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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water treatise by water treaters where we’re scaling up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems everybody trace Blackmar here I’m so excited to be
with you today you are listening to the scaling up podcast the world’s only
podcast that is all water treatment all the time of course it’s also things that allow us
to be better water treaters and that’s why today’s show is about the things
that we can use that can make us more efficient I know we’re all carrying
around smartphones in our pockets but a lot of us aren’t allowing the technology
that we carry on a day-to-day basis to do work that we do not need to do so
that’s what today’s show is about it’s about how do we let technology do the
tasks that we don’t necessarily need to do and we can just set technology up to
do it now I am by no means an expert on this in fact I probably need the most
help when it comes to this but because of this show I have experts that are
willing to come on and share their knowledge on how to do that before I
introduce our guests I want to answer a quick question I get a lot of emails a lot of questions
where people ask me how the heck do I have enough time to read all the books
that I do and I’m going to let you in on a secret I read my goal to read 35 books
a year most of those are in business a lot of those are in water treatment I’m
also reading some other items I read very little fiction I like to read so I
can have some sort of action plan to make myself better and you’re wondering
oh my gosh 35 books how does he do that and by the way I know people that read
much more than that well here’s my secret I probably read only five of them the rest
I listen to as like you I am in my car
and awful lot and I live in Atlanta so to go across the street it might be 20
hours in traffic so I don’t get mad at traffic I actually enjoy traffic because
it gives me time to listen to audible yes audible I think audible is the best
thing that has happened to me in probably the last 10 years because it
has given me the ability to read when I don’t have time or the ability to read
because I’m driving so here’s the thing audible will give you 30 days free to
try out all you have to do is go to scaling-up h2o dot-com forward slash
audible and you will get a free 30 days to try it out I know you’re going to
love it but if you don’t cancel it in that 30 days and you won’t lose anything
but that is my secret to how I get so many books read and I’m using air quotes
when I’m saying read I listen to them and folks if you’ve got a good retention
when you listen you can even change the speed and a lot of books if they’re not too intense I’ll listen to them at
one-and-a-half speed so I can get through them even quicker now I have to admit some of the ones that are really
intense I cannot listen any faster than one time speed and sometimes I even have
to go back and re-listen to chapters depending on how intense they are so again 30 days free scaling up h2o
forward slash audible well folks I promised you that we are going to get
more efficient today by using apps and that’s what our guest does our guest is
Beth Jesus and she is your nerdy best friend that’s what she calls herself and
she is so good at her job she is going to tell us all
about the apps that could be doing the work that we shouldn’t be doing because
the apps could do it for us and if we’re not doing that work that means we can do
higher-level work and that means we can be more valuable to our companies that means we can grow our territories that
means we have more time for our families so folks I know you’re going to enjoy
this please welcome my guest Beth zenus my lab partner today is Beth Z’s nests
and Beth was one of our speakers at the association of Water Technologies annual convention and Grand Rapids I was one of
the attendees there and I learned so much about how technology can help us
with day-to-day activities that we do best how are you today wonderful I’m here in sunny San Diego
California and I tell you it’s such a wonderful thing to live here well I am
actually in Atlanta Georgia and it’s snowed over the weekend and it does not snow in Atlanta we don’t know what to do
with it I heard that I heard that and good luck to you there’s not any bread
or eggs to be found anywhere in Atlanta oh that’s really funny because is it is
it a disaster that’s going to make it so you don’t get food for weeks or is it like two days and you’re good
well it’s pretty much an Atlanta disaster so there was about a tenth of an inch of snow so the whole city went
into panic that I really enjoyed your session at the AWT but I know we have
some listeners out there in the scaling-up nation that may not have been able to come to convention and heard
what it is that you do can you please tell us what it is that you do I am a
professional nerd this is what I do for a living is to discover free and bargain
apps that people can use I am an author a speaker and like I said a nerd and I
travel around the country telling people all about different apps I speak about 80 times a year for different programs
and I bring my books and I share my apps and I’m constantly keeping up with them and
that’s pretty much how I spend all my days did you always know you were a nerd
or did that just happen to take effect well sometimes some kids are designated
a nerd by other kids so from the very beginning I kind of sat in the corner
and did different things I was the kid who would grade the teachers papers during breaks because they needed help I
was the kid who oh it gets geekier than that I would sit in the back of the room
and do pot holders with a loop those loop weaver things I would avoid recess
