THE BLOG

“We do not do email in our company.”

That’s how I opened this conversation with Joanna and Lilly, and I’ll be honest – I’ve said it enough times that it no longer sounds radical to me. But every time I say it to someone outside our team, they look at me like I just said we run the business on carrier pigeons.

We operate across three time zones. I’m in Europe. Lilly’s on the West Coast. Joanna’s on the East Coast. We work with a VA team, a paid ads manager, and a designer – all remote, all asynchronous. And we have not sent each other an internal email in years.

What we do instead is Slack. But not Slack the way most people use it – as a noisier version of email. We use it as a full operating system. And in this post, I’m sharing exactly how we’ve built it.

Why Email Wasn’t Working (And What We Replaced It With)

When you’re a small team moving fast across time zones, email creates a specific kind of chaos. Things get buried. You’re searching threads trying to figure out who said what and when. You’re cc’ing people on things they don’t need and not looping in the people who do.

Slack, as I describe it, is like well-organized text messaging. You can have topic-based channels, thread conversations, link to other things, and integrate with the tools you’re already using. The organizational backbone that email is missing.

And once we committed to making Slack the one place – the actual one place – everything started moving faster.

The Channel Structure That Keeps Us Focused

One of the things Joanna flagged when we sat down to prep this episode was how intentional our channel setup is. We’re a small team, so you might wonder why we have 25+ channels for just a handful of people. The answer: focus.

When I have a block of time for Modern CEO work, I go to the Modern CEO channel and only that. I’m not seeing ads updates, sales pings, or client birthday reminders. It’s the virtual equivalent of walking into a specific room to do specific work. It removes the temptation to bounce.

Some of our favorite channels:

Sales – Every purchase across the entire Amber McCue universe triggers an automatic notification here. Joanna formats them all to look the same so you can scan at a glance. During a live webinar, when someone invests while I’m on camera, that ping hits Slack, and I can shout them out by name in the chat in real time. That’s a feeling I never get tired of.

My Week – Where we each drop our top priorities for the week, especially during busy or complex months. It keeps us aligned without a full team meeting, and it’s a great forcing function to actually think through your priorities before diving in.

Client Birthdays – Because we celebrate. Full stop.

Ads – Our ads manager, Ashley, sends weekly performance updates here. Metrics, what’s working, what to pivot. Visible to the whole team without anyone having to ask.

Emojis Are Not Just For Fun – They’re a Communication System

This sounds like a small thing. It’s not.

In a virtual environment, you lose all the non-verbal signals that make communication human. The nod. The “mm-hmm.” The look across the table that says, “Yes, I’ve got that.” Emojis fill that gap.

Here’s how we actually use them:

👀 Eyeballs = “I’ve seen this and I’m on it”

✅ Green check = “Done”

🎉 + dancing banana + 15 other things = someone made a sale

We also use them so we’re not piling on. If Joanna says something great and I agree, I don’t need to reply “great point!” and add to the thread. A reaction says it. Clean, fast, clear.

And yes – Joanna monitors which emojis get the most add-ons from the team. If she posts 15 under a sale notification and nobody else picks the dancing hot dog, she knows: that one’s getting retired.

The point isn’t the emojis themselves. The point is that we’ve built a shared language around what they mean, so nothing gets misread as short or cold.

The No Hot Potato Rule

This one came from our photography business days when we had a team of 50. The pattern goes like this: someone sends a message, assigns a task, and then considers it done. Ball’s in your court. Their job is over. That’s the hot potato – thrown, no follow-up, no confirmation.

It doesn’t work.

What we do instead: if I send Joanna a message at 11 PM her time, I don’t just assume she’ll see it and handle it. I set a Remind Me for myself to follow up. Not as a pressure tactic – as a genuine “hey, did this land?” It keeps things from falling through the cracks without anyone having to monitor a million things.

And because we’ve built a culture of assuming positive intent, that follow-up never reads as “why haven’t you done this yet.” It reads as “genuinely checking in.” That’s a culture thing, not a Slack thing. But Slack’s tools – the Remind Me, the Schedule Later – make it easy to operate that way.

