don't need to pay for another account for info ad it can be a nickname so that's one the other is a group inbox or google groups for business same thing but it can go to multiple people so if I have a sales team I can have a group called sales ad blah blah blah and it can forward to multiple people so again I don't need another account you don't have to pay for that it's a free group it's like when it forwards to other people to those people have to be in your domain oh you guys my mind is blowing right now I have so many things I want to say and ask but I'm not gonna because we could be here for hours but like that's huge yes people set up everything all wrong because they don't know that they can have nicknames and they don't know they can have groups and so a lot of my clients are me untangling the mess that they've made and putting it back the way it should have been in the first place another lesson a foundations you guys trying to jump to step five without understanding steps one through four I'm not I mean I am calling you out but I'm also calling myself out like I don't don't think I'm sitting here on a pedestal like guys what are you doing like guys I'm looking at myself in the mirror technically I'm talking to myself on the screen and I'm just like telling myself yo what's wrong with you calling you out but guys like we've got to stop obsessing over like getting farther faster because when we go farther faster the farther we got to come back when something goes wrong and then we got to go back forward like why can't we just all be patient little people and and do things in the right order like right so one of my favorite one of my favorite clients called me the other I don't know like two months ago and she was like aiming I was gonna do xyz but I stopped myself and I called you first because I didn't want to mess it up and that right there is the power of branding because they knew and had Amy at the forefront that she knew what the hell she was doing and she educated them into knowing that they shouldn't go to step five without doing steps one through four that right there is the power of building a powerful and impactful brand she has already educated and changed the actions of other entrepreneurs because she's educating them so I applaud you for that because I think that's fantastic I love that you're kind of on the same mission to really educate people on the foundations because like I don't know about y'all but like I'm tired of having to go backwards in order to go forwards right like I'm tired of that and another one or two okay so before we wrap stuff up so I want to know outside of google just as like a fellow entrepreneur outside of google do you have any other types of resources that you know you either love or you know that help you stay organized or on track with things yeah definitely so I use QuickBooks for all the accounting now I use something else my CRM does the invoicing but it talks to Quick Books yeah I will say to that end like make sure you pick things that integrate with each other so that you have to do less work right so there's that QuickBooks and I do have a CRM and I only grab the CRM after I couldn't handle all the follow-ups myself right so if you're starting really small you can do a bunch in google you're fine but once you hit the point where you can't follow up with everybody or you need more automation then you need a CRM so there's that I would say as far as the YouTube and social media stuff the two things I use all the time are oh actually three things now they think about it canva to make graphics metric cool is what I'm currently using to schedule things out in multiple places on multiple platforms very easily and then descript is what I'm using to edit videos because I'm a visual and I want to see the words and you can actually you can actually edit the text and then it will take the video out so yeah so I'm much better with that so those would be my three yes I love those and I think it's important that we're all you know like we're all like open about the fact that just because she said google expert doesn't mean that she is pigeonholing herself to like only using google products you know like she obviously is very passionate about them and is very passionate about making sure we know what the hell we're paying for because like most of us have no idea but it's important to know that like just because everyone's doing one thing doesn't mean that we have to like follow suit and like only only do those things like it's time to mix that stigma it's time to like do our own thing and just like literally be our own freaking people. All right a man, a man. All right guys, so as we wrap this up you know, I gotta always ask the burning question that we ask in every single episode because this is truly the core foundation of why I started this podcast and it was to you know, really empower people to be able to create their own definition of success. I'm done being successful but anyone else's terms other than my own, okay? I've gotten to the point where you know, I've hit seven figures, I've hit a certain amount of clients, I've done those things and I don't feel like they served me. I don't feel like I was doing them for the right reasons. I was doing them because is what I thought I was supposed to do, 2025 look out because I ain't doing that shit no more but Amy, you know what would you define being successful as? I'm very curious on your perspective. Yeah, I mean for me personally it's you know, I'm a teacher so, and a lifelong learner, so I love helping others and I love helping others do a couple things. I love when people figure out what their best add and what their strengths are and play to those strengths and that goes for business owners as well, right? I want to teach them, I like seeing light bulbs go off but also if they don't want to do that repeatedly and it's gonna, you know, make them want to pull their hair out just because they know how to do it or that it can be done doesn't mean that they need to do it all the time. So also taking off, taking, taking things off the plates of those people that like I'll, what I love in Google, I'll just do it if you want me to and let you do what you're really, really good at, so knowing our strengths and playing to those strengths is how I love to help, I love to be successful that way and I love to help other people be successful that way. So. Yes, there is nothing better than watching the transformations kind of happening right in front of you and feeling that impact that you know, you just made whether it was a tiny, like you could think it was like this tiny thing and it couldn't be a huge thing for them and I think just kind of realizing that no matter how we help people, no matter bigger, small and our mind, it's still helping people and it's still step in the right direction. So I love that, I love that. Oh my god you guys, we will hear from Amy a lot this year because there's just so much to unpack but if you guys are, you know, loving this topic and you guys are kind of vibing with our ADHD vibes, Amy, you know, how, what is the best way for people to find you and to get in touch with you? Outside of like the classroom, so I will drop the link in the show notes for your classroom. She does have an amazing library of different courses and things to learn more about Google but what's the best way for someone to connect with you? If they just really want to like let us know other than the YouTube comments, feel free to like and subscribe and leave us a comment below. But where else can they directly connect with you? Yeah, so on YouTube, I'm at ClutterCare and then so find my channel there and all my free resources and then on my website is cluttercare.net and there's a contact page if you want to get a hold of me. That's the best place. Yes, perfect. I will leave all of the show notes or all of the links in the show notes for you guys so they are easy access. If you want to have any questions, if you love this episode, please let us know in the comments below. If you have something else particular that you would love to hear us talking about, let us know in the comments or send us a DM on social media. But, Amy, thank you so much for coming and chatting with me today. I know I'll see you again soon. And for everybody out there, I will chat with you guys soon. Stay fabulous! All right, babe. I hope you really enjoyed today's conversation. I'm super curious to know what your biggest takeaway was from today. So go ahead and share this episode on social media. Make sure you tag me at this way to fabulous and let me know what you connected with. What did you learn from the episode and what action item are you going to take today? Until next time, guys, keep pushing, keep dreaming, and let's keep on redefining fabulous. chat soon, guys. music bed Now let's check out all the old colors. The black and the black colors from our website are from the other ones. So let's get started. We will be back on the street.