The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 066 – Time Management and More Practical Tech Hacks With Geek Pastor, Wayne Cordova
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And now your host Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, my name is Carrie Newhoff. I hope our time together helps you lead like never before. And oh my goodness, can you believe we are just a couple of weeks away from Christmas and that means that the demands on your time are pretty exacting and January is right around the corner and you're gonna have a whole bunch of New Year's resolutions. And last week, hopefully you jumped on John A. Cuff's special offer to podcast listeners, which is good all this month for his 30 days of hustle. And I guess December can be a way of giving back to you as listeners because my guest this week also has a special offer for you and a whole bunch of free. And he's backed by popular demand. His name is Wayne Cordova. And so Wayne, Wayne's become a friend. He's also known as Geek Pastor. You first heard him if you've been listening to the podcast for a while on episode 34. And that has been a wildly popular episode. To be honest, and Wayne and I talk about this, it was a real risk because it was my first ever really, and I guess kind of my only super technical episode where Wayne actually walked through a whole bunch of software and like apps you should be using and time hacks and tech hacks. And I thought, you know, this could go really well or everybody could go, wow, this is so technical. People loved it. You loved it. It's one of the top 10 episodes actually of all time on this podcast. So that's amazing. So Wayne's back. And he's got some really good tech hacks. So whether you're an absolute tech beginner and you've forgotten everything in episode 34, this will help. Or if you're a little bit geeky like Wayne is, you're going to pick up a few gems probably that you went, huh, didn't know about that. There was one that really challenged me. And I'm semi geeky. So I hope this is going to be helpful. And make sure you listen to the end because Wayne has got a special offer just for you podcast listeners because he really values you. And it's kind of fun. He's going to tell us a story too of how you kind of blew up his blog the first time around. So that was fun. Anyway, really thrilled to have Wayne back. And just want to know how you're doing too. I hope the time leading up into Christmas is going to be a good time for you personally. And just a personal note. I know this is when things can get out of control. And I just want to encourage you to take good, good care of yourself as you head into Christmas. I know that's something I'm going to be doing. We gave the staff a couple of bonus days off between Christmas and New Year's this year. And that doesn't always work in every circle, but I just hope you can find some time to kind of relax and take the season in. That's going to be really important for you. So that's from my heart to yours. And I also want to say thank you. Thanks for making this journey so rewarding. And we always talk about leaving ratings and reviews, which is awesome. But here's something I want you to do if you haven't done it yet. Would you take a minute if you haven't subscribed to this podcast and do it today? It's absolutely free. And here's the cool part. You'll never miss an episode. I've got some bonus episodes coming up before the holidays, after the holidays. And you won't miss it. And then you won't miss like next week's guest and the week after. And it's absolutely free. The stuff automatically loads. And that's another way. When you subscribe, believe it or not, iTunes goes, oh, we should get this podcast out to more people. So if it's really helping you, one of the best things you can do to sort of give back and it costs you absolutely nothing except five seconds of your time is to go onto your podcast app and hit subscribe. So if you haven't done that, would you do that today? That would be really, really cool. Also heard from a lot of you who are continuing to give great feedback on my book, which released two months ago now. Wow, called Lasting Impact, seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow. Also, I know a lot of you have said, okay, I've read this. I gotta get it in front of my team. If you want the best rates for your team, just go to lastingimpactbook.com. And obviously you can buy it off Amazon. You can get the, you know, the iBooks version off that website as well just to click away. But you'll notice one of the icons there says orange store. And orange is actually related to the publisher who published the book. They have the best rates for teams. So if you wanna pick up a dozen copies or 20 copies or you know, however many copies you want, you can get that the best rate for bulk discounts is at the orange store. So just actually go to lastingimpactbook.com, click on the orange icon. And then you can scroll down and when you go to order, you'll see the more you order, the more you save. So that's a way of saving you money. If you've budgeted for that next year, you're gonna buy some lasting impact copies for friends or for your team this Christmas. That's a way of hopefully helping you out a little bit. And also, I'm really, really hoping by the time this episode goes live that the audiobook will be available. And some of you got that audiobook for free because you got all the bonuses at the beginning. But if you didn't and you're gonna buy it off Amazon, I narrated it and I threw a whole lot of bonus material into the audiobook, particularly at the end of the chapter. Where I read through the questions, I actually took some extra time to answer them for you or at least help you formulate an answer. So I gave you lots of opinions that are not in the book, some stories that I didn't tell in the book. So there's bonus footage in the audio CD version. And if that is not on Amazon by the time you listen, it will be very, very shortly. So anyway, that's some stuff for Christmas too. So in the meantime, let's get right into my conversation with Mr. Geek himself, Wayne Cordova, who's gonna help you save time. So you can like read books and do John's course and Wayne's special stuff. Here you go. Well, I am very, maybe ultra excited to have Wayne Cordova back on my podcast. And a lot of you who've listened for a little while might remember him from, I think it was episode 34, where Wayne came on, he's also known as Geek Pastor online on Twitter. And Wayne, you and I did a little bit of an experiment where we went like super technical for an episode. And I mean, it's still timeless, but you told us all about apps that could save us time and increase productivity. And so I am so happy to have you back as a guest. And we're gonna go at it again. - Oh, Carrie, I am so excited to be back. Thank you for asking me back to be a part. I gotta tell you that just the last few months since I've been on the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast have just been amazing. It's just been one of those things where, I was actually talking to my wife just a little while ago and I was saying, you know, Geek Pastor is actually, it's a thing now, it's actually a thing. And I've been blown away. And ever since that time, I got to hang out during that episode. I've heard from so many other pastors that just needed to kind of talk a little bit more about productivity so that they could spend more time with people and