The Automations That Make It All Click

This is where things get good.

Joanna’s built integrations that funnel everything into Slack, so we’re not context-switching between a dozen platforms. A few of our favorites:

Login codes: When a verification code gets sent to one of our mailboxes, it automatically routes to a dedicated Slack channel. Nobody has to ask, “Can you check your phone?” Nobody has to wait. The code is just there.

Sales notifications: Every transaction across every product automatically fires into the sales channel. Formatted consistently, instant, no manual work.

High-priority customer service: Our VA Elliza uses judgment to escalate urgent customer emails directly into our customer service Slack channel. The whole team can see it, discuss it, and draft a response – without anyone having to log into a separate email system.

The goal: one place. As few platforms to check as possible.

This Isn’t Just a Slack Episode

Whether you use Slack or not, there’s something here about how you set up communication in your business that matters.

Pick one place. Define what things mean – what an emoji signals, what a follow-up looks like, what gets its own channel versus what goes in a general thread. Build the norms explicitly so nobody has to guess.

And if you’re still managing your team through a sprawling email inbox, I’m not saying this to judge you. I’m saying this because I’ve been there, and there is a better way.

We’ll be back with Joanna and Lilly for part two – where we go deeper on the AI integrations inside our Slack, including the one we call Victor. That’s coming next week.

Episode Transcript

 We’re back today with Joanna and Lily with, I don’t know, this might shock some people, it might not shock some people, but we do not do email in our company. We operate around the world, across the country, other sides of the country, n- not in person very often. We do get together in person from time to time, but we don’t do email.

I can’t even remember the last time I emailed one of you or any individual on our team. We instead do everything in Slack And there may be some people who are already using Slack. There are some who are not. There are some who are still all in email. And we not only wanna share with you today how we use Slack instead of email, but we also wanna give you some of the nuances.

‘Cause we have our Slack set up and our use cases and our Slack culture set up in a very unique way that we think are gonna be interesting for you. So with this, Joanna, I’m coming your way first because this episode, everybody, thanks to Joanna, is happening because this was your idea. At the end of our last call, you’re like, “We gotta share how we set up Slack.

There’s so much unique stuff.” And we actually sat down to prep for this episode, and I was like, “Okay, what are we talking about? What, what is it? What is so unique?” Because sometimes you don’t see it on your own. So Joanna, what are those overarching things that you see that we do differently here? Well, first of all, I think it’s already different to not be using email at all.

In other companies that I’ve worked with or supported, it’s very email heavy. So I think just using Slack as the main communication hub is already pretty unique. And then the way we have it set up, the way our channels are laid out, the way we kind of have a culture within that we acknowledge that we’ve seen things or that we’re working on something, I think that’s probably maybe u- unique to us.

Mm. And then some of the automations that we have built within Slack to bring everything into Slack. Email and all of the other software systems and platforms that we use, everything funnels through Slack. So it’s really a central hub for us, and I think that might be different than how a lot of people are using it or be interesting for people to hear how we use it.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. So Slack, I describe it as operating like text messaging, but it’s organized by topic, so it’s well organized text messaging. You can also thread things. You can link things. There are integrations with other platforms, which we’ll dive into as well. But Lily, as we think about how we use Slack, what stands out for you in our operating model?

Definitely the efficiency. I think that for me, using email or kind of any other messaging tool or platform with group teams in the past, it has not felt efficient. Things get lost. I’m searching. Where did somebody say this? Am I making it up? And I find Slack to be super organized for us and just incredibly efficient.

And we’ll talk a little bit more about this, but Slack is not only just like a communication tool for us. We have a lot of our outside platforms integrated into Slack. It’s a one-stop shop for a lot of things for me, so I’m able to kind of feel like I’m moving faster, more efficiently, all the things, and I- I love it.

