Improve Your Workflow Episode 03 with Nathan James Crane
matthew.barlocker
2 August 2019Nathan James Crane is the Director of Minutia.
Learn more about Minutia:
- Minutia: https://www.minutia.com.au/about-us/
- Minutia Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_minutia/
- Minutia Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/minutia_
Products and software mentioned in the show:
- Later: https://later.com/
- Filmora Wondershare: https://filmora.wondershare.net/
- Adobe InDesign: https://www.adobe.com/sea/products/indesign.html
- Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/
Media businesses mentioned in the show:
- Conde Nast: https://www.condenast.com/
- Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/
- Architectural Digest: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/
- The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/
- Bon Apetit: https://www.bonappetit.com/
Transcript of Improve Your Workflow podcast with Nathan James Crane of Minutia
Voiceover:
Welcome to the 'Improve Your Workflow' podcast, brought to you by Digital Pigeon. Learn from other creative and media businesses about attracting more work, delivering projects efficiently, getting paid on time and everything in between.
Paul Evans:
Hi there, and welcome to the third episode of Improve Your Workflow. My name is Paul Evans and I'm your host. The format for this show is really simple. I interview owners and managers of media marketing and creative businesses about their productivity and operations hacks as a way where we can all learn from each other, and hopefully make our lives that little bit easier. Our guest today is Nathan James Crane of Minutia. Welcome to the show, Nathan.
Nathan James Crane:
Thank you very much for having me.
Paul Evans:
Great. Could you tell the listeners what you do and who you do it for?
Nathan James Crane:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm the director of Minutia, so we're a media relations and communications agency. We work specifically with architects, designers, and creative professionals to generate compelling content for digital, traditional and social media as well as, sort of, providing brand development and reputation management. Minutia literally means the details, and our motto is "life in the details". So, we create interesting and engaging design stories from these details for our clients.
Paul Evans:
All right. What would you say is your number one productivity hack? So, whether that's how you sell your services, or how you deliver your work, or perhaps something that helps you on the business side of things?
Nathan James Crane:
Yeah, so I was thinking about this question. I would say, for me, it's probably down to rigorous time planning and scheduling, actually. I can be working on five or six different brands at any one time, all with different demands and strategies. So, in order for me to be able to be effective and also be productive, as opposed to, say, just being busy, I ensure that I account for time very carefully and I'm disciplined with which client or which project I'm dealing with at any one time. So, I suppose my hack, if we can call it that, is about implementing good strategy, to cut through the noise of distraction and overwhelm.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Okay, great. Could you tell us a bit about your own tech stack? So, what type of hardware or software or any other tools or processes that you do to help you with that?
Nathan James Crane:
Sure, sure. So, I suppose from a technology point of view, we utilize a lot of scheduling tools, as I was mentioning before. So, for social media we use later.com.
Paul Evans:
Oh, sorry, later?
Nathan James Crane:
Later.com, yeah.
Paul Evans:
Okay.
Nathan James Crane:
If we produce video, so, for my own sort of promos or scissor reels and things like that, I use Filmora Wondershare. For graphic layouts and publications, we use Adobe InDesign and Google Slides to present proposals to clients. We also, very much the brand is still connected to the idea of detail, and the nature of the clients being in the design community, we also still tend to produce quite a lot of printed matter rather, because it's quite a tactile medium.
Paul Evans:
All right. We're just going to take a few seconds now to hear from our sponsor.
Voiceover:
This episode is brought to you by Digital Pigeon. Digital Pigeon is the leading file sharing service for creative and media businesses that can't afford to miss deadlines. With a focus on moving large files from A to B quickly and reliably, Digital Pigeon is the tool you can count on where others fail to deliver. Try Digital Pigeon out for free today at www.digitalpigeon.com/workflow for an extra long 90-day trial. Now, back to the show.
Paul Evans:
Okay. So, if you could work with one brand that you don't already work with, who would that be and why?
Nathan James Crane:
So I had a long, hard think about this one that actually, because it's a bit of a tricky question at first. I've always aspired to actually work with Conde Nast in some capacity. So, they obviously have a huge portfolio of publications like Vogue, Architectural Digest, the New Yorker, and even something like Bon Apetit, any of which would be incredible to produce content for. So, I think particularly why those guys, is… I think they have a really sophisticated and attuned grasp of their different audiences, which I really respect.
I think they produce content that enables them to actually speak to those different audiences in a really nuanced way.
Paul Evans:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do they have digital platforms as well?
Nathan James Crane:
Yeah, absolutely. So-
-There's vogue.com, vogue [inaudible 00:04:42], Bon Apetit has a huge YouTube following as well. So, there's lots of different ways to engage with them. Absolutely.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Fantastic. How do you go about solving problems that you don't know the answer to? And, you’re not allowed to say Google because I feel like that answer's going to be coming up. Is there specific blogs or mentors that you use or anything like that?
Nathan James Crane:
Yeah. So yeah, Google would be the easy answer, I suppose. As much as possible. I always try and start conversations in the community to crowd source the right answer as well. So, a lot of my job as a media advisor is listening to what the public is looking for and then finding ways to deliver that through the clients that I'm working with. So, I think discussion amongst online communities, particularly. So I'm a member of a few different networking and different freelance, Creatives of Adelaide is one particular group that, obviously a local group, but lots of people can post on there and actually, within the community, actually find different perspectives and answers on there.
And then I also like to read a lot of international trend reports as well. So, entrepreneurial.com or places like that, which actually helps me to anticipate the media landscape for the next 12 months. Which, and then enables me to be fairly proactive about particular stories or content that I think needs to be produced as it comes through and it actually becomes really popular and needed.
Paul Evans:
That group that you mentioned before, was that a Facebook group, was it?
Nathan James Crane:
Yes. Yeah, that's a Facebook group. Yeah.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Okay, great. Final question, where can our listeners connect with you?
Nathan James Crane:
Yeah, okay. So you can find us online on Instagram. So our handle is @_minutia, M-I-N-U-T-I-A. And also, you can check us out on our website at www.minutia.com.au. Yeah, we're always looking to start conversations with great people, so please do get in touch.
Paul Evans:
Thanks so much for being on the show, Nathan.
Nathan James Crane:
My absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
Paul Evans:
There was some interesting insights there from Nathan today. From my perspective, I learned about a couple of new tools, Later, an Instagram scheduling tool, and Wondershare, which has a few tools from the look of it, a simple video editing tool, amongst a few others. I also liked Nathan's comments about managing time. Time's not a renewable resource, so it's important that it's managed effectively. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep on delivering.
Voiceover:
Thanks for listening to the Improve Your Workflow podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes. Go to www.digitalpigeon.com/reviewpodcast/ for more info, and we'll add you into our monthly draw to win a Digital Pigeon t-shirt. Bye for now.
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