Bryan Orr (@BryanJOrr) is both a brick-and-mortar small business owner and software entrepreneur, based in Florida. In owning and operating a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) installation company, he has experimented with a great variety of project management tools and collaboration software. Following this, he ventured into the software game itself, commissioning his own system to help run the business.
Bryan hosts HVAC School and Dialed In podcasts and is a co-creator of MentionTribe, an online service aimed at helping local small businesses.
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Show Notes & Links
- Bryan owns a HVAC installation business
- MentionTribe
- WOW Small Business Podcast
- Prescott had a past life as a Mechanical Engineering draftsman
- R-12 vs R-134a refridgerants
- Remember The Milk and TeuxDeux, examples of “laundry list” apps
- Basecamp, classic email replacement tool
- Gantt Charts
- Time-tracking and Invoicing
- Image previewing and collaborative reviewing
- “Tasking”, Bryan’s term for assigning items to different team members
- Gwenyth Paltrow uses Basecamp
- Bryan favours Trello for team collaboration
- Kanban board, take a task through a lifecycle
- Freedcamp is a free(mium) version of Basecamp
- Prescott doesn’t like “glorified checklists” because not everything in life is a checkbox item
“Email needs to be taken out back, burned, and never heard from again”
—Bryan Orr
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- “Advanced Chat”, Bryan’s term for specified cross-talk which replaces email
- Josh Miles, previous podcast guest and design firm owner
- “Pictures of Success”
- Eisenhower methodology
- Clients should not use text messaging, especially when the recipient may be driving
- Toggl, simple time-tracking but not so much invoicing
- Screenshot Monitor, keeps an eye on team members up-to-the-minute
- Xero, small business online accounting software; and employer of Saul Colt, past podcast guest
- Starship Design, Prescott’s design company
- The Wayback Machine
- Password managers like Dashlane allow you to have your password on you at all times
- The trouble with reference materials, “knowledge base”
- Wiki software is not very user-friendly
- Dropbox beats Google Drive for roll-back of individual files
Work Smarter by Nick Loper on Amazon
- Entrepreneur on Fire podcast
- Bryan Orr on Twitter
- Bryan Orr on Facebook
- Bryan Orr on Instagram
- Bryan Orr on LinkedIn
- Obsessed Garage on YouTube
Tools
- Remember The Milk
- TeuxDeux
- Basecamp
- Harvest
- Design Sign Off
- Evernote and Easily Do
- Trello
- KanBan Flow
- Freedcamp
- Slack
- HipChat
- MindMeister
- Jira from Atlassian
- Workamajig
- Asana
- FreshBooks
- FreeAgentPro
- Toggl
- ScreenShot Monitor
- Xero
- Mint
- GitHub
- IFTTT - If This Then That
- Google Drive
- Lighthouse
- Pivotal Tracker
- TacoApp
- Dashlane
- Dropbox
- Kippt, bookmarking tool for teams
- Gingko, non-linear writing tool
Techniques
- Create new columns (“States”) in your Kanban board
- Utilise a real Project Manager to make decisions and keep the project moving
- Define “Pictures of Success” to demonstrate best practices within your team
- Use the Eisenhower methodology to determine what’s important vs. what’s urgent
- Don’t use text messaging for business
- Create a method of your own to-do list
- Create a method for group communication/chat
- Create a method for assigning tasks
- Ensure you have mobile capabilities
- Experiment with mind-mapping methodologies
- Build a team knowledge base so folks don’t have to ask each other for stuff all the time
Habits
- Adhere to the system you create, but also test new methods
- Review your personal and team to-dos at the end of each day
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Prescott Perez-Fox is a graphic designer, brand developer, and educator with 18+ years experience in branding, packaging, graphic design, and web design. He runs The Busy Creator.
