Meet the Bulb Gals (and Modernize Your Workplace)

Livvy (00:06):

Hey guys, welcome to a special episode of the Make Other Successful podcast because we have the Bulb gals on today. This has been a little bit in the making. We've been talking about it for a few months actually. And then Mitch actually shout out, Tim was like, you guys, you're going to do it. So we're here today. We're going to talk about, actually kind of a unique topic. We all were kind of hired in line of each other within one a span of three months,

Emma (00:35):

Two or three months.

Livvy (00:36):

And we have all come from different workplaces, different backgrounds of work, and now we're all here and we work in a modern workplace. And our experience has been so great and we kind of want to talk about what that has made our everyday work life, what we probably could have changed in our previous jobs to make our work lives easier there and some more topics based on that. So let's get started. We need to set the scene of how did Bald Gals come to exist?

Emma (01:05):

It's a good question. Yeah, I guess I was the first of the three hires and then McKayla very shortly after. And then Libby, you joined about two months later. So our company was going through a big growth spurt and all three of us got hired. And it's a tech space company. We work in tech and we work with a lot of guys. A lot of guys who worked with a lot of guys for a lot of years. They didn't have many females, women working with them for a while, but it's been really fun to shake it up and have all of us on the team.

Livvy (01:39):

Yeah, a lot of you guys know we use Slack here, we don't. That's our internal messaging system. And I think what within the first month of me starting, we made a private bulb gal Slack message, and that's where we coined Bulb Gals. That's where that name kind of came in. So let's do intros. I'm Livy. I'm our marketing coordinator here. So all the newsletters, blogs, all that comes from me. And I started about January. How about you?

Emma (02:07):

Great. I'm Emma. I'm our delivery lead here and I started a little over a year ago and I do everything project management.

Livvy (02:14):

Nice.

Michaela  (02:15):

And then I'm Michaela, I'm our power platform developer. I started a year, I think to the date. So

Livvy (02:23):

One

Emma (02:23):

Year anniversary. Congrats.

Livvy (02:25):

Okay, well, I'm going to just work this way, but Emma, since you're kind of the first one hired from this trio, give your background what you worked in and talk a little bit about the environment of your previous workplaces.

Emma (02:40):

So this topic, I feel like it's really near and dear to my heart because the first week and month here I realized, wow, Bob Digital does it so differently than every other workplace I've ever been in. So I've sort of really run the gamut of workplaces. I started as corporate as you can go at one of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in the country or in the world. Worked for a major credit card processing company bank in New York and we had thousands of employees. We were not very modern. I want to say those companies always feel like they're modern, they have all the money and the resources, but it takes a long time to change the way they do things. So looking back, I recognized that although we had all the technology, I don't think it was always well adopted in the different teams. And obviously this is going back a decade now.

(03:28):

Remote work wasn't quite what it is today. So that was an interesting experience to start my career in. And then I worked in a startup where I was one of three employees, so it was really small, little less important to use software and technology, but at the same time we definitely were not modern. And then I moved into a small business, and again, just a different industry. It was in the construction industry and as everyone knows about construction, very slow moving industry as far as change. So I've really worked in these non-modern workplaces. So bulb to me felt like the most modern workplace I'd ever come across. And yeah, I'm excited to get into just how it's changed my work life and it makes doing work so much more efficient, which as an efficiency minded person has been a breath of fresh air.

Livvy (04:15):

Nice, nice.

Emma (04:16):

What about you?

Livvy (04:17):

So I am quite young. I'm only 24, so I didn't graduate that long ago and I went to art school. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I just kind of fell into my first job out of college, which was at an advertising agency doing social media content design for really big brands and just kind of working through the agency pyramid, which if any of you listening work at an agency, the pyramid that has to go through a million rounds of edits, client calls, constantly crazy hours. And we were not modern my agency. And with so many moving parts, I feel like I don't know how we got anything done, honestly. So then moving to a job where I worked, which is just a term to be like, I didn't work for clients, I worked for a company and designing their social media, it was a lot smaller of a team, still wasn't modern. Things fell through the cracks constantly. And that's kind of when I had the realization it doesn't matter if you have a million people to work with or three people to work with, if your systems aren't modern and they're not strategic work's not going to get done very well. And then I come to Bulb and it was like this slap in the face moment where you're like, how did I get work done anywhere

Emma (05:30):

Before this?

Livvy (05:30):

Right? I don't know. I have no idea how any work got done. And yeah, kind of just to say what Emma said is it's just such a breath of fresh air to work at a place that prioritizes modernity and making sure processes are staying updated as they hire new people. So that's a little bit of my history. McKayla.

Emma (05:50):

Well I guess

Livvy (05:51):

How far back are

Emma (05:52):

We going?

Livvy (05:54):

Sorry.

Emma (05:55):

So I'll just focus on my last

Michaela  (05:56):

Job where I was there for five years, started in a fairly low level role and just kind of expanded my job as it went on. It was in higher education working for facilities. And when I came in, the building that I was working in had just opened maybe a few months prior. So it was a little bit of chaos from our side of things. We had to organize hundreds of people and put new processes in place. So I was kind of working with a blank slate, but at the same time, we didn't have the capacity to get all of these things in place while we were trying to get our jobs done. We didn't have that spare room. It was kind of like putting out fires when

Emma (06:43):

So you couldn't actually work on the strategy.

Michaela  (06:45):

Exactly. And so by the time I left, I had tried to implement a few things that a few systems, and that's how I got involved in Power Automate and had tried to push toward a more modern workplace and implement the things that we do here. But that was the most challenging part was the adoption and the actual deployment of these systems because folks are, after five years stuck in their way of I need to email this person for this form. Well that form's outdated by two years when I've got it hosted. The most recent update on a SharePoint site that no one uses. So that was the most challenging part. So coming here, seeing the ways that we try to push for that yet still encounter those same issues has been, I guess validating but also a little eyeopening that it wasn't just me encountering those things.

Emma (07:43):

Right. And I'm sure you left a legacy there, you started the work and others will hopefully pick it up and move in that direction. We'll see. Because I do feel like, right, I mean if you're not changing and you're not moving forward and you do start to realize, well, our competitors are using these tools to their best of their ability, and all of a sudden you look around and although I think some industries move slower than others, eventually everyone's going to figure out, wow, everyone else is using this platform or they can collaborate on documents really easily and we don't have that and what's wrong with us. And so if you're listening to this and you are in one of those businesses, getting your leaders on board is obviously one of the biggest steps. And it sounds like that's one of the ways you were trying to do it of implement systems and then get people to come around alongside you.

