Tell Me About Your Weirdest First Date!

Dear readers, will you share your weirdest / funnest 1st date stories?

How do You Read Your Newsletters?

I get way too much email. Reading newsletters in my inbox has never been the right context for me to actually enjoy content I am subscribing to. Looks like I am not the only one who is struggling with a workflow that makes sense for consuming newsletters. (Dennis’ Crowley’s Tweet above) I am asking you, my readers, how do you make sure you actually get to the newsletters you subscribed to? My biggest hack is that I have a bookmark folder with all my favorite newsletter landing pages and then I read them like a blog!

How Are You Organizing Your Favorite Recipes?

So many resourceful answers in this Twitter thread. How do you organize your favorite recipes? Comment below?

Question For My Readers

Question for My Readers

Hot to Ditch my Phone

My name is Tina, and I have a phone problem.

One of my big goals for 2019 is to change my phone habits. I am an addict.

To help this problem, I am considering buying an Apple Watch, so that I can leave my phone behind, can still receive phone calls and texts from my kids and close family, but can’t get sucked into any apps. I have asked on Instagram story today if anyone had success with that method, and looks like a lot of folks did. (I know, it seems counter intuitive to solve a technology addiction problem with more technology.)

Do you have a healthy relationship with your phone? Do you have any advice?

One of my followers shared this helpful article on the topic: Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain

Companies Going Through Big Transitions

Some interesting answers on this thread. Do you have any examples I should put on my radar?

Favorite Song to Dance To

What’s your favorite song that you simply can not sit still to? Add in a comment below!

Friendship

Remarkable NYC Company Founders

Question For My Readers:

Product Roadmap Planning Tools

Do you run a product company? What software do you use to plan your product roadmap? Care to share in a comment below or in a reply to the above Tweet? Thank you!

Question For My Readers

Do you, or your company use employee review software that you think makes the entire process more efficient and useful? If so, would you mind to share your experience in a comment below or as a response in the Twitter feed?

Question for My Readers

What’s your Favorite Newsletter?

Earlier today I asked my tweeps about their favorite newsletters. I discovered so many interesting looking new ones in the replies. Do you have a favorite?

Better Swag!

Ever gotten some swag that really made you go wow! And that you actually use? What was it? Who gave it to you? So many good replies already! Leave a comment below?

Let’s make better swag!

Songs That Make You Dance

Impromptu dance parties are happening more frequently at casa swissmiss these days, with disco light and all. And I find myself constantly looking for new songs to add to my playlist.

What’s *the* song that will get you off your feet and onto the dance floor? Let’s start a YouTube-Link-Comment thread? YES?

Happy weekend!

Favorite Job Interview Questions

Hiring. It’s a skill. One gets better at it the more you do it. I’ve hired around 20 people over the past 3 years. And just slowly but surely I keep getting a sense what works and what doesn’t.

I have realized that sitting down at a table for the interview is just plain awkward and so I’ve started going for ‘coffee run interviews’. I pay attention on how the candidate treats the barista, if he/she offers me the sugar etc. The little things. Also, when walking side by side, a conversation flows more naturally.

While I have the setting figured out, I am still working on my list of ideal interview questions. One of my all-time favorite one is “What’s your secret superpower?”

What’s your favorite interview question? If you’re not someone that is hiring, can you remember a question that made an impression?

Question for my readers: ERP System

erp

I am currently researching ERP Systems for Tattly. Talk about growing up. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planing.

Research in this space is quite overwhelming, especially, when you’re a small shop like me, but with ambitions to grow and eventually having multiple shipping locations around the globe. There are the big known systems like Netsuite, Sage or Microsoft Dynamics but I am hoping to stumble across a well designed system that is the Justworks equivalent of ERP systems.

It is our goal to have all facets of our operations in one place to handle our order, inventory and warehouse management. As well as function as our CRM system, help us track our financials and overall planning.

I was hoping that some of you, might have some insights and have gone through this decision process as well. If so, anything you’ve learned along the way? Any word of advice?

(Obviously, my over-ambitious maker gene just keeps thinking to build my own.)

Female Entrepreneurs

Female Entrepreneurs

Whenever I hear conference organizers talk about how hard it is to find interesting female speakers, I cringe. Would you mind to help me add to this list of female entrepreneurs?

Melissa Miranda, Tiny Post
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr
Jen Bekman, 20×200
Alisa Volkman, Babble
Soraya Darabi, Foodspotting
Stacey Ferreira, co-founder of My Social Cloud
Debbie Millman, Sterling Brand
Julia Hartz, co-founder Eventbrite
Robin Chase, co-founder of Zip Car
Lauren Bush, Feed
Jennifer Hyman & Jenny Fleiss, Rent the Runway
Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder Paperless Post
Jessica Jackley, Kiva
Cindy Gallop, If We Ran The World
Jerri Chou, The Feast
Grace Bonney, Design Sponge
Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, Co-Founders 23andme
Ping Fu, Geomagic
Leah Busque, Task Rabbit
Louise Fili, Louise Fili
Paula Scher, Pentagram
Jessica Hische, Hische Empire
Lexy Funk, co-founder Brooklyn Industries

Obviously this list is just a start. Help me grow it by adding a comment below with female entrepreneur names and the company they started! Thank you!

iStockPack

Team Tattly is currently researching packaging and POS system ideas. I just stumbled upon iStockPack, a site that lets you to download vector files of packaging templates.

Question for my readers: Are there other similar resources out there that you can think of? Thank you!

Question for my readers…

During an interview last week I was asked a question that had me stumped: “What are some tools for people who want to project a strong personal brand but can’t afford to hire a graphic designer?” Is there a tool out there? Did anyone ever write a basic DIY post on this that could be used somewhat universally? Any suggestions anyone? I find it an interesting problem!

Question for my readers: Morning Songs

Kevin and I are researching songs with catchy lyrics entailing the word “Morning”. Any songs that come to mind and we should add to our list? Would you mind to share them in a comment below? Thank you so much!

Time for an Email Charter

Chris Anderson (of TED) is declaring war on in-boxes with this recent blog post. He is asking use to help start an Email Charter. I am nodding in agreement.

As I have expressed before, I am quite frustrated with how we use email. I know, I am not alone. I have declared email bankruptcy and explained in another post how email has become my primary source of guilt. I currently have an auto-responder set up that has the sole purpose of setting expectations low. Here’s what it says:


Hi there,

This autoresponder is an attempt in setting expectations right. Fact is: I get too much email and can’t keep up. My inbox has become my primary source of guilt.

I promise I will try my best to get back to you as soon as I can. If your email is super-crazy important, meaning the internet might implode if I don’t write back, then please resend your email in a day or so, if you don’t hear back.

Waving from Brooklyn!

Tina – ready to change the way we use email


The overall response to the auto-responder has been positive. Of course, I get an annoyed comment here and there, but it has helped me feel less guilty. Also, people have proven to be more understanding, less annoyed with my late or lack of reply. It’s obviously not an ideal solution, but better than nothing.

What do you think of Chris’ idea? And his proposed rules?