like the plague I would just kind of do my own things when I was a little kid I am or you know in middle school and high
grammar school I would read about nine books a day not exaggerating it was
funny one day I was at the dentist not too long ago and the guy said you have a cracked tooth and you’ve probably had it
you know all your life or quite a while you probably had it when you played
sports in when you were a kid and I said yeah probably a book fell on my face
while I fell asleep that’s pretty much the injuries I sustained as a kid so
it’s it’s been really interesting to grow up and see how nerds are accepted
and encouraged and I don’t know rich not myself but others and to see kids who
were different have a place in society rather than you know feel like they were
too different well Beth in high school they call people nerds when everybody graduates those people that call them
nerds call those nerds boss yep yep that is uh we hope that’s true for all the
nerds out there who were different and can make a change when they leave well
you really made an impression on me with all of the tools that are out there that
we could be using just save ourselves time make our life easier and a lot of them you mentioned were
free so the goal today is to become nerdy to get the scaling up nation part
of the nerd community are you on board for that I am let’s do it so what are
some of the ways that we can use technology to help save time one of the things that I always talk about and I
always ask people is what do you do that annoys you what do you do that you have
to do over and over again manually what do you do that just eats up your time and you can begin
to talk about technology in those areas and there are so many advancements that
have happened specifically for those annoying tasks for those repetitive
tasks for those just mind boggling boring tasks there are so many ways that
we can incorporate technology into there and start changing the way we do things
we’ve got a world that is developing
technology tools and and shortcuts so quickly that it’s time for you to stop
and think about how you’re working and what you’re doing so that you can put it all together and come up with some
solutions how do you know when you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be
doing because technology should be doing that for you that’s one of the toughest things I think for water treatment
professionals anybody who is as busy as they are to really examine because
sometimes we get so caught up in that being a part of our lives whatever a task it is I just you know talked about
these annoying tasks sometimes we get caught up in those tasks being so much of our lives that we forget just stop
and evaluate how we can do it so anytime you spend an enormous amount of time
staring at email getting things done communicating with people trying to get
organized stop what you’re doing ask yourself what
is it that’s going wrong and what is out there that will help me fix this at the
AWT convention you mentioned a lot of applications that we could be using and
you mentioned that some of them were secret weapons so as far as the water
treatment professional goes what are some of the apps that we need to be familiar with well let’s kind of go in a
few categories here and start with what we all need is better organization /
productivity in the first category of organization let’s talk about email if
you’re using the standard email that came with your phone and the standard
email that that your company set up or you set up you need to re-evaluate that
because so many of the email tools now are using and I were probably going to get into this in a few minutes
artificial intelligence to help you get through your inbox help you evaluate
what’s in there and what’s the most important so one of the things I see water treatment professionals and any
professional really struggling with is getting through that inbox and that’s where we can use technology I’ll mention
a couple of them that people can use one of them is Gmail if you start off with
Gmail as your basis Gmail is one of the most flexible email tools that can be
converted and used in so many third-party apps so you get your Gmail
you get your email from one place and then you can access it through third-party apps so some people have
some restrictions about whether they can use Gmail and some people have some flexibility even if you have other
emails you can integrate them into Gmail and access and answer from Gmail as your
headquarters rather than let’s say Microsoft Outlook which is very common so you’re wrapping your head around
making a change in what kind of access you have
is very important if we keep going in the email direction even if you are
required by your company to use one kind or another kind or another kind there are some email tools that will help you
inside your email for example very simple concept is making rules so let’s
say every day you get a couple of newsletters that you’re interested in or
you get some emails that are just updates or what have you you can set up
rules in Gmail in Microsoft Outlook to automatically have those sorted for you
in two different places so that you can concentrate on the things that are most important again going with the basics
Gmail and outlook both will have a classification system that will help you
get the important things upfront automatically and make use of those
things add those things add those features to your emails so that
immediately the stuff that’s most important bubbles up to the top and I’ll go ahead and say it the crap Ola that
just clogs up your email can kind of go into a different area or not be up
higher well I will say we just recently acquired office 365 and we were using a
2013 version before that and just the difference in the amount of stuff that