Michaela  (08:30):

Yeah, and it's also challenging from say internal communication like an intranet, SharePoint, to get folks to collaborate on that to then have content to hand out to people to give them their places within that intranet where they are responsible for that content. So there's not just from higher up folks adopting it,

Emma (08:55):

Yeah, leadership,

Michaela  (08:56):

But also from your peers to help you push this thing forward. Sometimes it does feel like a one man thing,

Emma (09:02):

And when there is a lack of accountability there, people don't feel like they're the owners, then they sort of shirk responsibility and

Michaela  (09:08):

Say, I don't want

Emma (09:09):

To really deal with

Livvy (09:09):

That. Your story is not unique either, because I think you speak to previous past Libby where something needs to change, and that's how you said you got involved in power apps was recognizing, wait, maybe I can start making things a little bit easier, more modern. Did you run into where it was harder to get peers on board or leadership or since maybe leadership wouldn't get on board, then how could you expect your peers to do or to adopt any of that?

Michaela  (09:38):

Yeah, that's a good point. I think it was more so just it's the communication aspect. We didn't have strong communication to begin with. Everything was over email until 2020.

Livvy (09:51):

Yeah, don't do

Michaela  (09:52):

That. And then we did move to teams, so that was great. I love Teams. I know that we use Slack here, but Teams is the first for me. But yeah, it was more so getting folks to understand this is the new way that we're going to do it and this is how we're going to do it. And no matter how many emails or teams messages I would send, it felt like too large of a role to not have that teamwork, to not have those folks be on my side from the start and to try to reign people in and

Emma (10:31):

Then updating people on what's new or what a new process or

Michaela  (10:34):

New standard. Exactly. So

Emma (10:36):

You almost have to have the communication in place first.

Michaela  (10:39):

That's how it felt. That was a challenge in my experience, was then communicating this out. And part of it was we were replacing old systems, so people still have those bookmarks and all of that jazz, and so it's really hard to break those things.

Emma (10:54):

So you came from an experience of teams to Slack. What were you using at your old companies

Livvy (10:59):

Teams both times? Teams.

Emma (11:00):

Okay. I came from a company where we didn't use any type of messaging software. We used sometimes iPhone group chats, which is really annoying because it's very personal. Personal because this is a small business. But we were growing, we grew from, I started with three employees and I left at 17. So we had huge growth in the three years I was there. But we did not start building in those systems until I think it was about 15 employees in, I actually migrated us from Dropbox over to Teams or SharePoint really is with all of our files. But teams would open automatically on all of our computers and all of us would go and close the window. None of us used teams ever because the way that leadership liked to communicate was email and it was email, email, email or text to our personal cell phones.

(11:48):

And I say this looking back now, I wish I could have put more modern tools in before I left because I know now how much teams or Slack could benefit these companies or really this particular one I'm thinking of and their goals and just their communication in general. But yeah, so I went from just email to then Ball Digital Slack. It's been amazing to be on the same page with other employees who are working on the same project in real time and not have to worry about the churn that emails bring. That has particularly completely changed my work life.

Livvy (12:24):

Yeah, I think the communication aspect or the biggest difference I noticed when I started working here and when I actually got to learn my job role and was performing my tasks at an automatic pace was, I don't know if you guys felt like this, but at my previous jobs it felt like not only do I have to get my tasks done, but I have to figure out how to make sure everyone's on the same page when they receive. If I need someone to review an asset or, oh, shoot, my one manager likes to email, but my other manager really likes to communicate over teams. So I got to differentiate between that. Now it's like I just get my work done and I know the processes in place. We all are on the same page in some way that it's actually getting the work done is most of my day now, not how do I make up for that lack of modern communication, internal communication, organized, it's just a mess.

Emma (13:19):

And you're touching on such a great point, Livvy, because I feel like from what I said, I was like, well, the tool really changed my life. Having Slack great, but it's not just having the tools, it's not just having teams, it's not just having Slack. It's not just moving your business away and to be more modern. It's also having some type of system or governance or process that then is clearly communicated when you are onboarded of, Hey, this is how we do it. If you think of a better way, feel free to bring it up to us. But this is the process so that it feels like you've now, expectations have been set. You know how to follow those. You don't have to figure those out. You just have to do the work, which isn't that what we all want most of the time. And then if you're a system oriented person, maybe you'll have some ideas on how to improve it, which I think honestly all of us have probably done or brought forward. And it's an open conversation. You looked like you had a thought.

Michaela  (14:11):

I did. So I was thinking about how our Slack is organized by all these different channels, and you were talking about the structure of it that really I think helps facilitate a lot of this. Whereas I've been, at my previous job, we had teams, which was great, but we were kind of thrown into it with suddenly being remote in 2020. And so we didn't have structure, it was just one single thread of everything. We were a team

Emma (14:43):

Of, oh man.

Michaela  (14:45):

And we were a team of seven folks spread across a couple different locations, and it was just everything in one spot and it

Emma (14:54):

Everything everywhere all at once.

Michaela  (14:56):

And it's similar to email in that way where there's this ambiguity of organization within, you have just one inbox, you can put your stuff in folders, but really it's just one inbox where these threads of communication are taking place. And the way that we have our Slack channel set up actually encouraged me to create a Discord chat with me and my partner, and I've broken it out into, this is finances, this is date planning, and things like that so that we That so smart. I know. And it feels so much better because now it's not just our text chain going back and forth, which we still use obviously, but it's much more structured and has been really helpful for organizing my relationship. I love that you're using

Emma (15:45):

Topic-based messaging to level up your relationship real life. Well done. I love it, Mikayla. I love that. So I feel like what we are really touching on here is topic-based messaging in itself isn't necessarily the answer, but you do need to bring in some strategy and some structure around, okay, how are we going to organize topics? How are we going to actually use the structure to the best? We can't just have one thread. And to what you were saying, Mikail, a lot of people might resonate with that of, well, I have so much work to do. When am I going to find time to go sit in a room with a whiteboard and whiteboard out the structure of all of this? What would you say to someone like that? How would you encourage them? Well,

Michaela  (16:24):

The whiteboard thing actually makes me think of what we would do at our previous job was we would literally bring in a rolling whiteboard into a conference room, and on a regular basis, we would make out lists of all of the things that we had to accomplish and where we were at with updates to projects. It's is that

Emma (16:46):

The only spot it lived?

Michaela  (16:48):

And then we take a photo of it and we post it in Teams Classic, and it worked for what we needed, and we would do brainstorming things that way. But if we had in place already a system where these things lived and we didn't have to remember them and then write them down and refer to these lists,

Emma (17:08):

So maybe if they

Michaela  (17:09):

Were each, the work would've been done

Emma (17:10):

Already each its own channel or each its own topic or each its own, however you wanted to organize it. But that could have potentially helped as

Michaela  (17:17):

Well. Exactly. Yeah. So it was recreating all these threads and taking up an hour or two of our time every couple weeks, and so when I could have posted a 32nd message in a thread and then continued on with my day, so it was like instead of taking the two hours to build the system, we were spending two hours every other week

Emma (17:42):

To try to remember everything to try to

Michaela  (17:43):

Work without a system.