connect with them. And I mean, I've been able to travel to other churches and help them with their weekend services and stuff and do one on one coaching and calls. And it's just been a blast. And so thank you for having me. That was just so much fun and can't wait to do it again. - Well, you know, that's a thrill for me, actually as the host of the podcast. And I want to circle back to the listeners because usually at the end of an episode, we're like, hey, you may want to check this book out or you've created a special deal on Geek Pastor for podcast listeners. And we're going to do a new deal this time around. We're going to do it again. So hang on till the end with Wayne because he is super helpful basically in just helping you leverage technology and time management hacks so that you can spend more of your life doing what you love to do. And apparently so many listeners went over and accessed your material. It kind of blew up your blog. It kind of rocked your world and you were telling me you weren't quite ready for it last time. - I really wasn't, you know, it was just one of the things where I mean, I just wanted to come on and talk geek with you, you know? - Yeah, yeah. - And, you know, it was amazing. I mean, so many people visited the blog and downloaded the free resources and so many folks jumped on and were listening to the podcast and it was just, it was one of those things where for me, I actually had thought about it and I was like, man, I really wish I had even more to offer at that time or even more for folks to be able to check out and download. And so we've been working on that and there's a lot of exciting things happening in 2016 I can't wait to share about. - Okay, so we're ready and we're going to try to break your internet. How does that sound? - Oh, let's do it. - I'm ready. - I tried to break the Wayne Cordova universe. So we'll do that. No, but you know what? And it was a risk for me too because I'd never done an episode that technical where we got into like specific apps and everybody who listens to this podcast knows it's eclectic. That's what it is. It's just kind of a weird mix of like well-known leaders everybody knows and people nobody's ever heard of and technical things and pastoral things and leadership things and everything in between which is sort of my world, right, as a church leader. - Well, I'm telling you, I mean, that for me, it was just really cool because I'm a fan of the podcast and then I got to be part of the podcast which was real kind of surreal for me. And we did, we got really down and nerdy. Like it was like real, we got real intricate. But I got to tell you, one of the coolest things happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. I brought a team of staff and adult volunteers to the Orange Tour when they visited Florida. And I'm standing there at the counter. I'm writing my name on my name tag. And there was an awesome guy standing next to me who kind of, he was looking at my name tag and he said, "Oh, hey Wayne. Hey, I'm a big fan of your podcast." And I was blown away. I almost didn't know what to do about that. I was just like, "Oh, I'm sorry." Like I had to apologize, I don't know why, but it was just like, I was so excited. And man, it's been a wild ride. And so I think we're gonna have some fun today. Kind of, we're gonna get in, we're gonna get in geeky, but I think it's gonna be really helpful. - Okay, that's great. And you know what, we will link back to your podcast. I'm gonna be a guest on your podcast. We're gonna go back and forth today. And I don't know when it's all gonna air, but it'll all come out in the wash. It'll be in the show notes, which is good. So let's start with everybody's favorite subject, free. Which is, who's favorite subject is that not? So you've got, and what we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about time hacks, tech hacks, teamwork, collaboration, and a little bit about a special productivity offer that you've got for people, that our listeners are gonna get exclusive access to or special access to. But let's start with free. So this hits everybody's budget, doesn't matter how small your church is, how small your expense line is, or how expensive groceries are. This works for everybody. Or how many kids you have in school in my case. But anyway, so walk us through some free things that can just make us all better at what we do, so that we have more time to do what we're called to do. - Well, and I really appreciate free. I mean, honestly, you know, we have a little motto at home, but if it's free, it's for me. And I love that. - That's good. - And especially, I mean, especially on a pastor's budget, I know the lot of times, you know, apps aren't in your staffing budget, you know? And little things that you can kind of just download onto your phone or onto your laptop. Sometimes you're on your own. And a lot of the feedback that I received from the last time was, you know, we did. We mentioned a lot of software and a lot of apps, and some of that costs money, you know? And so really kind of taking a look at that. I came up with a couple of things that I think are essential when it comes to productivity that we may not even realize are free because sometimes we kind of shy away from it because we just think if it's technology, it's expensive. But one of those things that I always drive people to are Google apps. - Yes. - Google apps are free. I mean, everything from Gmail, which you can actually host your church's email onto, everything, you know, from that to, you know, creating, you know, docs and spreadsheets on Google docs, even like team communication, you can do all that stuff on Google apps, you could do everything in that. And so one of the things that I love to do with our team is, you know, hey, let's create a Google app for that. Let's create a Google spreadsheet, you know, when people sign up for forms on our church website, more often than not, it's actually a Google form, which is also free. And so when people sign up for that, they sign up, maybe it's for baptism. Well, now we have a spreadsheet that everybody who needs it has access to and they can check out. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, we say, hey, we can't afford the big software suites, right? Or we can't afford, you know, the Microsoft Office stuff. Google apps is real, it's easy, it's accessible. There's an app for that. - Right. I appreciate you mentioning that because, you know, as I've said many times before, I've led a very small church. I mean, when I started, I was a student, we didn't have a whole lot of money. I was getting paid peanuts. And I think the budget of the smallest of the three churches for the entire year Wayne was $4,000 for the year. It's crazy. It's like, how could you give that little? But anyway, people did. So now we're part of a, you know, I think our annual budget now is $1.8 million or whatever, whatever. So we have a line for those items. But first of all, I'll never forget all of that stuff for the church came out of my personal pocket, even though I was making peanuts. And so I am big into free and over delivering value for pastors who are at it. Which is, which is just great. Second thing, Wayne, is even now that we've got, you know, a $1.8 million budget, guess what the Kinexis Church Office basically runs off of Google Docs. Google Docs, every series I teach is done on Google Docs. A lot of our spreadsheets are opened in Google Sheets. We run off Gmail and there