--- title: How can I communicate better with clients? date: 2024-02-13T05:30:00-05:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-2/how-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 07 Episode 2 – Feb 13, 2024 42:51 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## How can I communicate better with clients?  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-07/S07-E02-How-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients.mp3) In this episode we discuss various project management tools, and the pros and cons of each. Additionally how best to communicate with clients. ### Show Notes - Email from Natalie - What is a project management tool - Required features - Centralized communication - UI - Dependencies - Cost - Email notifications - batches, individually - Agile - Browser extension ### Show Links - [S01 E02 Planning Structure, Goals](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-2/planning-structure-goals/) - [Gqueues](https://www.gqueues.com/) - [Asana](https://asana.com/) - [Treelo](https://trello.com/) - [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/) - [Notion](https://www.notion.so/) - [Getting Things Done](https://gettingthingsdone.com/) - [Jira (Atlassian)](https://www.atlassian.com/) - [Air Table](https://airtable.com/) - [Notion](https://www.notion.so/) - [Milanote](https://milanote.com/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Amanda:** Welcome to another episode of the Website 101 podcast. This is the podcast for people who want to learn about building and managing websites. I am Amanda Lutz. With me, as always, Mike Mella. Hi, Mike, how are you? Hi, guys. I'm good. How you guys doing? Very good. Thank you. And Sean Smith. Hi, Sean. Hey, Amanda. Mike, I hope everybody's doing **\[00:25\]** **Sean:** Well, excited to get on to this next episode. **\[00:28\]** **Amanda:** Yes, and it's a good one. In fact, Mike has information about today's episode because we finally are all famous, email from a listener. **\[00:40\]** **Mike:** That's right. We got an actual email from an actual listener. This was, I feel bad because it was quite a while ago. This came in some time ago, let's say. And we usually had the seasons pretty well planned out so we didn't really get to it, but we're getting to it now. And the email came from Natalie and she says, I'll just read part of the email right now, topic, organizational ticket systems, like JIRA, Trello, et cetera. How do I make the feedback process better? We use Excel lists where she works. To collect feedback from our clients, it's a rather tedious process. And I would love to learn something from your approach and would be glad to receive tips and tricks. So Natalie wants to know about project management tools. That's how we're identifying this episode. Jira, Trello, what? Basecamp, Asana. I mean, we'll get through a bunch of them, right? Excel, exactly. **\[01:36\]** **Sean:** There's so many of them. **\[01:37\]** **Amanda:** There's so many. And also, I need to point out that this is actually revisiting a topic that Sean, Sean, you said you didn't like in the first or second season when it was just you doing the podcast by yourself? **\[01:49\]** **Sean:** It was the first season and the first episode, planning, structure, and goals way back in January, 2019. **\[01:59\]** **Mike:** Are we going to put that in the show notes so they can re-listen to you by yourself? **\[02:03\]** **Sean:** Yeah, actually, anytime we reference an older episode, I always link to it. There's always going to be a link in there. **\[02:11\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so we're going to address these tools and talk about the pros and cons and what you should look out for. and I don't, I doubt we'll get to a point where we pick a winner between these things. But yeah, hopefully it'll help. Natalie and everyone else who's interested in this. **\[02:28\]** **Amanda:** Yes, I think it might be important. Should we, should we like try to define like a project management tool? We know in case like we have a different definition from maybe what some other people would use. **\[02:41\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. How would you define it? Let's start with Amanda. **\[02:45\]** **Amanda:** What's your description you would have? And so because my role in any project is not being the project manager, I would think that the project management tool should be to help keep everybody on the same page, easy to update, easy for people to add comments, include haved. Like this is a problem. This is a bug that I found in the web project. Fix it. And then And I like it best when everything is in one central location. Everyone has access, everyone can update, everyone can see the current progress. And hopefully it's like one central repository. **\[03:27\]** **Sean:** That's my opinion. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good start. I would also add in some additional things that it should have to do lists that can be assigned to different users. So you can easily add and remove items or amend them as needed. Additionally, I like the ability to show certain threads to certain people, so it might be something that's only for internal use only and not the client. So maybe you're working at a small agency and the project manager and the designer and the developer need to talk about something but the client doesn't need to see what they're talking about. And maybe there'll be a different thread where the client is talking with the project manager, but you don't want your developer and designer chiming in before it's ready for them to know the information. So, being able to assign and hide tasks and threats is really important to me. And as well, I think every one of these things includes the ability to add uploads so you could upload assets and things like that. Do you have anything to