Organize, Streamline & Thrive with Google, featuring Google Expert, Adrienne Farrow

I sat down with Adrienne Farrow, a former teacher turned Google Suite expert, to talk about how creative business owners can reduce digital clutter.

Listen In:

Or, listen in on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Summary:

If you’ve ever wasted twenty minutes searching for a video file or lost a day trying to remember where you put that draft PDF, this episode is going to be a game changer. I sat down with Adrienne Farrow, a former teacher turned Google Suite expert, to talk about how creative business owners can reduce digital clutter and get seriously streamlined using (free!) tools you probably already have. We talk about what she calls the “Google trifecta”: Drive, Gmail, and Calendar. Adrienne shares powerful tips on organizing your backend, color coding for visual thinkers, and even using Google Slides in unexpected ways to make interactive course content. Whether you’re a solopreneur or managing a team, you’ll walk away with fresh ideas, clear systems, and a lot more headspace to create.

Topics:

How the “Google trifecta” (Drive, Gmail, Calendar) can streamline creative businesses
Digital clutter and ADHD: creating systems that reduce overwhelm and boost creativity
Practical organization tips for visual thinkers (color coding, emojis, dashboards)
Unexpected ways to use Google tools (like Slides) for interactive course content
When and why to upgrade to Google Workspace for better security and scalability

Episode Resources:

About Adrienne:

Adrienne Farrow is your go-to Google gal and self-proclaimed BFF—Best Friend in Folders, that is. Her journey from classroom hero to digital powerhouse has been fueled by over a decade of experience teaching K–12, pioneering the use of Google tools in schools, and helping educators and entrepreneurs streamline their digital lives. Since 2020, Adrienne has worked as a Virtual Assistant and digital product specialist, and she’s a proud Google for Education Certified Trainer. She’s even had a VIP peek behind the scenes at Google HQ—think Willy Wonka’s factory, but with more laptops and fewer Oompa Loompas.

Based in the desert just outside the bright lights of Las Vegas, Adrienne shares her life with her husband, two kids, and two dogs. She values work-life balance deeply, and when she’s not optimizing Google Drives or designing digital resources, you’ll find her exploring parks with her children, discovering new restaurants with her husband, or baking something delicious in her kitchen.

Connect with Adrienne:

Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode

Lyric Kinard (00:01.441) Hello friends, I am here with Adrienne Farrow, who is a phenomenal expert for using Google tools to organize your business. And you might be thinking, what on earth does this have to do with creating video content, whether it's for marketing or for online courses? But I am telling you, she is magic. The knowledge she has in her head of how to use these tools can really truly help your business to flow, to be organized, to be easier because none of us have a ton of extra time to do all the things. We're already doing all the things, right? So Adrian, welcome. And I would love it if you would give us a quick background where you're coming from and how you got to be the magician that you are now. Adrienne Farrow (00:54.158) Sounds great. Hi everyone. My name's Adrienne and I'm your Google BFF, your handy dandy go-to person when it comes to everything to do with Google tools. I was actually originally a teacher for 10 years and literally, and I'm not joking, taught almost every grade from kindergarten through high school special education in one capacity or another. I had my hands and toes in all each of those grades. But what was the constant for me was I was always the techie one. I was always the one implementing technology and then training teachers on technology integration. And Google started to come out with their education tools right around the mid part of my career. And so when COVID hit in 2020, I was prepared. I knew what to do because I had been doing all of these technological online things. And so I started training other teachers how to use Google tools effectively online, which led me to become a Google certified trainer. But also it opened up my eyes to the world of online business. And I became a virtual assistant during that time and started turning educational products that were meant for the classroom, like paper pencil activities into digital activities. And so I did that for a couple years and through that process, I realized that I was also training my clients and the people that I was working with on how to organize the backend of their business because it wasn't also, it was not only the forward facing things, but the backend mattered so much. And I actually got diagnosed with ADHD like 2022 and it made, it just made my whole world make sense. Everything made sense to me. Uh huh. Lyric Kinard (02:36.128) This is such a common story among creatives, you and me both friend. Adrienne Farrow (02:41.418) Yep. Yep. And it was like, white bulb went off. But then I also, as I was learning about my brain and how my brain worked, I was also learning about systems and how I could implement the systems in the back of my business to help alleviate the overwhelm I was feeling, to help alleviate just the stress of where was things? I can't find this. Do I have to recreate it? All those different things in my brain. And when I cracked that code for myself, I decided decided to start teaching it to other people. And I've been doing that for about the last year and a half is teaching online business owners, whoever has some sort of presence online that uses Google tools, how to be productive and efficient using Google tools in the back end of your business. That makes sense for you and your brain because you're a unique individual. You need to find the system that works for you. And a lot of times it's just knowing what's possible with Google tools. If you don't know what's out there and what exists and what Google tools can do, then you're not able to implement it. And so that's what I like to do is shine a light on what's possible. Lyric Kinard (03:47.465) And there are so very many things. I had you come do a power hour with me because my business has so many different parts running the Academy for Virtual Teaching, but I still teach my own on-demand classes. I still teach my own art techniques. And the things that you showed me and the way you showed me to organize were like, I didn't know that existed. And Adrienne Farrow (03:52.984) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (04:14.336) that makes so much sense and these things can connect and cut out five different steps of my process. It's so helpful to talk to somebody