are other apps. I think our website is largely powered by signup forms or all Google Forms. I don't know how to do that part. But like, and this is what's cool. If you don't know like how Google Docs really work or you just don't use it collaboratively, we'll be sitting in a service programming production meeting and I'm working on bottom lines with my team. There's five other people in the room. And you can actually see where everybody is on the sheet and we're all changing it and you can set permissions. So, you know, some guy doesn't accidentally erase everything you've worked on. But I mean, that's what we use and it's free. I think finally we went to the professional version of Google Apps last year or the year before because Google says you guys are too big and now you have to pay us. I don't know whether we pay or not. But most of that for the most part is free and I use it all the time. So, is there a good tutorial way in on like, if you don't know how to use all the functionality in Google Apps and what apps? So there's Docs, Sheets, Forms. What other apps does Google have for free? - Well, now they've kind of taken all the docs and the Sheets and all that. They've kind of just formed it all into one application called Google Drive. And so, Google Drive actually functions a lot like Dropbox. So again, there's another free resource where you can swap files and share files with each other, you know, go online and make as many documents and spreadsheets as you want. And here's the beauty of this is what I love about that is that Google's provided this free resource for everybody and they also offer free tutorials. You could actually just go right onto YouTube, which is also a Google company. And, ta-da, surprise. And you could pull up all the tutorials that you need. And the best thing is, this is what I love about the internet right now, is that even if you're not satisfied with the organization's own tutorial, somebody else out there has made an even better one. And so, if there's something that you're struggling with looking for, it's like free training. You just go right back on there and find out. If you don't know how to do something on Google Docs, it'll show you how to do, it's really simple. - Yeah, and you know what, we'll link to all of this in the show notes and maybe Wayne, what we could do is even find your favorite Google Apps tutorial on YouTube or wherever. And we'll link to that. The other thing I was gonna say is, this also works offline, correct. So, if you're using Google Drive, or Google Docs, or Google Sheets in Chrome, the Chrome browser, which again is also free, and you can upload that on any device, including an Apple device. I love this. When I'm on a plane that has no Wi-Fi, I can finish my series outline or my teaching notes on a plane offline. And as soon as I get internet connectivity again, it automatically syncs, as opposed to, and I've got word and all that stuff, but I mean, as opposed to sending 72 versions. I've written my last book, Lasting Impact. We wrote in Word Docs, and you're always trying to figure out like, what version did I just send? And then, how do I not send that again? So, I'm a big fan of Google Docs. That's cool. - And that's the beauty of it is, I keep that in my travel checklist all the time, is making sure that I'm all set to go with working with Google Docs offline, so that I can use it on the plane or in the airport. - Yeah, and that only works in Chrome, not in Safari or any other browsers that you happen to be using, but that's good. Okay, so we started with free with Google, but there's a bunch of other stuff too. And sorry, we really drilled down in that, but I think a lot of people probably don't know how much functionality there is inside Google for free for anybody. - It should be in every church planters toolbox, really. And the other thing that I would suggest, it's also just a free app, but man, is it versatile, even in its free state, is its Evernote? We talked a little bit about Evernote last time. I mean, it was definitely a huge part of what we talked about because I believe it's one of those essential items you need to have in your toolbox, but it does a great job, especially again, kind of with sharing documents, being able to just type up some notes and then quickly, image capture, I love the image capture feature on Evernote. You can just type up a real note. It comes in real handy for me right now. We're entering into the Christmas season, and I see something that I like for somebody. I snap a picture of it, type a quick note up, and I can always go back to it all the time. But Evernote's one of those things I just find it's essential, you can use it as a to-do list maker. So if you don't want to spend any big bucks on a big organizer, you can use it to make a to-do list. You can use it, again, to what I love is I like the work chat feature. So if you're working on this-- - I've never used that. - Oh, it's great, if you're working on the same document with somebody in real time, you can actually go through and just, they call it work chat. You can actually communicate with each other while you're working on the same document. And it just keeps all the notes of that conversation handy as you're working towards the same goal. And that's what I love about it. I could go back to it and read all the past work chat conversations, this is the case we missed something. - That's cool, I think, I don't know whether it's the free or the premium version of the premium 'cause I think it's worth the money. But if you've got a whiteboard and you've got notes, you just take a picture of it and it actually reads what you wrote on the board in cursive or in printed out. And so it's got OCR, like optical character recognition built into it so that basically it's completely searchable. And guess what I happen to be rattling these questions off of Evernote, I write them all in Evernote, hit the present mode and I've got, I mean you can see this nobody else can, but there it is in present mode. Wayne Cordova podcast interview questions because again, it syncs automatically on all devices and I can write them on when I'm flying, offline, wherever super easy that way. - That stuff is a premium feature, talking about the optical character recognition. So it does cost a little bit, however, there's always, and the cool thing with Evernote, there's always ways around that. They have referral programs that you could jump into that, hey, if you just wanna send some info to some of your pastor friends and stuff, if they sign on, you could get a referral credit and the more that you get, the more you actually work up into getting a premium. And they've actually narrowed down their premiums so that there's an even more affordable version and then you could go all the way pro if you want. - Gotcha. And again, the free does 99% of the stuff anyway. I mean, I should probably go back to free. Okay, so that's Evernote, that's great. And if you're not on it, why not? And then you've got another one, a couple more that you wanna talk about in the free category. - A couple more real quick. The first one, the next one is if this, then that. - Yes. - We chatted about this a little bit and here's the thing with if this, then that. Number one, it is free. It syncs with so many accounts and here's what it does. It is a free automator for everything from whatever you're doing online with, whether it's email or text messages, whether it's your social media activity. I