add? **\[04:39\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I would agree with that. I just think to me, these things are just, yeah, they're software that helps with the communication that's involved in any kind of project. It's usually involves communication either between the developer and the client or other developers or whatever. So that's how I see it. I mean, some of them, yeah, it occurred to me, I use some tools like this for my own project management, but I don't often, don't always bring in a client to take part in the system as well. Very often, I just use it to manage just my own work. I don't even work with anyone else sometimes, but it's still very helpful. So that's what I like these things for. **\[05:21\]** **Amanda:** So I think that one of probably the most important features though that we could probably all agree with is just being able to keep all of the information in one central location. Like we've all dealt with either individual clients or individual projects where sometimes they send email and sometimes they contact you on Slack. And I've had a couple of clients that were just like obsessively always sending me text messages and it's like trying to like reply on the phone. I was like, no thank you, I don't want that. Like let's just keep everything in one location so that all of the updates are easy to find, except for a good God, not something like a word document. I've also worked with clients who insisted on using a word document. And we'll get into why that is just an awful idea **\[06:15\]** **Mike:** in a little bit. **\[06:16\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Yeah, the central location is also really helpful because you can have like company history is there And it's easy to add and remove people. So maybe you've got this project that's been going on for years, and you bring in a new designer, a new developer. But they need to understand something from the past. Good luck trying to find that in emails. Here, you can just, you got cards with titles and whatever. And it's easier just to assign something to them rather than try and find the one email out of all the millions of emails you've sent over the years. **\[06:55\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, and you're always going to encounter some people, especially on the client side if you're a developer who likes these tools who just refuses to work on some of this stuff. I have clients who are. The number of times I've heard the phrase, I just thought it would be easier to pick up the phone and call you. And it drives me crazy, because it may be easier for you, but for me, I'm in the middle of something and that you're breaking my concentration. I wasn't planning to have a half hour phone call at this time of the day. So like, you're always going to people who just work in a different way and they're not going to be into this. So you do have to sort of be flexible on the same page when using these things and working with people who are willing to work with you, right? **\[07:39\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I have one agency client that the project manager likes to call me. She'll send something and five minutes later she'll call and did you get that base camp thread? Yes. That doesn't happen often, but you know, if you're sending it by base camp, I'm gonna get to it. Yeah. Unless it's a true emergency, I really don't feel like there's a need to call without scheduling it. Like sometimes I'll reply to them and say, hey, can we clarify this on a video call? And yeah, that's great. It works. Or I'll hop in Slack because we have a Slack and I'll ask the same thing. Can we video call about it? And it's less obtrusive that way because it's not a phone ringing. **\[08:30\]** **Mike:** just better. Yeah, I had a client recently, not sorry, not a client, a developer I was working with for this with this agency, who notified me of something that I needed to be notified about, but he sent me a message in Slack. He sent a comment on the task itself, which pinged me. He sent an email and he recorded a video screencast, all of exactly the same message. And they just pinged me in all these different services. And I kept thinking, oh, he's got something new to say. Nope. Exactly the same as what I just heard. That is over communication. Yeah. That can be problematic. It can be. So should we get into some of the things that are important to consider with some of these tools? Should we name some tools first or? Oh, absolutely. What do we use the most often? Yeah, I think **\[09:23\]** **Amanda:** Maybe we could talk about just generic when you're looking at starting up a tool, like what are some things to look for, what are some things to be wary of, and then maybe after that, we could get into like specific different pros and cons for like each different tool we've used. **\[09:39\]** **Mike:** Okay, sounds good. **\[09:40\]** **Amanda:** Yep, that's what I think. **\[09:40\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so I like Kanban. I like to ask things that the most common Kanban would be something like Trello where you've got cards and columns and things like that. That's what I like. So I much prefer that style over what Basecamp gives you. Basecamp doesn't have a ConBunCode system. **\[10:01\]** **Amanda:** Remember how I just said, maybe let's keep it generic first, and then go into the... **\[10:05\]** **Sean:** Yeah, but ACI, too. OK, it was hard for me to go into it without being specific. **\[10:11\]** **Amanda:** So then I guess what you're saying is the UI is very important to you and being able to group and categorize together different tasks for whatever categories make sense for that project. **\[10:24\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, UI is very important. Some of the modern ones have various types of views that you can have. So they might have a con-bon