Episode 6

Matt: Hello, and welcome to Working on Something New the podcast for and about makers and founders. I'm your host, Matt Johnson and I'm myself a founder and product manager.

Thanks for joining us for another episode where we interview a maker about their journey, their project, and their vision for the future. 

Working on Something New is powered by my company. Taskable: unified tasks and calendar for all day productivity. Taskable is productivity software that helps you manage your most valuable resource - your time - by integrating with the tools you already use to bring everything into one place, helping you plan your priorities and time block your calendar. Find us at taskablehq.com.

For this week's episode, we interviewed Brittany Joiner. Brittany is based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And in addition to her day job as a software engineer at elastic, she's building a content empire, including a YouTube channel focused on productivity in tech. As well as a newsletter on how to make the most out of Trello. 

Brittany and I chat about how to build your profile and communities the right way, how to discover content ideas. Validating ideas before building. And the benefits of being a marketer and a software developer let's kick it off

thanks for joining us. Glad we could finally find time to chat. We've had to rearrange this now several times, but yeah, if you could just give everyone a little bit of your background, so your name you know, what you're working on sort of as your side project, the YouTube channel, as well as maybe a little bit about, you know, what your day job is as well.

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So my name is Brittany. I am a marketer turn developer. I spent most of my career working in marketing and over the last couple years started to learn how to program and. Eventually that turned into a full-time gig programming at the same company. So I work for elastic. It's a, a tech company and we, yeah, I'm an engineer by day, but I also enjoy making content the, the market or part of me didn't ever entirely go away.

But it's different from the type of marketing that I spent most of my time doing, which was like ads and things like that. What I actually prefer and what I do in my side project is just kind of create content about interesting tools that I'm working with and cool things that I'm building. And so.

Typically what that means. I'm a huge, huge, huge organization, productivity nerd specifically I love using Trello. So you're definitely gonna hear a lot about that. I also love using tools like Zapier and pixie bricks, which is a it's a Chrome extension that lets you build various automations and stuff.

So. I just make a lot of content about ways to do different things with those tools and things I'm working on. And then just honestly, some random stuff on the side. Like I, like I said, I've really gotten into the video making aspect of content lately, and I made a video about this new suitcase.

That I I've been thinking about getting, and I got it. Yeah. It's, it's turned into like one of my most popular videos. Like I think it's literally my number two in terms of views. And I probably get a comment on it every day and like, everybody's asking me to make a follow up on it. And so actually have that queued up to do this week.

So yeah, that that's me. I just, you know, I help on YouTube and I record sometimes I do the live stream sometimes it's all ahead of time, but yeah, I just like making content about cool things going. Oh,

Matt: awesome. So I kind of, I find it interesting. You know, people who become, or who are developers are often working on side projects, it tends to be a software product. And so you are working on, you know, essentially a marketing or, or content content side project. Have you ever considered more of a, a, another software side hustle or is it, is

Brittany Joiner: absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, and it's one of those things. I have a thousand different ideas. Like I literally have a Trello board of like all the different app ideas and things I wanna build. And what's funny is the idea of building an entire product sometimes feels intimidating to me. So like just one of my ideas is I have an idea for like an airport tracker where you can kind of like, and who knows, some of it may already exist, but like, I have a very specific vision for how I want like an app to like keep track of which airports I've been to.

Cause I love traveling and like different notes about each one and like, oh, I know, you know, at Atlanta gate C 12, it's right across from a Starbucks. There's a good spot. I can say like, things like that. So that's an idea I have, but somehow, like that thought feels too intimidating, but I still leverage that developer sort of brain.

In the way I build content, because most of what I'm doing is really like, even if I'm not writing code it's engineering type of, type of thinking. And I think what makes me so passionate about doing that instead of just building more apps is because seeing stuff like that is what helped me realize that I could be a developer full time because.

I always thought it was, oh, developers are the people who, you know, build those kind of apps. But really developers are people who, who solve interesting problems and use the tools that they have to kind of connect the dots and say, I have this input and here's the output I want. And so that's my. What I do in a lot of my videos, like I just released one today about it's it's you could say it's something I built with software.

I didn't write JavaScript per se, but I did. I, I used pixie bricks and Trello to, and Google sheets to basically build out a dashboard for tracking things you're doing to reach your career goals and automating various pieces of that process and just showing some reporting. So I know it doesn't sound very developer.