talked a little bit about one thing that I do where if I hit like on my Instagram, it actually saves the image that I like into a special folder. And so I do that with a lot of the Bible verses that Carrie will post every day on Instagram. And I use that, it goes straight into my screen saver folder. So I have all these cool Bible verses that are floating around on my screen and a lot of different facts to do. But a lot of times we think, hey, I don't have the money to afford Hazel, which is an automator that costs money. Hey, I don't have the money to buy keyboard moisture, which is another automator. But if this, then that you sign up for it, it's free and you could discover it all you want. You could jump in there and play around. It's a huge sandbox of automation. If you do anything more than once, check out if this, then that. It could probably help you save some time. - And they have recipes, right? Is it recipes on if this and that? - I love that because I love food. And so-- - I don't mean to. - So they call them recipes. And so some of the simple stuff is, I don't always want to have to check my email. I'm not a big fan of notifications and I'm not a big fan of it. But if I'm waiting for a specific email to come in, you could set up an if this, then that recipe, that can simply say, if Carrie emails me, send me a text message. And in all the background, that's what the recipe will do. So if you send me an email, this is, hey, Wayne, are we still on to hang out today? It'll shoot me a text message that says, you got an email from Carrie new, I'll have to check it out now. And then I can just go right in there and check it. - And you can steal other people's recipes, right? It's common property. - Okay. - So you don't have to be this genius who's like, gosh, I gotta figure out all these recipes for myself. So it's sort of common property. It's open source that way. - You can download them straight from the site. You can download them straight from the app. And then there's even user groups all throughout the internet, all these different forms that people will post, all the ones that they've created. And so again, like a great leadership application is, right? You can surround yourself by all these people who are just smarter than you, who created these things in advance. And you can just download it and just reap the benefits of their genius, you know? - See, that's so good. Okay, now the next one's gonna be a lot of fun because graphic design is all the bomb and very few of us can afford graphic designers. But there's, what, this is in the free category? Are you kidding me? - This is in the free category. And here's the reason why. Not only is it a free, not only is it a freemium, what I call, but this may also save you money. If you can't afford a graphic designer on your staff, on your team or anything like that yet, and you're just trying to get started, especially when it comes to social media, there's an app for that. And many of these apps are free. And the thing that we kind of shy away from is that, well, I don't have any artistic sense, or I don't know the first thing about graphic design. Well, at a very amateur level, if you download any of these really great apps, I mean, and there's a ton, I'll just flip in through my phone. Some of them are 99 cents, some of them are $2, and some of them are absolutely free, and they'll put like a little watermark on the corner, which in this day and age, man, a lot of that stuff is just so acceptable, especially in social media. It's okay if you have a pick-play post thinking out at the bottom. But again, pick-play post is a great graphic design app where you could put text on pictures and on images, it even allows you to use video. And so if you shot a really great baptism video, you want to celebrate how many people were baptized, you can do that real simply, and then upload it to Instagram and boom, you are like this graphic design genius. - Yeah, it really makes you look better than you should look, right, these apps, it's great. - So pick-play post. - Pick-play post is one of those. You know, we like, I know you and I, we like Word Swag. That costs a little bit, that's just a couple of bucks, but again, and what you'll find is a lot of these apps have a free version that you can play around with. And I love that, I love apps that have a, usually they call them Lite, L-I-T-E, they call them a Lite version. It's free, you can play around and see if you like it. And if you like it, then you can decide, you know what, is this worth the two bucks, just to kind of make our ministry look good every week or to have some great graphics? And a lot of them will download at a high resolution and you may be able to even use them on the web and you maybe use them in some print capabilities, especially if you kind of do it in a small way. It's not a replacement for a graphic designer. And by all means, I love graphic designers. Our church employs one and he does a phenomenal job. But when I need something really quick, there's nothing like having that right at the tip of my fingers. - And you might need it for you. Word Swag is my go-to app. If you follow me on Instagram or any of my social sites, it's Word Swag that produces 90% of my graphics. And sometimes they're so good. I had just as a little team gift to the team that helped me launch my book and do my podcast. I actually took Word Swag graphics and blew them up onto Canvas and gave them to them as a gift and they loved it. It was great. So I mean, this is really good quality stuff and it makes you look smarter than you actually are. So that's good. Okay, anything else in the free category? - You know, the biggest thing that I recommend and this is more of a tip than a specific item, okay? And my tip is this is that whatever smartphone you use, make it a weekly habit just as you're kind of poking around to pull up the app store, okay? And tap on the top 10 free apps because the reason why I say that is because sometimes apps that are sold at a premium, sometimes they're, you know, a $4 app or a $5 app. For some reason, the developers will put it on sale for free and they'll do it for a short period of time and it happens a lot during the holidays and around new year and anytime there's like a major sale, the sale date that's going on, you could even do that. Hey, even Boxing Day in Canada, you can do that, woo! - Canada Boxing Day. - But like, you know, but that's, it's more of a tip. Check out the top 10 free apps at any app store and you may be surprised at what's being offered at any given moment. - Yeah, and you're right about the fire sale. I bought some really expensive apps, like $49 apps for $9.99 that I really wanted, just 'cause I caught it on sale and then other times stuff goes free and you can try it out and if you don't like it, delete it, right? - Exactly, and hey, look, if it's free, it's for me and if it's cheap, it could still be for me. - So Google Apps, Evernote, if this, this, then that, Word swag, other graphic design places or apps like Pick Play, Post and so on, super helpful. And then let's talk about team collaboration. Let's go there. So this is something you're really passionate about. We all work on teams. At some point, and I think a lot of us can relate to this, you're working with team members who are not in the room, and you know, your team thing is not just you guys all hanging out in the boardroom 24/7 or in somebody's office. So how do you not die in a sea of