Overcome Tech Overwhelm & Boost Efficiency

The Humane Marketing Show. A podcast for a generation of marketers who care.

In this episode, I’m joined by Avital Spivak, an online tech coach and certified business manager, to discuss how heart-centered entrepreneurs can overcome tech overwhelm and use tools to boost efficiency.

Avital shares her expertise on aligning technology with your business values, building a solid tech foundation, and approaching tools as trusted partners that enhance, rather than complicate, your work.

Whether you’re tech-savvy or tech-shy, this conversation will empower you to confidently choose and manage tools that free up time and create space for being more human in your business.

What we covered in this episode:

• How technology can serve human needs rather than the other way around.
• Ensuring that we’re building a solid foundation of our business tools before adding new technology.
• Evaluating new tools that align with our business paradigm and values.
• Approaching tools as if they were team members, ensuring they complement and enhance our work.
• Strategies for overcoming tech overwhelm by starting small and focusing on what’s needed.
• Choosing the right person to help with tech.
• A sneak preview of the Collab Workshop on November 6th

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Overcome Tech Overwhelm & Boost Efficiency

Sarah: [00:00:00] Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy.

I'm Sarah Zanacroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama bear of the humane marketing circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what we're doing.

Works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way.

We share with transparency and vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work. So that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. And if you prefer one on one support from me, my humane business coaching could be just what you need.

Whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book, I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience. experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one on one client can find out more at humane.

marketing forward slash coaching. And finally, if you are a marketing impact pioneer and would like to bring humane marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at humane. marketing. com. Dot marketing.

Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of the humane marketing.

podcast. Today's conversation fits under the P of partnership. We're partnering with technology and tools, and I'm speaking to Avital Spivak. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the humane marketing mandala.

And if you're new here and don't know what I'm talking about, you can download your one page marketing plan with the [00:03:00] Humane Marketing version of the seven Ps of Marketing at Humane. marketing forward slash one page, the number one and the word page. And just a reminder that humane is with an E at the end.

That's not always obvious for non English speakers. So it's not human marketing, but humane. It comes with seven email prompts to really help you P's for your business. I'll tell you more about Avital in a minute, but first allow me to plug my awesome business book alchemist program, which starts on November 14th, one more time.

So this is a program for what I call a renegade authors. So authors want to be authors who are writing a book for the message, for the change, and not only to call themselves bestselling authors. So, in these eight weeks together, [00:04:00] we'll refine your big message, get clear on your ideal reader, build a solid outline for your book, and then also create a marketing plan for it.

So, it starts on November 14th. It lasts officially for eight weeks, and I'm saying officially because with last year's participants, we're still meeting monthly in the BBA book lab to hold each other accountable with our writing, and one of the members already submitted A chapter to a multi author book and it's just been published and she keeps writing now her own book as well, which is amazing.

The program comes with an evergreen video course portion and extensive workbook to help you reflect and work on your book as well as Eight live calls in which we go deeper into the content and start planning and working on our books. And after these eight weeks together, you also have [00:05:00] the opportunity, if you want to, to join that BBA book collab where we meet monthly because it really helps to have that accountability and community to hold each other accountable as well.

So if that speaks to you, if you know deep down. You have a book inside of you, and let me tell you, it's never the right time to write a book. Just kind of like, it's never the right time to have a child. Maybe now is the time. So check out the details at humane. marketing forward slash BBA. And let's talk.

Book a call to talk to me about whether this is a good fit for you. I'd love to hear about your book idea. Okay, so back to today's episode. Avital Spivak is an online tech coach, certified online business manager, and computer engineer. For 15 plus years, she has been breaking the myth [00:06:00] that people who did not grow up with technology cannot get comfortable with it at any age.

She's a martial artist, multilingual, and enjoys helping clients from everywhere around the world get unstuck with tech so they can grow their business with confidence. What we covered in our conversation, how technology can serve human needs rather than the other way around. Ensuring that we're building a solid foundation of our business tools before adding new technology, evaluating new tools that align with our business paradigm and values, approaching tools as if they were team members, ensuring they complement enhance and enhance our work.