But it is like building things and helping kind of expand people's view of what engineering is and helping people feel like it's more achievable and something they can follow along and do, and not just someone sitting behind a screen coding. Right.

Matt: I find that interesting because you are a developer and you are still using things like no using NOCO tools. I feel like a lot of times people wanna overcomplicate and we're just, we're talking about this before we start recording about how, you know, people like to make things overly complex, but I find it, I find it really interesting that instead, you know, when you're working on these side projects, you're still going for these NOCO tools to sort of either validate or, or to build something quicker, as opposed to doing something more complex off the.

Brittany Joiner: Absolutely. I mean, and I think that's a big part of it too. Like you said it's a good way to kind of validate an idea more quickly. Like yes, some of these automations, I probably could build a Trello power web for, I probably could, you know, build my own Chrome extension, but like there's a longer, you know, learning curve to doing some of that stuff.

And I also find that it, it, it's not, it doesn't lend itself as well as to like teaching and helping others. And I think that's another big piece of why I like making these videos and creating, you know, tutorials and stuff like. Because I found that very helpful on my journey and I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I do think that's kind of a gift I have is like my, my enthusiasm is contagious about stuff.

So when I'm excited about, yeah, whether it's a, a fricking suitcase or, you know, a career tracker or whatever it is I wanna share that with people and, and help them cuz I've, I've seen some pretty boring tutorials and I've seen some like tutorials where you're like, I could never follow what this person is saying and I just can't really get into it.

And like, I'm sure I'm not everybody's cup of tea either, but at the same time, I want to be able to help it feel, you know, like something people can do and you know, If you've never coded before, you're probably not gonna jump in and start building a Chrome extension, but maybe you'll feel less intimidated to try something like pixie bricks after you see me show how simple it is.

And it's kind of like almost drag and drop and pieces like that. So yeah, that, that's kind of my, my goal with it.

Matt: Gotcha. Yeah. And I. It, it seems like a really powerful combination to start with a marketing background and then get into to software engineering be. And especially if you're thinking about, you know, starting something new or, or working on a side project. And again, I think. A lot of software developers want to start building.

They wanna start, you know, writing code and, and, and starting from, from that, as opposed to starting from, you know, what's the market need and what's the problem I'm trying to solve. So I feel like that gives you quite an advantage actually, when you start to think about different side projects, if it's gonna be a software product online uh, do you find, do you find yourself approaching sort of these types.

Problems differently because you have that marketing background and, and sort of, if you were thinking about starting, you know, a new software as a service side hustle or something, like how would you approach it differently because you have that marketing background, do you think than you would, if you were just purely a software engineer.

Brittany Joiner: Oh one, 1000%. So I'm actually giving a talk at a conference next month about making tech more accessible to non-technical folks like, like joining tech careers and one of the. The things that I point out is that you want non-technical people to learn how to code and come to your team for exactly the reason you just described, because we approach things with.

A different sort of mindset. Like we have usability and you know, a product at the front of our minds, more so than you might just because, you know, you've always been head down and co you being, you know, technical people who have coded all their lives, but that, you know, may not come second nature or, or that may not, not come right away with you.

But like, for me, that's. When I'm building something, my first thought is what's gonna be the easiest way for people to use this. And to your point, I don't jump in and code right away when I'm like, how do I build something? I start thinking about like, you know, who's actually going to use this and it's, it's the same with when I'm creating this sort of content.

It's like, I know I have some audience who are more interested in Trello. I know I have some who are more interested in automation and I'm trying to think through like, who's most interested in this content, where can I share it and kind of meet them where they are to help them see how to do different things.

So, I mean, Think, I think there's a lot more of a marketing sort of mindset or a product mindset that goes into things ahead of time where I'm thinking about holistically the product. And not just, if I build it, they'll come, but more of like, should I build it? Is there something already out there like this is there, like you know, who else is doing something similar?

Could I partner with people on this and only then do I actually, you know, start looking at the feasibility of like code and things like.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is, that is such a superpower to be able to approach it that way. And I think you said something really important. There is like, should I build it? I don't think people ask themselves that question enough. I certainly do that. You know, when I've in the past, tinker around little projects, it's like, this seems really fun to build or to work on.

And I really want to do this, but I haven't yet asked myself, should I do this? Or sh is this something that is really solving. Problem. Is this something that I wanna, you know, devote a bunch of time to

Brittany Joiner: Oh, absolutely. Well, well, and I was gonna say, and that's part of why you asked, you know, like, why haven't you built, like, you know, apps and stuff and the side and stuff. Like, even back to my airport idea, I might be the only person who would use that. I haven't done enough research to see is like, are there other people interested in tracking which airports they've been to and seeing like people's notes about that?