Emma (17:44):

I think you're hitting on such a good point because everyone feels like we don't have time to stop and think through the strategy, but if you just can convince a couple people, whether it's just your manager or a leader in the company, or even just a peer to be like, Hey, I really think if we just look at this, figure this out, structure this and get some topic-based messaging channels in place, it's going to help us in the long run. Let's take half a day and do this and it's going to save us weeks of time in the long run. That'd be my encouragement. Looking back at the businesses I've worked at, man, if I just sat down and thought about it for a little bit and thought about the strategy and thought about the power of the tools, and then put those two things together instead of just trying to keep swimming and survive in the amount of workload you usually have, I think we could have really made some powerful pivots for those businesses. And I almost want to call some of 'em and be like, Hey, you should use this tool this way. There's a better way. You want to share that wisdom, which is what part of what we do here at Bulb, which is why I love what we do, but you want to share the wisdom once you learn it on that there's a better way of working.

Livvy (18:49):

Absolutely. That's actually a good point to girl math, what you just said. If you'd spend a lot of time, now you're spending less time later,

Emma (18:56):

A hundred percent hashtag girl math, hashtag

Livvy (18:58):

Girl math. That could be the sponsor of today's

Emma (19:01):

Video. I think sometimes though people do underestimate the power that if you do think through the communication side of it, that is what ends up helping with the tech adoption. That's the other piece that I'd love for us to chat more about as well, because specifically the construction industry, we were looking at a lot of people who didn't want to change the way they use technology at all, so they were slow to adopt even apps on their phone type thing for work. So it's really hard to think about a project manager, a superintendent out on a site actually using the teams app when they don't really even want to use email. They just want to text what

Livvy (19:40):

Was their default, if not those things.

Emma (19:42):

Texting. Yeah, direct text or once in a while, once a week they check email or phone calls. It's all phone calls in that industry. What's been interesting is one of our main clients here at Bulb is actually a construction company, and I've seen how they've embraced modern tools, and they're an example of, you can't really just say, well, our industry doesn't really change, because when you do see players in that industry changing and modernizing and just saving a ton of money, time, effort, all of it, you built an app for one of our clients that's in that industry, and it's so fascinating to see how it changes. And I almost wanted to make that a case study and send that to my old company to say, Hey, these things could really make a difference. I almost feel like I drop a ball at these old places, but I didn't know, I didn't have the knowledge about how it could actually shape these specific businesses.

Livvy (20:34):

And hopefully people are listening right now know that it's not always, I kind of call it like a death sentence. Like McKayla was talking, making a couple Slack channels. I wish I could tell old Livy, Hey, in your social media department, just focus on those 20 people. You don't have to do the 200 person company. That's

Emma (20:52):

Great advice. Be

Livvy (20:53):

Like, Hey, you guys been thinking we should make, I'm using Slack channels for an example, an Instagram or a client-based one. You can separate it out however you want, but even just that freedom from your mind of knowing I know exactly where a message is that I need to refer to, or you talked about how you just had a stream of consciousness, it sounds like.

Michaela  (21:17):

Yeah, yeah. We'd have the random like, Hey, check out my kids at their soccer game, and then, Hey, I have an upcoming deadline. I need a response on this. So it's just like, okay, Sharon, we can't look at right now like, oh, that's cute, but it's getting in the way of my work. I would like to shove it to the side, but I don't have the luxury to do that. It's all in one place. No,

Emma (21:37):

You're so right though, Olivia, about starting small, because looking back, there were three of us who worked on the accounting side of operations and everything as well. We should have had a channel just for the three of us, and I know those two women would've gotten on board. They were office workers in the sense that they were at their computer a lot. That's where I could have started it, find the in of who will be a tech adopter and then start small with that. You don't have to do the 200 person company to begin with,

Michaela  (22:03):

And that's the champions model of things. And so I was part of the champions model at my previous place, and of course you were champion. I know it was the Microsoft champions, and so we met once a month. I had to travel an hour to go to the main campus there, and it was so fun. I got to learn about teams and all this jazz. So when we were forced to go remotely, I think me having that knowledge did help our team. I remember I gave a little presentation. It was like the day before we had to be remote, and I'm like, okay, this is how we use teams. This is how you send a message. My McKayla, I had a little PowerPoint ready

Emma (22:44):

Explaining all

Michaela  (22:44):

Of it from my own experience being a champion. I think that is a very successful model. It's still challenging for those people, but you are building a workforce that's spreading that adoption. It's kind of like a wave

Emma (23:00):

From the ground up.

Livvy (23:02):

How would you guys, because I know if I was listening to this podcast a year, a year and a half ago, I would've been like, that's great. I understand how I can do it. Unfortunately, and I feel you. I know Emma and McKayla probably feel your pain. Sometimes you work with people who just, it's sometimes an ego thing. It's an ageism kind of thing where it's like, I've been doing it this way for 20 years. Why would I do that? What would you tell those people if they want to start trying to maybe put in a little just some more modern ways of doing things when you feel like you've hit a brick wall?

Emma (23:37):

I feel like on the one hand, I would go back and tell myself this, if I could go talk to past Emma that I feel like where your mind normally goes with these sort of modernizations is it's going to help the bottom line. You go talk to your leader and you say, well, we'll save time, so we'll be more efficient, so we'll save money. And so then you think that will actually move the needle. And depending on the person, maybe it would, it wouldn't. I wish I could go back and tell past me, you'll enjoy working more if you're able to get these, because it used to in my head be like, well, too bad my leader won't listen. He could be saving so much money, but it's his company, not mine. But that's such a shallow sort of reasoning. I actually think you just end up having more joy in your workday when things go more smoothly.

(24:29):

And maybe that's cheesy to say, but I've experienced it the last year of enjoying work much more when you feel like you're on the same page and you're actually rowing in the same direction with all your coworkers. So given the communication topic we're on, I think that one's top of mind. I would almost take that angle of if you can convince yourself of that, it gives you a lot more intrinsic motivation to get other people on board with you in whatever way you need to. But don't just think of it as only a money saver, because that can be kind of a shallow, I lost motivation with that quite quickly. I was like, well, that's not going to really affect my bottom line. I'm paid when I'm paid. So that's me being super honest.

Livvy (25:06):

Yeah, that's a good point because I think I've been here too where it's like, it's just my work. It's just my work. Well, that's

Emma (25:13):

50, 40, 60,

Livvy (25:15):

Depending on what you do hours of your week, you should be happy majority of the time

Emma (25:21):

And just be able to get more done. And that really, I think provides a lot more motivation. But when you hit a brick wall over and over again where you're trying to change something, it's hard to find more motivation. So that deeper motivation of knowing you may enjoy your day more, I think that actually can be really encouraging.