Strategies for overcoming tech overwhelm by starting small and focusing on what's needed. Choosing the right person to help with tech. And then also a sneak preview of the collab workshop on November 6th. [00:07:00] That's right. On November 6th, Avital comes into our community, the Humane Marketing Circle, and will help us in a 90 minute hands on workshop to get more familiar.

And get more used to tech and also kind of build that foundation and map it out according to our needs. So if you want to join us after listening to this episode, please go to humane. marketing. com forward slash workshop. And you can join us for a small donation inside our community. All right, let's do it.

Here's Avital and I talking about tools. Enjoy.

Hi, Abital, so good to have you on the Humane Marketing Podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Hey, Sarah. Great to be here. Thanks for welcoming me. Thank you. All right. Tools and technology. That's our topic today. One of my favorite topics, actually, I, [00:08:00] I'm a big tech fan and AI and people kind of always Find that interesting because I'm, as you know, I'm talking all about human and being human and being humane.

But I really feel like they go together and we can discover or kind of dive deeper into that later in the conversation. But I want to start with you and this topic of. Yeah. Technology. What, what brought you, like, what made you focus in on that topic? That's my first question. And then why is that such a struggle for so many entrepreneurs?

So two questions for you. So what brought me here is many years as a software engineer and a team leader. So I've been in the tech space for many, many years. But also I've been an [00:09:00] educator even longer than I've been an engineer. I've always liked having people ask me questions and, and come back with something for them to get them unstuck and into the next step.

It's been a lifelong since I think I remember myself in the third grade already helping. other kids in my class with their problem with their mom and the problem with homework and their problem. So it's always been there. Every team that I've been on, I became the person who onboards people and et cetera, and shows them what to do.

So both of these came together as an entrepreneur. To help solopreneurs with their technology. For me, and it's interesting that you said that your interests are in tech and people, because for me, this comes together because the technology is here to serve us. It's not separate than the human. [00:10:00] And I think a lot of tech troubles, to go into your second question, a lot of tech trouble comes from ill fitting matches.

So when we forget the human part of the equation and we focus, let's have the tech that can do that thing. Wait a minute, there's a human in the equation. If we don't fit the text to the human, it's not going to work. Yeah. That's why you're here on this podcast. I could get, I knew you know, when Sophie Leschner introduced us, I'm like, yeah, there's gotta be a good fit here because obviously there's, there's.

A lot of tech gurus out there. But you're right. It's the technology that needs to go together with the human being and being able to adapt and adopt the, this technology and fit them into our humanness. [00:11:00] That's the, that's the key really to, to making these things work for you. Right. I think that's a, a big part of what you're saying is also like.

Make sure you choose the tools that work for you and not just because someone recommended a new shiny object that you have to now also use that thing as well. Very true. And really tools have been an extension of humans for many, many, many years. We can go back, you know, to using stones to carve things.

But I like to do my, another passion of mine is martial arts, Chinese martial arts. So I would say that the sword is an extension of the person you have to, the sword doesn't work by itself. And for it to work well for you, you need to hone it, you know, like to hone your skills to, to, to. [00:12:00] Get the tool in good shape to get yourself in a good shape to become a team and work together.

If you don't become one with your sword and the sword doesn't fit you, you know, it's not useful at all. Right. So, so the tools are an extension of ours. They come to serve our needs. And for that to work, we need to give them, you know, we need to be good team members. We need to give them what they need in order to serve best.

Right. Maybe this, for someone who's completely opposed to, or even kind of scared of technology, that may sound a little abstract, right? So let's, let's give them some specific. examples, like for you, when you talk about tools for solopreneurs, give us one or two examples of these tools, and then I can share some of the tools that I use as [00:13:00] well.