view. They might have a, I don't know, like a spreadsheet type table view. Yeah, so you can sort of view the information in different ways. We'll get to that, **\[10:41\]** **Amanda:** I guess, a little bit later. What can do that and what can't do that? Something I wanted to mention **\[10:48\]** **Mike:** that I really like to see in these things and they don't always have them is dependencies. So what I mean by that is if you have a task that needs to be done but it can't be done before this other task is done then it's a dependency there's a dependency relationship. One is blocking the other and some of these things will let you you know if you try to click complete on the thing that is blocked by the other thing this is getting really confusing but it will say, wait a minute, you can't do this until the other one's done first. I really like that kind of feature. Oh, I'm getting a thumbs up thing for my video camera. Do you see that? That's my automatic, they're not hearing this, they're not getting to the audio. **\[11:28\]** **Amanda:** I see the little bubbles popping up, that's... **\[11:31\]** **Mike:** My computer's annoying because I'm not seeing bubbles either. Basically on a Mac now, when you give thumbs up, it does some stupid little graphic. Anyway, so yeah, dependencies is really, really valuable. They don't always have them. I've said before, I use something called GQs, which does let you have a nested task system where one is nested under another and it will warn you if you're about to complete a task that has children tasks. So that's sort of similar, but it's a really valuable feature if you have tasks that are related to each other. **\[12:04\]** **Sean:** I like the dependency one, and I don't think I've used any system that has dependencies. I used to use GQs as well, but I wasn't using it enough, sorry, I let my subscription expire. **\[12:17\]** **Amanda:** I guess that's a very important point right there. It's like the cost, I mean, I am like famously cheap and I am just not going to pay for anything I don't have to pay for, so I'm- **\[12:30\]** **Sean:** You'd be nice to say you're parsimonious, it's better than the word cheap. **\[12:34\]** **Amanda:** I'm cheap, I'm not, man it pays for enough, man does not pay him for stuff she doesn't need to. I would rather have like three different accounts with like on the free tier if they like limit you for like five projects or whatever I will like make another account just to get another five free as opposed to like paying for yet and yet another service **\[12:57\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I don't go that far, but I do my best to stay in Free free tier or the most basic tier if I if I must use something that paid that you have to pay for **\[13:09\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Well, it's a big investment because, especially what we were saying about, if you're using it to communicate with a client, you know, if you're going to commit to saying, look, client, this is what we're going to use to deal with this project throughout this, throughout the course of working on it. So you've got to sign up for your free account or whatever. Like you better make sure that if you're going to pay for it, it's the one you want to be using moving forward. Otherwise, you're bouncing back and forth between different tools, right? **\[13:37\]** **Amanda:** And so often, it's like, I will always talk to the client first, and it's like, do you currently use some sort of management tool? And if you do, let's keep using it, because that's what you're familiar with. But, you know, I would say the majority of cases, they aren't. **\[13:51\]** **Sean:** That's exactly what I do as well. **\[13:54\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, unless it's like within agency that already has something established. But yes, in a lot of cases, when we're working one-on-one with the end client, it's like, fine, you know what, you don't have anything set up. How would you feel about using this, hooray? **\[14:07\]** **Sean:** me get you set up on it. Yeah I do that as well and then if they have something I'll use it so I've used almost every possible project management tutorial on earth at this point. I think between the three of us we have covered all of them. Yeah I don't there's not one that I like. There's one that I use because it's the one I like the most out of all the ones that I don't like. That's a ringing **\[14:34\]** **Amanda:** endorsements. I don't like it the most. No, I don't like it the least. It's a double negative happening **\[14:44\]** **Sean:** there. I did have one client that refused to use anything and I had to use email with them for years. And then they ended up switching off to putting their whole website on HubSpot so I don't I no longer work with them, disappointed by that. That happens. **\[15:04\]** **Amanda:** Another feature that I really like the idea of, and yet I haven't seen it in any of the free ones that I use, is almost like in Reddit, how you can reply to a comment, but then reply to this other comment, and then reply to the reply to the comment. I'd love to see nested comments, that kind of structure happening a little bit more by default as a post because too often it's like here's the task that has been set up in the management tool and then you'll start commenting on it but then all of a sudden it'll be like oh yeah this reminds me of something else can you can you look at this too and so now this one this one ticket item this one card would everyone call it is now dealing with like two different items so every time I go to reply to it it's like okay well regarding this topic type up my response and now regarding this topic type of the response. And it's like, it's, you know, it doesn't always warrant a new, a new ticket or a new card, but it'd be nice to be able to like separate