Michaela  (25:37):

It reduces the friction of getting my job done, of doing my job,

Emma (25:42):

Of doing

Michaela  (25:42):

Work. It makes it a more smooth process so you don't have that daily frustration of, Susan didn't respond to my email yet. Has she even read it?

Emma (25:51):

I don't know. Again, this person didn't come to this meeting because there was no communication about when we were having it. Now we're not even going to have the meeting, even though 16 of the 17 people are there. These things affect the whole team. Then the whole team is upset and frustrated. And then how do you think that then affects the product you're putting out there and their interactions with the client? And it's just a downward spiral, but yeah, how do you sum all that up in a conversation with your boss? It's a challenge.

Livvy (26:17):

We've all done it and it's hard and it's never easy. And just because I think the other thing I would tell old Olivia is just because you might get pushback. There are some bosses who just aren't going to change, and we can acknowledge that I think here, but those difficult conversations could lead to a really big payoff. And I sometimes wish I would've done that more knowing the people that I worked with.

Michaela  (26:38):

My challenge in suggesting these new ideas is that they look so drastically different from what people expect. I always think of the end result. I'm always 500 yards down the road being like, ah, yes, this is what it will look like, but it looks so foreign to folks. They haven't followed my train of thought to get to this place. And so when you hand someone something that doesn't look like anything they're used to, they don't want to touch it. Like, oh, no, I can't learn this. This is the new user interface, whatever it is. I think part of it is to be sneaky and start small and make it look like what they already know. We had, I think someone on office hours or within our community asked something about using Loop within email so that people who use email can start using Loop and not even know it. And so I think that's a great idea. I know, right? That's cool. Sneaky to get people to adopt things that maybe they don't realize they're adopting a new tool

Emma (27:43):

Or another one. That's just such an easy example is if you have an event coming up and you usually would send an email with all the information in it, send a message, or if you have to the email, but don't have any of the information in the message, have a link to your SharePoint intranet if you're trying to get people to start exploring that. And so don't always spoonfeed everyone, all the information, make them have to go find it, and so that they start to learn the tool, whether it's a intranet or they have to log onto teams to go see the information. If that's where it's posted,

Livvy (28:14):

Something that's doable. It's not like this massive, oh my gosh, I can't even fathom trying to do this to everyone, but just like, oh, I'm just going to do it once and see what happens. Let's see what goes on.

Emma (28:24):

So let's leave everyone with the one or two things that we enjoy most about our modern workplace that we think they could adopt.

Michaela  (28:34):

Love it.

Emma (28:35):

I probably have my too if you want me to go, go, go. But again, because I came from such non-modern workplaces, this will probably seem elementary to some people, but if you're hearing this and it sounds new, you need to use it. So within SharePoint, just a couple years ago, I didn't understand how document collaboration worked, so I didn't realize, I think years and years ago, this is going to show my lack of teams knowledge from years ago, but you used to not be able to collaborate on a document in the desktop app. You could only do it online. And so that turned a lot of people off to being able to collaborate. If you had it open on your desktop and someone else had it open on their desktop or when we had Dropbox, that's how it was. Anyway, teams allows you to collaborate in documents when you both have it open in the desktop.

(29:20):

So if you don't know that it is a thing, and we use it here all the time, and it's a lifesaver. I think it's been around for a couple years, and if you're not using it at your company, which I know there are companies that aren't using it because worked for some of them, you should start using it. So document collaboration's huge. And then topic-based channels, which you guys are probably going to echo. But yeah, it's just changed my life. Being able to know where to go to talk to who for which topic, and having that structured, and you don't have to think about it, then you don't have to think about who in marketing needs to know about this. We just have a marketing channel. So those would be my two. Those

Livvy (29:57):

Are good. Two, yeah. My two, I would definitely, I'm going to say topic-based communication, and obviously for the reasons of just being able to find your messages, but I think what happens a lot of the time in workplaces is there is secret pettiness, secret ego that no one's even going to acknowledge, and people are people. You can't always avoid that. The biggest benefit of topic-based communication that I have found is nothing's technically yours or private, which Matt Dressel, one of our co-founders talks about this. You just throw out your information into the void and it kind of starts to build this comradery trust between coworkers, and it's something that I had never experienced until working here that I was like, wow, everyone's just so in our random, we have a random channel where it's like, Hey, or general, I'm going to be out for 30 minutes, and it's not a secret. It's not like someone has to tip

Emma (30:49):

Toe open. Communication doesn't feel like there's all these secret,

Livvy (30:53):

And same with like, oh, we have a marketing team channel where it's just being able to have people review my work. I can review other people's work. It's just created this such an evil, I mean even level evil, not evil, even level playground where you can just be like, here's my work that, and then I don't know if this is necessarily here, but if you're in a place where you're really like, I just don't know where to start, my advice to you would be make out a list of the things that you do every single day, every day from menial tasks to your big tasks to what you have to send and start breaking them out into areas where you're like, okay, this, I can definitely make more modern and I can start somewhere small. That's not going to happen until I get pretty big leadership on board because even though I don't have to do that here, that would be what I would've told old Livy to do because you can implement it, you can really do it, I promise, even if it's not everything. Those would be my two things.

Michaela  (31:50):

Yeah, I guess it's tricky for me to follow up with that kind of what I want to say as well, something I do really appreciate about using Slack, and maybe for me it's the connection to Discord, because I've always used Discord for video game messaging, and Slack is structured very similarly, and so maybe it's my connection to it there, but to me it feels more casual and I actually know my coworkers more.

Emma (32:18):

So true.

Michaela  (32:19):

Yeah. We can create a quick response. We can respond to something with an emoji. Yeah,

Emma (32:25):

A gif,

Livvy (32:26):

Custom emojis,

Michaela  (32:27):

Custom emoji. I'm always uploading new emojis and I feel like it creates a more casual way of communicating with folks. I know that someone has seen something when they've tossed a check mark emoji on there. They don't have to respond. Noted. Thank you. It's not as formal. You don't have your signature on an email of like, thank you. Here are my 20 ways to contact me with my personal phone, and it's just a lot more fluent and smooth and authentic, and so that's, I think another way. It helps you enjoy your job more too. Yes,

Livvy (33:06):

Completely agree. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a good one. I would echo all of that. Well, you guys, I think we did a fantastic first Bulb Gals podcast episode that was fun, and we talked about a lot of things that we've all felt, and we hope to people who are listening, you're not alone in this. This is a really common thing, and just because our workplace is really modern, we're always improving here, which is a great attitude to have. So thank you so much for listening, and we hope that we could help you a little bit today and we'll see you on the next episode.

Mitch (33:39):

Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already subscribed to our show on your favorite podcasting app, so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulb Digital, and special thanks to Eric Veneman for our music tracks and producing this episode. If you have any questions for us, head to make others successful.com and you can get in touch with us there. You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the most out of Office 365. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.

