Current gig: Co-Founder at Sweet Tooth

Working from: Waterloo, ON

Working on: Macbook Pro & Nexus 5

1. Tell us about yoursMikeRossi_600elf and the kind of work you do. 

Sweet Tooth allows eCommerce store owners to run point-based loyalty programs in their stores. These programs increase customer retention, purchase frequency, and general profitability of an online store. As the CEO I'm responsible for setting our product direction, recruiting new team members, and managing our finances.

2. What does a typical work day look like? 

My typical day involves a lot of conversations with customers, and with our employees. There is quite a lot of email happening, so it's important to keep an eye on the 5-10 main things I want to accomplish each day.

3. How big is your team of coworkers/collaborators? 

We currently have a team of 15 people. We're hiring!

4. Why did you choose Sandglaz? 

Sandglaz was the only tool I could find that allowed you to do both of the following: set long term objectives/goals, and also dynamically adjust what you're working on each individual day.

5. How does it fit into your workflow? 

I go through tasks and set my priorities at the beginning of each week, but I also have to deal with emails that contain mini-tasks that just need to get done. In an attempt to get to inbox-zero, I star the emails that contain to-do items, and then create Sandglaz tasks for all of the starred email once I have zero remaining unread emails. The Sandglaz web app sits in a browser tab along with Gmail and my Calendar. I also use the bookmarked android app.

6. How do you organize your tasks in Sandglaz?

I use a project for each general area of the company that I switch between. Each week I set the main things I want to do in each of those areas, and then organize the things I want to do based on my priorities. The different areas are Product, People, Finances, Administration, Sales, and Marketing.

7. In one sentence how did Sandglaz change the way you work? 

I no longer have to worry about dealing with a backlog of uncompleted tasks - they're automatically moved to the next day if I don't complete them.

8. What’s the best task or project management advice that you’ve received? 

Focus on delivering more work per hour rather than a high number of hours worked.

9. Is there anything else you'd like to add that might be interesting to readers and other Sandglaz users? 

One of the main things that Sandglaz has helped me with is avoiding having a long list of starred emails that contain small to-do items. By clearing these away and adding to Sandglaz, you can be confident that you'll never miss them.