So I'm not going to go with a specific tech tool, but I am going to go with the computer. As a tool, so we use the computer as part of our tool, right? But if we don't know how to wrangle the windows to do what we want, if we don't know how to respond. So I'll jump into a different piece a little bit because I speak about a lot about computer land.

This is me as a human being entering computer land and it's somewhere where there's the culture is different. The language is different. Part of that, to give the specific example you're looking for is that I interact with computer land on a flat screen. Everything goes. Starts with the eyes. So if my tools want to [00:14:00] talk to me, they have to put something on the screen that I can see.

And we've all seen those, you know, little boxes that come up, right in front of your work, and ask you something. And our first instinct is to just, you know, go away. Click, click, click, click, click, go away. But if we remember that that's the only way that our tools have to speak with us, then we might start paying attention.

Here's another source of problems is we send away the messages to tell us there is a problem. You need to do something about this. Here's a guide of, you know, here's your next best step. There's a lot of conversation going on. If we ignore it. we get into trouble. So specifically, I help people start paying attention to those.

And really, [00:15:00] it's not that you need to read each one, because like walking down the street, you don't talk to everybody that comes and asks you a question or tell you something, etc. You make a decision. Is that a person that's relevant, and they need to listen to what they say and respond? Or is that somebody that.

I need to ignore. So when that thing pops, the first thing is not to read or to make it go away. The first thing is, where did that come from? Who's talking to me? That, that, yeah, that really makes me laugh because I. Probably 9 out of 10 times, I'm the person who closes those things, right? Because, and I tell you why, Avital, because they.

They're not using a very human language, like they're speaking to me as if I was another piece of technology. So I think message to, you know, whoever humans are programming this technology is to [00:16:00] use a more human language in those messages as well. Because then we can actually communicate, but, but right now all these messages feel like, I have no idea what you're saying.

Sounds bad. So I'm going to close it. But I agree. And that's you who are passionate about technology and likes using those things, right? And you close nine out of 10 without reading, right? So it's definitely a very common thing. What I do with my clients is I tell them, take a picture, send it to me. I'll tell you what they're saying.

And what happens is Those things stopped coming because a lot of them come back and back and back because we haven't responded, right? So what do you do when you know, if I have a team member, they're trying to tell me something and I'm not responding Hopefully they'll try again and again and again, right?

So when we respond a lot of time those things go away Right. If we don't respond, they pile up and then you have things [00:17:00] taking your screen space, taking it away from your work, distracting you. What I was more thinking of is, is tools like, you know, zoom, for example, that we're recording our podcast with, or technology like my mic that I need to know how to, you know the levels of the, of the microphone so that the sound is, is, is good.

All of these other technology tools that again, help us to be more human with, you know, someone across the ocean that I can now talk to where before or. You know, for someone who doesn't know how to use these tools, it becomes difficult. Other tools that solopreneurs probably often need to learn how to use it are like email providers even just the Google suite and all of these technology things that we're using all the [00:18:00] time.

And even if. We are not, if we're choosing not to use them in our own business, the minute we collaborate with other people, we're often confronted with having to use them. I see that in one of the volunteering teams I'm in right now. And it's a challenge because it's like, Oh, I just took it for granted that everybody knows how to use this.

But. Obviously that's not the case. So yeah, tools are everywhere. So here are, here are my top things. So first is the computer. You have to learn to talk to it. Then we have the browser, how to use the internet well with tabs and bookmarks and not lose your space and not be afraid to search and all that.

Then we have zoom to collaborate and communicate. Then we have files. Where do we put our files or storage? Where is everything? How do I find it again? And like you say, when [00:19:00] collaborating with others, then suddenly we have Google Docs. And there's a lot of people who, you know, you put the link to a doc and that's very common way to share information and, and collaborate in writing.

And there are people who are very uncomfortable with that. So I create tools like little courses and things like that. One of my courses is navigating Google land. So that people can collaborate easily, but, you know, actually learn to do it because it, it's very challenging to get started when you don't have the basic blocks.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And even people who are versed and know things, they might be missing some of the basic blocks without knowing it because they find all sorts of workarounds. [00:20:00] But it creates inefficiencies and it creates a little level of, I'm not sure if next time I'll be able to do this. And it really makes the daily life hard.