goes in my primary email notification window I don’t know how they do it but
it’s a pretty good job of the things that I need to be looking at just out of the box it’s showing me those things absolutely and I think that’s one of the
challenges that people have is they bought this way back in the day they
paid for it and it works still but there are so many advancements that they can
take advantage of that go beyond that use those tools that are inside their
update I highly recommend office 365 just for your own for everybody’s
edification I do not get paid by any of these apps to talk about them I pay for
them just like you do I love them I use them I try them out my budget is a little
high for things I try out I just wanted you guys to know that office 365 is not
paying me to say that it’s wonderful it is wonderful and it has changed the
integration of all kinds of different programs the integration that features
and outlook all these different things can be pulled together with a tool like Microsoft Office 365 that is a system
rather than just an individual software piece well you mentioned organization and
productivity what are some of the other areas that we can look at let’s talk about to-do lists one of the things that
challenges many of us is keeping track of all the things we need to do now I do
a couple of different things I keep a Google Calendar with all kinds of major guidelines but frankly and this is a
little bit embarrassing I have a piece of paper in front of me it’s actually a steno notepad with two columns and I put
the date on top and I have to write it out every day so I understand what I
need to do and stay focused but in addition to piece paper in addition to a
calendar set up you’ve got a whole bunch of again third-party apps or integrated
apps into your regular email system that you can use to keep track of things Microsoft has something called to do
which is so creatively named I know but keeps track of all those tasks and it
helps you again through the integrated programs all of them together so anywhere you are you can add those to
do’s and keep things going one of the best to-do lists that I like also is called to-do list
Tod o ist the most organized human being in my world is my manager Molly Gardner
she adores todoist Microsoft to do is based on a tool
called wonder list w u nder li st and believe it or not Microsoft bought them
in 2014 and they’re supposed to be putting it to bed but it’s not to bed
yet in fact in my newest book I wrote that it was already integrated in and it’s not yet so that’s not quite
accurate but everybody loves wunderlist for that kind of thing so besides to-do
lists and you mentioned this a moment ago I am also a paper note-taker there’s
just something I can’t I can’t get a tablet and and a stylus and really get
anything to to feel right when I’m doing that so I’ve always got to put pen to paper when I’m in a meeting
and I normally draw a line down the center of it so my my hand doesn’t go all the way across the page you know
things they taught you in the in the early 90s to do how do you get that to
work with your apps with all these things so are there other or ways to integrate the paper into the technology
it’s kind of like you were reading my mind because the next app I want to talk about was evernote evernote is one of
those tools that kind of bridges the handwritten notes and the pieces and parts you come across in your world with
the electronic and the technology so whatever note is is the ultimate
note-taking tool you can take notes directly into Evernote with typing you
can actually when you’re taking handwritten notes take a picture of those and Evernote we use OCR optical
character recognition to search through those notes you can put all of your emails in there you can put all of your
pictures in there you know water treatment professionals in the field can take notes and add pieces and parts to
the things there the information they’re collecting and evaluating into Evernote and it’s available everywhere
immediately Evernote used to be super duper free and have all kinds of
features in the free area mmm dang it all they want to make a living so they
put several things behind a paywall that they used to have for free but Microsoft’s OneNote and getting back
into that integration of the Microsoft Office tools Microsoft’s OneNote is very
similar so some people prefer one of the other but Microsoft’s OneNote is
a fantastic tool that also will bring things together and also will help with some of that paper capturing is there
any hope for somebody who’s so addicted to paper to start actually taking notes
on a device hmm that is a good question because there may be other issues for
someone who is I have a lot of issues that’s like if we could convert you and
if we can convert people to using a tablet that has handwriting features you
may be able to immediately do that one of my favorite devices and I I adore it
but I can’t use it because it’s not quite reliable enough but it’s the Microsoft Surface pro it’s a tablet
slash computer and it has a fantastic note writing tool that is a stylus that
you write directly into it and it will convert your information to text there’s
also a tool called and this is really cool called Livescribe Li ve SCR ibe
and when you write with Livescribe as a pen it automatically pulls it in to the
Livescribe software and you can use at other places and will convert it to text a lot of it it’s not a hundred percent
easy to take written word and converted a text converts it to text gonna take a
couple of different it may take a gadget or two but you can do it but I would go
to an Apple store I would go to a Microsoft Store and just sit there with one of these tools and try to write one
of my favorite tools is called notability in OTA bi L ity notability