email when you're working with the team? Because I think the default for a lot of teams right, Wayne, still is, all just email 'em. - And tell us about that. - You know, it really is. It's like, you know, a lot of times, and you may have experienced this too in the office where somebody will come, you know, they'll come run around the corner, they'll knock on your door in your office and they'll say, "Hey, did you get my email?" And you'll say, "Well, when did you send it?" Well, just now. (both laughing) And a lot of times we do. - What do you do? We treat email like it's text messaging, like it should be instantaneous. And there was a time, there really was a time when email, what was this novel way to communicate with? There's amazing, it really was mostly instant and you can kinda share a lot of thoughts. But right now, so many people are drowning in their inboxes. And I was really inspired by something that Michael Hyatt did with his team and he mentioned it on his podcast and he just said, "We killed email for our team." And he just said, you know, from that point on, when we killed email, we said, "All communication would happen." And he mentioned an app called Slack. And all this information would happen on Slack. And I said, "Huh." And so I gave Slack a try, I started kind of checking it out. And I love, love, love Slack. It is a team communication tool that works a lot like instant messaging. It works a lot like text messaging. But it also allows, you know, file sharing, private channels, small channels. And basically where you can just kinda go and cover one particular topic. You can invite people on your teams to join just a particular channel so they could stay up on, you know, here on our team. We have a Slack channel focused just on baptism. And during our baptism, you know, seasons that happen every couple of months, right? They get really, really busy and a lot of questions pop up and a lot of, you know, information is shared. And then that kind of trickles down and it kind of dies up for a couple of weeks and it comes right back up. And in the same way, you know, we use it. I've got a little line item that says, "Today at cross point." And basically, if something's happening today, you know, whether it's here in the office or in the life of our church, talk about it here, you know, whether it's a volunteer who's about to come into the office because they're gonna, you know, come and do some work. It really helps because sometimes I'm thinking, oh, I really wanted to, you know, oh, I really wanted to talk to so-and-so but I didn't know they were coming in and now they're gone, you know? - Right, right. - It really kind of helps with that. But it also helps in kind of knowing, hey guys, you know, don't forget about this meeting that we're having today or that kind of thing. - So help me understand, all right. I heard the same podcast. Here's the difference between you and me. You did something about it? I did nothing about it. So I'm still drowning in email. And so help me understand 'cause what I have many of, and I need to take some time and just drill down into it. But how does that, and how is that different than email? How, like, if it's on Slack, how is that better than just, you know, 72 emails blown up your inbox. Now you got 72 threads going or whatever they call them discussions or whatever happening inside Slack. - No, that's a great question. And the difference is for us is that we decided that email is gonna be for information. And so we, you know, we use email still on our team and we inform, you know, we kind of, you know, the notes that we have to go back to or the reference points that we have to go back to, we share. But when we're looking for back and forth communication, we go to Slack because what we often realize is that we wish somebody else was in the thread with us, or we wish somebody else was in the room with us at Slack, that happens. All the communication is fully searchable as well. So if you need some information to come back to you, you can always go back and you can kind of reference all the conversations that happen. - It's a lot like Gmail in the sense that it's fully searchable. But it's also, it's immediate. What I love about Slack is there's an app for Slack everywhere. You can download the desktop app. You can download the phone app. It's also a web app. And so everywhere you go, you know, it follows you. If you want to have a notification turn on, you can. If you want to shut down all notifications, except for maybe one channel, you can do that in the same way. But what I love about that is that people do email differently and people dream email different in different situations. But when you sit down with your team and you say, guys, this is what's going to go on Slack. This is the kind of communication we want to have happen on this platform. And we want it to be searchable. We want everybody to at least be in the know of what's going on. It really kind of makes people a little bit smarter about what I'm going to share, what I'm going to talk about, or even the information that gets dispensed between each other. And it makes you a little bit more focused on, hey, you know what, everybody's going to get this. Let me communicate this in a way so that everybody can understand. And it allows me to kind of learn from everybody as well, because I may not be involved in your area 100%. But by searching through Slack, I can know what I need to know to get me, you know, into this next Sunday. - Okay, well, I'll have to take your word for that. And Michael Hyatt's and Pat Flynn's. And if you want to be plus, well, I really love this. And I'll have to drill down on that. So that's Slack. And again, everything we talk about is going to be in the show notes. What else helps with team collaboration? - And so a couple of other things that are free or at least kind of they have a free level. There's apps like Wonderlist, which I know that you like to use. It's a to do app. - I do. - And it's great for collaboration, especially when you want to kind of work one-on-one with somebody, you shoot them a task and they can kind of comment and you can have a conversation. So you can get a little bit more detail oriented in Wonderlist, which is what I like also is, you know, you can work through a project and create the list, you know, together. And then comment, you know, as the project's going on, it's free to start with. And you can kind of go into, you know, premium uses, but honestly, I don't use Wonderlist for work-related stuff. I use it for my family. I use it with my wife. - Cool. - And especially when it comes to the honeydo list or the shopping list. And so you can kind of, you know, she can make lists for me, which is usually what happens. And then she could get real detail oriented in the comments and then I could kind of comment back and if I want to be a little smart me, I can. But you know, but it works as a great kind of communication tool between the two of us. - Yeah, okay, and I use that too. My assistant and I use it and it's great. I really do like it. And for me, it's become my go-to-to-do app. And I've tried lots. - It's fantastic. And now if you're more of a visual person, this is what I love, Trello. I don't know if you've heard of Trello or if you've seen it. - Tried it for a while. Yeah, Trello. - It's great for visual folks who like to actually take a task and just move it on down the line. And so the way it works is they call everything