MY FAVOURITE APPS FOR RUNNING GYMSHARK: Apps I use everyday

today I thought I would do a quick video for you guys just to talk through the top five apps that I use every single day what I use them for why I think they're so important and why I think all of you guys should be using them soon I absolutely live and die by this app I think is absolutely brilliant if you can learn to use both then genuinely whatever line of work you're in you will be a force to be reckoned with if for 10 years if you didn't avoid doing what you knew you needed to do what would you be like this is what we're using now to plan my YouTube videos and it is just become possibly one of the most important pieces of software that I use on a daily basis so first things first slack slack is so so so important everyone at jimmy shark uses it and it's our internal messaging service at times like this during coronavirus slack has become even more important but despite that having offices around the world and working with so many different people slack is just huge for our business and it just really really helps to keep everyone in touch regardless of where they are in the world where they are in the office whatever's going on it's great for both direct messages and we also have channels and so on we have a gym shot channel where everyone in gym sharks involved each department will have their own channels we'll have channels around different projects you'll hear me talk a lot about communication and how important communication is in the business and the slack really really helps us with them so to put things in perspective I quickly jumped on our analytics up with slack and Jim shock has sent almost 700,000 slacks within the company in the last month alone show you my spikes this is my conversation with James I've just been turning in some tests test test test I'll give you an example we have a Jim shark overall channel so here you go we've got everyone in Jim shark in this channel and it's really good because this is where all of our sort of company-wide announcements will go so everyone can keep up to date at the moment you can see we have actually converted a part of our office into a 3d printing studio and we are printing things such as visors and bands for the NHS this is just great and again it keeps everyone in the loop with what's going on around the world this is an interesting video so this is of like an internal vid that's gon lie to everyone that we're offering a new sort of internal system called spokes is like a little machine learning thing that sits within a slacker I could say for example if we're in the office what's the food menu at refuel like today and it will respond with the menu and so yeah it's like super cool it's a great internal messaging system but also having things like spoke built-in is really really useful as well so I think it's a really flexible piece of software it's great and it's perfect as an internal messenger and it really tires you can shout together so application number two that I want to talk about is the app that I talked about in my last video and it's the things app I absolutely live and die by this app I think is absolutely brilliant it's a super simple app and I find it incredible for holding myself accountable and throughout the day Jim shark I'll have a bunch of varied meetings I'll constantly come out of meetings with different actions and different things to do anything it could be things I need to follow up on it could be people that I need to speak to this is one saying that really really inspires me Jordan Peterson who I am a massive fan of says if a 10 years you didn't avoid doing what you knew you needed to do what would you be like and I think that is so true and I think the things up is brilliant for holding yourself accountable for the things that you need to do but more importantly the things that you don't want to do genuinely I've been doing that now for I'd say probably all-in-all two years and it is allowed me to learn and grow more quickly than I ever have in my life so I would recommend it I've created a quick test area here so what I've got here is a thing to do that you need to do in here you can add notes in but if you want you can add different things that you need to do within that you can also add deadlines on which is really really important genuinely it's a super super simple app it's just so valuable for me I'm just trying to hold myself accountable to doing the things that I need to do in the things want to do so the next piece of software that I'm going to talk to you about is Photoshop so I think as a creative is an absolute must I think anyone that's in any creative field needs to learn Photoshop and countless times have I talked about Photoshop being one of the most important tools or the most important pieces of software that I have used to grow Jim Shella it's so important that you buy people into your ideas into your visions whether it's a product or a brand campaign or a design or a logo and the way that I've always tried to buy people in two ideas has been using Photoshop genuinely once you've learned a few basic tools it's quite easy it's quite intuitive and nowadays on YouTube there are so many different tutorials on how to use Photoshop Photoshop definitely has the highest barriers to entry in terms of using it and mastering it of all the pieces of software of all the apps that are on this list but I promise you the reward for learning to use Photoshop is so so vast and it's so so great it can be used to create logos it can be used to edit imagery and pictures it's all thumbnails as myself and James still do but you can use it for designing products it doesn't need to be super clean and crisp the main thing is just about how you get that message across Photoshop is really easy just to open quickly drop a design and do some sort of quick and dirty edit and you can get the idea across really really easily once you know how to use it if you're wanting to do well in a business I would absolutely advise getting used to using Photoshop as quickly as possible I think it is one of the most powerful tools you can have in your arsenal next up is Microsoft Excel similar to photoshop I feel like the the the abilities of Excel are just so so vast however I think a basic understanding of Excel is absolutely vital I'm a firm believer that true creativity can happen at any moment but if you want to be creative time and time again over a prolonged period of time I think that needs to be informed with data when you're working with data excel is such a powerful piece of software and I use it every single day so you want to truly understand your business you need to understand the numbers behind it and the underlying trends and that could be around staff numbers staff turnover revenue profit stock all of these things a number and the best way of present in those numbers generally is in Excel so I'll give you an example in my particular role we have a Excel document which is sort of our Bible and every single day it has the revenue that we've done it has the overarching marketing