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The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
Morgan Seeber Takes us Inside Slack: Elevating Team Collaboration
Unlock the secrets to streamlined team communication with our latest People Gardener podcast episode featuring Morgan Seeber, co-founder of Auxbox. Have you ever struggled with managing scattered communications across multiple platforms? Morgan shares how his team transitioned from using Facebook Messenger, email, and text to the all-in-one solution of Slack, thanks to a savvy employee with corporate experience. This episode is packed with valuable insights into how Slack can transform your team's communication strategies, helping you stay organized and focused on what truly matters.
Join us as Morgan provides an insider's look at the practical functionalities of Slack, from creating dedicated channels for various projects to utilizing direct messages and video calls. Discover the advantages of having specific channels that involve only relevant team members, cutting through the noise of unnecessary communication. Whether you're a small business owner looking to enhance your internal communication or simply curious about Slack, this episode offers actionable tips and firsthand experiences that can help boost your leadership skills and team efficiency.
Morgan Seeber - auxbox.ca
Well, hey there, welcome to the People Gardener podcast. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your host, also known as the People Gardener, thrilled to put this podcast together to help small business owners, new business owners, frustrated business owners and aspiring leaders, whether they're inside business or outside. Each week, we bring you some actionable steps so that you can actually improve your skill as a leader. That's what we're about. We're here to help you become a better leader by giving you access to lots of different perspectives. By giving you access to lots of different perspectives, the guests are varied. We're thrilled to have them. Get out your pen, get out your paper and be ready to learn Every single episode. You're going to be able to take something away that you can implement. Are you ready? Let's get to work. Well, hey there. Welcome back to the People Gardener podcast. Happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:This week we are going to talk about the software, slack, and I brought back Morgan Sieber, who is the co-founder of Oxbox. Got to check him out. Oxboxca right, yes, and he uses Slack inside his business. I thought it would be interesting to chat with him. How did he find it, how did they make a decision to use it and, essentially, how they use it. So, morgan, let's start with how many people are on your team that are inside Slack channel.
Speaker 2:I think right now we've got eight people, seven or eight, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And so this is your way of internally communicating with your team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much all communications for slack okay.
Speaker 1:So how did you end up picking slack? Was it that you were looking for, or, and what did it have that you thought? Yeah, no, we need to use this yeah, we.
Speaker 2:We hired an employee that she had worked for larger corporations, so Reebok and Lululemon and I'm not sure who else. Anyhow, she introduced us to it because we were using Facebook messenger at the time and email and text and it was scattered so how does it work?
Speaker 1:I'm not a slack. This is more for information for my audience. Okay, so how does it work? It's on the phone.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I have it on my computer, ipad, phone, okay, and it all is synced. Obviously it's just like an instant messenger, right? However? So you can have direct messages to a particular team member and you can have locked actually, no one can see those direct messages between you and one team member. And you can have channels, which is common and that's between a group you set up a group. You can have locked channels that nobody can see those. If it's just a normal channel, everybody can see it. So we have various things like shop, crew, site work. Yeah, we've had design channels. We've had, um, trying to think you kind of use some of them temporarily and then they become irrelevant. So then I ended up I don't like clutter, so I just delete stuff after a while. We have an administrative channel that's locked, so it's me and the other founder, landon, and our administrative assistant, and then we have like a coaching channel, so our business coach is on there too.
Speaker 1:Right. So in my head, what I picture these channels looking like is when you would call a meeting of all the stakeholders for a particular project old school. Everybody come into the meeting room that is part of this project and let's talk about something relative to this. So with this channel, you include the people who actually have something to do with yeah department or that specific project and you can interact directly yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to interrupt other people and that it doesn't really matter to them.
Speaker 1:This makes me so happy because it gets gets rid of those those delightfully lovely folks that want to CC you on everything. Yes, but it's not relevant to you, they're not in your channel. So, okay, that's very, very cool, can you? Is it just simply text?
Speaker 2:Yes, Okay, you can call video call as well. Video call.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you pass back and forth documents like PDFs or photos, or?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything you can pass through there. I actually use it. I pass messages to myself. If I want to put something onto my phone or onto my computer, from the computer onto one of my devices, or even like if I'm going out to site and I want a whole bunch of stuff in the same spot on my phone, I just message myself with all those documents and pull it up through slack.