Livvy (00:06):

Hey guys, welcome to a special episode of the Make Other Successful podcast because we have the Bulb gals on today. This has been a little bit in the making. We've been talking about it for a few months actually. And then Mitch actually shout out, Tim was like, you guys, you're going to do it. So we're here today. We're going to talk about, actually kind of a unique topic. We all were kind of hired in line of each other within one a span of three months,

Emma (00:35):

Two or three months.

Livvy (00:36):

And we have all come from different workplaces, different backgrounds of work, and now we're all here and we work in a modern workplace. And our experience has been so great and we kind of want to talk about what that has made our everyday work life, what we probably could have changed in our previous jobs to make our work lives easier there and some more topics based on that. So let's get started. We need to set the scene of how did Bald Gals come to exist?

Emma (01:05):

It's a good question. Yeah, I guess I was the first of the three hires and then McKayla very shortly after. And then Libby, you joined about two months later. So our company was going through a big growth spurt and all three of us got hired. And it's a tech space company. We work in tech and we work with a lot of guys. A lot of guys who worked with a lot of guys for a lot of years. They didn't have many females, women working with them for a while, but it's been really fun to shake it up and have all of us on the team.

Livvy (01:39):

Yeah, a lot of you guys know we use Slack here, we don't. That's our internal messaging system. And I think what within the first month of me starting, we made a private bulb gal Slack message, and that's where we coined Bulb Gals. That's where that name kind of came in. So let's do intros. I'm Livy. I'm our marketing coordinator here. So all the newsletters, blogs, all that comes from me. And I started about January. How about you?

Emma (02:07):

Great. I'm Emma. I'm our delivery lead here and I started a little over a year ago and I do everything project management.

Livvy (02:14):

Nice.

Michaela  (02:15):

And then I'm Michaela, I'm our power platform developer. I started a year, I think to the date. So

Livvy (02:23):

One

Emma (02:23):

Year anniversary. Congrats.

Livvy (02:25):

Okay, well, I'm going to just work this way, but Emma, since you're kind of the first one hired from this trio, give your background what you worked in and talk a little bit about the environment of your previous workplaces.

Emma (02:40):

So this topic, I feel like it's really near and dear to my heart because the first week and month here I realized, wow, Bob Digital does it so differently than every other workplace I've ever been in. So I've sort of really run the gamut of workplaces. I started as corporate as you can go at one of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in the country or in the world. Worked for a major credit card processing company bank in New York and we had thousands of employees. We were not very modern. I want to say those companies always feel like they're modern, they have all the money and the resources, but it takes a long time to change the way they do things. So looking back, I recognized that although we had all the technology, I don't think it was always well adopted in the different teams. And obviously this is going back a decade now.

(03:28):

Remote work wasn't quite what it is today. So that was an interesting experience to start my career in. And then I worked in a startup where I was one of three employees, so it was really small, little less important to use software and technology, but at the same time we definitely were not modern. And then I moved into a small business, and again, just a different industry. It was in the construction industry and as everyone knows about construction, very slow moving industry as far as change. So I've really worked in these non-modern workplaces. So bulb to me felt like the most modern workplace I'd ever come across. And yeah, I'm excited to get into just how it's changed my work life and it makes doing work so much more efficient, which as an efficiency minded person has been a breath of fresh air.

Livvy (04:15):

Nice, nice.

Emma (04:16):

What about you?

Livvy (04:17):

So I am quite young. I'm only 24, so I didn't graduate that long ago and I went to art school. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I just kind of fell into my first job out of college, which was at an advertising agency doing social media content design for really big brands and just kind of working through the agency pyramid, which if any of you listening work at an agency, the pyramid that has to go through a million rounds of edits, client calls, constantly crazy hours. And we were not modern my agency. And with so many moving parts, I feel like I don't know how we got anything done, honestly. So then moving to a job where I worked, which is just a term to be like, I didn't work for clients, I worked for a company and designing their social media, it was a lot smaller of a team, still wasn't modern. Things fell through the cracks constantly. And that's kind of when I had the realization it doesn't matter if you have a million people to work with or three people to work with, if your systems aren't modern and they're not strategic work's not going to get done very well. And then I come to Bulb and it was like this slap in the face moment where you're like, how did I get work done anywhere

Emma (05:30):

Before this?

Livvy (05:30):

Right? I don't know. I have no idea how any work got done. And yeah, kind of just to say what Emma said is it's just such a breath of fresh air to work at a place that prioritizes modernity and making sure processes are staying updated as they hire new people. So that's a little bit of my history. McKayla.

Emma (05:50):

Well I guess

Livvy (05:51):

How far back are

Emma (05:52):

We going?

Livvy (05:54):

Sorry.

Emma (05:55):

So I'll just focus on my last

Michaela  (05:56):

Job where I was there for five years, started in a fairly low level role and just kind of expanded my job as it went on. It was in higher education working for facilities. And when I came in, the building that I was working in had just opened maybe a few months prior. So it was a little bit of chaos from our side of things. We had to organize hundreds of people and put new processes in place. So I was kind of working with a blank slate, but at the same time, we didn't have the capacity to get all of these things in place while we were trying to get our jobs done. We didn't have that spare room. It was kind of like putting out fires when

Emma (06:43):

So you couldn't actually work on the strategy.

Michaela  (06:45):

Exactly. And so by the time I left, I had tried to implement a few things that a few systems, and that's how I got involved in Power Automate and had tried to push toward a more modern workplace and implement the things that we do here. But that was the most challenging part was the adoption and the actual deployment of these systems because folks are, after five years stuck in their way of I need to email this person for this form. Well that form's outdated by two years when I've got it hosted. The most recent update on a SharePoint site that no one uses. So that was the most challenging part. So coming here, seeing the ways that we try to push for that yet still encounter those same issues has been, I guess validating but also a little eyeopening that it wasn't just me encountering those things.

Emma (07:43):

Right. And I'm sure you left a legacy there, you started the work and others will hopefully pick it up and move in that direction. We'll see. Because I do feel like, right, I mean if you're not changing and you're not moving forward and you do start to realize, well, our competitors are using these tools to their best of their ability, and all of a sudden you look around and although I think some industries move slower than others, eventually everyone's going to figure out, wow, everyone else is using this platform or they can collaborate on documents really easily and we don't have that and what's wrong with us. And so if you're listening to this and you are in one of those businesses, getting your leaders on board is obviously one of the biggest steps. And it sounds like that's one of the ways you were trying to do it of implement systems and then get people to come around alongside you.