that out a bit **\[16:05\]** **Mike:** more. Yeah, and actually that reminded me of something that can be helpful when you're dealing with a lot of people. And I, I'm going to break your rule there, Amanda, but I think Asana does this, the tool, Asana, just because it's coming into my head. But what you can do is, first of all, you can tag people in comments and it will notify them and all that. You can also post like reference a previous task or like another task or maybe even another comment whereby you start, you type like ATT or something and it will give you a drop-down menu where you can select it. So it makes it really easy to refer to other things. **\[16:43\]** **Amanda:** A lot of them have that now. Trello, does it? Yeah. **\[16:47\]** **Mike:** Okay. **\[16:48\]** **Sean:** It did. Trello didn't use to do that and it's not something I've used recently because I only have Currently, only have one client that I'm using Trello with, but I think they do that. **\[16:57\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I'm currently using Trello for like four different projects. And yes, it's been... Wow, really? Okay. It doesn't do the nested comments, but you can do the mentions, you can upload... I love that you can upload images, but also if you take a screenshot, you can just like paste the image in, which I think it is. **\[17:18\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's right. That's a nice feature as well. **\[17:21\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. I also like that a lot of these project management tools will also send you emailed notifications, almost like what is the word, were they like shorten it, they just sort of like give you a batch thing. Yeah, a batch email that it's like these are the comments that have been made in the last half day or in the last whole day. I think that those are handy as well. **\[17:46\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think that's a great feature person. I like to get one email per update because then it's in my inbox. And then it's like when I might do it out of sequence and then it just works better for me. But I see how some people would prefer to get a summary or a batch of updates at once, especially if you're a project manager and you're getting like 100 of these a day. **\[18:10\]** **Amanda:** I couldn't imagine. Yeah, no, I like it because I like getting the email that has the batch of them And then what happens is when I have time to go back and work on that project, I'll see it in my inbox and be like, oh yeah, there's only a couple of things to do. There's a bunch of things to do. I can manage my time a bit more and then delete the email and go into the project management tool and actually see all of the comments and updates there and then just start working through stuff. **\[18:33\]** **Mike:** Right. It can be an issue when these notifications, if they're happening through email especially, sometimes it can be an issue with timing. Just the other day I had a situation where I was on a discussion with another developer where I was working with. And he referenced a particular component that someone had to deliver and we had to look at. And I said, oh, we haven't gotten that yet. And he said, sure, we did. And there was this weird confusing thing. And I looked at my email and suddenly the email came in, like right after he said that, notifying me of that thing. And I was like, oh, sorry, I just came in. I just got it. And so sometimes there's a bit of a, I don't know how people, if you do the summary thing where you get one email a week or whatever it is. Like, isn't there a risk of your falling behind? **\[19:18\]** **Sean:** I think the daily summary is, depending on the service, it'll be like every six hours or once a day, like you have options. Yeah, yeah. So, depending on your needs, but I'd never seen it be more than once a day, like a weekly summary just seems completely useless to you. It does, yeah. **\[19:35\]** **Amanda:** But I mean, it's like, while you're like sitting in the project management tool, you can like see the updates happening. Like all of a sudden, there's the little notification icon that shows that one of the items has been updated and you're in there already. **\[19:47\]** **Mike:** So yeah. So I just wanted to point out that some of these things are more geared towards teams than others. So I, like I said, I use something called GQs a lot. It does have a team's component to it where you can have people and assign things to them that. I just use it for myself, so I don't really know much about how good that is. But I know some of these bigger ones that we've mentioned earlier are designed for working with lots of people together. And I guess I did say earlier, it's mostly about communication, but it can also just be about managing a project, even if it's just you. So have a look at whatever tool you're considering, check, is it really designed for a lot of people? Is that something you need? Because that could affect the price of it as well. If it's intended for big teams of people. So that's something I just want to bring in. **\[20:37\]** **Sean:** Yeah, the collaboration or something that you're just using for personal use. What's the, what do you need it for? 100%. I think some of them work well for both, but they're probably shifting their focus more towards teams because that's where the money is. Right. **\[20:54\]** **Mike:** Exactly. **\[20:56\]** **Sean:** Do you want to hear more website 101 Podcast content? Of course you do. now you can not only listen to us, but watch us on our YouTube channel. Search YouTube for a website 101 podcast. **\[21:10\]** **Amanda:** Okay, let's start naming and shaming. What do you like and why do you like it? I'll start. **\[21:19\]** **Sean:** I'll start. I want to start off with the one I hate the most. So the one I've mentioned **\[21:23\]** **Mike:** GQs a bunch of times and I'm going to say it right now. GQs I like and the best thing I like about it's not as powerful as some of these other ones probably for this kind of stuff. It's based on getting things done methodology by David Allen for anyone who's into that stuff, which I'm a big fan. And the best thing about it is you can do every single thing in it with your keyboard. I'm a big keyboard guy. I don't like using the mouse if I don't have to. And you can use like every command in there is accessible from the keyboard, which is great. So that's my vote. **\[21:54\]** **Sean:** Yeah, when I use GQ's, I knew about that, but I never used it enough to remember the keyboard which is why I ended up dropping my subscription because I didn't use it enough. I liked it and I think it's a really good for managing personal to do this. I didn't find it so helpful with the business end of things. For me, obviously it works well for Mike, so like your mileage may vary. For me, the The absolute worst project management tool, the least good one. The most worthless one. The most is what is f\*\*\*ing, I don't know if I've ever heard of it. I haven't used it in years, used it with one agency for several years with them, and I just hated it with a passion. I can't remember why. I still don't like it and I would never use it by choice ever at all, worst, worst, worst, worst, there's my negative endorsement. **\[23:01\]** **Mike:** So we allowed to negatively endorse products like this. Is that a good idea on this show? **\[23:05\]** **Sean:** Maybe we can cut it. Sorry. No, just leave it in whatever. **\[23:11\]** **Amanda:** I could bleep it. Yeah, I worked on a project and they were using, what is it, the Agile project management, methodology where you would have to stand up and then every week there would be a different set of tasks that needed to be completed and we used JIRA for that. And I would say that the JIRA, like the ticketing and the assigning tasks to different people It was just as good as any of the other ones out there. But I felt that I would never initiate in doing an agile project because it just seems like so much extra work, but because the project managers were very keen on doing it that way. It seemed like the whole software package was geared directly towards that. And so there were different views and different pages for setting up milestones for different stand-ups and timelines. And you can see calendar views. and you can see this waterfall of tasks to be done. It was pretty cool. **\[24:16\]** **Mike:** Now, I always forget who owns what? Jira is owned by Bitbucket or something. **\[24:22\]** **Sean:** I think Bitbucket is owned by Jira. It's got a lot of that. Last year, it is the parent company, and they're all, and last year, there you go. Yeah, it starts with an A, yeah. **\[24:30\]** **Mike:** Something like that. **\[24:31\]** **Sean:** Jira is probably the only one of the big ones that I haven't used. **\[24:35\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I think I've used it years ago. And that's the other thing with this stuff, by the way, is updates, you know, like how often they get updated because like Basecamp, for example, we mentioned that. I've used Basecamp, but it was at least, I don't know, 12 years ago that I've last used it. I'm sure it's completely different now. **\[24:53\]** **Sean:** No, it isn't. **\[24:54\]** **Mike:** Oh, it isn't, okay, good. **\[24:56\]** **Sean:** Well, okay, good tip. The thing with Basecamp is there's two versions of it, Basecamp 2 and Basecamp 3. And I've got two clients currently on Basecamp we're using Basecamp 2 and I had one client that I took over their client so I no longer a wick with the parent client and they used to be used Basecamp 3 and I think the differences were mostly cosmetic. There might have been more features but Basecamp 2 is still around years after the release Basecamp 3. Alright, interesting. I don't know. Basecamp is, it's fine, I think it's, I don't think it's overly feature rich. doesn't have the con bun view I mentioned earlier that I like. It also doesn't let you drag and drop things around, which is part of the con bun view that Trello has. So I personally wouldn't choose it, but I kind of like middle of the road to me. And I'm not really the target. It's more, it is more for big teams rather than solo, uh, solo **\[26:01\]** **Mike:** people. Yeah. So you guys both talked about using Trello recently. So how do you feel I've used Trello as well, but not in a long time, and not extensively at all. I just kind of toured around with it. Actually, Sean and I used it for a long time. **\[26:16\]** **Sean:** Yeah, because that was on my insistence back when we started the podcast, and you never liked Trello. For me, Trello is the one that I choose because it's the best of the rest. **\[26:32\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I think that Trello's got some pretty good features. And it's free. It's free, which is thumbs up. **\[26:40\]** **Sean:** There is a paid tier, but I don't know anything about it. Sorry Amanda, I keep interrupting. **\[26:46\]** **Amanda:** That's OK. I've also found, because I was trying to use Trello a little bit, so a negative of Trello is that it does not have that nested comments that I would really like to see. **\[26:59\]** **Sean:** Oh, Trello, are you listening? **\[27:00\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, Trello, dear Trello, please do that. But it does have things like you can, not only can you set up these categories that you see on the main layout, but for each ticket or card, they call them cards. For each card that you make, you can also create different categories. So how I usually set it up is that I will make a column for, to do a column for in progress, a column for needs client feedback, a column for ready for review, and then a column