In today’s episode, we pull back the curtain on our process of organizing projects using 17 Hats. We talk about…
- Platform Usage
- Project Setups
- Workflows
- Utilizing Google Drive
- Lifecycles and Automated Workflows
- Why chasing the perfect platform is a waste of time.
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Keegan 0:01
In today’s episode, we pull back the curtain on our process of organizing projects using 17 hats.
Keegan 0:25
Staying organized is the key to productivity in business and in life. But if you have no system to keep your thoughts and things grouped, your life can become extremely frustrating. So have you ever tried to find something you know you had, which couldn’t find it? Have you ever started a project only to be overwhelmed by the amount of locations where different parts of the project live? This was me in 2015, I was looking for the free platforms to piece together a system to organize all of my projects.
Keegan 0:54
This led me to a system that just did not work. A good friend suggested 17 hats, so I took it for a test run. I was super confused. At first, I can’t even lie, it took me a while to get things where I wanted them. But that isn’t because 17 Hats is hard to use. It was more because I wasn’t sure of the product offerings. Workflows are generally how I wanted information to be stored for each project. So after a few projects, I really started to get the hang of the system. I started putting every contact I was working with into 17 hats and building projects for each contact.
Keegan 1:29
This was a game changer for me. But now everything from contact information, Project notes, activity, time, logs, and even emails from all of my clients lived in one place. Next, I started looking at workflows for every single project. Sometimes projects veer from their usual path. But that’s okay. I just I keep moving along with the workflow. It isn’t meant to be a one size fit all but but more so a guideline to help you get back on the path when things get a little chaotic.
Keegan 2:00
The final thing I did was was really organized file structure inside of Google Drive. This was a Super Game Changer. For me, my structure was really, really simple, I would create a template folder inside of that template folder would live a few additional folders. One of them we the brand standards, another site page content. The third one was media. A fourth folder is site review notes. And then the final was a pre launch backup of the site.
Keegan 2:27
Once the project folder was created, I would share it with the project lead from the client. This made media sharing extremely simple. I didn’t have to track down emails looking for pictures anymore. And then I would create a Google doc within the Drive folder for site content. And this helped really consolidate things like sitemap and page copy into one file in a single place. Also built out lifecycles within 17 hats. This allowed me to track different stages of the project. So from lead to development, or build time to a nurturing phase where I would routinely check in to see how things are going with the client’s website.
Keegan 3:08
This really tied into workflows that activate automatically when a lifecycle status change puts the project management pretty much into autopilot. So there’s a lot of platforms out there. And I’ve been on 17 hats for almost two years. And I really can’t see myself using anything but 17 hats. So you spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out the perfect platform, but there really is no platform that’s perfect. They all have opportunities. And if you continue to chase the perfect platform, you will never ever make the progress you’re hoping to make. You’ll spend all of your time learning the new platform. And it almost always leading you to the same or very similar frustrations and limitations that you had with your current platform.
Keegan 3:57
So the goal here and the biggest advice I could give is stay loyal master your platform that you’ve invested time in as long as they’re developing and interacting with the community. That is always always a huge sign of positive things to come.
Keegan 4:14
Alright guys, so thank you so much for hanging out for another episode of Divi addicts. If you want to support the podcast because we brought you value, you can visit Keegan Lanier media.com forward slash patreon to see the ways that you can help us better serve up content for you. Patreon platform is just meant to be a way for people who really love what we’re doing to support us to allow us to invest in better audio better video equipment over for the YouTube channel and just allow us the time and a little bit of income to support focusing 100% on content creation so that we can bring you amazing podcast every single week. Amazing tutorial videos over on the YouTube channel and just all around help you supercharge the Divi development your WordPress life or just your business in general so we thank you again for being here and we will see you next week with another episode of the Divi addicts podcast