I love Slack. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m gonna tack onto that, Lily. Also, because s- of the mobile app with Slack, and because- Yeah … it’s central, I really … Not only do I have one place on my laptop that I’m checking, but also on my phone when I’m away from my laptop. I can stay on top of everything just using Slack. I don’t, I’m not having to go into our email platform.

I’m not having to go into all these different things. I can just go right into Slack to see what I need to see, which is great when you’re traveling or you only have, like, a quick minute or two to pop in and check and see where things are. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Perfect. And I would say, since we’re virtual and spread across the world, and in different time zones, all of the things, a lot of the Slack features really do help build our culture.

Like, we use the emojis and reactions, and I like the status updates inside of Slack so we can stay communicating with each other in, like, a super easy, non-pressure way. I love it. Okay, this is really good. You’re starting to touch on some of the details, and you said a couple of things that are little teasers for things we absolutely need to break down more.

But before we go there, we talked about the channels that operate like topic based text message group, little conversation channels that can be private or they can be public, where everyone in the company can access them. Let’s share some of the channels that we have, because just the way the unique channels that we have set up on our teams and in our companies is also unique.

So first up, Joanna, share your, a couple of your favorites with us. Well, my number one most favorite, most loved channel, I, it’s like a child I love and care for, is our sales channel, where every time any sale happens of any product within the Amber McCue universe, we get notified in the sales channel. And that’s an automation that’s set up.

We can go into more detail on that, that whenever a sale comes in, I format all the notifications to look the same. So it’s also a very uniform, pretty channel. Everything reads the same way. You could scroll through very quickly and, and see everything at a glance, and that’s just, it, usually no action is required in that channel.

It’s just a celebration channel. So that’s probably my favorite channel in Slack, is to see all of our sales as they come in. I gotta say, for anyone with a sales team or if you just like to celebrate your customers, the excitement that, “Oh, I get to serve this person now, see their name, know them,” that is really fun, and we did the same thing in the photography business when we had a team of 50 operating in 26 cities.

It was a whole lot of fun when you got to celebrate, oh my gosh, this person invested in this product. They invested in us and in themselves, and it was just so fun to celebrate everyone. The team who served them, the person who was making this investment in themselves. We would light it up, the whole team.

So it does have a good energy. That’s a favorite. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That’s definitely one of my favorites. Yeah. And it’s immediate feedback. When we’re live on a webinar, whenever we’re sending an email, we get immediate feedback, an immediate notification. Email sent, boom, sale. Yeah. That’s helpful as well for us learning and adjusting, um, as we go.

Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, that’s such a great point. When we’re doing a webinar and we’re launching something or, you know, as soon as we get to the part of the webinar where we’re talking about how you can invest in this product, invest in yourself, to have that notification come right into Slack, and then to be able to shout that person out in the chat, in the webinar chat, to say like, “Okay, Stephanie, you’re in.

We, we’ve got you. We can’t wait to see you on the implementation call,” or something to be able to celebrate, not only celebrate internally with each other that, that this is happening, but then to also celebrate that person live in real time on the webinar. It feels so good. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It’s fun. It brings it all together.

Okay. Second favorite channel. Second favorite channel. Believe it or not, I think it’s our ads channel. Ooh, okay. I think I say these two channels ’cause they’re not channels I have to do a lot in. I’m not usually tagged in those channels to, like, do something other than maybe, like- That’s true … implement a landing page or something.

But those are just fun channels. I love our, our ads person, Ashley. I love her weekly updates on, like, how ads are doing, what ad is working. I love seeing all those metrics. I love that channel a lot because it’s just a great way to quickly see where, how things are shaping up, and what pivots we might need to make or what’s working really well.

I like that channel a lot, too. Ah, amazing. Okay, these were good. Lily, your favorites. Or, or if not favorites, you know. Yeah. I think My Week is up there. My Week is a channel where… I- we’ve talked about this before, but where we send our priorities for the week. And we don’t do this maybe every week, but especially when we have a lot shaking or busy abnormal months, we’ll send our top priorities for the week, making sure that we’re all checked in on what everybody else is working on.