for completed. And then within, yeah, and then within each of those cards, you can like have different categories. Is it back end? Is it CMS? Is it design? Is it content related? And then you can also assign them to like the different people who are active on the board. So like, is it for me? Is it for the client? Is it for the designer? Is like, who is it? Who is it that we're waiting on? But because of this, I found that having all of these columns to do in progress, etc. whatever was really taking up a lot of space. I found a chrome extension for Trello that would if that column was empty it would take **\[28:14\]** **Mike:** the heading of that column and put it vertical so that it would say a lot of **\[28:20\]** **Amanda:** death space going across but it was like still there you could like still see it still like easily drag things into it. So it's like there are a lot of times with with these software, with these project management packages, sometimes if it doesn't have all the features that you want, maybe go find a Chrome extension or whatever browser you use in extension for that. Maybe it'll add a little bit more functionality. **\[28:44\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, all right. **\[28:45\]** **Sean:** So one thing that's both good and bad with Trello is the ability to add people to cards. If your client doesn't remember to add you to the card and does not at reply you. You won't get notified when they write something. So clients can, hold on a minute, I know, Amanda's raising her hand. So clients can just create a card and start typing and if they don't at reply you in the body of the card or add you to the card directly, you're not gonna get notified. I suspect Amanda's got something, a solution that I'm unaware of. **\[29:21\]** **Amanda:** Oh, I was just gonna say, especially if it's like an active project that you're still working on and you're in Trello a lot. And if you see that that's happened, you can just go in and watch that card, so you will still be notified. **\[29:33\]** **Sean:** Oh, yeah, you can, you can add yourself to it, which I, which I've done. But it's not, it would be nicer if there was a way, maybe there is, and I should look into it. If there is a way to automatically add myself to every card. Because generally it's me and one client, so I want to just be added to everything. **\[29:52\]** **Mike:** Is that the key? So even if you own the prop, like you own the account. **\[29:57\]** **Sean:** The pillow board. **\[29:59\]** **Mike:** Yeah. It still won't notify you of every card. **\[30:03\]** **Sean:** Not unless you add yourself to the card. Oh, interesting. So even when I create a card myself, I have to add myself to the card. **\[30:10\]** **Mike:** Oh yeah, that could be annoying yet. **\[30:12\]** **Sean:** So I have a man that says you don't. **\[30:16\]** **Amanda:** I don't think you do. Well, let us know. We can let us know. If we can experiment later, we'll be fine. **\[30:24\]** **Mike:** So when I wanted to bring up a cool to move on from Trello, or you guys have more stuff to save on Trello. So we use, to manage this podcast, we use AirTable. AirTable was something I was really obsessed with for a while there. And I still like it a lot. Honestly, if we were to do it now, I don't think we would probably use AirTable to manage this. We'd probably go to Trello or something else. **\[30:45\]** **Sean:** I'm not a fan. **\[30:46\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I know. Sean doesn't like it. So for those who don't know, it's basically spreadsheet that's it's a super high-powered spreadsheet kind of like I don't know Google she eats it is super powerful I don't like the I don't like the **\[31:01\]** **Sean:** UI and I've there's some stuff I've just never been able to figure out I just go with it because Mike's the boss now well well so what I wanted to bring **\[31:11\]** **Mike:** But because of this, I found that having all of these columns to do in progress, etc. whatever was really taking up a lot of space. I found a chrome extension for Trello that would if that column was empty it would take it up is because we use it to manage episode recording and all that stuff on this and yeah you can create as many fields and columns as you want and hold any kind of information at all and there's all different field types and stuff. But it does have a con-bond-bond view that you can do where you can drive things to different, you know, completed and whatever. And Amanda, it also has that collapse thing that you just described in Trello where it puts its sideways. I do the label. Yeah, I've noticed that before that you can make it sort of, and then you double click it to expand it or whatever. **\[31:50\]** **Sean:** you know, some of them are, they, they do competitive research. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, **\[31:55\]** **Mike:** that's, that's one tool air table. It's pretty cool. These days, I think, if we were to do it, I might recommend Notion, which is a very popular tool these days. Do you guys have a lot of **\[32:07\]** **Sean:** experience using Notion? I just started using Notion for personal stuff. I'm not sure how it would work collaboratively. Yeah. So, I mean, I just use it to keep track of things for my YouTube channel and some stuff about my photography and some other stuff because it's really just personal stuff. I'm not, I'm curious how you would use it collaboratively with a client or another developer or something. **\[32:35\]** **Mike:** Well, I'm thinking back to like Natalie's email here about specifically looking for feedback from clients, right, trying to gather feedback. Because notion, you're right, it's not actually a project management tool, I don't think, but it's one of these database-powered Google Docs or whatever, like a Word document powered by a database. **\[32:56\]** **Sean:** I