00:00 Hello, better sheets members. It is Andrew from better sheets.co. Thank you for watching this video. And I hope that this video is incredibly helpful to you too, so that you find the help that you need for better sheets.
00:14 And this video is all about how to ask better questions so that you get the help that you need, uh, to get the help for better help, actually better help is not the better best term I'll do better sheets help.
00:27 Um, I don't want to be thought of as a therapist. I'm not your therapist, but I am a Google sheets.
00:35 Uh, no at all, actually, you know what? This video will prove that I don't know at all, but, uh, let me get to getting you some help to help.
00:46 I want to help you, help me help you. So this is what this video is all about. Number one, most popular feature of better sheets.co.
00:54 If you've read the reviews on AppSumo and you've talked to anyone in any group, or you've been recommended this a better sheets, and you've bought it, you will know that you are looking at the number one most popular feature.
01:10 Me. That is right. I am. And I'm answering every question you have are at least trying to, I have an ask me anything policy.
01:20 Uh, you can literally ask me anything. I may not know the answer, but you can ask it. Uh, you can email me.
01:27 Oh, you should move my face. andrew@bettersheets.co literally, uh, you have my email. I answer my emails. Uh, that's the number one best way to reach me.
01:39 That's the number one best method to ask a question. As of now working on some other options here had some other options before they didn't really work out very well.
01:50 Um, I have had members re uh, recommend a forum or a community, but, uh, every forum and every community I've ever seen myself has been fairly difficult to manage or, um, actually get the help you need.
02:09 What you can do is just email me. I check my email like 20 times a day sometimes. Uh, but go ahead, email me your question.
02:20 And the rest of this video is going to be about what kind of questions you can ask. What kind of questions I can answer again?
02:30 You can ask any question you want. There is no gate to that. There is no stopping you from asking any, uh, weird questions, bad questions.
02:40 If you think it's a bad question, just ask it. The better thing to do is just ask. I will let you know what is the least helpful questions?
02:48 What are the least useful questions, um, where others might be of more use, but that's for later in this video, all right, let's start with the least helpful questions.
03:01 These are what I've come up with so far from the last two years of running better sheets, 3000 members, probably around a thousand questions.
03:09 I think I've made more than 500 videos of which there are now publicly, almost 200 for all members to see.
03:16 And there's roughly over 300 videos for, um, that I've made for individual members. So sometimes when you ask a question, I will reply with a little video and that video may or may not be available to all members.
03:33 So if you let's, let's wait, I'm gonna get into that later. Here are the least helpful questions. This is going to get, you know, good answers.
03:44 Um, one Microsoft Excel. I don't work in Microsoft Excel. I may have used to like almost 10 years ago. Wow.
03:54 Time has passed a decade ago. I was using Microsoft Excel. I do not use Microsoft. I do not use Microsoft Excel now, but if you are coming to Google sheets from Microsoft Excel checkout, Google support, one of the first things they have right here is if you've previously used Microsoft Excel, read this guide, switching to sheets from Microsoft Excel.
04:19 So Google itself with in the Google workspace learning center, literally on Google sheets training and help can copy down this URL.
04:28 This is a really weird URL. I don't know why then I don't know why they didn't do a different URL help for this, but there is a switching to sheets from Microsoft Excel guide right here.
04:41 And this will help you like 99.9% of the time. Uh, I have gotten questions where people just don't know what in sheets is from Excel, but if you mentioned anything about Excel, I just won't have any context I won't have.
04:55 I won't be able to help you. I will probably point you to here to this, uh, learning center. And so I'll point you there now.
05:03 Um, if you, the, again, you can ask any question you want, I'm just not going to be super helpful about anything that's coming from Excel, broad themes and overarching topics.
05:15 Um, I get a lot of questions where someone will ask and, and this is a totally fine way to question, but it just isn't really helpful.
05:25 It doesn't let me help you very well. They'll be like, do you have any videos about X where X is a very big thing like SEO, um, or inventory or tracking?
05:36 Um, I just made a couple of sheets about like, one's called track anything, uh, where I just track. Like, if you have a daily habit, I also have dark habits where you track a bad habits for two weeks.
05:47 I have a track track, every edit video that I just put out this week that lets you track things inside of a Google track edits with instead Of a, but if even though that topic has been covered in a video, you asking the question of that topic and not finding that video means there's actually some other question you have.
06:15 Um, for instance, one really unhelpful question is one, one, which I can't see and I'll get to that later, but basically show me what you're doing.
06:25 Oh, N in like, if it's a broad theme that's like in your mind and you're like, oh, I wonder about this.
06:32 That's probably better to Google for first watch some videos. And then as you get deeper into it, then ask me because I have a little weird thing.