and notability also I just adore it it lets you markup PDFs it lets you write
directly into it and it’s just it’s great note-taking tool as well great
advice I’ll let you know what turns out with that that’s what are some of the other items that we should be looking at let’s go
into dun Dada passwords holy smokes
I’m so sad when I see and hear all of the situations that happen with
passwords in this day and age if you’re if you’re using the same password over
and over again you’re really risking things and if you’re I don’t know Jack
Walker the person you spoke to at the last podcast and use the exact same one
and then give it out over the air hmm could be a couple of issues there so
don’t do that and talk to that but you need everyone
needs a unique unguessable password for every single site you visit you should
see my face right now it’s the serious face and I’m using the fingers unique username and pass or unique password for
every site you visit it has to be that way you can no longer use the same
password over and over again it’s so easy for the bad guys to get a database
of a username and password list you may not even know you used it on whatever
has been hacked you know didn’t have high security a low-level site you
visited was hacked and then you have that password username combo floating
around the world here’s an example for you I was in Louisville Kentucky and I
had a couple extra days I was gonna go to a play now I go to register on the
small town Actors Guild or whatever I go to get tickets online and they make me
register how secure do you think a small theater in Louisville Kentucky is going
to be how much time and effort do you think they put into saving their password so if I had used my regular old
everyday username and password which I have you know I have one of those that
it’s a I’ve changed my habits but I have those kind of things how secure do you
think that’s gonna be and how what’s gonna happen when not if when somebody
gets that database puts it on the dark web and the bad guys have it not good
so when you say these things I think that my little mind can remember fluffy 98 you know my rabbit’s name and I got
him in 98 so it’s always been fluffy 98 no it’s not really my password but now I’ve got to remember 400 passwords and
that just frightens me well go back to the idea that we talked about earlier about the problems you have and the
things that stumped you how can we solve that with technology and done Sena know we have a solution we have lots of
solutions there are password management tools out there that allow you to create
one password that you can access the entire database of passwords or create some wait for you to get into your
database of passwords and it will track and let you automatically load and
automatically find these crazy mixed-up passwords that’ll help you generate
there are several of them out there you have to have to have to be very careful
I mean that’s one of the biggest questions I get are are these tools safe and I’m like no because nothing is safe
however if you go with one of the top five tools you’re going to get people
who their whole reputation is based on this this security so they’re gonna work
mmm I don’t know a million times harder then you and your elaborate sticky note
system around your computer monitor I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting that
system well if there’s a breeze that comes out around and all of your
passwords are flutter to the ground you’re going to be in trouble and some
people have a really good system and they have unique passwords for every site but most of us struggle there I can
see my husband and and you know he he doesn’t listen to me because yeah he’s
my husband and I see him lose his password and forget his password because
it’s one of five that he uses over and over again and he gets locked out after four tries and then he cusses and I can
see the face and he resets it all the time and I’m like use these things fix this problem so I’m
going to list a few of the top ones and I’ll tell you which one I use the top
ones are really – lame vash la in e there’s one called 1password
it’s the number one and then password that one people liked very much because you can store things locally rather than
in the cloud there’s one called RoboForm it’s been around for a long time they
kind of converted from a form filler to a password keeper there’s one called M M
as in man secure and people like that one very much there are several out
there the one I use is called LastPass really the only reason I choose it and
use it is because it’s always worked for me number one number two it’s the one I started with
right so stopping and going to another one would kind of be a pain even though I’ve tried out the other one so that’s
the one I choose and it’s free LastPass is free for the basic version or a
whopping 24 dollars a year two dollars a month for the highest version one of the
things that I want what our treatment professionals to think about is the
sharing of passwords because right now I’m sure a lot of them have systems that you know family members or other
colleagues get into and they say oh just use my username and password you’re only as secure as everybody who has your
password right even if you have a really good password if they write it down into Starbucks and leave it on the table what
have you it’s kind of out there so LastPass lets you share passwords
without actually sharing passwords and I do this with my manager all the time so
she doesn’t have access to my passwords but she can get into any system we need because I’ve shared them through the
system is that on the pay-as-you-go version of the free version I believe you can share with both I they you know
those are the kind of things they tweak to make money dang them and I believe you can share with both but with the