cards. And so you pull out a card and it could be of whatever project, you know, maybe you've got, you know, the big Easter services coming up and you could create the Easter card or you could create smaller cards when it comes to Easter in general. And so you kind of like, you're almost, you know, playing a game where, you know, you want to move this task down the line. It goes from idea to implementation to done, you know? And so you can continue to do that. A lot of folks in churches use Trello, especially for their pipeline of assimilation. And a lot of times they'll use that because you can visually take a person literally from entry point into the first step of what they're doing at their church to the next step. Maybe it's membership, maybe it's activity in the group or something. And if you have a series of activities that you want somebody to go through, you can kind of take them through until they're done and they're a fully functioning participant of your church or a member. And a lot of churches will do that. And what I love about what churches have been doing with Trello is that if you do a couple of searches here and there on Twitter and overall, just kind of on, in Google a little bit, but Twitter have had a lot of success seeing what other churches are doing in Trello because you can share your Trello page with everyone who wants to see it so that they can see who things done. I love stuff like that that not only is it collaborative with the team 'cause you could use that with an entire team, but also you get to kind of share it so that other people can benefit from, again, you're genius of how to put things together. - The achievers would love that too. You see progress, okay. Good, other collaborative tools for your team. - Okay, so the last couple of collaborative tools that are free, especially to start, are Zoom and Skype. And a lot of times- - We're on Skype right now. And a lot of times folks forget about Skype. I mean, Skype is a legend now. It's a veteran of the internet. And a lot of times we forget that it's actually a really great collaborative tool, especially if you have staff, maybe you're a smaller church staff and not everybody is in the office. Maybe you don't have an office that's big enough for everybody. But you can pull together, especially in Zoom. You can actually pull together an entire group meeting in Zoom. You could record the conversation. You could share it for everybody. You could still do some of that with Skype. You can record the calls and share it. You're a little bit limited on Skype on how many people can be in a room. But again, there's nothing like having that face-to-face. And I had a conversation with somebody just a few weeks ago that said, "I can't have a staff meeting." And I asked them, "Why?" And they said, "Well, everybody's got different schedules and they can't all be in the office at the same time." And I said, "Man, we live in an entirely new world where folks telecomm you all the time. If somebody's got an internet connection, they could be a part of your meeting, no matter what." - Yeah, we started that. We started Daily Huddles for our team about seven months ago, six months ago. And wherever you are, unless you're on vacation, you just phone in four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Sunday, we're all on campus. And we use Google Hangouts, which is also free and a Skype alternative. But it's fantastic. It's really built team communication. It's really helped. And so that's been good. And yeah, totally. It's a great way to do virtual teams. - I was gonna try and avoid another Google entry into this category. - Right, right. Unless they think you're being paid, right? - I don't have my t-shirt yet. But yeah, no, googling out. - But Skype works just as well. And I've actually recorded every video interview on this podcast, which is like 98% of the episodes I've done, has been recorded on Skype via video. So you and I are seeing each other. And then we just rip the audio off of it and use that for the podcast. - And actually, I'm wearing a cleaner shirt today in Nashki. (laughs) - That's it. I mean, often I've interviewed people right after their run and they're still sweaty, you know, and stuff like that. So yeah, I could probably extort a lot of money if I threatened to make the videos public. - There you go. - But anyway. Yeah, so, I mean, it's really good. And the audio quality is quite solid on Skype. - Absolutely. Now, the last couple of resources I would talk about when it comes to collaboration, they're not necessarily free. They're free to try and I love being able to do that. Like, again, if it doesn't work for you, you don't have to get it. You don't have to pay for it. But base camp and to do it are really cool premium applications when it comes to team collaboration, being able to get together again and share projects. I just recently was helping with the church, who, you know, I just came for a weekend visit. They wanted to kind of go over, they were refreshing their look and they wanted to make some changes to their, their Sunday morning, just look overall. And they included me in on their base camp project communications. And so I was getting a daily digest of emails from base camp that kind of shared all the communication that they had. I was able to download the app and I could be engaged and I could share documents. I could share files and images with everybody. You know, all the communication was happening in one central location. And it was really neat. It kind of happened like in forum type setting where, you know, if you wanted to start up a conversation about one particular topic, we had one going about their new signs. We had one going about their hospitality area. And, you know, you could just jump into that forum, comment on what you need to comment on, jump back out, upload files. There was so much to be able to do. And base camp just updated to a new version. And I haven't played with it yet. I played with the old version, but the new version looks so great and it's so tempting. But I could get really excited about tech really easy. And, you know, in the last minute the staff needs for me to run in and go, I'm changing everything. But it is so tempting. - Hey, you know, we use base camp too. I used it, actually the podcast is coordinated through base camp because we have people, you know, my little team is all over the place. And also launched lasting impact using base camp. And again, people who jumped in, the editor of the book jumped in for a season, you know, the type setting people or whatever you call that, they jumped in for a while. And so it's a great, you can see how technical I am on that stuff. - You too could be a world famous author, like Carrie Newhoff, by using base camp. Just like. - Yeah, that's right. That's exactly the point. So, and then to-doist, to-doist is like a to-do list. So it's like to-do list with no L. - Exactly, and basically maybe it makes you an expert, you are a to-doist, but I've also been collaborating with somebody else through to-doist as well. And it kind of is like base camp light. It's not, it's not as versatile as base camp is, but you can handle a lot of projects all at once. So if you're working with a team of teams, to-doist is actually really great, because you can keep everybody in one central location, basically, but they're allowed on their own apps. And it works as a phone and a tablet app. You can work together on that one app, but also just kind