Speaker 1:It's kind of where I live. So, yeah, that's efficient. Yeah, you mentioned that there's a channel for your crew, your building crew, there at Oxbox. So what types of things are you communicating to them, or they're communicating to each other on this channel?
Speaker 2:Well, right now we're kind of an intimate team. We talk every day as well, so Slack isn't always relevant. But if maybe I could just pull one up, give me a second here.
Speaker 2:well I was out on site the other day and so not around the guys, and I asked everyone's opinion on, or preference for, a cedar product, I guess a sealant for cedar. So the same way I have the expertise on this proper sealant for cedar that I can bring to a client, and so it became a short chat. Something that can happen is well with any any kind of group messaging is it can get carried away, but generally you kind of try to keep that in check. Okay, that that's good.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I'm good on a scale of one to ten, ten being super helpful, one being not helpful at all as far as streamlining your communication or your your process inside your business well, I guess I, relative to other things that I've used, I think it's high like nine or ten.
Speaker 2:I haven't tried a ton other things. Right, we attempted to try google messenger and that would probably work relatively close to the same. But yeah, I like it. It's really clean. We rarely have problems with it. That kind of thing would irritate me a lot. That's nice.
Speaker 1:So often, technology software is supposed to make life better and then doesn't. So it's encouraging to hear that something that is promoted as a communication tool that can help streamline and keep things moving actually is doing that.
Speaker 2:It's just like anything, though. You need training, a little tiny bit of training and you need people to not be what do you call it like hesitant to accept change. So we had one guy that refused to get a smartphone, or a guy that refused to use he would be out on site but refused to use like any data.
Speaker 1:so we end up like, okay, man, that's maybe a different problem, but we have to buy their data, or even like a tiny little message well, it's certainly something to think about if you're, if you, as an employer, asking employees who don't have access to a desktop computer just simply because of how they work, like your shop crew, they're on the floor, they're building, they don't necessarily each have their own computer so, yeah, I guess it would be something that you would need to consider because it does use up their data that they are paying for.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I agree, it's another, another conversation one thing I do like about it is you can send scheduled messages, just like Google sends scheduled emails, so click on it, hold it down your message and say send tomorrow morning at 7am which is nice, nice, nice.
Speaker 1:So your training, did you go on YouTube or did it come with training modules and whatnot? No training that I can remember flying by the seat of your pants yeah, well, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not very complicated. If you've done like msn messenger or any of these other messaging things, a highlight comes up. When you get a message, you click on it, you type your response or put your emoji in and you're good to go right, awesome, okay, well, that's great.
Speaker 1:I like I say I haven't used it. I know lots of people that do use it that seem to be very happy with it, so it's definitely sounds like something that anybody that's got a team of people that they want to be able to communicate with efficiently Like in me it makes more sense when it's groups of people that are all invested in one particular area. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of any other benefits right now, but it's probably not optimized within our small company.
Speaker 1:I think that's kind of the way most of the software is. There's been multiple upgrades to where I record or I edit these episodes of the podcast and there's just so much stuff in there that I don't use. I don't know how to use, I haven't seen. But yeah, invest the time and find out, because it could be that there's features that would be really beneficial. But again, back to stopping slowing down and actually taking the time to get in there and look at it.
Speaker 2:So there's a free version that holds your information and history for, I think, 90 days or 30 days or 90 days? Which has proven to be enough for us right now. But if you needed to keep important documents for much longer, you just get the paid version.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like any subscription.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, thank you very much for sharing your insight. And again, folks, this is morgan seabird, co-founder of oxbox. Check them out, oxboxca. They make the most hmm, I I want to say the most attractive and functional accessory units. And I always said the aux it's A-U-X-B-O-X, it's the auxiliary box, it's that extra room, it's that extra office, whatever you need put on your property. So, yeah, thanks so much for sharing your real world experience with Slack.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:That's it for this week, folks. We'll talk to you again next week. Well, thanks for joining me today. Just a quick reminder if you were not on my email list, go to my website, rondadelaneycom, and there's a place there that you can subscribe, keep you up to date on all things people, gardening and leadership and also a reminder that the Raving Fans Society app is available on the Apple Store and the Google Store. I do have a free membership in there that you'll be able to access some of my material, and then there's also a paid membership, and right now it's $49 a month and you will receive access to all of my material, all of the teaching content, including a resource library that will really help you along, as well as group coaching every month and then quarterly bringing in guests that will talk on topics that pertain to small business owners and leadership. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you again next week.