Michaela  (08:30):

Yeah, and it's also challenging from say internal communication like an intranet, SharePoint, to get folks to collaborate on that to then have content to hand out to people to give them their places within that intranet where they are responsible for that content. So there's not just from higher up folks adopting it,

Emma (08:55):

Yeah, leadership,

Michaela  (08:56):

But also from your peers to help you push this thing forward. Sometimes it does feel like a one man thing,

Emma (09:02):

And when there is a lack of accountability there, people don't feel like they're the owners, then they sort of shirk responsibility and

Michaela  (09:08):

Say, I don't want

Emma (09:09):

To really deal with

Livvy (09:09):

That. Your story is not unique either, because I think you speak to previous past Libby where something needs to change, and that's how you said you got involved in power apps was recognizing, wait, maybe I can start making things a little bit easier, more modern. Did you run into where it was harder to get peers on board or leadership or since maybe leadership wouldn't get on board, then how could you expect your peers to do or to adopt any of that?

Michaela  (09:38):

Yeah, that's a good point. I think it was more so just it's the communication aspect. We didn't have strong communication to begin with. Everything was over email until 2020.

Livvy (09:51):

Yeah, don't do

Michaela  (09:52):

That. And then we did move to teams, so that was great. I love Teams. I know that we use Slack here, but Teams is the first for me. But yeah, it was more so getting folks to understand this is the new way that we're going to do it and this is how we're going to do it. And no matter how many emails or teams messages I would send, it felt like too large of a role to not have that teamwork, to not have those folks be on my side from the start and to try to reign people in and

Emma (10:31):

Then updating people on what's new or what a new process or

Michaela  (10:34):

New standard. Exactly. So

Emma (10:36):

You almost have to have the communication in place first.

Michaela  (10:39):

That's how it felt. That was a challenge in my experience, was then communicating this out. And part of it was we were replacing old systems, so people still have those bookmarks and all of that jazz, and so it's really hard to break those things.

Emma (10:54):

So you came from an experience of teams to Slack. What were you using at your old companies

Livvy (10:59):

Teams both times? Teams.

Emma (11:00):

Okay. I came from a company where we didn't use any type of messaging software. We used sometimes iPhone group chats, which is really annoying because it's very personal. Personal because this is a small business. But we were growing, we grew from, I started with three employees and I left at 17. So we had huge growth in the three years I was there. But we did not start building in those systems until I think it was about 15 employees in, I actually migrated us from Dropbox over to Teams or SharePoint really is with all of our files. But teams would open automatically on all of our computers and all of us would go and close the window. None of us used teams ever because the way that leadership liked to communicate was email and it was email, email, email or text to our personal cell phones.

(11:48):

And I say this looking back now, I wish I could have put more modern tools in before I left because I know now how much teams or Slack could benefit these companies or really this particular one I'm thinking of and their goals and just their communication in general. But yeah, so I went from just email to then Ball Digital Slack. It's been amazing to be on the same page with other employees who are working on the same project in real time and not have to worry about the churn that emails bring. That has particularly completely changed my work life.

Livvy (12:24):

Yeah, I think the communication aspect or the biggest difference I noticed when I started working here and when I actually got to learn my job role and was performing my tasks at an automatic pace was, I don't know if you guys felt like this, but at my previous jobs it felt like not only do I have to get my tasks done, but I have to figure out how to make sure everyone's on the same page when they receive. If I need someone to review an asset or, oh, shoot, my one manager likes to email, but my other manager really likes to communicate over teams. So I got to differentiate between that. Now it's like I just get my work done and I know the processes in place. We all are on the same page in some way that it's actually getting the work done is most of my day now, not how do I make up for that lack of modern communication, internal communication, organized, it's just a mess.

Emma (13:19):

And you're touching on such a great point, Livvy, because I feel like from what I said, I was like, well, the tool really changed my life. Having Slack great, but it's not just having the tools, it's not just having teams, it's not just having Slack. It's not just moving your business away and to be more modern. It's also having some type of system or governance or process that then is clearly communicated when you are onboarded of, Hey, this is how we do it. If you think of a better way, feel free to bring it up to us. But this is the process so that it feels like you've now, expectations have been set. You know how to follow those. You don't have to figure those out. You just have to do the work, which isn't that what we all want most of the time. And then if you're a system oriented person, maybe you'll have some ideas on how to improve it, which I think honestly all of us have probably done or brought forward. And it's an open conversation. You looked like you had a thought.

Michaela  (14:11):

I did. So I was thinking about how our Slack is organized by all these different channels, and you were talking about the structure of it that really I think helps facilitate a lot of this. Whereas I've been, at my previous job, we had teams, which was great, but we were kind of thrown into it with suddenly being remote in 2020. And so we didn't have structure, it was just one single thread of everything. We were a team

Emma (14:43):

Of, oh man.

Michaela  (14:45):

And we were a team of seven folks spread across a couple different locations, and it was just everything in one spot and it

Emma (14:54):

Everything everywhere all at once.

Michaela  (14:56):

And it's similar to email in that way where there's this ambiguity of organization within, you have just one inbox, you can put your stuff in folders, but really it's just one inbox where these threads of communication are taking place. And the way that we have our Slack channel set up actually encouraged me to create a Discord chat with me and my partner, and I've broken it out into, this is finances, this is date planning, and things like that so that we That so smart. I know. And it feels so much better because now it's not just our text chain going back and forth, which we still use obviously, but it's much more structured and has been really helpful for organizing my relationship. I love that you're using

Emma (15:45):

Topic-based messaging to level up your relationship real life. Well done. I love it, Mikayla. I love that. So I feel like what we are really touching on here is topic-based messaging in itself isn't necessarily the answer, but you do need to bring in some strategy and some structure around, okay, how are we going to organize topics? How are we going to actually use the structure to the best? We can't just have one thread. And to what you were saying, Mikail, a lot of people might resonate with that of, well, I have so much work to do. When am I going to find time to go sit in a room with a whiteboard and whiteboard out the structure of all of this? What would you say to someone like that? How would you encourage them? Well,

Michaela  (16:24):

The whiteboard thing actually makes me think of what we would do at our previous job was we would literally bring in a rolling whiteboard into a conference room, and on a regular basis, we would make out lists of all of the things that we had to accomplish and where we were at with updates to projects. It's is that

Emma (16:46):

The only spot it lived?

Michaela  (16:48):

And then we take a photo of it and we post it in Teams Classic, and it worked for what we needed, and we would do brainstorming things that way. But if we had in place already a system where these things lived and we didn't have to remember them and then write them down and refer to these lists,

Emma (17:08):

So maybe if they

Michaela  (17:09):

Were each, the work would've been done

Emma (17:10):

Already each its own channel or each its own topic or each its own, however you wanted to organize it. But that could have potentially helped as

Michaela  (17:17):

Well. Exactly. Yeah. So it was recreating all these threads and taking up an hour or two of our time every couple weeks, and so when I could have posted a 32nd message in a thread and then continued on with my day, so it was like instead of taking the two hours to build the system, we were spending two hours every other week

Emma (17:42):

To try to remember everything to try to

Michaela  (17:43):

Work without a system.