premium version when I update it automatically up dates it for her so I think with the
free version when I update I would have to reshare it and that’s kind of a pain because sometimes she needs it like on
the go or really fast and Here I am like not able to give it to her well that’s
great advice and Jack Walker if you’re listening buddy and I know you are make sure you download LastPass I think you
need it a tool that you shout it out during the AWT that I have used a bunch was post a
gram I’m one of these guys that I love the written note and I like to put pen to paper but I never have a stamp or I
never have a card I have to go out and get something but I like sending thank-you notes and that is the coolest
program based on how I like to thank people do you mind talking a little bit about that oh it’s one of my favorites
I adore thanking people too and you know water treatment professionals are on the
go all the time you’re on the go I’m on the go we don’t have time to sit down
and find a stamp and find some paper and find a pen and find an envelope so I
love this tool called posta Graham poster Ram lets you snap a picture or take a picture from your social media or
your phone and choose a background that actually the backgrounds cost extra money nowadays so I just go with the
basic you write a note you write your address and then you click and two or
three days later or three to five days later they will get a high quality
postcard that has a punch out a bull picture that’s the official technology
word punch audible but it has a punch audible picture that they can save and
how much cooler is that than a regular old thank you know why and even more
than that it’s not even a buck to send with postage well they went up you can
buy credits at a discount but now it’s a dollar ninety-nine so it’s two bucks but
still I mean I literally have carried around in fact I just gave it to him I bought a card for my husband on the road
it was a Valentine’s Day card three years ago three years ago and because I didn’t put a stamp in my
bag and I just put this card in my bag I carried it around in my briefcase for three years because I didn’t I didn’t
take the time to buy a stamp while I was on the road to send him a nice card
so finally I just used it we just had our anniversary and I just used it and I
it was wrinkled it was sad and I told him I’ve had it for three years the sentiments the same but that’s great
you mentioned this term earlier and we’re going to go ahead and get into it you said artificial intelligence now and
I think of artificial intelligence I go to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Judgment Day and I think that was April 29th 1997
of course that didn’t happen then they keep redoing it so they can make more movies but does that mean the machines
are taking over what is artificial intelligence it’s a complicated complicated question because I’ll be
honest with you I still have trouble figuring out all the levels of this and all the types of this but the concept is
that computers are able to figure out things on their own because of a couple
of different methods it is advancing so quickly that it’s it’s mind-boggling
I’ll give you an example so and this is not my example it was a researchers
example but I’m stealing it so artificial intelligence could be
described as machines learning from every possible example that we feed to
them and then being able to predict it so if you’re trying to teach a computer
how to cross the road right so in the old days you would just program in every
possible way to cross the road and tell it you know look both ways and give it
exact instructions but nowadays what you would do is show it 110 thousand videos
or scenarios of people crossing the road and successfully and then ten thousand
of people getting squished so unsuccessfully and so the computer would
learn how to based on a whole whole bunch of different factors cross the road with the image recognition they
showed it millions of pieces of data of images of images and said okay now that
you’ve seen every possible thing we told you what every possible thing can do then you can figure out what all these
things are and it did but here is the kicker here’s here’s where things are
starting to get strange number one there was an experiment not too long ago that
they taught computers how to bargain right so they did it with like red hats
and blue balls and and orange bats or something like that and each computer
had a different goal like one computer needed to have a yellow bat and a red
hat to win or to get a certain number of points so you incentivize the computers and then you fed in the results of
hundreds or thousands of humans negotiating and you gave that to the
computer so the computer played a whole bunch and learned a whole bunch from humans and then they pitted the computer
against itself well the computer learned how to lie to Bluff and say well I want
to red hats and he didn’t really want to red hats he the it I said hey it wanted
one red hat but because he knew it knew that the other computer wanted more red
hats it used that as a bargaining chip so it was deceitful in order to get its way and then second thing and here’s
something scary and I’ll tell you another thing scary in just a second another thing the computers did was they
came up with their own language an own way to communicate that the researchers
couldn’t understand so they started off in English right and as time went on and
they were working with each other more the two computers they came up with they’re faster language that
communicated quicker the same information and researchers had to stop
that and set it to just be English and the kind of communication were used to