Mm-hmm. See where we can plug in to support, and just kind of keeps the train moving. I love that channel. It’s a great practice for me to stay organized, and I absolutely notice when I don’t spend the time reflecting and planning, so I appreciate the space for that. I’m looking at Slack right now. Oh, I like Client Birthdays.

This is also a channel. I wouldn’t have to do much there, but we like celebrating period, but especially the people that we work with and so closely with. And so we celebrate our clients’ birthdays, and I love getting a notification that somebody’s birthday’s coming up. It’s just a fun, joyful channel.

That’s a good one. We’ve all, we’ve… So far, we’ve named channels that don’t have a lot of work, and then they’re just like, “Okay, here’s what I’m doing. And here’s how I celebrate.” We did work to get there. Yes, we did work to get there. That’s right. So, the automation you said. That work to get there happens in key departments.

So just like you might have a department in… We’ve got departments in our company, we have a Slack channel set up for each department, as well as key products. So we can pop into the product channel if we’re working on the Modern CEO. All the conversation happens in one space. If we’re working on AI clone team, it’s happening in another space.

As well as launches, very specific launches may have their own channel as well. But we try and keep it pretty cleaned up. I think we’ve probably got, like, 30, maybe not even 30, 25 channels. Yeah. Right around there. And I do wanna say, we are a small team, right? So us three, we’re in, you know, all of these channels.

Mm-hmm. And so you might ask why. Why do we have all of these different channels if it’s just us three working in them in different locations? And there’s absolutely a purpose for it. I think it helps keep us intentional, keeps us clean and organized. And if we just had one scrolling email thread or text message thread or something, we would be bouncing around on every project and every time we talked about it.

Yeah. And it would probably take us 10 times longer to get one thing done, whereas if I have Modern CEO implementation time blocked, I just go to that channel, I knock that out. I’m not looking at sales or celebrating client birthdays or any of the things. And so it’s really helpful to have those blinders with this channel system.

I just envisioned us, like, physically moving. Okay, now we’re gonna go work on the Modern CEO. Let’s walk over to that room. Exactly. It seems silly, but it does give us great focus when we are virtually doing that. Mm-hmm. It keeps us intentional when it’s so easy to bounce, uh, so easily online right now.

Yeah. Speaking of that, I’m gonna piggyback off that. One of the features I love most about Slack, because Amber is in Europe, right, and Lily is on West Coast, and I am on East Coast, is I might be working around, like, 5:00 PM, and I wanna send Amber a quick DM on something that I’m thinking about, or I wanna type something in the channel about it, like, you know, in our launch channel if we have a launch live.

I will get a little no- I don’t know if you guys have seen this, I’m sure you have, but at the bottom of Slack, it’ll say, “Hey, it’s 11:00 PM for Amber right now. Are you sure you wanna send this message?” I’m like, “I absolutely do not.” Not that I think you even have notifications on, but nope, I absolutely do not wanna send a message out that’s gonna ping someone at 11:00 PM.

So I have the opportunity and the option to schedule that message or write it as a draft and come back to it during what are more normal business hours for most of the team, like our core working hours where we’re all online. So that’s another way we’re using Slack since we are, you know, across the world and in so many different time zones, so that we can be really mindful and intentional about when we’re pinging people.

Yeah. Really great. Yeah. I loved when they added that. It, it just brings that presence and awareness to, oh, you’re gonna send this to how many people? And some of them are still sleeping. Okay, let’s give it a minute. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just give it a… Or schedule it till another time. Mm-hmm. Okay, super. Now let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about our culture in Slack.

And big company, small company, I think it is so important to kinda define the culture. And there are some very specific things that we’ve noticed, we’ve evolved, we’ve spoken about and added intentionally over the years, and I think they’re pretty great. One of them was our use of emojis. Lily, you mentioned this.