thought it was more like ever-new. **\[32:59\]** **Mike:** Well, yeah, but the thing is, you can create pages in it, you can create sub-pages, and it's just really amazing. The mobile app is really nice, too. Yeah, I've come to learn like all the different things it lets you do and I think you could make a good case for it being a good communication tool with clients because you can add people and all that kind of stuff. It's probably not as powerful as some of these other ones but it's worth considering because it's very, very flexible. **\[33:23\]** **Sean:** Have you used it for work related stuff? **\[33:27\]** **Mike:** I've used it a little bit but only with a client that also uses Asana. So that's their real project management tool but they sort of have this as a component as well. But it's more documentation of stuff, like you said. **\[33:41\]** **Amanda:** I would almost think that one of the benefits of using one of these tools, or software, whatever, where you can set up different fields, it would be very flexible, much like if you were stuck using an Excel spreadsheet, or a Google sheet, or something like that, where you could actually say, OK, well, show me the URL. Paste the URL here. Paste a screenshot here. give the description here. Because I find that one of my biggest complaints with something like using Trello, that's just like a single description box, is that the majority of my replies are, please provide URL, please provide URL. I don't, and often times they'll just send a screenshot that it's just like, oh, there's a problem with the call the action button, and they'll just send a screenshot of the call the action button, and it's like, please provide URL, I got stuff to do with it. **\[34:35\]** **Sean:** site is huge. I don't know what page it's on. Exactly. I have the same problem. Yeah. **\[34:42\]** **Mike:** If it's not where you described, they might make an attempt at telling you where it is, but they'll say, when you click on this and then scroll down and you move over to the thing and click on that, they just send me the link to the page. Yeah. Yeah, direct links for the way to go. So, there's one more **\[35:00\]** **Sean:** service listed here, which I'm unfamiliar with. I'm not sure who put that down there. Milanoon. **\[35:05\]** **Mike:** Milanoet, yeah, I did, and Amanda, I don't know if we've ever even had this conversation, but you mentioned Milanoet one time, and you learned about it through your teaching career. Some other teacher used it or something, maybe you don't remember, it doesn't matter. But you mentioned it, and I said, what is that? I looked it up, and now I've really fallen for it. Now it is not a project management tool. It's basically a brainstorming kind of graphical, you know, you draw things and have arrows pointing to stuff of that kind of thing. But recently I started, yeah, kind of like a fancy whiteboard thing. And I've started using it to collaborate with clients. I actually have a project now where a client is also using it with me to create a navigation menu for a site where we can have little comments on each thing. You can comment and add reply people and stuff. You can put cards inside cards so you can drill right down into different levels of the site in whatever, it's hard to describe on an audio podcast, but I've really started to like it. It's not quite a project management tool, but if you're a graphical person, like me and you like to think visually, or have clients that I find it really helps clients, check it out. It's kind of cool. **\[36:18\]** **Sean:** I just opened up the website, and just based on the screenshots, it looks really interesting. And just for listeners, all of these services will be linked in the show notes. Just don't worry about that. Everything will be linked in the show notes. **\[36:31\]** **Mike:** And as usual, we get no money from any of these companies. **\[36:34\]** **Sean:** Unless somebody wants to sponsor us. **\[36:38\]** **Amanda:** So I would also like to take a step back. Back into the past when things were simpler. Hey, everybody, I still have a pad of post-it notes. Easily available to jot stuff down on. I still have a whiteboard that's sitting on the wall just over the view of my monitors. And yes, even though working with clients even working with some personal projects. I feel like do whatever is going to work best for you for this project at this time. If it happens to be a word document right now, let me tell you you're going to get that's going to get old fast but use it. Using some kind of tool, any tool is going to be better than using than having nothing and having tasks slip between the cracks. **\[37:25\]** **Sean:** Such good advice, yeah. The last thing we're teaching a client or a dev to use your project management app? Is it necessary for your project? **\[37:33\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so I want to talk about that a little bit. It's kind of further to your point, you just made a man, is that it can be detrimental to try to coax a client to use what you want them to use. And if you get pushed back as a developer, whatever, and they're like, you want me to sign up for what? And if you're getting that, then abort. You know what I mean? I would say it's better off maintaining the relationship and letting them do it the way they want to do it than trying to force them into using a tool. **\[38:07\]** **Sean:** My example earlier in the show where I said I had a client here, wouldn't you do anything except by email? And I worked with them for years because you know what? I liked the client. I just didn't like the project management aspect of them. **\[38:20\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, sometimes people work a certain way. I mean, if it gets to be a real problem and the project is being held back for it and have that discussion. But sometimes