who understands and knows what's out there. Always talk to somebody who knows more than you do so you can learn. It's not intimidating, it's super helpful. So tell me a couple... Adrienne Farrow (04:21.55) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (04:39.54) things that you think about the why behind this. How does being organized and why does being organized become a crucial part of running any kind of online business? Adrienne Farrow (04:56.098) I think a lot of it is that I call it digital clutter. The digital clutter that we have in our Google Drive or our Gmail or even our calendar, it takes so much more brain power than we realize. And that when we're able to free up that digital clutter, then we expand our ability to be creative. We expand that mental capacity to think. think creatively and think in different ways. Because if you're not worried about where things are, if you know exactly, I know exactly where that video file is, I know exactly where I can get that email to respond to that person, then you don't have to waste that mental energy that would be using to find things and you can be more creative. And I also attribute it just to being like, you know, reducing clutter in your own environment. Like I, I mean, I have my filter on most of the time, cause I'm like, you don't want to see my desk around. me. There's way too much clutter. But it's that same aspect is like you think freer when you know where things are. If you have that confidence in the back end of your systems that you can get what you need when you need it, then you have more clarity in your everyday business. Lyric Kinard (06:07.742) I can't tell you how many times I've been ready to film something or ready to tackle a task in my business. And then I can't remember where I put the file that I need for that thing. I don't remember if it's in a Google drive or in Dropbox or in my desktop files and folders. and it's hilarious. It's like the cobbler's shoes having or the right cobbler's children having no shoes. Adrienne Farrow (06:37.71) Yes, there you go. Lyric Kinard (06:37.786) That's the metaphor I was going for, I try really hard to be organized in my business and I teach it to my people all the time. You begin with an organized filing system for your videos so that you can leverage that content time and time again. If you can't find it, can't use it again, right? Adrienne Farrow (06:58.71) Exactly, exactly. Lyric Kinard (07:00.818) So talk to me about some of the ways that you organize, or we can start with some of the Google tools that people might not realize are available. What are some tips and tricks that you can give some of us who are creative messes? Actually, creative geniuses. This is our superpower. All the ideas, all there, all the time, and one giant pile. How can you help us sort through those so that we can access them? Adrienne Farrow (07:17.294) Yes, creative genius, yes, yes. Adrienne Farrow (07:29.07) Definitely. Well, I say there's three key tools I say to start with and I call it the Google trifecta and that's your drive, your Gmail and your calendar. That's really like the foundation of your business because your drive is going to keep all of your files. Your Gmail is going to be how you communicate with others in whatever capacity. And then your calendar usually just keeps track of what's going on in your day to day life. So if we can get systems in place in those three, it sets that foundation to be able to then go to the next level and start optimizing your businesses. So in Drive, and it sounds like you already teach a little bit about it too, is having that folder system where you know exactly where things are. You can go into your Drive. I say you can find any file in 15 seconds or less. And it is true. You really, truly can. if you have either a folder system that works well or you're naming your files appropriately so that you can go and search for them. Because if you just name it video one, that's not gonna do much good. Lyric Kinard (08:35.466) That's one of our first basic processes and I encourage people and I do it myself to use like 20 words if you need to in the title because then one of them is going to pop up next week when you're searching you can't remember what you named the thing. Adrienne Farrow (08:38.83) Perfect. Adrienne Farrow (08:51.054) 100%. And then you can start to dive into the little things that Google can do. If you have a team, there's ways that you can share your files effectively with other people. You can do advanced search, so you can only search for video files. So when you're putting in that keyword, you can go to the advanced search button and click videos. So you're only searching for videos and you don't have everything else coming up. So, yeah. Lyric Kinard (09:16.786) I don't think I knew there was an invent search button. It's these tiny little things. Adrienne Farrow (09:20.896) Yes, exactly, exactly. But if you know, it's like next time you're in Drive, in the little search bar, looks like a couple lines with a little line through it. I don't know exactly how to describe it. But it's at the very end of the search bar. And you click that and it opens up a menu. And you have a bunch of other different things that you can put in for search. And one of it is, what is the file type? And so if you know it's a video, you can search for just videos. If you know it's a Google Doc, you can search for just Google Doc. And then that just decreases the amount of things that pop up in your search to reduce the overwhelm for finding whatever files you need. Lyric Kinard (09:58.923) That was that one little thing was worth this entire hour. I had to go over and click it real quick and go, whoa. I did. Adrienne Farrow (10:02.166) Yep. Adrienne Farrow (10:08.291) So did you just pop it up? How would you describe that little icon? Lyric Kinard (10:13.638) It is a little menu icon. It's three lines with sliders on them. Adrienne Farrow (10:18.584) There you go, sliders, that's a good way of putting it. But also you can search by date, so you're like, I know I created this in 2003 sometime. You can search for only files that are in 2003, or I guess it should be more like 23, but you know what I mean. But you can get kind of granular instead of just typing in one word and doing that. Lyric Kinard (10:21.354) Yeah. Lyric Kinard (10:41.396) That's for amazing people who can actually remember any dates. Fantastic. If you're one of those people, appreciate that superpower that you have yourself. That's amazing. Adrienne Farrow (10:45.358) Yeah, right. No, 100%. But then we can do the same kind of thing in Gmail. So there's different inbox styles in Gmail. And so to find the inbox style that works best for your brain is usually where I recommend starting. So you can either have one that shows all of the unread emails only, so you