Like, why wouldn't I use. Google reviews or, you know, something like that kind of thing. So that's why I think that's partially why is because I realize building an app is often sometimes the, the easy part, like not, not to oversimplify it, but like and then there's kind of different reasons for building apps, right?

Like maybe I do wanna just build that to practice my developer skills, even if nobody besides me ever uses it, or even if I don't use it. And so it's kind of like understanding why you're doing something and there's often a lot of reasons for that. Like there's no wrong reason to build something. If it's something you wanna do, like I've had to work really hard at remembering.

I. And have to monetize every single thing I do in my free time.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's okay to do things for fun. I think I think a lot of people get wrapped up in and, and that's just, it like maybe the airport tractor is worth building, even though there's no revenue that will ever be attached to it. It's just something that you wanna see in the world. And, and that's fine.

I think, yeah. It's like the, should I build, it needs to take into account sort of everything. It's like. Is it gonna generate revenue? Is that important or is it just something that I would have a lot of fun working on for a few hours, you know, and nice and weekends. So yeah, switching gears a bit to the, to your YouTube channel.

Could you just talk a little bit about, a little bit more about sort of the Genesis of that? Like, why did you wanna start doing a YouTube channel? You know, why sort of this productivity space or, or, or, and sort of the Trello space and you know, how did that all, how did that all start?

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. So I've been a really avid Trello user for probably about the last 10 years. And I've developed a lot of cool different sort of systems with it. And I've been a regular contributor to the Trello blog pretty active in the Atlasian community. And I just, I genuinely enjoy helping people. Solve different problems with, with Trello.

And you know, now with pixie bricks and like I've added different tools and productivity at, you know, taskable even one of them adding different sort of tools to my tool belt of helping people solve their productivity challenges. And. I thought about for a while. Do I wanna start a podcast? Like how do I like actually like formalize sort of a quote unquote brand around this sort of thing?

Like how do I give myself a single place to sort of house this content rather than periodically posting on a blog here or there, or, you know, answering a question on a forum or in a slack channel. And that's kind of when I thought, well, You know, a podcast, isn't the right answer. Cuz I think a lot of this is extremely visual.

This sort of stuff I'm building and working on. And I was like, you know, well, what if I try YouTube? And I was like, you know, I know it's hard to break in on there and I'm, I'm not at all. One of those people that thinks, oh, if I start posting videos, I'm suddenly gonna get thousands of subscribers and be monetized and make money.

And that's actually probably the hardest part of all of this is this is the first side project I've had in a while. That is definitely not my most profitable one. Or any profitable at all, to be honest. So I'm still working on that piece of it because obviously I don't, I don't intend to become a millionaire from it, but if I can make some money, then I can spend some more time on it and, you know, keep going from there.

But so that's what kind of started it is thinking, you know, let's create a visual area where I can sort of sort of host this. And then along the same side of that, I started a sub stack, which if you're you or your listeners aren't familiar with, it's basically a platform that you can, you. Host newsletters and people can subscribe to them and, and, you know, get updates and you can offer paid plans.

I have not had much success with the paid plans, so I'm mostly using it as a, a free tool, but I every week have a newsletter where I post different things about Trello and I found it's kind of a good niche because there's nothing else quite like it. And I just kind of peruse the internet from, you know, Reddit to YouTube, to the Atlasian forums and just try to share anything that's new and going on, or how to do interesting things in Trello.

I couple that with, you know, obviously my content on YouTube and some weeks I just have a thousand ideas and some weeks, you know, I, I only have a few, but kind of the Genesis was whenever I have an idea, it takes me about as long to go post it, you know, in a community post or something, why not make a video about it.

And then I just kind of constantly see ideas of things. People are wondering how to do, and I'm like, oh, cool. Let's, you know, just turn that into a video. Yeah,

Matt: Yeah, that's that's actually an approach that we've taken with our content as well. You mentioned, you know, you're in a community forum and someone asks a question and then you're able to answer it. And then you turn that into a newsletter and in a video. And that's how a lot of our content gets created as well.

And I find that to be. Just a really great way to create content because you already know that someone out there needs to know the answer to this question. Right? And so you, if you can uniquely help them answer that, that there's some value to at least one person that's, if there's one person there's probably several more you know, and once you've already written that response in the community for 'em, you already have the bulk of the.