Emma (17:44):

I think you're hitting on such a good point because everyone feels like we don't have time to stop and think through the strategy, but if you just can convince a couple people, whether it's just your manager or a leader in the company, or even just a peer to be like, Hey, I really think if we just look at this, figure this out, structure this and get some topic-based messaging channels in place, it's going to help us in the long run. Let's take half a day and do this and it's going to save us weeks of time in the long run. That'd be my encouragement. Looking back at the businesses I've worked at, man, if I just sat down and thought about it for a little bit and thought about the strategy and thought about the power of the tools, and then put those two things together instead of just trying to keep swimming and survive in the amount of workload you usually have, I think we could have really made some powerful pivots for those businesses. And I almost want to call some of 'em and be like, Hey, you should use this tool this way. There's a better way. You want to share that wisdom, which is what part of what we do here at Bulb, which is why I love what we do, but you want to share the wisdom once you learn it on that there's a better way of working.

Livvy (18:49):

Absolutely. That's actually a good point to girl math, what you just said. If you'd spend a lot of time, now you're spending less time later,

Emma (18:56):

A hundred percent hashtag girl math, hashtag

Livvy (18:58):

Girl math. That could be the sponsor of today's

Emma (19:01):

Video. I think sometimes though people do underestimate the power that if you do think through the communication side of it, that is what ends up helping with the tech adoption. That's the other piece that I'd love for us to chat more about as well, because specifically the construction industry, we were looking at a lot of people who didn't want to change the way they use technology at all, so they were slow to adopt even apps on their phone type thing for work. So it's really hard to think about a project manager, a superintendent out on a site actually using the teams app when they don't really even want to use email. They just want to text what

Livvy (19:40):

Was their default, if not those things.

Emma (19:42):

Texting. Yeah, direct text or once in a while, once a week they check email or phone calls. It's all phone calls in that industry. What's been interesting is one of our main clients here at Bulb is actually a construction company, and I've seen how they've embraced modern tools, and they're an example of, you can't really just say, well, our industry doesn't really change, because when you do see players in that industry changing and modernizing and just saving a ton of money, time, effort, all of it, you built an app for one of our clients that's in that industry, and it's so fascinating to see how it changes. And I almost wanted to make that a case study and send that to my old company to say, Hey, these things could really make a difference. I almost feel like I drop a ball at these old places, but I didn't know, I didn't have the knowledge about how it could actually shape these specific businesses.

Livvy (20:34):

And hopefully people are listening right now know that it's not always, I kind of call it like a death sentence. Like McKayla was talking, making a couple Slack channels. I wish I could tell old Livy, Hey, in your social media department, just focus on those 20 people. You don't have to do the 200 person company. That's

Emma (20:52):

Great advice. Be

Livvy (20:53):

Like, Hey, you guys been thinking we should make, I'm using Slack channels for an example, an Instagram or a client-based one. You can separate it out however you want, but even just that freedom from your mind of knowing I know exactly where a message is that I need to refer to, or you talked about how you just had a stream of consciousness, it sounds like.

Michaela  (21:17):

Yeah, yeah. We'd have the random like, Hey, check out my kids at their soccer game, and then, Hey, I have an upcoming deadline. I need a response on this. So it's just like, okay, Sharon, we can't look at right now like, oh, that's cute, but it's getting in the way of my work. I would like to shove it to the side, but I don't have the luxury to do that. It's all in one place. No,

Emma (21:37):

You're so right though, Olivia, about starting small, because looking back, there were three of us who worked on the accounting side of operations and everything as well. We should have had a channel just for the three of us, and I know those two women would've gotten on board. They were office workers in the sense that they were at their computer a lot. That's where I could have started it, find the in of who will be a tech adopter and then start small with that. You don't have to do the 200 person company to begin with,

Michaela  (22:03):

And that's the champions model of things. And so I was part of the champions model at my previous place, and of course you were champion. I know it was the Microsoft champions, and so we met once a month. I had to travel an hour to go to the main campus there, and it was so fun. I got to learn about teams and all this jazz. So when we were forced to go remotely, I think me having that knowledge did help our team. I remember I gave a little presentation. It was like the day before we had to be remote, and I'm like, okay, this is how we use teams. This is how you send a message. My McKayla, I had a little PowerPoint ready

Emma (22:44):

Explaining all

Michaela  (22:44):

Of it from my own experience being a champion. I think that is a very successful model. It's still challenging for those people, but you are building a workforce that's spreading that adoption. It's kind of like a wave

Emma (23:00):

From the ground up.

Livvy (23:02):

How would you guys, because I know if I was listening to this podcast a year, a year and a half ago, I would've been like, that's great. I understand how I can do it. Unfortunately, and I feel you. I know Emma and McKayla probably feel your pain. Sometimes you work with people who just, it's sometimes an ego thing. It's an ageism kind of thing where it's like, I've been doing it this way for 20 years. Why would I do that? What would you tell those people if they want to start trying to maybe put in a little just some more modern ways of doing things when you feel like you've hit a brick wall?

Emma (23:37):

I feel like on the one hand, I would go back and tell myself this, if I could go talk to past Emma that I feel like where your mind normally goes with these sort of modernizations is it's going to help the bottom line. You go talk to your leader and you say, well, we'll save time, so we'll be more efficient, so we'll save money. And so then you think that will actually move the needle. And depending on the person, maybe it would, it wouldn't. I wish I could go back and tell past me, you'll enjoy working more if you're able to get these, because it used to in my head be like, well, too bad my leader won't listen. He could be saving so much money, but it's his company, not mine. But that's such a shallow sort of reasoning. I actually think you just end up having more joy in your workday when things go more smoothly.

(24:29):

And maybe that's cheesy to say, but I've experienced it the last year of enjoying work much more when you feel like you're on the same page and you're actually rowing in the same direction with all your coworkers. So given the communication topic we're on, I think that one's top of mind. I would almost take that angle of if you can convince yourself of that, it gives you a lot more intrinsic motivation to get other people on board with you in whatever way you need to. But don't just think of it as only a money saver, because that can be kind of a shallow, I lost motivation with that quite quickly. I was like, well, that's not going to really affect my bottom line. I'm paid when I'm paid. So that's me being super honest.

Livvy (25:06):

Yeah, that's a good point because I think I've been here too where it's like, it's just my work. It's just my work. Well, that's

Emma (25:13):

50, 40, 60,

Livvy (25:15):

Depending on what you do hours of your week, you should be happy majority of the time

Emma (25:21):

And just be able to get more done. And that really, I think provides a lot more motivation. But when you hit a brick wall over and over again where you're trying to change something, it's hard to find more motivation. So that deeper motivation of knowing you may enjoy your day more, I think that actually can be really encouraging.