of branch out and run a ton of different projects at once. - Cool. Okay, well, we're gonna, man, this has been great. We're gonna keep moving. Let's work on just a few bullet points on like getting your time back, where tech is going and so forth. - Definitely. - You're big into productivity, and the whole goal of sort of geek pastors, not just geek out and spend thousands of dollars on technology, although that would be nice. It's actually, so technology can do the things that you don't have to anymore, so that you can do what you're called to do, right? - Absolutely. - Absolutely. - Time hacks that you're finding are working really well as geek pastor blows up, and you are still leading a church and helping out with that, and being a dad and a husband and all of that. So what are some things that are really helping you these days? - Okay, so the number one time hack, actually, that I always tackle, and I ask this of everybody. One of the first questions I ask if somebody asks me, "Hey, how can I be more productive?" I always ask, "What time do you wake up?" - Yeah. - Because it's just very telling to me, based on all that you're struggling with, with productivity, how much you're getting done, if they tell me, "Man, I wake up at seven o'clock in the morning, I go, "You gotta wake up earlier." And so that's my number one thing. When it comes to productivity and time, I can't stress it enough or encourage you enough. Wake up early. I mean, get plenty of sleep. Don't be that guy that's going to bed at two o'clock in the morning and then waking up before-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Get some good sleep, sleep is important, but wake up early. You can easily gain it. If you're looking for an extra hour out of your day, you could get it in the morning. If you're looking for a couple of hours, you can do that. It's great because one of our preschool ministry director, she's great, she's amazing at what she does. And her little secret is she wakes up early because none of the kids are awake. You know, all of her kids at home and her husband, she wakes up as early as she can because nobody else is awake. It's her time with God. She gets to sit down and really just, you know, drill down on her Bible or drill down on what God's telling her that morning. And it's that extra time that otherwise she wouldn't be able to find later in the day. And so for me, that's the first thing I look at when it comes to time hacks is, you know, wake up early. I think John Acuff calls it the 5 a.m. club. And I'm a member of that. In fact, I kind of-- - I was just gonna ask you, what time do you get up? - I typically get up every morning at 4.45. - Wow. - And that's my thing every morning, 4.45. In fact, the whole church knows that. And so they actually even, it kind of joke around about that, you know, when they talk to me, they go, "Hey, when you're up at 4.45, can you pray for me?" And, you know, and I tell them all the time, it's to waking up early isn't a terrible thing. You're not gonna encroach on the Southern Hemisphere's time with God because of that. You know, you're, it's okay. You could spend time with God early. And for me, that's a time where my daughter's not up yet. My wife hasn't started getting ready for the day yet. And I can actually plan out the day. Sometimes I do some podcast stuff. Sometimes I do some writing. You know, when I take a look at the morning, I try and call them the three B's. And when I wake up in the morning, I spend some time in the Bible. I spend some time on some blogs. And I spend some time on my body. And I, you know, and I use that for early time, you know, just to try. - I never heard that. That's smart. So again, and again, if that's just, you're like 4.45, I could never do that. Well, just back up a little bit. And maybe if you're getting up at eight, get up at seven or seven 30. If you're getting up at seven, get up at six, six, 30. I generally am up between 4.30 and six every day, depending on my schedule and what's going on in my life. Today I slept in to like 6.10. It was amazing. But that's a sleep in for me. And I still got more done before most people were out. - I have to tell you, honestly, sometimes I sleep in and I'll wake up at six o'clock in the morning. And my wife will laugh at me because I'll say, I feel like I've lost the whole day. - Oh, I've said that. I've said that on a Saturday, if I sleep in, I'm like, I'm two hours behind where I should be. Come on, what's going on? - I'm with you. - And then people are like, how do you get it all done? It's like, well, get up early. - Get up early. So here's my thing. This is the hack. It's a set it and forget it hack on, if you want to start waking up a little bit earlier each day, all you got to do is just sit down, grab your alarm on your phone. A lot of folks use their phones for their alarm clocks now. The beauty about that is you could set multiple alarms on your phone and you could set them way in advance. And so what I have encouraged people to do is take your phone and every day, you can sit down in one sitting, set an alarm for every day this coming week. And every day, let that alarm come on 15 minutes earlier. - Oh, smart. - And the next thing. And then just set it and forget it. And now that thing's going to go off and it's going to ring and you'll be awake. And so it's just, and it's a discipline thing. You got to be able to do it, but I mean, I can't encourage that enough. - You'll be the frog in the kettle. And eventually you won't even know what happened. That's good. - So we've talked a lot about technology, but is it? So technology can make you better, but like how much of it is just you and how much of it is technology? - Honestly, it's all about you. It's you as the leader. Maxwell, John Maxwell, he says, everything rises and falls on leadership. And I believe that's true. I mean, the technology doesn't lead. The technology enhances. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which apps you can download, which apps you can afford or not afford or have. I mean, I got a lot done in ministry before I ever had an iPhone. (laughing) You know? - I've always had stuff. - That's a great quote. - I've had so many, I've had a lot of technology in my past. I remember back in the day of the Palm Pilots, remember those things and you know, I had those. - I had one. - But none of them, none of them helped me lead. None of them actually helped me be a better pastor in terms of what God was teaching me, what God was taking me or what he had to show for me. All those things did was just help me remember things, which is really kind of what technology does, right? - Yeah. - 900 bucks to help you basically have a digital calendar, right? I remember. - So, I mean, honestly, you know, that's why my heart has always been, I wanna help you get the most done that you can so that you could do what matters most, which is spend time with people. Be there for them, not have your face on a screen and not, you know, not be focused downward, but be focused outward, you know, for other folks and, you know, a naps never gonna teach you leadership. It's never gonna teach you how to love people. - Okay, real quick. - I mean, iPad Pro. - Have you had a look yet? What are you thoughts? - I've had a look and I can't believe that a few years ago, I was saying I needed something smaller and all my devices are getting bigger. I loved my small iPhone and now I have the iPhone 6 Plus, right? - Yeah, me too. - Yeah, big. It's