don't see unread and then read and then unread and read. You can just see those. You can... sort them by your labels. So if you create labels, which are like folders in Gmail, then you can sort them by the different labels. The one that I find the most effective is the primary and promotions. So all of my newsletters that I subscribe to and everything go to the promotions tab. And then all of the primary emails that I receive are in the primary. And then I start to train Gmail by dragging over any newsletters that accidentally get into my primary over into promotions. Lyric Kinard (11:20.052) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (11:45.206) But if you start to do that, then your Gmail will start to get under control. And then I also like to suggest have a number of unread emails in your mind of like, this is the max. So you don't have 40,000 unread emails. And I have worked with people who have had 40,000 unread emails in their Gmail, but say, okay, I'm not gonna let this go any higher than 100. I'm not gonna let this go any higher than 200. And stick to that system and keep it under control, because Gmail can get wild. really, really, really quickly. And then those same advanced searches work in Gmail too. You can search for emails in a certain date range. You can search for emails that have certain attachments. And then you can even get into some automation in Gmail, which is pretty cool. And then Calendar, I like to recommend having one calendar to rule them all. So keeping everything on one calendar, but color code it so you can see. What's my personal things? What's my work things? What's my appointments that I have? What are the courses that I'm teaching? So you can actually start to label those and then it really helps visually to see your week. But then also if you use an appointment scheduler like Calendly or something else, it makes it so much easier to have Calendly find those empty holes in your calendar. Lyric Kinard (13:11.808) How is that different? I have a family calendar and a work calendar and two different work calendars and each of those have different color codings. How is that different than? I guess I haven't figured out how to have different color codings within one Google calendar. Adrienne Farrow (13:32.751) So your main Google Calendar, the one that's attached to your account, usually it's named with your name on it. If you right click on, well, if you go to the event, like open up the event, part of way down, by your name is like a little colored dot, and you can click that and open it up and it will give you a bunch of different colors. And so you can color code the event to be a color. On a free plan, you just get the colors. On a paid plan, you can label those colors. Lyric Kinard (13:42.868) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (13:47.742) Right. Adrienne Farrow (14:02.466) So then when I go in, yellow for me is work. So any work-related event, I color code it yellow. And then on the work or on the pay plan, it'll also give you time insights. So it'll show you how much time are you spending on work-related activities? How much time are you spending in personal activities? Or how much time are you spending in meetings? So those colors can also help give you some insights into how you're spending your time too. Lyric Kinard (14:29.116) if you actually write everything on your calendar, which I do. I have like 12 different colors and every day is completely full with stuff because if it's not on my calendar, it doesn't happen. And also if I don't look at my calendar, then it also doesn't happen. How can... So this is interesting. We work with creative people here. How do these systems support... Adrienne Farrow (14:31.402) Yes. Mm. Adrienne Farrow (14:41.134) 100 % Adrienne Farrow (14:46.812) I understand that. Lyric Kinard (14:58.784) creativity, how do they reduce resistance to showing up in your business, to showing up for your students, to showing up for your shop customers? How do these things relate to each other and one feeds the other and makes it easier? Adrienne Farrow (15:15.63) So Google's really, it prides itself on two things. On one is being fairly simple and intuitive to apply. Like it can be very complex, but it also can be very simple in how the tools work together. So you can see your calendar events and connect them to Gmail. You can pull up Drive things and relate it on Google Docs or Google Sheets. And so by having it all in an ecosystem that makes it interconnected, you can stay more organized and know where things are. so, and again, it releases that mental energy or that like by spending less time on what you have to do, you can be spending more time on being creative. But it's also allowing more creativity aspects are coming into Google. They're adding more things that you can do just to think outside the box a little bit about like, can you use these tools for that aren't necessarily like word processing or slide presentations. So as creatives who use to teach other creatives, you could do a slide presentation, make it very creative and make it interactive where it becomes almost like a workbook where you have your video embedded of how you teach like a YouTube video embedded in a slide presentation with maybe boxes around it for people to then type in their answers after they watch it. There's a lot of different things that you can do with the Google tools that might just not be as cut and dry as you think they might be. Yeah. Lyric Kinard (16:51.326) Interesting. So you could create a course lesson like this, have it set to anybody with the account or with the link can access it and use it and maybe embed it in your online. course platform or maybe if you have other systems in place so you can have paywalls and privacy passwords and things for access. Maybe you can just use, my, my mind is going crazy with things. You could probably use only Google as your online course platform if, if there's a way to take care of all that other business part. Adrienne Farrow (17:20.365) Yes. Adrienne Farrow (17:30.261) Almost, yeah, Google doesn't do any of the payment processing except for through the appointment scheduler in Calendar. There's a Stripe integration there, but other than that, it doesn't do that. You could create a site, a website on Google Sites and link to Google Docs or link to other things. There is, it's harder to make it completely private on the Google Sites part. But you can do, so what I'm talking about is like you can make a notebook in Google Slides. I call them interactive notebook. Like you can set the pages to be eight and a half by 11 so it looks like a notebook. And then on a slide you can actually insert a video into the slide and put it at the top. And then at the bottom could be a box where they could type in and respond to the questions or even almost like a digital