Brittany Joiner: Exactly. It's already

Matt: down on paper. So it's really easy to then turn that into a blog post or a YouTube video or podcast or whatever, whatever the content looks like. So, yeah, I, I always We've written a bit of content about that SP that specific idea, like we called it like minimum viable content and trying to sort of validate content ideas, like you would any other sort of startup idea.

And I'm always encouraging people, you know, when you wanna find content, start in those forums where, you know, your target audience hangs out and find their problems and then build content around that. And so it's interesting that we both sort of, we have a similar approach from that respect. How do you.

How do you sort of, how does the the YouTube channel and the newsletter, like how do you sort of see them as, are they all part of one sort of brand or property or, and how do they sort of augment one another?

Brittany Joiner: Oh, it's a good question. It's a good question. And this is where my marketer brain like kicks myself sometimes, cuz it's like, why are you spending so much time making content? You need to like work on your brain strategy. And like, I know that's true. But I have so much fun making the content and like, you know, actually building cool things and then showing people how I build it.

Because I don't have a great answer for that. My Trello newsletter is very focused on Trello, my YouTube channel. I'm still trying to figure out what it's focused on, to be honest. A majority of my content is Trello, but then I have a. Freaking video about a suitcase that takes off and everybody loves it.

And I'm like, I mean, do I need to like, be a be, you know, should I do more content about productive and being organized and productive while you travel? And you know, things like that. And so right now it's the YouTube is more of a general sort of like productivity automation. Sort of sch mortgage board that I'm still trying to find exactly what my niche is.

Whereas my newsletter is very, very Trello focused and every now and then I'll stick a new thing in with like, you know, pixie bricks. But I mean, yeah, it, it's very, very focused on Trello and I've played around with a couple different formats. And right now what I have found works kind of best is like my top section is all about, you know, here's, what's new in Trello and I'm connected.

A lot of power up developers and like, I get, you know, real time updates from them when they're releasing new features and things. So I share that there, and then it's like kind of how to in Trello and I'll usually have one of my YouTube videos that week have been, you know, even if it's just a minute or two long about how to do something in Trello, or it could be a longer one about like how I do meal planning in Trello, something like that.

And then any other articles that I come. And then I try to share an interesting use case and sometimes I'll share other, like, I literally have a section called like other productivity, but I, I don't tend to get as much traction with that. Like, and I've gotten feedback from readers. Cause I, I do a poll every week too and ask different things and then want it to be mostly Trello, but they're okay with something else sort of sneaking in there.

So I'm still trying to figure out the right balance of that because I don't want to give my readers, like they signed up because literally the newsletter is called how I Trello. So it's very Trello focused newsletter and people have given feedback that that's why they signed up and they like it. So yeah, still trying to find that balance.

I know that's not an exciting answer, but

Matt: well, yeah, a as you're talking, I sort of thought, well, I think maybe aren't you the brand then like, do you,

Brittany Joiner: Pretty

Matt: you, so if you're saying like, yeah, this podcast is called working on something new, is that working on something new then? Is it working on you as a brand to create

Brittany Joiner: Yeah.

Matt: around? Is it, whether it's Trello, whether it's productivity, whether it's specifically travel, you know, productivity or, or organization, and, you know, so is that, does that make you the brand then?

Do you

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. I mean, that's actually probably the best way to look at it is like, yes, like it's very much me. It it's a, a personality of sorts, which I feel like makes it sound like I'm a comedian or, or something of sorts. But yeah, that, that's pretty much what it is. Like. I mean, There, and yes, it is that sort of general niche of things.

And, but at the same time, yeah, it does. It does have a little bit of like, this is what Britney's life is. And my life is, you know, sometimes it's buying a new suitcase and trying to figure out if that's better, sometimes it's, you know, doing this very specific thing in Trello. Sometimes it's building a Chrome extension that lets me start a timer whenever I want, like, things like that.

Matt: Yeah, I suppose when I. When I, I don't follow a ton of YouTubers. I, I don't, I I've just never really been someone who like spends a lot of time on YouTube, although that's been changing a little bit recently, but what I, what, what I found is like, when I am following someone, For specific content I do really enjoy when you kind of get a, more of a glimpse into their life.