because they couldn’t understand what was going on so that’s wonderful
the second thing that just happened that is phenomenally worrisome / helpful is
that okay the chess game right so one of the big breakthroughs in the last three
years was that computers are now able to even past they had won about five or six
years ago where computers were playing chess with the masters and computer finally won so
they have been letting computers play with masters and win or you know they’ve
been winning more often but they and they did it originally by programming in
every possible move that every chess master knows and letting the computer
figure it out right but not too long ago they had one computer teach another
computer how to play chess and they didn’t start with the whole database
that humans had fed them they started by calculating every possible move that
ever could be made and figuring out what was the best so instead of using human
knowledge to build computer knowledge they used computer knowledge to build
computer knowledge cutting out what the human input was so you have thoroughly
frightened the entire scaling-up nation so people are not trusting their cars anymore or their tablets so is there
something useful there now that we’re all terrified that the computers are taken over what are some of the ways
that we could actually use that to our advantage before we’re working for the
machines well let me first go back and clarify and make sure that everybody knows that I could beginning some of my
experiments overlapping but those are the capabilities that are coming out but maybe it wasn’t the chest on chest I
don’t know it was the chest on chest thing but nobody goes and looks it up and says she was wrong because the outcomes were
right but I might have mixed up some of these thousands of things that I’ve been reading fair enough so going back to
your question about the how can we use it holy smokes we are so fortunate to be
able to use this it is phenomenal again how much help these kind of things
can be for example in the area of translation and voice transcription huge
advances with transcription you can talk
in regular language to a host a hope of
virtual assistants to answer your every question on the go and I was just you
know I was getting ready for this podcast and I was doing another project and very quickly I was talking to Alexa
one of my virtual assistants in the house and Alexa I said set a timer for
this and then I said oh wait a minute cancelled that timer and then I said what time is it and then I said in in
five minutes to the hour please notify me and all these different things that were in casual language that Alexa
processed and made it very helpful for me to keep an eye on the time so that I was early to come and get set up so that
is one of the things that can happen is the is the trance transcription and the
voice recognition but in the translation area holy smokes there was an exercise and this was
probably over a year ago so it’s ancient history now a Japanese book was
translated into English they used a very skilled Japanese translator who can
capture those nuances because I know a few people have tried out translation tools and they were a joke right just a
couple of years ago they were like word but word translations and it’s like oh my gosh I once had a housekeeper who
spoke a different language than I did I mean I spoke none of her language she spoke none of my language so I carefully
when on google translate and I had I wrote out what I wanted to say and then I
printed it out in her language and I put it on the table and I left to go out of town and what I said was please clean
out the freezer well it translated as please throw away everything in the
freezer and so we came home and had like this incredible you know we live here in
San Diego so you know the fresh salmon that we had had frozen pretty much from the sea all these you know Omaha steak
kind of things it was like uh well we need to go shopping so the translation
has come so far such that nowadays and
they need to work on dialects they need to work on accents they need to work on regional differences but there are
several tools on the market including google that you can put a device into
your ear and a headphone and while someone else is speaking another
language it will translate into your ear that’s the universal translator they
have that on Star Trek I know those guys were right amazing one of the other
tools that I adore and this is an artificial intelligence actually it’s just plain old intelligence and played
on computer computer work is it’s a tool called if this then that and I consider
it to be if tatata but they don’t say it like that they have it rhyme with lift but if this then that sets up a tiny
little recipe that works behind the scenes that helps you automate some of
the things you check again where we keep going back to those things that annoy us right so this is another thing if it’s
gonna rain tomorrow send me a text message at 7 a.m. if I change my facebook picture change my Twitter
picture if I take a picture of a certain
certain situation while I’m on the job you know analyzing some water event
somewhere automatically when I use when I do this one thing save it in a certain
folder if this then that and it’s free now there’s a couple of competitors to
it one of them is called zapier the api ER and it has a lot more integrations
but several of them cost money but when we go back to evernote when we go back to gmail when we go back to dropbox all
these things have all these integrations that let you automate some of those
things for you but these are some great tools but we do have some listeners out there that might be a little
technologically challenged for those out there in the scaling up nation that aren’t technologies friend what advice