scrapbook. You could also. do something where maybe you keep track of your progress over your course or your progress over a project that you're creating. And so you're taking pictures that you're making of the beginning stages, then the middle stages, then the end stages, and have it in there. And because of the collaboration feature in Google Slides, you could actually, if you had a cohort, everybody could be working on the same slide deck. and they could all be putting their pictures in and you could have like a class or a cohort scrapbook at the end of the time of what it looks like through the whole entire time. Lyric Kinard (19:00.212) which would be amazing for people who teach creative courses, like everybody could put their project photo in it. Does it give you code so you could actually embed that into another online course platform? Adrienne Farrow (19:05.076) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Adrienne Farrow (19:13.71) Yes and no. So there is a feature where you can publish to the web and you could have embed code from there. So you could embed it, but it would be only in presentation mode. So for people just to see it, you'd have to get the actual link in order for people to access it, to collaborate inside of it. Yeah. Yeah. you could have, say you have a cohort, a six week cohort or something. Lyric Kinard (19:19.615) Mm-hmm Lyric Kinard (19:28.224) Hmm. Lyric Kinard (19:34.654) and then they'd have to go there to do that. But that would be interesting. Lyric Kinard (19:43.327) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (19:43.437) You all put your pictures in of what you've created in there. You could publish it to the web and then put it on your website for everybody to see. It becomes almost like a testimonial or a scrapbook of that cohort. So you can use it not only internally, but you could also use it externally for promotion purposes too. Lyric Kinard (19:55.53) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (20:04.202) That sounds really, really cool. You've got the gears spinning all over the place. Let's go back to creating systems and integrations. You've seen a little bit of my business, you know, about our lovely audience of creative video makers out here. What are some systems that you would suggest setting up if you're just starting? Adrienne Farrow (20:07.776) Ahahahahah! Adrienne Farrow (20:12.962) Yes. Adrienne Farrow (20:18.286) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (20:32.238) So I'm a big fan of templates. So as much as you can template things, do it. So if you have the same kind of video process, like an SOP, create an SOP standard operating procedure. Sorry, yes. So basically the steps that you take. Every time you create a video, this is what I do. Like create a template of that, and then you can make copies of it every time that you do it. Lyric Kinard (20:43.87) What does SOP mean? Thank you. Lyric Kinard (20:53.973) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (20:59.542) and then you're making sure that you're repeating your process, but you've only created it once. Same kind of thing if you include any kind of branding documents, maybe workbooks or PDFs or something that go along the side. You can create that in Google Docs, create the template that makes it look like your branding with your logo on the top, however you want the fonts to be, maybe the headlines and such, and then all you have to do is make a copy of it. Lyric Kinard (21:04.672) Right. Lyric Kinard (21:21.524) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (21:27.682) fill in the new information and you've retained that same structure over and over again. If you're posting to YouTube, I have a video description that I use every time I post to YouTube. I have a template of that, so I make a copy of it and then I have the structure and I'm not having to recreate it or even just copying and pasting takes time. So if you're trying to copy and paste from one document to the other, like that takes time to make sure it's formatted correctly. If you can just make a copy of the whole document, that's system. really, really helps. think about as much as you can template as possible is great. The other thing I recommend is I am a big fan of dashboards and I create them in Google Sheets. And the reason I like dashboards is because it's one document I can go to to get to all my other documents. I mean, I know that drive you can as well, but it's curated to whatever theme I need or whatever I need to access. So for example, I'm planning an event coming up for the summit, it's a summit, an online summit, and I have everything I need for that online summit in one Google Sheet, but it links to other documents. I put in links to a Google Doc with my emails. I put in links to my landing page. I put in links to the Google forums I've used, but I always know the one place to go to to get a hold of everything. So the more you can think about having a centralized place and how can I make this more simple and more easy is really the key. Lyric Kinard (23:03.87) Right, I've used Google Sheets for many, things, including organizing whole conferences like that. You know, one sheet and then it has a whole bunch of tabs with all the links, keeping track of everything. And often they become monsters out of control. Just so much. Adrienne Farrow (23:21.774) They can, they can, they can. But like if you're planning out your course, your program, you know, have one sheet that has all of your modules and it links to all of your videos and has all of the descriptions and other things that you include with there. And then that way, you know, okay, I need to access something for this course. Then I go into that one document and I have it all together. Keep things as streamlined and as simplified as possible. Lyric Kinard (23:29.983) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (23:47.793) Right. Adrienne Farrow (23:51.789) And then it alleviates that stress or that overwhelming might feel of like, where did it go? Where can I find this thing? Lyric Kinard (23:59.849) Right. So why would somebody have these things in Google or in addition or instead of on their computer desktop? We work with workflows where we have a video folder, we put the raw files in another folder, finished files in another folder, and the raw files that will have subfolders with this is this technique or this course or this product. Adrienne Farrow (24:23.011) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (24:27.68) And then as they finish, move over into finished videos. And then I tell my people to upload to online. What if we're worried about security online? Adrienne Farrow (24:34.19) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (24:38.988) Mm-hmm. No, it's a great point. think that Google, especially the Google paid plan for businesses, they