And I think, you know, maybe that suitcase one is, you know, instead of you screen sharing you doing something on Trello, it, then it sort of, then you get a better sense of like who you are and, you know, you're traveling and, and sort of the things that are, you know, I think a lot of that is like, I think thing about it, what I found interesting was what are the things that are important to you to bring when you travel and, and sort of that says a lot about who you are.

And I think you learn a lot about a person that way, so maybe. I mean, maybe that's what it is. It's, you know, maybe if you did, only that content, it wouldn't be that as interesting, but when every once in a while you sneak that in and people get a better glimpse that it sort of makes you a little bit more relatable, particularly if, if you're the personal brand.

Brittany Joiner: Yeah, because you wanna get to know that sort of person. And like, I, I think that's the beauty of, you know, the internet is, is that I have, you know, just as many online friends that I've never met in real life that I'm, you know, comfortable talking to and having conversations about all sorts of things.

Like I am plenty of people I've met in real life. And even if it's, you know, people like. Quote, unquote celebrities. You can connect with them in ways you never could before for these sort of same sort of reasons. Like there's, you know, influential developers that I actually have been able to have a conversation with, but like, even prior to when I did that I still, I felt like I knew so much about them because you know, they they're sharing those sort of aspects of their life.

And I think. Yeah, like you said, it just makes you relatable and human and yeah, I'm not some famous YouTuber yet. And maybe never will be, but like here's snippets of my life. If you can relate to it, come on. And I'm happy to, you know, try to encourage you and, and join you in the journey.

Matt: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So, I mean, if switching to sort of tactical maybe advice that you have, you know, having, let's say let's just call it your personal brand with the, the, the newsletter and the YouTube channel. What are some things that so far you've learned that work really, really well, that you would say to anyone else sort of trying to sort of follow in your footsteps, here's what you should do.

And also, maybe here's some things you should definitely avoid that you you've learned sort of, you know, early on in your journey.

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. Good questions. I would say things you should do. This is probably something you've heard before, but it's true. Done is better than perfect. You can be such a perfectionist about videos, about editing and about. You know the news that one of the reasons, honestly, I preferred when I first started, I did more live streams than recorded stuff because I was like, I actually like the idea of like, this is live and it's happening because otherwise I could obsess for hours and hours

Matt: Yeah, totally.

Brittany Joiner: how to tweak something.

So but honestly, you're not gonna see that return. You might spend five extra hours trying to make the video this much more. Perfect. And you're, that doesn't mean you're gonna get more views. So just get the content out there. People care. Yes. About presentation, but more about the content. Don't I think a big don't.

Is that don't start thinking about communities that you want to quote unquote infiltrate when you're trying to promote content and just kind of jump in, because I think it's easy to think, oh, I just made a YouTube video about Trello. Let me go post in the Trello subreddit about it. And actually that's a subreddit.

That's probably more forgiving of that than other subreddits, but in general, you're gonna have the most impact where you're already part of the community. So like, think about. And that that's why it helps to do video or content or your SAS, whatever you're working on. It helps that it's something you're actually interested in because you're already gonna be part of those communities.

You're already gonna be part of like, I'm already very active in the Trello community. Like, whereas if I had just jumped in and started posting my own content, there Atlasian may be like, whoa, like what's going on here. But like, because I'm regularly answering people's questions and not pointing to myself.

And I had been doing that for years. Atlassian welcomes when I post my own videos in the forums. And so I think that's a big thing is like, don't wait until, you know, don't wait UN until, you know, oh, I'm starting this new idea. I should go like, join those communities. Like rather build something that relates to a community you're already part of.

And you're interested in, and you're already active in because you you've got your people right there and you'll get the quickest feedback and, and everyth. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, that's, that's such a great point. I think it's part like that community side of things. I feel like people do communities are a great way to get yourself out there, but when you do it as like a super sales forward, like. Someone asks a question, you say, oh, I did a YouTube video on this. Here's a link to it.

That's way less impactful than you saying. Oh, like, totally. I, I understand that problem. Here's how I solved it. You know? So on and so forth. And maybe at the bottom you say, I actually did a full YouTube video on this. Here's a link if you wanna get more information. So if you're, when you're in the community, the last thing you wanna do is just.

Be linking to your blog, say, oh, I asked for this question here or my YouTube video. But if you're able to say, if you're already a part of the community, people know you trust you and you're there adding value in the community, so they don't have to link away somewhere else. And then at the, yeah, and then you could do that soft sales pitch at the bottom because like, oh, there's a ton of more information I have about this if you're interested.