do you have for them here’s where I want people to go when they they get
overwhelmed with technology first of all I want to look them to look at their biggest hang-ups and biggest problems
are they having trouble reaching people in the field are they having trouble keeping up with email again are they
having trouble remembering tasks start there do not start with the biggest most shiny thing because that may not solve a
problem you’re actually having you don’t have to use technology for everything if something’s working but start thinking
about the places where you’re spending too much time and see if there’s technology that will help that the
second thing is do one thing so often I
hear people and they write to me and say I did this one thing and it has changed
the way I work stop what you’re doing choose one thing try it out and see how
it transforms things Beth this has been so informative I know the folks out in
the scaling up nation can’t wait to start looking at some of these tools that you’ve mentioned I’m going to try
to list these out on my show notes page but if they want more information than that where can they go
well I bill myself as your nerdy best friend so believe it or not my site is
your nerdy best friend calm and on there
I keep a blog I have a newsletter all these things are great additions to your technology pile in
fact we just asked my readers what was the biggest benefit and all of them saying things like or a lot of them say
things like number one the humor so I’m hoping that’s there but another thing is they say you are the one who’s doing the
research on apps that will help me and I’m taking away apps that I would never find on my own so please visit please
take a look at my books they are the latest one is called the big book of apps mainly because it’s a it’s a big
book of apps really so try those out well Beth you got time for some lightning round questions go for it all
right so if you could go back in time to the first day where you started your job
knowing all the things that you know now what advice would you give yourself I
would say blog more I would say come up
with the content more often and you know I’m not sure how that translate exactly into the water treatment community
except to say do more research and have more information I would say blog more
and get more content and share things more often that’s what I I would have
done at the very beginning what are the last three books that you’ve read well I’m just gonna go with the last book on
greeting because I adore it so much Amy Poehler’s it’s called
yes please I think it’s just delightful and she talks about the pain and agony
of writing a book and I’ve written for now and when I read it I actually used a
tool to capture the text from that page and texted it to everybody I knew things
see she gets me writing a book is it is all this and more so I am delighted with
her book it’s funny it’s interesting and I relate to her very well well I’ve been
threatening to write a book for probably ten years now and that’s why I started this show because it was just easier for me than to write a book any advice for
me blog more download that and you can put it in an Excel spreadsheet then mail merge it into a book well there you go
great advice eventually they’re going to make a movie about your life when they do who plays Beth well I have always loved
Mare Winningham from the time she played in st. Elmo’s fire and kind of pudgy
kind of cute incredibly intelligent all she needs to do is dye your hair or whatever color my hair happens to be at
the time because you know these things change and I think we got it last question if you can talk to anybody
throughout history who would it be with and why throughout history well I’m
gonna go with a modern person and I am in love with Wil Wheaton who plays himself on Big Bang Theory and plays
Wesley Crusher on star trek the next generation he speaks for the Nerds I saw
him speak one time I was speaking at Mensa the high IQ Society and he was
their keynote speaker and I wept in his presentation and or in his speech and my
husband turned to me because we both that was part of my package I was like I’ll speak for you if you negotiate this
and my husband got to come and he turned to me and said Beth he was speaking to
you and I’m like I know I can honestly say nobody has ever given that answer on
scaling up I am a Trekkie so I I appreciate that answer so I thanks so
much for coming on the show I know we’ve learned a lot and I just want to say applause well thank you very much for
inviting me I told you she knew her stuff folks you did not hear this part
of the recording but before we actually started this interview I was asking her
questions about things that I was doing on a day to day basis and she was
helping me with things that I am already using and she was telling me tips and
tricks on how to use them I’m gonna put her books on my show notes page by all
means please check that out but I want to let you know that since this recording Beth has a new book coming out
in a couple of weeks it’s called the big book of apps so when that comes out I
will be sure to let the nation know so you can now see
her latest book on all the apps that you should be using to do the work so you
don’t have to do them I’m gonna tell you I got office 365 a couple of months ago
actually we started at January 1 we decided that we were going to make the break from our old 2013 software which
we had and go ahead and go with office 365 and if you have not done this or if
you have not gone on their website and seen the tools that come with office 365
it really is an impressive suite I am just getting into using OneNote I talked
about OneNote at last year’s convention and I thought I knew how to use it then I have since met with somebody who is an