I see what you're doing. And I, I feel myself feeling a little bit impatient because I'm like, Oh, but I thought we're going to be talking about, you know, these techie tools, but I see completely what you're doing. And you're like, well, we have to build the house. We have to build the foundation with. If, yeah, with how to, yeah, have a filing system, maybe on your computer files, but also in your email file, email organizing, all of these things that are, it's true.

It's part of the foundation. Why would you want to use something very techie if you don't have that foundation yet? Right. So, so that leads me to the, another question. So, so [00:21:00] then. Okay. We were building this house with the foundation. And yet we're healing, hearing from everywhere. Well, you should be using this tool now and this app and this, this other shiny thing.

So once we have that foundation in place, how do we then make decisions about what to add to our foundation of the house? If we continue with that analogy. Yeah. Excellent. This is the next place, right? So so at this point, once we have, we made sure that the foundation is solid, then we want to start from the human and the company.

What are my needs? What is it that I need to do? Because if I just start listening to everybody that tells me you need this, you need this, solopreneurs need this. I use that. We get lost and we might start trying things and get into trouble. Right. Many [00:22:00] of us know enough to get ourselves tangled and the way to decide and I have a tool for that, which I can talk about in the workshop, right?

Exactly. We'll talk about in the workshop that helps you map your needs to your tools. Okay. Because that's really the way I approach this is looking at my tools as a team. So I need a team to help me with my business needs. And what are my business needs? We don't go out and start taking people because somebody said, Hey, this guy's great to work with.

Okay. Let me employ them. We don't go about building our human team like that. It's like, what do I need a person with? Is that person? Okay. So they're great to work with. Do they fit me? There's an interview process. There's a, you, you want to know who you're bringing in rather than try and bring all sorts of things because they might be able to help.[00:23:00]

There's a cost, even if it's not in money, there's a cost in adding just anybody and everybody to the team. Even for a trial period. It disrupts something. And when, when I tell people to start thinking about anything they know about team building, because all of us that are, let's say above, let's go with 30, all of us older than 30 have seen some teamwork somewhere.

And even if they didn't build the team, they were part of teams and they know what works and what doesn't work. We all have experience. Let's use this experience to build our tech team. And when we start thinking of Our tools as what actually serves the need it starts being a good fit and it starts being something you can use.

So that's where I start. I start with, let's say what what [00:24:00] your needs are. And now let's interview the tools that everybody's recommending according to that. I love that. That is so aligned with everything we, we stand for it, humane business and humane marketing, because it, you know, humane marketing also starts with ourselves, like, who are we, what's our story, what's our values, what's our worldview, and then how do I bring that to my marketing, to my business so that it reflects.

And resonates with the right kind of people so that they feel attracted by who I am. And so you're telling me now, and this is so beautiful that we're going to listen to ourselves first again to our needs our business model, because all of our business models are going to be different. And, and then from that place, [00:25:00] look at the tools that are out there and available and see well, which one fits just because everybody's using MailChimp doesn't mean that I have to now use MailChimp and, and use, you know, even have an email list.

Maybe I don't want to have an email list. So yeah, looking at my needs and my business needs first, I like that a lot. I'll give you a specific example. Many people use a. Tools that are different ones, but tools that would post things for you in social media. Right. And maybe you give them kind of the same post, go ahead, schedule it and post it everywhere, but.

And that sounds efficient and sounds helpful and it feels good, you know, this tool is going to post for me. I don't have to spend my time there. But when we're thinking about the other side, which is in part humane marketing or in part [00:26:00] what, how is the tool fitting my values, depending on my values and how I see talking to people, LinkedIn has a very different style and vibe and environment for conversation than in Facebook, for example.