have an extra layer of security involved in their cloud-based platforms tend to be more secure in regards to keeping your content. And it's always good to have a backup. So never rely on one. Even in regards to Google, I still say have a backup. Lyric Kinard (25:05.226) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (25:08.406) I like to put everything in Google for a couple reasons. One is that I can access it anywhere. I can go to any computer wherever I'm at, log into my account, and it's there. Versus, it depends on how your desktop is set up. If you have a Mac, you might have it connected to iCloud, you might not. It might look different on different computers, but you know I can get into Google Drive wherever I am. Also, tends to have more storage space. I think I have two terabytes right now, six terabytes technically, because I have multiple accounts. But you can easily increase the storage where it's more challenging to increase the storage when you have it on a desktop. I can also access on my phone. If I need to quickly find a file, I can go to the Drive app on my phone, and I can go and I can quickly share it with someone else. And that's another thing too, is that in Google, you can share things really easily with other people versus if it's on your desktop, it's more challenging. So if you're connecting with team members or other people who are uploading things for you or whatnot, then I would highly recommend using Google. But there's also a little known feature called Drive for Desktop. Have I talked to you about this one before, Drive for Desktop? Lyric Kinard (26:28.978) Not that I remember. Adrienne Farrow (26:30.442) So it is something you can download to your computer, but it connects Google to your desktop. So you can do one of two things. You can either have a one-way sync or a two-way sync. So I have it set up with a one-way sync, so I can access anything in my Google Drive on my desktop, on my computer. I use a Mac, so I just go to Finder, and there's my Google Drive at the top. I press Google Drive, and then I can see everything that's in my Google Drive and access it. there and I don't have to go onto my computer. But it also helps me when I'm downloading, like if I am doing videos, I don't have to save it to my desktop or save it to my computer. I can save it directly to Google Drive just through my Finder window on my computer. But it also acts as a backup system too. So you can do a two-way sync. So it can start to read your computer and do a backup from the cloud. So if you're still, you you're in a process where you don't want to disrupt the system you already have. that's on your computer, but you want to have a backup of your files on Google, you can also use this to make sure that it backs up to the cloud as well. Lyric Kinard (27:37.089) Right, backing up is such a huge thing. My current workflow is creating things on my device, immediately downloading it onto an external hard drive on my computer. I put all my video photo stuff on an external hard drive. Those terabytes get filled up really fast when you're working with video, right? Adrienne Farrow (27:39.63) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (27:49.805) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (27:54.03) huh, when you...uh, 100 % Lyric Kinard (27:57.631) And then as they're finished and processed, then I upload it to my Google Drive. Because here's the thing, people, if you want to think into the future, if you want to build your business, in a scalable way, you cannot continue putting in all the hours yourself. You're going to have to work with a team and have somebody who offloads the parts of your business that anybody could do, right? You're the only one who can be on camera, who can teach, who can impart this amazing creativity that you have to offer as a gift to your people. But somebody else can work with Adrienne Farrow (28:16.59) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (28:41.086) SEO, somebody else can use that template, swipe sheet that you have and send communications back and forth, the hiring groups or customer service for your people. And having a place, a repository for all of this data, all of these documents and systems that you can share with somebody, set it up now and it's going to be so much easier. I speak from experience that it takes a lot of work to train somebody to do your things. Adrienne Farrow (28:45.23) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (29:05.676) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (29:10.966) if you start setting up the possibility for that, if you start setting up these templates and processes as you're using them, then it's gonna be so much easier. And that's a huge reason I use Google folders for storage. It's because I do have a team now. Adrienne Farrow (29:20.238) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (29:29.986) Yeah, and then they can access your things and get what they need. And then you also as a business owner could have control over who has access to what as well. Lyric Kinard (29:40.199) Right. So are there any... we work with visual people. What? Adrienne Farrow (29:46.574) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (29:49.353) We talked about color coding a calendar. What other tips do you have for organizing for visual brains, people who do this? I remember that dashboard that you showed me. All I remember, like I'm closing my eyes and I don't remember the words. I don't remember how it's used. I remember the picture of the colors and the bars and thinking, that would be useful. Can you describe that a little bit to us? Adrienne Farrow (30:02.466) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (30:18.604) Yeah, so this is kind of talking about the dashboard before I created it it's a product you can get on my website. It's called the GoToDashboard. adrienneferro.com. it's a one-stop place for your business. So the idea is that you have one Google Sheet where you can access your branding, your offers, any information you want really to get your hands on right away is in this dashboard. Lyric Kinard (30:21.384) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (30:25.514) tell us your website. There you go. Adrienne Farrow (30:45.304) but I've created the homepage to be very visual. Like there is a lot of color area, so the different sections have different colors. You can actually put images in Google Sheets, so you can import image. So I have a motivational quote at the bottom. So every time that I open it up, I see that right there. I have a link page where I put all of the links that I wanna access on a regular basis that I don't necessarily need to see on my homepage, but I have them in different categories in each of those columns. are different colors and different visuals. One of the things that Google Sheets added recently