expert on OneNote and I had no idea of all the things that it could do so by
now I am no means an expert I’m but I’m learning a whole bunch of stuff in fact I’ve gotten a surface pro that I am
trying to use exclusively to take my notes and as I told Beth as you guys
just heard I am a paper person so I am going kicking and screaming doing this but the problem is is I love to use
legal pads and if you could see my desk right now there’s about 40 legal pads on my desk and if you were to ask me to
find notes from a particular meeting I know they’re all my desk I have no idea how to find them so that’s how I am
using OneNote I’m sure from all the tools that Beth has mentioned there’s at
least something out there that you can start using to make a difference in your
life to make you maybe a little organized to make you have less email folks there’s stuff out there
pick one thing learn how to use it so you have more time to do other things
let’s answer a couple questions all right so pinks and blues my favorite
part of the show were the scaling up nation members of the scaling up nation right in
me and asked me questions about things they have questions about so my first
question is how can you tell if a filter needs to be changed on a closed-loop
system so on a previous show several shows I believe I’ve made it clear that
I do not believe that we are treating a closed-loop system unless it has a
filter on it and a lot of people went out and they started putting filters on their systems and then they’re worried
that they’re throwing away clean filters so very simple thing what you can do is
you can put pressure gauges on the inlet and the outlet and whenever you see a delta on those gauges you know that your
filter is starting to clog that way you never throw away a filter that doesn’t
need to be thrown away and I think on the episode with Mark Lewis we talked
about different types of filters and I am a fan of the bag filter for one they’re cheap for two they’re just so
darn impressive to see all the crud that comes out of the system and folks if if
you have a really clean system you might be changing ones that don’t need to be cleaned or changed if you change them
every single month so pudding Inlet and outlet pressures and just change them
when there is a change when there’s a delta on there that might solve your problem now let me throw another question in here that I saw before and I
think it fits in good with this question actually I guess it would fit in well with that question I’m trying to make
sure I speak well now that I’m on the podcast so a question I saw earlier was
how can you tell if a carbon filter needs to be changed and that’s actually
super easy if your water is chlorinated if your water is chlorinated just run a
chlorine test whatever chlorine your test free total I don’t think it matters a carbon filter should get that out of
the system and if you ever see chlorine coming through a carbon filter you need
to change that carbon filter so great questions here’s another question it’s about re
agents and it says how long does phenolphthalein last now that was an interesting question out of all the
reagents why are they asking this question about phenolphthalein I don’t know the answer to it but I’ll answer it
I have a bottle of phenol failing that I think my father had I don’t think phenolphthalein goes bad the only thing
it does is turn pink at a pH of 8.3 so if you’re ever curious about that
find a pH of 8.3 you’re higher and if it turns pink it’s still good if it doesn’t I guess it’s bad I don’t think you can
go bad I don’t know what would happen if it went bad but that’s the answer to that question now I will throw out
another question how do you know when your reagents are good how do you know
when they’re in date so I’m extrapolating a little bit more from the question that was asked most reagents
today do have an expiration date on them does that mean that they’re no good well
it really depends on the reagent that you’re using here’s what I want to leave you with if you are ever in doubt of
your reagent test it don’t blindly believe the reagent simply because you
think it’s right make a known standard of whatever you’re testing for it’s really easy to do maybe I’ll do a show
on it some time and then test for it when you do that you should get the
answer that you made the standard – and you just verify that that reagent is
totally fine folks the last thing that I want to mention is the CWT challenge as
you know I signed off 2017 last year by saying if you were in the water
treatment industry the industrial water treatment industry by all means let
everybody know that you are serious about being in that industry and get
your certified water technologist designation I am pleased to tell you
that I have had well over 160 people
it’s like a hundred and sixty-three say that they were going to take that challenge and I’ve had five people reach
out to me and say that they have passed they’re certified water
technologist designation folks that is outstanding as you know I am super
passionate about this industry and I truly believe that there aren’t enough people like me out there that are
passionate about this industry and really try to make it better so by you going out there and getting your
certified water technologist you too are making this industry better and I hope
that you are making this industry better by listening to this show and in being inspired to be a better water treater to
treat your customers better to understand what it is that you do and folks I hope you keep those questions
coming to me because that’s how I know what to talk about it sure is fun
bringing this show to you each and every other week I sure hope you tune in next time to scaling up
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