And that just, that just goes so much further. And I, you see people making that mistake all the time. In like slack communities just doing this like super salesy pitch. And it just turns people off if you can. Yeah. Like you said, like be a part of that community be authentic and that goes so much further.

That will, and people will find you, even if you're not linking yourself, they'll

Brittany Joiner: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: like

Brittany Joiner: Exactly. They'll go to your profile. Yeah. They'll they'll look and see, see what you're doing. And I mean, I just, I think that's, that's so huge. That's what, like, I, I know it feels like what I'm doing is, is marketing. Like, you know, when I'm promoting my content and stuff, but I have found a, build a good product and answer people's questions with it.

And when you do that, like that's gonna be, your marketing is answering people's questions. You don't necessarily need ads. You don't need to, you know, pay to be on these different channels. You don't need. Spam slack communities. Like you just need to solve a problem and be where people are, who are looking for answers to that.

And then just answer their questions and like when it points to your product, that's handy. Right.

Matt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's, it's interesting cuz yeah, like this has just been, I, I, I discovered this when we first started working on task school and it, it really has gone a long way. It's just, you know, being P in like product hunt community, for example, and we just get a ton of people and, and indie hackers and people find us that way.

And it's just, it's just such a super valuable tool. It just, and, and it's not salesy at all. And so you feel better about it too. You're not feeling like you're going into these places and kind of being annoying. You're you're actually there adding value.

Brittany Joiner: Right, right. Absolutely.

Matt: So on that note on, on sort of the Trello community, you know, you see this a lot with notion, just a ton of notion people building templates, and they have, they all seem to have a, a fairly good relationship with notion who are maybe, you know, promoting their templates or, or, or, you know, involving them and webinars or, or whatever it is.

How's your relationship with, with Trello and Atlassian, you know, being one of the, you know, probably one of their, you know, biggest power users and, and biggest fans. Do you have a good relationship with them? How's that relationship sort of helped you build an audience?

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. So I definitely do have a great relationship with them. Particularly their community team loves me for obvious reasons. And they, you know, have often, you know, made themselves available for anything you know, that they wanna do. They don't. Explicitly. Well, except for like, there was a time when I was writing on the Trello blog and that was more of a marketing focus and they do pay people to write on the blog, like freelance authors.

But other than that, like, I mean, Trello doesn't like pay me for any of these videos I make. So it's more of like a, they, they help support me in terms of like helping get more eyeballs on that sort of content. So back to what I was talking about, like when I, you know, we'll post something in the Atlasian community, that's video of.

If I had just randomly shown up in there and did that, they might be like let's just keep an eye on this and make sure she's not just being spammy, whereas, because I have that relationship with them and have been, you know, doing lots of other things in the community, they actually will like feature some of those posts.

So even more eyeballs get on it. They'll include it in like newsletters and, you know, things like that with the community. So they're very supportive in, in things like that. And anytime I have like a, like just recently, I brought up the fact that like, I really wish that like, I could be more involved when Trello's about to release some new stuff, because it feels like sometimes I am, and then it feels like sometimes they don't mention anything.

And I just start seeing people complaining about it in the forums. And I'm just like, wait a minute. Like, I don't even know what this is. I don't even have access to this. So I can't be helpful. And Trello, like the product team's been jumping in and trying to make it, you know, make. Make ways where I can be more involved in that sort of stuff.

So I feel like they're very responsive, just that sort of thing, and trying to figure, figure out how I can do that. And at the moment I'm back logged in not accepting new clients for consulting, but at times I have been, and there's lots of people in the community who, you know, are looking for that sort of stuff.

And other community members, not even just Trello have like often referenced me and pointed to me and said, Hey, you know, Brittany does this sort of stuff reach out to. So yeah, so in short they've been very, they literally, this microphone I'm using, they sent it to me as soon as they saw I was starting to make Trello videos.

So they do that sort of, kind of thing like that, where they're they're yeah. Very, very supportive of it. And yeah, I think it's one of those things. They don't always know how or what to do, cuz they don't have like a formal sort, they do have a formal partner program, but what I'm doing is kind of so different to, you know, like a plug in for JIRA or something that they don't really know exactly what to do with it.

But whenever I ask they're, they're happy to, you know, try to accommodate as best they can.

Matt: That's awesome. And so I'm assuming that microphone didn't get stuck at the post office for two weeks

Brittany Joiner: No, it, it did not. Funnily enough, funnily enough. Not, not like yours, it did not get stuck. It got here. Actually funnily enough, it just kind of showed up one day and I had no idea who it was from, but I knew it was Atlassian. And I had to poke around and find out my secret Santa there. But yeah.