You gave us a little teaser in the beginning. Tell us more about the emoji use. Yes. There are so many uses of emojis in our Slack. But if you’re unfamiliar with Slack, every message that’s sent, similar to if you have an iPhone, you can, like, react to that message with an emoji. And then also in Slack, you can add your own emoji.

So you could add your dog’s face, you could add a pic- like, your face as an emoji. There’s lots of funny animated ones, and so even just like a quick emoji reaction helps bring sometimes, like, joy or, uh, awareness or, I don’t know, helps communicate a little bit more clearly in just, like, a, in a totally virtual written, you know, work environment.

And so I really love that. And also, when you set your status in Slack, again, if you’re unfamiliar, you can set your status in Slack, so right by your name, it’s like @Lily, and there’ll be a little emoji next to it, maybe, maybe a, a arm flexing like this, and I can say, “Hey, I’m, I’m at a workout. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Just so we’re… so nobody’s wondering, “Hey, where is she? What, w- why is she not replying?” We’re keeping that communication door wide open in, like I said, just a very easy, quick, efficient way. And that does help build culture and all the things. I was gonna say, we also kind of have an unwritten, unspoken system to our emojis.

For example, Lily might tag me in something, and I will put the eyeball emojis, like I have eyes on this, right? Mm-hmm. Or if it’s something that I’ve already completed, I’ll use the green check mark emoji like, “Hey, this is done,” and then I’ll follow up with a message. But it’s just a way of communicating, like, hey, I’ve seen this, or I’m working on this, or just through a simple emoji we can acknowledge that we’ve seen what each other has said.

And then the other way we’re really using emojis, I think going back to our sales channel, whenever a sale comes in Load it up I, I lighted up every celebration emoji that there is, and I’m constantly adding new custom emojis that are, like, animated. Like, one little dude that- I like the dancing banana

yeah, there’s a dancing banana. Like, I’m constantly trying to keep those kind of fresh and fun to use, and I will put 15 emojis under a sale notification. And then I will sometimes go back to s- and that’s how I’ll know if you guys have seen it, because the emoji count will go from one dancing banana to, like, four, and I’m like, “Okay, everyone has seen the sale.”

And then it’s also interesting to see which ones, if I put, like, 10 emojis under a sale or 15 emojis under a sale notification, which one you guys also select to, like, make it two, and which ones you don’t. I’m like, “Okay, this emoji is not a hit. No one is adding a plus one to this emoji, so okay, next time I’m cycling around these, maybe I’ll pull that one out.”

The analysis on the emoji use. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Uh, I think in virtual environments, when people are moving fast, we miss out on some of the non-verbal communication when we’re virtual, so this is a nod to that. I look at it in client communications even. If we have a post in a community and in a group, and 10 people have commented and shared and given feedback on something, and I just agree, agree, agree, agree.

Every emoji is, like, me nodding, yes, yes, yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Same thing here. We don’t necessarily need to add on more words, ’cause Joanna just said it great, and then Lily had a different point, and she said it great, and I don’t have anything to add right now. But that simple emoji is like, “Yes, I see you. I’m nodding.

I’m thinking.” So it contributes to the communication. As much fun as we have with it, it is so purposeful as well. I love that kind of pull through line to non-verbal communication. Even sitting in this conversation, if I’m not contributing to every word said, I’m nodding, I’m giving you signals- Yeah … that I hear you, I agree, I disagree, and it’s really hard to sometimes get work done, especially creative work done, in a space where you don’t have those signals, and so it’s a great virtual replacement for that.

Yeah. Yeah. Also not adding to a thread that’s maybe 15 comments long with another comment that says, “I’ve seen this,” or, “I’ve got this.” I can go in and put check marks or something so I’m not making something even longer for people to have to read through or scan through. Although I know we’ll talk about Victor, but Victor in our Slack is a big help when you have those really long threads.

Maybe that’s- But- We will talk about Victor. Yeah, we’ll talk about Victor. But yeah, so it’s just a great way to communicate quickly without necessarily adding more information. Yeah. Good. One more add on on the emojis. I think these things are important to talk about. So as you’re defining culture, whether you’re a team of two or you’re a team of, again, 20 or 30 or 50, you’ve gotta think about what does an emoji convey?