And Facebook is different than Instagram and they're all have a different environment, right? So sometimes posting the same thing to all of them wouldn't necessarily make sense and, and using a tool that would do it for you rather than I like part of my value is the conversation and the relationships that I create with the people that I serve.

And when I'm posting on LinkedIn, I'm there to respond to comments and I'm there to respond. And I don't use my VA to respond to comments because I want to respond in my voice and the way that. You know, depending [00:27:00] on people's questions and comments, I want to respond. It's an extension of the post and that's the conversation.

Right. At the same time, I have my VA post things like reminders and all sorts of things that are, I've written in my voice, but it needs the extension. Then I can use an automation or a person or anything to, you know, for wider reach. Right. Yeah. So I don't know if that makes sense, but for example, choosing a tool to do the automation of posting or not.

would depend on how I see what I want to do on social media. Yeah. Yeah. And I was thinking like even further, like if we look at our values first, which is this inner work, right? And then we look, we figure out our needs and then we find. Let's say two different tools. One is kind of the traditional [00:28:00] tool to just make money or profit oriented.

And one is a tool with great ethics. It, you know, plants, like I'm thinking of a browser, for example, can remember the exact name I'll look it up, but it plants trees for whenever you use it. You know, and if my values are kind of in alignment with that, then, well, it's a no brainer. Of course, I want to plant trees while I'm browsing, right?

And there's other implications that our values kind of dictate. It's like, well, I don't want to use a tool. For example a criteria could be that immediately. Makes people take out their credit card for a free trial. I've noticed myself, it's very hard to actually find a tool that kind of is already sinking in this new paradigm, new [00:29:00] business, like we're human orientation.

But eventually if enough people give that kind of feedback back to the developers, I'll. I'm hoping that there will be new tools out there that are also aligned with ethical behavior, et cetera, et cetera. So, so it becomes even more important. Yeah. I check usually who owns the company. I like, you know, it's a combination really, but if the company is not well behaved according to values that are, you know, close to me, I, I don't want to use it.

Exactly. Yeah. So that's important. Yeah. Yeah. And I like, you know, there's also external measures like B Corp. I don't know if you're familiar with big corporations. Yes. So that those. Those are helpful to make a decision, right? Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Any kind of [00:30:00] label that immediately tells you, okay, my values are aligned.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So what would you say for someone who's listening and who is now, you Or has been in complete tech overwhelm. What are kind of the first steps you advise clients to think about when they're in tech overwhelm on how to simplify their use of tech? I say a few things, but the first thing I would say is disconnect for the tech for a moment.

And realign yourself with yourself. Think of why did you get into the tech for the, in the first place? What is it that you wanted it to do for you? And then start from there. So what do I want it to do? Do I already have something that can do it just kind of like start small [00:31:00] and there's nothing wrong with starting with paper calendar and you know, whatever you need to do to run your business.

And just take things slowly. And because tools, you know, tools are only as good as how you use them. So even if you take a tool that can do a thousand things, maybe you just need two things from it. Just learn to do those two things. You don't need the whole thing. So don't go there. So I would say that's even before you try and find somebody to work with.

Because in the tech overwhelm, just pull back. You don't need all that avalanches too much. We have marketing, we have more food available to many of us, unfortunately, some not, but many of us that [00:32:00] are talking now about owning a business, et cetera, we have way more food offers than we ever could use or consume.

And it's an overwhelm, right? But we've been training for many years to bring in only what we need or mostly what we need, et cetera. It's the same similar skill. It's an avalanche. You don't need to listen to every commercial, every recommendation, every listen to your needs. 1st, 2nd thing I want to say, and that's really important. For people who are uncomfortable with technology or, you know, comfortable, but got into trouble, we need some help trying to fix. Your knowledge or your ability or whatever by yourself, it's sometimes very challenging and time consuming. You might get a shortcut by working with somebody. [00:33:00] Be very, very choosy who you work with, who you get to do, do it for you, because we want to kind of like, okay, you do it.