Matt: awesome. That's great. So, so you've been doing consulting just on, on people, helping people set up Trello and such. Is that, is that usually like businesses or, or is it like, who are you

Brittany Joiner: Typically. Yeah. Yeah. It's typically like small to medium businesses. My most recent client actually is still, still working with him and he has like super cool use case where like, he actually is built basically an app for his company and his contractors. He works with all through Trello and like together.

Yeah. We kind of did it together. He kind of like, is. Explained what he was looking for. And I kind of, you know, put in the, okay, well, we'll use this, this and this, and then play around with this. And so like, he, he had the vision and I just kind of built it sort of thing, but yeah, pretty much people with, with that who either want to, you know, sometimes it's someone who just wants, Hey, I know, you know the most about Trello.

Like, can you tell me, you know, in 60 minutes, like, can we just meet and you review, here's what I'm working on here. Like. Do you have any feedback? Like, are there things that I should know ahead of time? And sometimes it's like, you know, the other end of the spectrum, like I have a very specific vision of this sort of thing I wanna build.

Can you, you know, walk me through how we're gonna build it and build it with me together. And so Yeah, I love those are probably my favorites. Especially when, like I can tell ahead of time and set clear expectations on if it's gonna be possible or not, or what I think will be possible. Cause that's always my biggest fear saying, yeah, we can totally do that with Trello.

And then, you know, you pay me for 10 hours of working on it and I find out we can't, but thankfully I haven't had that many situations. Like there's always some sort of solution, even if it's not initially. They were thinking of. And so, yeah, I, I do that in small doses in the community. Like I'm happy to reply to emails if like, I think it's going to, you know, if someone just shoots me an email with a question about, is this or that possible, I'm happy to always respond.

Yes. And you probably wanna do these three things. But if it looks like it's gonna turn into something longer, I'm also happy to offer consulting and say, you know, pay me by the hour. And I'm happy to, to build this for you.

Matt: Gotcha. So you have, you have quite a few things on your plate. You

Brittany Joiner: I do. I'm never bored. Yeah.

Matt: you're consulting you. You're you, you're building your personal side of things with this, the newsletter and, and YouTube and you know, obviously the day job, how do you sort of Balance all that personally, like how do you, it seems like there should be three of you.

How do you, how do you make it all work with your personal life? And, you know, could you sort of give a sort of insight into a day in the life?

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. So I it's, it's a good combination of time blocking looking at you taskable and and just a good process for knowing what I need to work on. So I have a good process with Trello where every idea and plan for things sort of gets documented, whether it's. You know, I know I need to do this thing at work.

Thankfully, that's mostly done by our product manager. So I get a to-do list handed to me, and I know what I'm, you know, working on for my sprint for the next two weeks. And so when I'm clocking in quote, clocking in, like, I know what I need to do there and focused on that. And then as I get ideas for like videos I wanna do, or, you know, like different clients that come in, I actually am currently like not accepting new clients because I do not have three of me.

And I'm a bit backlogged there. And so, but yeah, it's, I organize everything into Trello and then assign times and due dates to sort of things. So that way I'm able to really see. Okay, cool. Well, you know, based on this, here's what I'm working on today. So literally this morning I got up and went and looked in what's on deck for today.

It's like, oh, okay. I had a doctor's appointment, have a podcast. I have, you know, I need to work on these two things for work. And then afterwards I'm, you know, gonna start working on, you know, this, this other piece of content. And so it's all kind of queued up there and I move it through and I find it really.

To me to realistically like time block and look at, even if I'm not necessarily setting specific hours for things, but setting days to work on things because helps me be a little bit more realistic about when I'm doing like my weekly planning and saying, okay, here's, you know, anything that's quote unquote, do in the next week, like this is, I need to have this done for work or, you know, I need to have this or that submitted by then.

But, and then after that, I'm able to see, okay, well, realistically what's remaining left with my time. I can probably do these three or four things. So let's add them to the queue. So that helps with that. And then also a lot of automation with that. I built both in Trello and the, when the, within like my browser for shifting around due dates, because since I operate so much off of those, it's very helpful to be able to quickly change them because otherwise it can just be a nightmare if they're all kind of clogged up in one specific day, like if everything's overdue, that means nothing to me.

So I have a lot of automation in place for helping me be able to quickly shift and pivot when one plan's inevitably.