is tables. And tables can be color coded. You can color code those. And then you can add dropdown menus, and you can color code the dropdown menus. And then you can sort in the table so that like, you know, for example, for the, because my event is on my mind. So I have a table with all the speakers and I have day one, day two, day three. And day one is one color, day two is another color, day three is another color in the dropdown menu. So in the table, I sort by day, and it groups all of the ones for day one together, all the ones for day two together, and all the ones for day three together. But it's in a very distinct visual way, because you can see all the color coding that goes there. So Google Sheets can do a ton. I also think that not many people know this, but you can color code your folders in Google Drive. Lyric Kinard (32:11.422) Wait, what? Adrienne Farrow (32:12.428) Yes, yes. So if you right click on a folder, partially down the menu, it'll give you some colors. I actually have to, I'm gonna go into my drive just to make sure that I'm giving the right direction. You found it? Yep. Lyric Kinard (32:26.394) I see it. Yeah, so when you right click on a folder, the menu opens and one of them is organize. And there's folder colors there. I should just we all should go through and just click all the buttons everywhere. Who has time? Adrienne Farrow (32:41.014) Right? Yep. So you can group them by color. You can have like, assign a color a meaning. So all of my social media ones are written red folders. All of mine are in blue. This is in blue folder, so you can definitely do those. But you can also add emojis in front of file names or folder names. So if that's a visual thing that helps you out, you could have an emoji that's in front of anything to do. Lyric Kinard (32:48.127) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (33:09.89) like an emoji is assigned to your course. So you know if you see that emoji that that has to do with your course. You can't search by emojis, so you can't really put that in, so you do need the other keywords, but it's a visual cue and also emojis will help with organization of your files and your folders, because it'll actually bring them up to the top. So anyone's with an emoji will go up to the top. So that's a little quick way of doing that. Lyric Kinard (33:34.485) Right. Simple things like on my task list that I share with my assistant. In the table, we've got color coded, urgent, to do eventually, and whatever is in the middle. And we've got color coded drop down for in process or completed. So that's, again, for visual people, being able to see at a glance the whole overall table in. Adrienne Farrow (33:38.318) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (34:02.3) immediately find the things that are most important to us by that color is really helpful. We have talked also about artificial intelligence and ways people are using it in their business and Google has some really interesting ways it's integrated in things. Now as visual artists we Adrienne Farrow (34:13.897) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (34:22.446) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (34:27.334) And as creative content creators, right, we have intellectual property. So artificial intelligence feels scary to a lot of people. What can you say to us to reassure us and give us some ideas for ways that it can be used to streamline our business ethically and effectively? Adrienne Farrow (34:34.978) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (34:49.006) Thank you. I like to use it as a productivity assistant more so than like a content creator. And I think that helps me have that nice little division in there. It's really hard to know for sure how your data is going to be used, especially in this ever-changing world. But there is this one tool that Google provides. called Notebook LM. And it does not put your data on to the... use your data to train its algorithm, and it also doesn't search the internet for any data. So it only works with your data. So for example, what you do is you upload whatever information you want to work with. So I'm gonna say transcripts for my coaching calls. So I'll upload transcripts for my coaching calls. I can do that either individually or I can do that in just one Google Doc. I can have one Google Doc and then keep adding a transcript every single time. and it will automatically update in notebook. Then I can. No. Lyric Kinard (35:53.949) Is this a paid service? Is it a different AI app? What is it? Adrienne Farrow (36:00.075) It is a Google product, but it's a different AI Google product, and it's not paid. It's a free one. There is, if you have one of the paid plans, there's like an upgrade aspect to it, so you get like more storage, more sources you can add. But anybody can go to, it's just notebooklm.com, or .google.com, one of the two. But it will work within your own data, and it will allow you to... They use it as a research assistant basically, so talk to it. So one of the things I like to ask is, what are the most frequent questions that my audience is asking? So I can gather from the transcript, what are the common themes that are coming up? What are the common things I'm talking about? What are the common tools that I need to focus on, et cetera? And then that, because it's working within my own data, I'm able to gather that information and then apply it however I feel like I need to. So if I can hear a reoccurring theme is, I don't know, we'll just say Google Docs. People keep asking me about Google Docs, Google Docs. Now I can get some tangible questions and then maybe create a YouTube video off of it or have a new course module based off of it. But I'm using my own data. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (37:13.344) Use that in your language. Yeah. Use that in your language for your messaging. Use their own words to answer their questions and understand their problems. So do you have to, is it separate from Google Docs? Do you, if you have a Google Doc already with all this, can you, is it part of Notebook LM or is Notebook LM a separate app that you would then have to use additionally? Adrienne Farrow (37:22.422) Yeah. Yeah. Adrienne Farrow (37:31.587) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (37:38.603) It's a separate app, a separate window that you have to pull up, but it's attached to your Google account. you log in, it would be logged in through your Google account so it can access your Google Drive. And when you add a source to a notebook, it would open up your Google Drive and then you could choose the Google Doc that you wanted to add to it. Lyric Kinard (37:45.472) Mm. Lyric Kinard (37:58.665) Mmm, okay, so you're not creating another additional Google Doc, you're just attaching it. Adrienne Farrow (38:03.806) No. Yep, yep. So