spending for that day week month or year and then I can see it broken down by channel so I can check is our marketing spend at a reasonable level versus our sales number how much of that marketing spend have we gone on a mall conversion focus tact and how much of that spend is on a more brand focused tack I can see what the CPM czar I can see what the average cost-per-click is it's a lot of information that can just be condensed and controlled and presented and then incredibly user-friendly way using Excel if you can learn to use both Excel and Photoshop really really well then genuinely whatever line of work you're in you will be a force to be reckoned with and I think that if you can pull those two things together as we talk about a Jim shark art and science truly special things happen when those two things meet you will be able to not only buy people into ideas but you'll be able to back it up with numbers and that's genuinely so powerful so the fifth and final piece of software that I want to talk to you about is an app called notion I absolutely fell in love with notion a few weeks ago I've been using it ever since we started working from home and it's just become possibly one of the most important pieces of software that I use on a daily basis I am absolutely obsessed with it and it is currently spreading across the different shot team like wildfire so a huge shout out because I've only just recently found out the notion even exists and I found that out on a guy called Ali Abdullah with YouTube channel and as soon as I saw it I knew this would be a really really awesome tool for me to use on a daily basis as soon as I downloaded and started using notion it reminded me a lot of WordPress so anyone that worked on WordPress or has done understand exactly how notion works it's like heaven and I think Ali described it as a life OS or a second brain and it is it is exactly that rather than try and explain it I'll show you so this is what we're using now to plan my YouTube videos we've got like a what we call a video track image as a table where we've got a bunch of different ideas if I look over here we've got inspiration the thumbnails video inspiration video ideas channel assets and things like that but for this video for example James put a load of stuff in here so like a thumbnail example the settings even I need to use on the camera B rolls and shots that I need to get and when I need to record it and then I filled in sort of the top 5 apps and so if I go into my notion I've got like a life - here so I've got like a bunch of daily reminders as I started journaling every day so I write a morning journal and an evening journal based on Benjamin Franklin from book of virtues which I found really cool basically here I've got a bunch of different sort of areas from uh notes of different parts of the business where I spend a lot of time so I'll have like a home page for each one I can - g.b.m Chiefs this is sort of like a home page and then within this I got sort of like reminders and then equally I can go in here and I've got a bunch of different notes so think of that as like the home page for that particular meeting cobra I talked about the Cobra means that we're doing a lot at the moment where if I'm learning I've got like a learn something new section here which is really cool Jim shot USA I've got all my usa-based notes here but then I've also got information on the office so I can jump in here and I can see designs I've got like a general note dump so this is a link to database so if I for example do a new test note let's pretend this is in a board meeting I can tag it as board meeting and then later on if I wanna refer to all board meeting notes my test note as appeared it's it's it's an amazing piece of software me and James are loving it because you can sort of collaborate as well at the same time or this is great as well so what I found is I've been reading quite a lot last few years but I haven't actually been commenting down what I'm reading so what I've done here is I've got a media list and as I'm reading books I'm actually writing down what I'm learning from them so I've got finished I feel that I'm reading and listening to I can score them tag what area they're in I can talk about and write to myself the things that I've learned from that particular book which is really really valuable and useful in terms of really allowing it to soar stick in my mind so yeah notion is an incredibly powerful piece of software I use it as my go-to note-taking app I use it to hold myself accountable on long term aspirations but I also use it as like a filing system for all of my notes it's super valuable and between notion and things those are the two apps that hold me demo to countable things on a short-term basis and notion on a long-term basis so a couple more honorable mentions and Microsoft Outlook emails obviously a massively massively powerful tool email is still used every single day even though I am much more of a fan of slack I'm still using email a lot so it's something that I wanted to mention but I see it as more of a web tool even though I do use the different apps so we just wanted to cinch in that to you guys and the last two sort of honorable mentions that are willing to make it was Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool for understanding the traffic that hits your website it's just incredible you can see traffic in real time you can see where the trucks coming from you can understand bounce rates time spent on websites and it really allows you to optimize that online experience for people that are accessing your website finally as well an honorable mention to Shopify I absolutely adore the Shopify company all the guys that work there are absolutely incredible we want to focus on our products on our app and on things like that we don't want to be constantly engineering a website Shopify allows us to do that it means we would have to have hundreds of developers to manage your website like as and I genuinely don't think there is a system as intuitive as easy to use as cost-effective and that is managed as well as Shopify so that is the top five apps I use slack things Photoshop Excel and notion all incredible apps all for very different reasons but they really do help me do what I need to do every single day they keep me creative they keep me accountable from a numbers perspective they keep me accountable from those short-term things to do perspective and a long term things to do perspective so anyone that's working in the business running the business or just wants to work on improving themselves and growing developing and learning I would recommend all of these different applications they're genuinely brilliant and they helped me so so much

Channel: Ben Francis

Views: 112,249

Keywords: Gymshark, business, entrepreneur, growth, gym, shark, ben, Francis, growing business, GSHQ, gary vaynerchuk, business app, business apps, CEO, Young entrepreneur, business owner, Gymshark owner, fitness, business lessons

Id: IZFIsx--vLY

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020