Scheduling was a mess, now it's getting better
Hi there! I'm Jose E. Ruano, the writer of The New Gazette. You are receiving this email because you signed up for it, a weekly newsletter about all things digital. Each time, a new story about a brand or person that is doing an amazing job on the internet. Thank you for being here. If this email was forwarded to you, subscribe by clicking the button below.
Hello again everyone!
I’m gonna be honest with you, coming up with the topic of this article was one of the hardest things I’ve done since starting this newsletter. I had lots of things on my plate that I wasn’t getting focused on what story to tell this week.
These past few days were one of the busiest I had in a while as I scheduled a lot of meetings in the old way. Emails back and forth and many text messages.
I knew there was a solution for this, it was Calendly, an app killing it on the internet, but as they say, I knew the medicine but never took the pill.
This post will tell you a little bit of the company history, what is trying to solve and how it’s doing it and why I think their product is so helpful.
In my regular routine, While I’m not writing this newsletter, I work as a freelancer, helping entrepreneurs build their products, things like an e-commerce store, landing pages, setting up their profiles in social media, I pretty much help everyone be better in the digital world, as I love the internet so much.
On a normal week between finishing some projects, finding new clients, keeping up with what was happening, helping friends doing their things and calls, I pretty much need to schedule a lot of things.
Every Sunday afternoon after lunch, I try to get the week ahead in order to not lose what is needed to be done. I write down what I want to achieve in the next few days, whether is work, exercise, family, friends, and hobbies, it all goes to my calendar, notes, and reminders app but that’s not ideal.
I try to make everything look okay for myself as I forget a lot of stuff but when it’s too much it became too messy.
Mid-week, I realized that I lost a lot of time scheduling the meetings, as a lot of them were around different timezones, figuring out when it was on my time and when my schedule was open.
I hated it but I promised after that I will get into using Calendly for real. My schedule wasn’t the most organized thing in the world and I needed to change it.
Some of you probably know the app and are using it daily but it’s never a bad time to talk about the history behind the brand.
What is Calendly?
Started in 2013, This platform is a freemium software-as-a-service that provides a quick way to manage open spaces in your calendar for people to book appointments with you. Schedule a meeting in your available times and not get lost as I did with everything.
The idea for Calendly came from Tope Awotona, the founder, a Nigerian entrepreneur which after trying to create and build different companies, got into a lot of trouble scheduling his activities which made him looked around and realized that there wasn’t a solution for it.
To start He cashed in his 401k and went into debt to build the scheduling service expected to be valued at $3 Billion dollars, (yes, right!) after closing a new investment this week.
Tope's story is really inspiring, how after a lot of adversities he managed to build a really successful and helpful idea. You can learn more about him on the NPR show, How I built this by Guy Raz, on this link to the amazing interview.
What is trying to solve?
The platform is trying to solve a common problem we all have. As meetings scheduled online have gone up, there wasn’t a really good way to keep control of it. Trying to remember at what specific hour you are available is impossible, plus as remote work is becoming more common, more and more timezones are being used and is hard to figure out which time is okay for both parties to schedule a call.
Calendly was built with this in mind, it integrates with all types of calendars to help you get more done and not lose time sending emails or texts and waiting for a response to see when a call could happen.
The simplicity of the product makes it a platform all could have, no matter in what industry you are or the type of job you do.
How it’s solving it?
Calendly offers you after signing up a way to put your time into context to others, with it they can know at which time you’re going to be busy and not interfere while trying to schedule something when it cannot be. It’s all automatic a good reason for its growth. Calendly gives you the option to send invites in the form of a link, which redirects to Calendly itself, so new people who use it and like it can start using it right away, too.
It connects to your favorite calendar provider like Google’s, Apple’s, or Microsoft Outlook, which makes it easier to start using it and schedule more without any complication.
The future of the company?
The wide range of its use cases, and the virality of that growth strategy, have been winners. Calendly is already profitable, and it has been for years. And more recently, it has seen a boost, specifically in the last twelve months, as new Calendly users have emerged, as a result of how we are living.
It is part of the “future of work” — cloud services, communications, productivity apps that make our job a little bit easier.
Calendly for its future sees itself as a platform that provides a way to be the upfront to schedule virtual events, seminars, and more not just meetings with integration to pay for it inside the app.
Imagine, a new webinar is going to happen about “The Future of Marketing” offered at $20 from a famous university, you see the event, you like it and then decide to attend, as it is online you sign up and receive a Calendly link to first pay the fee and then add the event to your calendar. All happening inside the same app.
How it can help you?
Some of you are probably already using the app, if not, try to sign up and see what it can do for your time.
To all, Calendly could become an essential piece of your work. It can be your life saver to not schedule things you will regret later.
This platform can provide you a way to expand and be more efficient with your time. You could schedule things you enjoy more like calls with friends, happy hours with colleagues, and events you are think attending without that headache of always figuring out if you're available,
I’m a fan of the automatization of things and Calendly is a service you could use to do exactly that.
I was about to give up and not send a story this week but thought to myself, “you been really consistent with your content you shouldn’t stop now“ and thankfully Calendly came to the rescue, not just to make my schedule better in the coming days but as an inspiration that some ideas could become a must-have in your life to make it easier.
If you have any tips that can make my schedule more organized, let me know in the comments or by replying to this email. I can really use an advice
Until next week,
Jose
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I finished setting up my Calendly, if you want to talk you can schedule a 15-minute chat with me to discuss whatever you want and I could be helpful for you. here’s the link
Go check out a really good newsletter about mindful productivity on Ness Labs. I promise it will help you adapt and be sharp no matter your circumstances. You will learn a lot. See it here: Maker Mind. I’m using his advice to have my life more in order.