Matt: Awesome. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like obviously I'm a big fan of time blocking. So one of the reasons we're working on task school, but but yeah, I do, I do feel like once you can, once you, once you can sort of measure it, you can manage it. You can see how everything pieces together and you really can squeeze out more of yourself more time if you're.

If you're just on top of that and, and it gives you more time to, to work on your side projects or do other things, what, you know, spend more time in your personal life for whatever it is.

Brittany Joiner: Absolutely. And when it's very specifically defined and right in front of you and you just pick it up and start working on it, that's half the battle. I feel like, you know, prior to having any sort of system, it was more of like, well, I know I need to be doing for stuff for YouTube and what do I need to do though?

And now it's like, I don't even think about it. It's like, I know what I'm working on. And it's, you know, queued up for me right there.

Matt: Yep. Absolutely. Well, we've spent a lot of time talking and I really appreciate you, you taking the time to chat. Last question is well, two, I have two more questions. One question is anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you during, during our chat, anything you wanted to share specifically or.

Brittany Joiner: that's a good question. No, I mean, I feel like we honestly covered, covered the gait. We covered all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I, I can't think of anything.

Matt: Cool. And then, so I did, I did a, I guess I did a good job interviewing if

Brittany Joiner: Yes. Excellent. Well done. Well done.

Matt: pat myself on the back

Brittany Joiner: Clapping sounds in the background here.

Matt: we, we we'll add that in, in post. Last question is how can people find you? So how can they find the YouTube channel, the the sub stack find you personally on, on Twitter and all that sort of.

Brittany Joiner: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm pretty active on Twitter. That's probably my most heavily heavily monitored social channel. And my handle there is Brit B R I T T underscore joiner, J O I N E R. So feel free to find me there. My DMS are open. You can, you can message me and connect with me. And I pretty much share all of the content that I build on there.

So if you like want one place to see kind of everything, that's a good spot. But my YouTube channel I, I have the customized channel name. So it's youtube.com/c/brittany joiner. B R I T T a N Y J O I N E R. And my newsletter, you can actually find it. If you go to how I trello.com, how. Spell, just like how I, and then Trello, T R E L L o.com.

So yeah, and I assume we'll include links to that in, in the, in the show notes here, but yeah, those are the best places. True reach me. And you ever wanna nerd out about Trello or anything or just productivity or dev? Literally anything? I, I love, I love making new friends online, so feel free to reach out to me and love to chat it up.

Matt: I can, I can second that as soon as we started chatting online, once you, I think when you saw us on the product on lunch we became, we became quick friends and, and have chatted quite a lot since then. And it it's always easy to, to get ahold of you. So

Brittany Joiner: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I love chatting with other founders and people building cool stuff. And I, I know what it's like and I, I love to, I love to talk about that stuff.

Matt: And also you provide excellent feedback and feature suggestions. So we, we really appreciate you as a, as a taskable user and, and anyone else out there who has any questions about Trello? I'm sure. You are, you are the right person to get in touch with, so yeah, really appreciate you taking the time to chat again and glad

Brittany Joiner: Yeah, thanks for having me

Matt: Glad the the postal strike or whatever you wanna call it at my local post office finally got me my mic so we can, we can finally chat and look forward to, to, yeah, maybe we'll, we'll do it again in, in a couple months and, and see how you're getting.

Brittany Joiner: Yeah, let's do it. That that'd be cool. That's that would be a cool segment to have, like on your on your shows, like where are they now when, and, you know, you check in again three months later and kind of see where are they at versus from, you know, what you talked about the last time. That'd be

Matt: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. It's, it's fun to see people's progress and, and hopefully people will follow you in and tracking real time, but it it'll be great to see sort of where we start and where we at, we sort of get to. Cool. Well have a great rest of day. I know you, you have some time blocks coming up, so we'll, we'll let you get to, 'em

Brittany Joiner: Sweet. Sounds good. Thanks Matt.

Matt: talk to you later.

Brittany Joiner: See ya.

Matt: So that's it for this week's episode. Special thanks to Brittany for joining us. If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to give us a follow or review on your favorite podcasting app. You can also follow me on Twitter @mattcrail or @wosnpod. You can find all the episodes of the podcast at wosn.taskablehq.com. 

Working on Something New is powered by Taskable: integrated tasks and calendar for all day productivity. Start a seven day free trial at taskablehq.com. Thanks everyone out there for listening we'll catch you next week