you're just uploading sources and you can upload PDFs, you can upload YouTube videos or give the link to a YouTube video. It has to be a paid, excuse me, a public one, because what it's gonna do is it's gonna grab the transcript, essentially. And I think you can do slides at this point and then you can also just paste text in. But then you... Lyric Kinard (38:13.532) Mm-hmm. Publicly available? Yeah. Adrienne Farrow (38:29.41) you just start asking it questions and it will spit out a couple of documents for you automatically. It'll automatically spit out like an FAQ, a timeline, like an overview summary. But it's a really great way of working within your own data to really get some of that key information. And then you know that it's not gonna go and search the internet and be like, well, I found that. Lyric Kinard (38:47.743) Right. Adrienne Farrow (38:56.672) You know, Joe Schmo is saying XYZ. Well, no, I don't want to know what he's saying. I want to know what my own audience is saying. I want to know what my own audience is doing. So that's a very unique Google tool that is not out there. Lyric Kinard (39:02.431) Right. Lyric Kinard (39:08.992) So it's siloed AI. I love AI in so many different ways for this kind of thing, but it's only a tool that's ever as good as the input you give it. So I have it always use my input and then give me ideas. And that's exactly what you're talking about. Adrienne Farrow (39:20.695) user. Adrienne Farrow (39:29.41) Yep, and then Google is starting to integrate its AI system Gemini into tools. And you're gonna find that on a paid plan. It's not on the free plan, it's only on the paid plan. But what that does is it allows, one of the things I like is that it can quickly give me a summary, even of like an email thread. So say I have like five or six emails, I can go over to Gemini and say summarize this for me. And it'll give me a summary of all of those emails. Lyric Kinard (39:48.832) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (39:56.951) So I can quickly get that information. It can give me draft email responses. So I can, and it'll start obviously to learn based off of what I've been doing and what I've been saying. So, and I can prompt it and say, you know, write a response on, you know, a customer service response saying, sorry, I don't give refunds or whatnot. And it will spit out a draft response for you that then you can edit and then send off. So it's gonna start to save some time there, but the key thing is, you know, chat GPT and Gemini and Claude, I love all those tools for a lot of different reasons, but you still have to go talk to them and then copy and paste whatever it is and then bring it over. And this works right directly within the tool itself. And so. Lyric Kinard (40:39.754) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (40:45.098) Does it work? So is it only for a Google Workspace account or is it an add-on app that you can pay for Gemini just itself to tie into your private, your regular everyday Google account? Adrienne Farrow (41:00.288) It's right now only available on a paid Workspace account. It used to be an add-on that you could pay for, but recently, within the last couple of months, Google has integrated it in with its paid program, so now you have to upgrade. Lyric Kinard (41:13.608) Let's talk about the difference between, because we're professionals, we're business owners, let's talk about the difference between a personal Google account, even like I have two different personal Google accounts, but one's named my business. But it's not a workspace account. So tell me what the difference between those two is. I would have to pay for a workspace account and probably transfer all of my billion things over there. Adrienne Farrow (41:16.994) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Adrienne Farrow (41:28.928) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-mm. Lyric Kinard (41:42.365) But why would I do that? What is the advantage besides having integrated AI? What does a workspace account give me that a private account wouldn't? Adrienne Farrow (41:53.209) So a free Google account is just the one that you sign up for that's generally like at gmail.com. And that one will give you, think it's 15 gigabytes of storage. You get access to the majority of all of the Google tools and a lot of the features, but not all the features. And it's the one that most of us are just used to on a regular emailing basis. A workspace account is designed with businesses in mind. Lyric Kinard (42:00.051) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (42:21.326) So it is the business plan for Google and it starts as little as $7 a month. That's the starter plan. And then the next plan up is $14 a month. And that connects to your domain name and allows you to create a team underneath your domain name. So your email address would no longer be at gmail.com. It would be at whatever your domain name is. And so that creates a professional email address that I like to say is your professional business card. It's part of your branding. And there are ways of connecting a, if you have your email address through like, know, go daddy or something, you can connect it into like a free Gmail account area. So there's ways of doing that as well. But this kind of, what it does is it allows you to have multiple users under one umbrella and everybody's gonna have an email address under there. So if you're starting to create a team, I have adrian at adrianferro.com, but I also have va at adrianferro.com. And then I also have control over their email addresses. So if my VA were to leave, I can reset the password and see what's going on in her account and make sure that everything's okay before passing it on to the next person. And then you can also... Lyric Kinard (43:32.969) Right. It's not a domain host or server, but you can get business emails through it. Like I have several emails for my people through GoDaddy who host my website, but it's, I have to say, it is a huge pain to get everybody logged in and keep every, and I've had problems with them. And Google's just always been so easy for everybody to get into. Adrienne Farrow (43:36.685) Mm-mm. Adrienne Farrow (43:41.965) Yes. Adrienne Farrow (43:59.555) Yeah, it's really smooth, really, really smooth. And then that allows you for the ease of sharing files within your domain. So you can use something called Share Drive to make sure that everything, you you can access the files. If you're a team member were to leave, you're not worried about them taking the files with them. They stay with your domain. So you can make sure either those files get transferred to your account. or lock them out of their account so you can go and access those files. There are a couple other features that are only available on a paid plan. So there are e-signatures. So if you