Because if w- we didn’t know this, if we didn’t have this conversation at some point, like we don’t have to pile on. Literally we always say, “It’s okay. Save your energy. If you disagree, throw an emoji or express whatever you are doing through that,” because it could come off as short. Like, sometimes if I would just see a check mark and you’re never giving me any words, and I’d be like, “Wait, um, is it okay?

Really?” Like, what’s happening? Wait, just confirm. Yeah. Just confirm. But we know, like, done. Got it. All good. And if there’s something else happening, we will articulate that. Mm-hmm. Um, okay. Next up, culture, Slack guideline rule that we’ve kind of evolved and adapted is no hot potato Tell me more. This came from the photography business, and I remember w- it was a much larger team of 50 or 60 people, and when you’re working so fast and sending these messages, it’s really easy to send a message, “Hey, I need you to X, Y, and Z,” and then say, “Okay, you got the potato.

Now it’s y- you got it. You can do it. You know, I don’t … No follow-up needed from me,” or it’s on them. And that does not always work when there is a lot shaking, a lot of messages happening. So I think coming back to that Slack Remind Me feature or the Schedule Later feature is really, really helpful so that if I send a message to Joanna and it’s, you know, 11:00 PM her time, but, you know, 8:00 PM my time, whatever it is, I can send her a message if I absolutely need to, but then I’m not just gonna leave it there.

I’m gonna set a reminder for myself to follow up in the next day or two and say, “Hey, I sent this kind of late at night for you. Did you see it or any questions there?” Because I don’t wanna assume that she saw it. Maybe she accidentally read it, anything. And so relying on those Remind Me features in Slack is really helpful to make sure things do not get lost.

Yeah. I love what Lily said there, and Joanna, we’ve operated like this from the beginning, in that we send a reminder, like, “Oh, hey, did you see this?” It’s not, “I think you did something wrong. You missed this. Why didn’t you reply to me?” It’s just, “Hey, did you see this?” Like, it’s for real. That’s it. ‘Cause, like, there is a

We know there’s a lot going on. We know notifications can get missed. So that goes back to some of what we talked about in the last conversation as well, about assuming positive intent always. Mm-hmm. But we established that. We’ve articulated that. Would you add anything to that, Joanna, as we’ve evolved that over the years?

Just maybe I would just add that I, I love that extra ping, ’cause maybe I really haven’t seen it or may- Yeah … I never take that as a defensive, like, oh, why is she breathing down my neck, you know? I’m like, “Thank you so much. I did miss this,” or, “You’re right. I checked this at 11:00 and I meant to mark it as unread,” or, “I meant to set a reminder for myself for the next day, but I forgot, so thank you.”

Like, those, it’s never assumed like someone thinks I’m not doing my job or I’m not doing what I’m- Yeah … supposed to be doing, which I appreciate. And that Remind feature is so good, even for me, if I’m, you know, going throughout the day and I go, okay, here’s something that needs my attention, but this is not on my to-do list for today.

It’s not something that’s a priority right now. I’m gonna set my own reminder for tomorrow or three hours from now or whenever I think I’m gonna have time to circle back to it. And, you know, I might put an emoji, like the eyeballs, like I’ve seen this. Mm-hmm. But I’m setting a reminder for myself to come back to it when I know I have the space and time to work on it, so.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I would also say that that hot potato mindset help, and just like following up helps convey priority as well. Because sometimes I will leave a message unread if I’m, if I’m swamped. I gotta, gotta take things one step at a time. I can’t read everything, I can’t tackle it all right now. And so if I, you know, am intentionally putting Joanna’s message to the side and then I see her follow up with me, because she didn’t just throw the potato at me and say, “Okay, it’ll get done,” that helps me reassess my to-dos and helps me bump that up in priority.