like my kids say, hey, flat screen TV in your pocket, I'm gonna go down. - Well, now you're literally, you have a flat screen TV in your backpack, if you get an iPad Pro. - How big is it? I haven't seen one. - I think it's a little over 12 inches, I think. And I mean, here's the thing, it's huge. It's a flat screen surface that's really big. Personally, I don't have a need for the iPad Pro. I may change my mind, but, you know, right now, I don't see it. I have a lot of friends who are artists. I have a lot of friends who are comic book artists, actually. And cool, they've been doing a lot of drawing on there with the Apple pen and the iPad and all that. And so they've been doing that. But I see the iPad Pro doing some great stuff for churches on a Sunday morning level with like check-in and handling information stations. I've already kind of been eyeball on that and kind of going, oh, this would look so great. Like in our kids ministry, for, you know, for check-in for folks. One of the biggest issues that a lot of folks have, especially if you have older folks in your congregation, right, is, you know, I don't want to sign up for a small group on an iPad that's just kind of so small. Well, you got this big screen TV, basically, that they can use if they want to sign up for groups or get help. So I'm loving that. I'm loving the iPad Pro. I think there's a place for it. I think that there's a place for it. - Right. Okay, that's good. That was just a quick one. And if you're listening to this a year after we broadcast it, you'll be like, what? I know all about that. But anyway, so you've got a special offer. And I want you to tell listeners about that. And then also, just help us understand where we can find you online. 'Cause I think it's really cool what you're doing. - Definitely. And first off, I wanna say thank you so much, man, for having me here. And this is just so nice. You're just so helpful and you're fun to hang out with. And I've learned some stuff. And I'm gonna have to go check out Slack. That's what I'm gonna do as a result of this. - Well, hang out on Slack together. 'Cause that's the cool thing too, is we can kind of share with each other. - Okay, cool. - Okay, cool. We'll hang out on some Slack together. You know, okay, so here's what I was doing. Last time I was here, we created a special page on the website. It's geekpastor.com/carry. - And that's C-A-R-E-Y. - And it's just G-E-E-K, right? Geekpastor.com/carry, C-A-R-E-Y. - That's right, geekpastor.com/carry. We did a couple of cool exclusives there. And I'm actually gonna leave those on the page. And so if you missed it the last time, you could still sign on and check out some of the stuff that we posted the last time. But at the top of the page, we're gonna create a new signup for a new exclusive. And what we're gonna do is after the new year, okay, we're gonna have an exclusive listeners only of the Carrey Newhoff Leadership Podcast Q&A webinar. And last time, I kind of, I spent some time unpacking some things like email and automation. And we had a little bit of time at the end for some Q&A. But this time around, we're gonna do an entire Q&A webinar. And I'll collect questions from folks before the webinar. We'll do them live on the webinar as well. But I wanted to kind of start off the new year, right? And there's no time, no time like the new year to really be able to, you know, start fresh with some life hacks or start fresh with some technology hacks to get us going in the right direction. - Well, this is great because I know listeners are going, "Well, why didn't you ask this question?" You know, you guys can ask better questions than me. So you can go direct to that just geekpastor.com/carrey, sign up for the webinar Q&A with Wayne. And Wayne, I know one of the things that I just appreciate about you is you're so happy to share. And really, your help is so practical. Like there, if you listen and you actually apply some of this, you might actually be five hours more productive next week than you were before you turned into this episode. So that's great. - Man, I love it. It's my heart. In fact, that's why the other thing that I'm gonna launch in January, and this is gonna be for everybody. You can tell all your friends about this, okay? - Great. - I'm gonna launch a special webinar series called Geek Year. And we're gonna, we're gonna kick it off. - Kick it off. - And we're gonna kick it off in January on how you can have the geekiest year ever in a positive way. I'm talking in a real positive way that it's gonna help you get the year started off, right? Because I know for me, I love making goals and resolutions and all that kind of stuff, but a lot of times I'm kind of left in the lurch as to how to do it. How do I accomplish it? I wanna do that with geek year. So as soon as we kick off 2016, we're gonna launch that. And so be on the lookout next couple of weeks and stuff I'll share with you guys. - Okay, so where would you share? Where would they find that if they're interested in that? - Find all that at GeekPastor.com. You'll also be able to follow me on social media. I'm GeekPastor Everywhere. You can follow me on Twitter as Wayne Cordova as well. But the blog and the podcast are all at GeekPastor.com and you're gonna get all the information right there. - Oh, that's awesome. And what's fun is you can be a geek with Wayne, but still keep all your friends. It's that kind of geek. - That's right. - Which is awesome. Hey, Wayne, you've really served the listeners again. I just wanna say thank you so much for being a guest today. - No, Carrie, it is my pleasure. Thank you so much. - Hey, isn't that cool? I just love it when podcasts guests say, I'm gonna give back to listeners in a really special way. So do me a favor and go blow up his site. Would that be great? 'Cause Wayne's got this webinar for you. He's got these bonuses for you. And I just love it when people wanna give back to the Christian community. So give him some love, head on over there. It is geekpastor.com/carry, C-A-R-E-Y. And thanks so much for that, Wayne. I think you're gonna be back here again. You know, it's fun now that we're sort of in the second year of the podcast, we've got some return guests and you'll hear more from them. But we also got some people you have never heard from before coming up on the podcast. In fact, we've got Chris Brown. So Chris has got a radio show. He's coming up real soon. He also has his own podcast. The Leadership Momentum podcast and Chris Brown's true stewardship. So Chris Brown from Ramsey Solutions is gonna be our guest next time. We've also got Dave Adamson, who does all the social media for North Point. We've heard from New Spring in their social media. Dave is gonna bring us a perspective from North Point. Joe Sangle, a great friend. We're gonna spend a lot of time talking about money at the end of the year, not only for your budgeting, but for your church's budgeting cycle. Whit George is a guest, Hayden Shaw, all about like millennials. And we got a whole lot more coming up for the new year. So I'm really excited about that. And again, best way to make sure you don't miss anything is to subscribe. And if you would do that today, I would be so, so thankful. So thank you so much for everything today. And I really do hope that this episode has helped you lead like never before. Talk to you next Tuesday. (upbeat music) You've been listening to the Carey Newhof Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)