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technical writing, and then<br />
support. So that’s been great to<br />
see everyone take ownership of<br />
that aspect of the business.<br />
THAT’S A NICE SIZED TEAM.<br />
ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS, I<br />
ALWAYS LEARN SO MUCH. AS A<br />
TEAM WHAT CAN’T YOU LIVE<br />
WITHOUT?<br />
I love ASANA, our team runs<br />
really well because of it, so that’s<br />
where we put all of our tasks, all<br />
of our projects, and we use it to<br />
plan ahead. We track all of our<br />
feature requests, and bugs and<br />
everything all in ASANA, so it<br />
really does a lot of heavy lifting<br />
in our business.<br />
Some of the other things I<br />
cannot live without. There’s<br />
another tool that I love which,<br />
all the writers reading this will<br />
definitely agree with, it’s called<br />
Scrivener. It’s a little app for<br />
Mac or PC, they have it for iPad<br />
too, and it helps you organize<br />
your writing, and I’ve been<br />
using it for 12 years, which is<br />
kinda crazy. I love it, I use it to<br />
write all of our blog content, my<br />
newsletters, PDFs, pretty much<br />
anything I create that’s written,<br />
starts off in Scrivener, and they<br />
can export to different formats<br />
and all kinds of things. I use that<br />
a lot.<br />
The other tool that we use,<br />
which is our company Wiki,<br />
so it’s run on Atlassian’s<br />
Confluence System hosted on<br />
their website (and there are<br />
tons of other great Wiki tools,<br />
I know there are Google sites<br />
that do Wikis, there’s just I<br />
think Wikimedia, or something,<br />
there’s basically a bunch of<br />
different options for Wikis) but<br />
we like it because everyone on<br />
the team can come in and update<br />
pages and keep everything fresh<br />
and up to date with what we are<br />
doing. We also use it to plan our<br />
meetings and keep track of what<br />
we talked about, and we have<br />
something in there we call our<br />
‘idea cooldown’.<br />
The idea cooldown basically<br />
is when, I’m the idea person,<br />
and I have too many ideas for<br />
the business I will just create a<br />
document that outlines the idea,<br />
the goals, like what I see as the<br />
outcome of this idea if we do it<br />
well, and then the rest of the<br />
team can chime in on whether<br />
they think its a good idea to<br />
prioritize that or not. So, it kind<br />
of slows me down a little bit<br />
from just jumping in and doing<br />
everything, because one of our<br />
company mottos is; Do fewer<br />
things better. It also makes the<br />
best ideas rise to the top.<br />
I LOVE THAT. I THINK A LOT OF<br />
US NEED THAT IDEA.<br />
Yes, everyone can use it.<br />
YOU’VE MADE A GOOD NAME<br />
FOR YOURSELF, AND HOW<br />
HAVE YOU STOOD OUT,<br />
ESPECIALLY IN SUCH A MALE-<br />
DOMINATED INDUSTRY?<br />
Great question. I think part of it<br />
is that I started off in the female<br />
industry, so I think that I got a<br />
really solid start because I was in<br />
the B school community and the<br />
female entrepreneurship space<br />
and that gave me a chance to<br />
spread my wings a little bit and<br />
feel comfortable growing my<br />
business and being successful<br />
before entering the male arena,<br />
or the mainstream arena,<br />
whatever you want to call it.<br />
It gave me the confidence and<br />
the support I needed in the<br />
beginning. When I was doing<br />
web design all of my clients were<br />
female, except for one, so that<br />
also confirmed I understand the<br />
female market, I understand<br />
how to design websites, and then<br />
later on software that works like<br />
how women think.<br />
From there, it was just a<br />
matter of translating that and<br />
ROOOAR MAGAZINE - ISSUE <strong>20</strong> 15