So yeah, it’s always positive intent. It’s not a slight at all. It’s just helping us get to our shared goal, yeah, through teamwork. We’ve, we’re all in this together. Yeah. The emojis help with that too, ’cause that recognizes like, okay, she has picked up- Yeah … the baton now, and it takes it off your radar. So bringing it- Yes

full circle to our love of emojis. We have emojis, no piling on, no hot potato. We’re not playing hot potato here. There’s like an acknowledgement, there’s a handoff, and was that it? Am I missing one? We talked about culture. Culture. And that all wraps up into our culture. So good. All right. Next up. Joanna, am I missing something?

Oh, no. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, cool. Integrations. We have a bunch of integrations set up that help us move things along in Slack. That’s right. Anytime we are doing something repetitive or there’s … Anytime that I can automate something, I will automate it. So for example, those sales notifications. Every time that’s, the sale comes in through our platform that, you know, we sell our products on, there’s an automation set up to send that information to our Slack.

That’s one automation. Another automation is our login codes channel. So we, you know, when you work on a team and you need someone’s login code or you’re like, “Okay, uh, it sent a code to your email, can you give me that code?” Or, “It sent a code to your cell phone, can you send me that code so I can log in?”

That’s just like, that assumes that the person’s on- online and available and, you know, sometimes it’s like, “Hey Amber, I have to log into this thing. Are you near your phone? It’s gonna send you a code. Can you send me the code? What’s the code? Hey, how do I get the code? Da, da, da, da.” So there’s an automation set up in our channel called login codes that every time a login code comes to one of our mailboxes, there’s an automation set up that triggers that code to come to Slack so that you don’t actually need the other person to be available or on their phone or in their email to grab that code for you.

I think that’s been like such a big game changer for us. Mm-hmm. So that’s another automation. I know there are others. Lily, you have one with customer service. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. So yeah, we have a system set up with our VA team where, but certain high priority customer service emails or partner emails, things like that get sent to a certain channel, customer service in our Slack, and that is not an automation because right now we don’t want all of our emails going there.

I don’t want just another inbox to sort through. But I appreciate- Eliza’s human judgment in that, “Okay, oh, this is really high priority. It can’t wait until your customer service, you know, block time later. We need, uh, to address this sooner than later. We need to flag this to the team, brainstorm here, collaborate before replying.”

And even that is super helpful for me because I like that Slack is a one-stop shop for as many things as possible. I don’t need to check one place for the first sales and another for customer service and then another for a million and one things. It’s really helpful to work in one place, and that really makes me more efficient and saves time.

And so having Eliza bring over the high priority customer emails also helps us serve faster in a more intentional way, and I’m very grateful for that too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. That allows us to also all have eyes on it if we need to. If there’s something- Yes … where it’s like, “Hey, I’m really not sure how to respond,” or, “This requires a lot of empathy.

I wanna make sure I’m hitting on all the, you know, the things I need to touch on. Can someone review this? Here’s my draft reply.” It allows us to collaborate in one place instead of us all having to go log into the email system, read the email, draft different replies. We can just do all that collaboration in one spot.

Really good. Loving this conversation. Joanna, I’m so glad that you had the idea to dive into our Slack use. And whether you’re using Slack or not, you can set up similar communication practices, protocols, guidelines for you and your team no matter where you’re communicating. So we hope this gave you some ideas, whether it’s Slack or email or wherever else you may wanna be hanging out.

There are some great alternatives and options out there, and we are just scratching the surface on those integrations. So we mentioned Victor. We’re gonna come back in our next episode and share more about Victor and some of the other integrations and the AI that we have in Slack that’s helping us do some pretty cool stuff as well.

So more to come. Until then, Joanna, what’s your final word on Slack? That I love it. So good. Lily, final word? Love Slack. Love you. Thanks. And for me, it’s also more than one word. It’s stay out of email. Stay out of email. Yeah. Or pick one. Pick one. Yeah, you can’t be in all the places. Yeah. Pick one. And if you are having some fresh ideas as you listen to this episode, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Let us know what was helpful, and we’ll see you next time.