Be very careful because they don't know your business. Like you doesn't start with it. It starts with you, your business, what you need. And. Ask for help only from kind people. I know that sounds maybe weird in a business conversation, but the first year, exactly. The person you deal with is more important.

Well, not more in the sense of, but if you have two people to ask, go with the person that you're aligned with, that. Kind that is not judgmental or blaming in any way about what you're doing and what you're thinking and what you know and don't know, because this is. [00:34:00] Challenging enough without adding somebody being a bully around you and tech doesn't need bullies.

Unfortunately there's, there are some, so just don't choose to work with them. Thank you. Yeah. Before we wrapped this up, I'd like you to give us a sneak preview of what we'll be working on during our CoLab workshop because we have this chance to have you in our community, the Humane Marketing Circle, and we'll do a 90 minute roll your sleeves back kind of hands on workshop with you, which I'm very excited about.

So tell us a little bit what we're going to be doing there. Okay. So we're actually going to be doing the things we spoke about before here today. And we're going to, I'm introducing a map, which is a tool that we can use. And [00:35:00] this map will help us match our existing tools to our existing needs and see where the gaps are, where there's duplicates, where, how things work and that don't work, and that goes a long way to bring that.

Tech overwhelm and the mess in our head, first of all, into a visual form. And then we can start making decisions and evaluate. And what's fun in the workshop is that we also help each other see. So sometimes we put things on the map. It's so close to home that we don't even see what's visible to everybody else there.

So it's kind of fun to do this together and to start learning a little bit. About our own system and where we can simplify. Yeah, I, I, like I told you in the beginning of this conversation, I love tech and I use a lot, but I've never, you know, [00:36:00] mapped it out. So I'm personally super excited about that.

And, and for me, it's probably going to be more about simplifying. So maybe getting rid of some of the tools or, or combining them rather than adding more tools. But who knows, I'm, I'm looking forward to it. And, and like you said, it's very much about the human conversations as well as, as for all our collab workshops.

But I think especially for the, this one, so that we can counterbalance the, the tech and the mental in essence, so. So yeah, this, this workshop is on November 6th, so please join us there in our community for a little donation. You can join us and the link is humane. marketing forward slash workshop.

Cannot wait. Avital, you also have a freebie on your website, so please do mention where people can find you. Tell us a little bit about your freebie and Yeah. Anything [00:37:00] else you'd like to share? Excellent. So my website is vitalweave. com and when you go there, you can find a freebie right there on the bottom, including some details, but what it is, is my best three tips that are non techie that will check, change your tech life.

Starting today, and they seem very simple and almost like, why is she telling this to us? But these tapes were curated from my clients who come back two years later, three years later, and say, you know, the most valuable thing that you taught me is that's where I got those three So they're misleadingly simple.

I love that. That's great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being with me today to talk about [00:38:00] tools and tech and looking forward to this workshop on November 6th. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Avital. Thank you, Snara.

I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode. Please find out more about Avital and her work at vitalweave. com. Or even better, join us for the 90 minute hands on workshop on November 6th. You can sign up at humane. marketing forward slash workshop with a small donation because you're going to be inside the Humane Marketing Circle community. By the way, if you're looking for others who think like you, then why not join us in the Humane Marketing Circle community? You get access to all of these collab workshops once per month for free, as well as all the past workshops that are in the recording library, as well as another [00:39:00] monthly call where we connect with the community members and As of two months ago, I think the community calls are actually community led, so they're led by a member of the community, and they're also topics that came from the community, so they're all having to do with business building and marketing and selling.

But all according Oh, Oh, Oh, values. So again, find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. You find the show notes of this episode at humane. marketing forward slash H M 1 9 9. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers. The Humane Business Manifesto and the Free Gentle Confidence Mini Course, as well as my two books, Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. you so much for listening and being part of a generation of [00:40:00] marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. are change makers before we are marketers. So go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak [00:41:00] [00:42:00] [00:43:00] [00:44:00] [00:45:00] [00:46:00] [00:47:00] soon.