ever use contracts, like through DocuSign or something like that, now there's an e-signature feature inside of Google Docs. And that's on the middle plan. You can use appointment schedulers, which is like a Calendly or a TidyCal or something like that. That's also on the free plan. Lyric Kinard (44:38.759) Mm-hmm. Right. Adrienne Farrow (44:56.226) but you only get one. And then on the business plan, you can have multiple and you can charge for appointments. So if you do coaching appointments and things like that. Templates are easier on a business plan. You can use the template gallery and make sure that you can template out. And then I think also a key feature is the security on a business plan is an upgraded level of security versus a free level of security. And you do not get access to Google support. So if you have anything go wrong with your account on a free plan, you kind of have to go to the help pages and pray you can figure it out versus you can actually contact support directly through your admin panel in a paid plan and get that support that you need. So that's also a key feature as well. But I like to say if you have a business, you should have a Google Workspace because it's designed with businesses in mind. And it is, I do a lot of migrations for people. So I do a lot of like consolidating accounts, moving people from a free plan to a paid plan, moving people from Microsoft over to Google, all of those things. And it's harder down the road when you have a lot more files, a lot more emails, a lot more things to do. So it's a really small cost in the grand scheme of things. So if anybody is ever interested in migrating, let me know. do, I am a referral partner and I do get discount codes. So I can also give you a discount on your paid plan. Lyric Kinard (46:27.536) Excellent. That's wonderful. We'll put those links in the show notes as well. Adrienne, this has been super helpful. My mind is spinning with all the things I should be doing. One of the things that I'm thinking about Google Workspace is that it's like the difference between being a hobbyist or a sole proprietor or a limited liability corporation, right? So if you're an LLC, your business is separate from your personal life. The only reason, they're both a sole proprietor and LLC are both pass-through corporations in the United States. So you're taxed the exact same way. But if somebody sues you and you have an LLC, they can't take your house. They can take your business, but not your house. Google Workspace is kind of the same. It's set up as the business itself Adrienne Farrow (47:10.262) Exactly. Adrienne Farrow (47:14.478) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (47:18.7) has those protections in place. Like you were saying, if a team member leaves, they can't take your business with them. You have everything all in one place. This sounds, ooh, I'm like ready to do it now. I need to do it now before this account gets completely out of hand. Adrian, thank you so much for being in here. And we like to end with some fun questions and you can answer any off the wall way you want. What is the last thing you Adrienne Farrow (47:31.182) Hehehehehe Lyric Kinard (47:48.61) made. Adrienne Farrow (47:49.743) I have been getting into gluten-free sourdough, so I'm a baker. So that's my hobby, that's how I create as I bake and I make goodies and I have been gluten-free for the last couple years and have just started to perfect gluten-free sourdough. So I made a loaf of gluten-free sourdough. Lyric Kinard (47:54.24) Ooh. Lyric Kinard (48:07.74) and that takes skill. So here's the thing, for an ADD person, that is a skill because bread, all those things are things you have to pay attention to at different times over a long period of time. That's why I was only ever, right? Right? Adrienne Farrow (48:19.137) Mm-hmm. Adrienne Farrow (48:23.166) And you have to remember to feed it. You have to remember to feed a sourdough starter every single day. It took me probably a good three or four times before I got this one to really stick and grow. And I think I've gotten about three or four loaves out of it. So yeah, so it's producing. It's good. But yes, I do have to remember, I've gotten into a routine of I feed it every morning and, you know, so. Lyric Kinard (48:36.916) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (48:42.056) Yay! Lyric Kinard (48:53.14) Yeah, that's fantastic. only reason, the only time I could ever do anything like that was during COVID where I couldn't go anywhere else. soon as I was out again, that flew off the table. So I admire people with this, stick to it enoughness. If that's a new word, by the way, to be able to do that. Well, thank you so much for being with us. Tell us where people can find you. Adrienne Farrow (49:05.482) Hehehe Adrienne Farrow (49:09.646) Yes, we'll make it one. Adrienne Farrow (49:20.632) So my website is adrianferro.com. And then you can go to my everything page. And that's really where all of my main offers are, my freebies, et cetera. The go-to community is my main offer. And that's a place where you can come with all of your Google questions. We focus on getting those systems in place so that you can really get that back into your business built and solidified. I do coaching sessions where we go deeper into different Google tools, a lot of what we've done on this call, but with visuals of like unlocking like, hey, did you know you could do this? Or, hey, I want you to know you can do that. We have regular talks on AI, so I'm keeping up with what's new and up to date. And then just general ask me anything calls, like come to me with your questions. I'm here to answer them, here to help support you. You can find me on YouTube as well at Adrienne Farrow. And then I have a great Facebook group called That Google Group. And it is growing every day and it's a great place to not only come and find out what's going on in the Google world, I'll post some updates, know, let you know what things are happening, but a lot of people post their Google questions in there too. And if I can't respond, the community members jump on and give different perspectives and respond too. So it's a great place just to go to get some knowledge about what's happening in the Google world. Lyric Kinard (50:38.4) Everything is so much better with community and with knowledgeable experts like Adrienne Farrow, which has two N's and two R's, my friends. So look up her offers. Again, I hired her for one hour to just come in and look at what I had, and that hour was so packed. Adrienne Farrow (50:47.629) Yes. Lyric Kinard (50:57.79) with so many useful, actionable, really, really helpful tips that have helped me streamline my business. So once again, thank you, my friend, signing off to all of our lovely creatives here. Adrienne Farrow (51:12.878) Thank you.

Categories: : Podcast