Michaela  (25:37):

It reduces the friction of getting my job done, of doing my job,

Emma (25:42):

Of doing

Michaela  (25:42):

Work. It makes it a more smooth process so you don't have that daily frustration of, Susan didn't respond to my email yet. Has she even read it?

Emma (25:51):

I don't know. Again, this person didn't come to this meeting because there was no communication about when we were having it. Now we're not even going to have the meeting, even though 16 of the 17 people are there. These things affect the whole team. Then the whole team is upset and frustrated. And then how do you think that then affects the product you're putting out there and their interactions with the client? And it's just a downward spiral, but yeah, how do you sum all that up in a conversation with your boss? It's a challenge.

Livvy (26:17):

We've all done it and it's hard and it's never easy. And just because I think the other thing I would tell old Olivia is just because you might get pushback. There are some bosses who just aren't going to change, and we can acknowledge that I think here, but those difficult conversations could lead to a really big payoff. And I sometimes wish I would've done that more knowing the people that I worked with.

Michaela  (26:38):

My challenge in suggesting these new ideas is that they look so drastically different from what people expect. I always think of the end result. I'm always 500 yards down the road being like, ah, yes, this is what it will look like, but it looks so foreign to folks. They haven't followed my train of thought to get to this place. And so when you hand someone something that doesn't look like anything they're used to, they don't want to touch it. Like, oh, no, I can't learn this. This is the new user interface, whatever it is. I think part of it is to be sneaky and start small and make it look like what they already know. We had, I think someone on office hours or within our community asked something about using Loop within email so that people who use email can start using Loop and not even know it. And so I think that's a great idea. I know, right? That's cool. Sneaky to get people to adopt things that maybe they don't realize they're adopting a new tool

Emma (27:43):

Or another one. That's just such an easy example is if you have an event coming up and you usually would send an email with all the information in it, send a message, or if you have to the email, but don't have any of the information in the message, have a link to your SharePoint intranet if you're trying to get people to start exploring that. And so don't always spoonfeed everyone, all the information, make them have to go find it, and so that they start to learn the tool, whether it's a intranet or they have to log onto teams to go see the information. If that's where it's posted,

Livvy (28:14):

Something that's doable. It's not like this massive, oh my gosh, I can't even fathom trying to do this to everyone, but just like, oh, I'm just going to do it once and see what happens. Let's see what goes on.

Emma (28:24):

So let's leave everyone with the one or two things that we enjoy most about our modern workplace that we think they could adopt.

Michaela  (28:34):

Love it.

Emma (28:35):

I probably have my too if you want me to go, go, go. But again, because I came from such non-modern workplaces, this will probably seem elementary to some people, but if you're hearing this and it sounds new, you need to use it. So within SharePoint, just a couple years ago, I didn't understand how document collaboration worked, so I didn't realize, I think years and years ago, this is going to show my lack of teams knowledge from years ago, but you used to not be able to collaborate on a document in the desktop app. You could only do it online. And so that turned a lot of people off to being able to collaborate. If you had it open on your desktop and someone else had it open on their desktop or when we had Dropbox, that's how it was. Anyway, teams allows you to collaborate in documents when you both have it open in the desktop.

(29:20):

So if you don't know that it is a thing, and we use it here all the time, and it's a lifesaver. I think it's been around for a couple years, and if you're not using it at your company, which I know there are companies that aren't using it because worked for some of them, you should start using it. So document collaboration's huge. And then topic-based channels, which you guys are probably going to echo. But yeah, it's just changed my life. Being able to know where to go to talk to who for which topic, and having that structured, and you don't have to think about it, then you don't have to think about who in marketing needs to know about this. We just have a marketing channel. So those would be my two. Those

Livvy (29:57):

Are good. Two, yeah. My two, I would definitely, I'm going to say topic-based communication, and obviously for the reasons of just being able to find your messages, but I think what happens a lot of the time in workplaces is there is secret pettiness, secret ego that no one's even going to acknowledge, and people are people. You can't always avoid that. The biggest benefit of topic-based communication that I have found is nothing's technically yours or private, which Matt Dressel, one of our co-founders talks about this. You just throw out your information into the void and it kind of starts to build this comradery trust between coworkers, and it's something that I had never experienced until working here that I was like, wow, everyone's just so in our random, we have a random channel where it's like, Hey, or general, I'm going to be out for 30 minutes, and it's not a secret. It's not like someone has to tip

Emma (30:49):

Toe open. Communication doesn't feel like there's all these secret,

Livvy (30:53):

And same with like, oh, we have a marketing team channel where it's just being able to have people review my work. I can review other people's work. It's just created this such an evil, I mean even level evil, not evil, even level playground where you can just be like, here's my work that, and then I don't know if this is necessarily here, but if you're in a place where you're really like, I just don't know where to start, my advice to you would be make out a list of the things that you do every single day, every day from menial tasks to your big tasks to what you have to send and start breaking them out into areas where you're like, okay, this, I can definitely make more modern and I can start somewhere small. That's not going to happen until I get pretty big leadership on board because even though I don't have to do that here, that would be what I would've told old Livy to do because you can implement it, you can really do it, I promise, even if it's not everything. Those would be my two things.

Michaela  (31:50):

Yeah, I guess it's tricky for me to follow up with that kind of what I want to say as well, something I do really appreciate about using Slack, and maybe for me it's the connection to Discord, because I've always used Discord for video game messaging, and Slack is structured very similarly, and so maybe it's my connection to it there, but to me it feels more casual and I actually know my coworkers more.

Emma (32:18):

So true.

Michaela  (32:19):

Yeah. We can create a quick response. We can respond to something with an emoji. Yeah,

Emma (32:25):

A gif,

Livvy (32:26):

Custom emojis,

Michaela  (32:27):

Custom emoji. I'm always uploading new emojis and I feel like it creates a more casual way of communicating with folks. I know that someone has seen something when they've tossed a check mark emoji on there. They don't have to respond. Noted. Thank you. It's not as formal. You don't have your signature on an email of like, thank you. Here are my 20 ways to contact me with my personal phone, and it's just a lot more fluent and smooth and authentic, and so that's, I think another way. It helps you enjoy your job more too. Yes,

Livvy (33:06):

Completely agree. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a good one. I would echo all of that. Well, you guys, I think we did a fantastic first Bulb Gals podcast episode that was fun, and we talked about a lot of things that we've all felt, and we hope to people who are listening, you're not alone in this. This is a really common thing, and just because our workplace is really modern, we're always improving here, which is a great attitude to have. So thank you so much for listening, and we hope that we could help you a little bit today and we'll see you on the next episode.

Mitch (33:39):

Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already subscribed to our show on your favorite podcasting app, so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulb Digital, and special thanks to Eric Veneman for our music tracks and producing this episode. If you have any questions for us, head to make others successful.com and you can get in touch with us there. You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the most out of Office 365. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.

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