by Joey Novak | Apr 8, 2015 | Tips
I have to admit, I am an evangelist. Not the religion, but of the products I like. I’ve tried a lot of task managers over the years. I’ve even written a few myself. At Novak Solutions we’ve tried a half-dozen or so and the one we’ve enjoyed the most so far is Asana. Some of the reasons Asana is great include: It’s free. It has great team features. It’s SIMPLE (this is one of the bigger reasons we chose it). It doesn’t spam you on every single update. Did I mention it’s simple? You can rapidly enter a number of tasks and group tasks without needing to use your mouse. Try it...
by Joey Novak | Apr 7, 2015 | Tips
Do you know what Key Indicators drive your business?? If not, take 30 minutes today and figure out what your key indicators are. Then figure out what you can do to increase those key indicators. For us, our key indicators are: # of Free App Users $ Recurring Rev / Mo Churn Marketing Reach We have our own dashboard we track these stats on, if you want it for your own use, check it out here: https://novaksolutions.com/performance/...
by Joey Novak | Apr 6, 2015 | Tips
Voice mail is so so 1990. I hate it. I’ve seen a few other successful business owners change their voice mail message to motivate people not to leave messages, and once I did life got simpler. You don’t want to actually turn off voice mail. Just change your message. Mine says: “Hey, you’ve reached Joey at Novak Solutions. I NEVER check voice mail on this number, the best way to reach me is to send me an email at joey@novaksolutions.com, or send me a txt message on this number. Thanks, bye!” People now send me emails or txt messages instead, which fits seamlessly into my...
by Joey Novak | Feb 13, 2015 | CEO Corner
One of the things I love is to understand how systems work. From FedEx sorting, to gas station fuel pumps, to nuclear weapons (which are actually a lot simpler than you might think). One of the things I’ve learned is that systems can be divided into two classes: closed loop and open loop. An open loop system is a system with no feedback; it just happily runs along doing what it is told to do with no real indicator of success. It just assumes everything is hunky dory. While these systems are usually cheap to build and very reliable, they can cause problems. For example, I spent a small amount of time at a grape vineyard assisting with the grape juice processing during harvest season. There were 8 different machines the grapes went through before processing was finished. There was one machine whose job is to crack open the grapes by crushing them just a little. This was the first real step, and it was the main bottleneck in processing the grapes into grape juice. There was a large conveyor belt that fed this machine, and if the guys putting grapes on the conveyor belt were too fast, the hopper on the crusher would fill up and grapes would start raining down inside the building. It was a non-profit facility run by volunteer labor, so the quality of the labor was somewhat random. Sometimes you would get over-eager people that no matter what you told them would keep dumping grapes on the conveyor until finally, to their dismay, you just turned off the electricity to their equipment so they...
by Joey Novak | Nov 13, 2013 | Automate It!
We all know Infusionsoft is great for marketing, but did you know it can make you breakfast, too? I paired Infusionsoft with the Novak Solutions Automation Center platform, a few kitchen appliances, and a TM-19A transceiver. A simple Infusionsoft web form captures the date and time you’d like breakfast to start cooking. I used “Send HTTP Post” in the Campaign Builder to tell the Automation Center to schedule breakfast for 8 AM the next morning. The next step is the easiest: go to bed for the night! In the morning, the Automation Center automatically used the TM-19A transceiver to turn on the kitchen appliances to get my food cooking. I woke up a few minutes later and enjoyed my hot breakfast. Did you enjoy this video? Want to see more? Click here to vote on what you’d like to see in the next Automate It!...