people in our line of work fall in love with these projects and sorry, these tools and they're just like, we gotta use this and other people just don't feel that way sometimes. **\[38:41\]** **Amanda:** I think we've all received emails from clients that have like just a long list of tasks. I have then gone and made my own project in whatever software you're using to do the tracking. And just like, even if it's just for yourself, just put the tasks in and however you're comfortable tracking it. And then even if you want to like go back in there and be like, I did this task on this date, and I emailed the client and said this. And then that way it's like, it's just, again, one central location, just to make it easier in the future for you to find the emails thread that went back and forth. **\[39:16\]** **Sean:** Yeah. One last thing I wanted to say is that as solo freelancers, I think it behooves us to be more adaptable to the client's needs in that. As Amanda said earlier, ask them, are you already using a project management software? Great, I'll sign up for that. But if you're not, can you use the one I use because it will give us the advantages of A, B, and C. And I just really like it. Why don't you try it, maybe you will like it too. And then you see, I think that's the best way to go. **\[39:52\]** **Mike:** Yeah, you might be able to explain to them that, you know, if we use this, then we can do XYZ and is not a great thing like you'll tell them things that are available that wouldn't be available through just email or whatever, right? **\[40:06\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. And of course, I mean, we're talking about all of these benefits and everything from the developer perspective, but if you're a designer, you could use one of these project management tools. If you are a project manager, you could use one of them. Like, I feel even if you're the end client. across industry valuable. Yeah, it's definitely definitely a valuable tool for like if you're working for yourself working working yourself on any type of project, it'll help manage it. And if you're working together with a team of people, again, it's all about collaboration, it's all about communication, find **\[40:39\]** **Sean:** something that's going to work for everyone. And it's also helpful to have paper **\[40:44\]** **Mike:** trails of things that get said, you know, if someone calls you up on a phone and says launch this tomorrow and then next week someone complains and I didn't tell you to do that and it's on a phone call how do you know so if we can have a tool like this look you said on this day yeah hopefully it doesn't come to that but it **\[41:01\]** **Sean:** can help a lot of times if I have a longer call with a client within like 10 minutes of their call being done I will email back and say well here's a **\[41:09\]** **Amanda:** summary of what we talked about I do that to you I'm so bad at that it's mostly to **\[41:15\]** **Sean:** help me remember, but also it does provide that paper trail of, hey you actually told me this on this date and I emailed back to you and you didn't say no I was wrong so what's the problem? I followed your instructions. It's never come to that, but it's there for that reason. **\[41:33\]** **Amanda:** It's definitely a good thing to do and I recommend it to everyone and I'm so bad at it myself. **\[41:41\]** **Sean:** I'm not saying I do it every time, but I do it regularly. **\[41:46\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Okay, so have we covered everything we want to cover? **\[41:51\]** **Amanda:** I think so. I think we have. It was nice talking to you both, a really good topic, Natalie. Thank you so much for the idea. I keep listening, tell friends, subscribe and like and thumbs up and we'll see you later. **\[42:05\]** **Mike:** Talk to you next time. Bye. **\[42:07\]** **Amanda:** Later. The Website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at AmandaLoots.com. **\[42:18\]** **Mike:** And by me, Mike Mella, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella. **\[42:24\]** **Sean:** I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.ca and link down at caffeinecreations. You Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 07 - 1 [ When to Say No](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-1/when-to-say-no/) - 2 [ How can I communicate better with clients?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-2/how-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients/) - 3 [ What to do when work is slow - with Mitchell Kimbrough](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-3/what-to-do-when-work-is-slow-with-mitchell-kimbrough/) - 4 [ Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-4/motivation-burnout-and-imposter-syndrome-with-kevin-nicholson/) - 5 [ How to spin up a website quickly using a boilerplate](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-5/how-to-spin-up-a-website-quickly-using-a-boilerplate/) - 6 [ Back in my day...](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-6/back-in-my-day/) - 7 [ How to submit a support request with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-7/how-to-submit-a-good-support-request-with-ben-croker/) - 8 [ Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-8/online-learning-and-keeping-up-with-technology-with-ryan-irelan/) - 9 [ Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-9/unlock-your-adhd-superpowers-with-chris-ferdinandi/) - 10 [ Rebroadcast: 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-10/rebroadcast-11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/) - 11 [ Raw and Unedited](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-11/raw-and-unedited/) - Bonus[ The Joy of Self-Taught Coding](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-/the-joy-of-self-taught-coding/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>