06:42 When I created better sheets, I had already seen the existing, uh, help on YouTube in courses on Google sheets. And I felt that they didn't go into more like aspirational and inspirational topics.
06:57 They were mainly, um, very tactical. And I've only just gone right above that a little bit, not really getting into those big, broader themes or topics.
07:07 And I have shared with you the topics that I do cover smart, like design a number crunching data, wrangling automations, a little bit of automations, just getting you started, not really deep, but anything broad that you can sum up into one word is unhelpful to me.
07:26 Uh, and so I will now tell you what's better. There are better questions for better sheets. So now you know what not to do well, you don't really know what not to do, because again, I haven't asked me anything.
07:37 Policy literally asked me anything. There is no, I'm not telling you not to ask me about it. Um, please ask, but here's some better questions.
07:47 Um, the more specific you can be the better. So if you have a question and you know, there is a more specific question ask the more specific question and it is totally okay if I do not have context, um, try to give me context and I'll try to ask for context many times, actually this happens more times than you can imagine.
08:09 If someone will ask me a question and I will ask a follow-up question to get more context, answer that I'm okay.
08:15 Getting into a dialogue. I'm more than happy to get more context before I answer your question, or I'll point you to a video and say, does this help watch the video and really answer answered my question?
08:26 Does it actually help? I have a lot of people who have asked me a question and not followed up because I asked the follow up question.
08:34 Um, the more specific you can be, the better tactics are better than strategies in this case. Like if you have a specific roadblock or a challenge that you know, the outcome of, and you want an outcome share with me that outcome and what roadblock you got into, know where you're trying to go.
09:00 Um, I do have a lot of videos in better sheets, which are again, aspirational and inspirational and share with you large topics.
09:08 But when you're asking a question, it's very hard for me to know exactly your goals, what your outcome should be.
09:14 But if you show me and I'll get into that actually in a second, what you're doing, what the roadblock is that where you got stopped and what the challenges that you're, where you're disconnected, or I have a gap the better, great way to start a question is I can't seem to do X.
09:34 I can't seem to find this. I can't seem to go here because that means, oh, you're looking for something. You're curious about something and you're going that path and, you know, sort of an outcome.
09:45 The best thing you can do is show me the best thing is a one minute loom video. If you can sum up your question in a one minute loom video and show me in a sheet, uh, what you're working with, then please do I do recommend that you limit a loom video to one minute or less.
10:04 If you can ask a question in less than a minute, I can probably answer you very quickly, or I can ask a series of questions that gets you to the right, gets us to the right question.
10:14 Um, and show me that you've made some attempt at finding some solution, or you got to a place where you're like, I've tried five solutions.
10:24 I've tried Googling for this. I've tried, uh, this, this, uh, solution I found doesn't work. This solution. I found doesn't work.
10:32 What else? Now that's putting a lot of pressure, right? But I'm probably going to be able to either shift your context and tell you, oh, your original question was based on this.
10:44 And you actually want to get here. You can do this other thing to get to this result. Um, the way that you're going about it might be impossible, right?
10:53 Things like, uh, automatically, if you have, if you want to know how to do something automatically might be impossible in Google sheets because scripts really work as a semi-automatically meaning a script runs.
11:06 Once you take some action, uh, definitely share with me the sheet, um, more likely than not, I will want to make a video that is available to all other members.
11:19 Uh, not every video I'm going to ever put on YouTube or in a public setting. But, uh, every video I make, I will try to get it to other members.
11:29 So here's what you can do. One, don't share me on the sheet that you have like personal information on, um, don't share me a sheet that you have like internal communications on of your company or your business.
11:43 What you can do is create an example sheet. If you say, have like a inventory, um, create some fake inventory numbers, create some fake product numbers, product skews, and say, Hey, I have these, this data is in this format and I want to get into this other format, or I have these like lines of data with these dates.
12:06 And I want to extract these dates. So just share me on a few dates in a, in a sheet that's like brand new.
12:11 You can, she thought new takes you two seconds to create a new sheet, copy and paste some information and share it with me.
12:18 You don't need to share with me the entire sheet of your entire business. In fact, that it makes the question harder to answer, because I don't really know where to go, but a one minute loom and a shared sheet are going to be golden.
12:34 And you also don't necessarily have to do all of this, right? If, um, you can show me, I can usually make an example, fake numbers, fake names, fake fake letters, fake data.
12:49 If you share with me and you show me, oh, I'm going to love you. And I'm going to try to answer you as quickly as I can, if you're looking for free.
12:56 So you've purchased better sheets. You are watching this video on better sheets.co. You can get free help. How do you get that?
13:05 The answer is asynchronously. You email me a question and I will answer you. One minute screen share is, is a good rule of thumb.
13:13 Share with me what you already know. Like, give me your context. Let me know if you've already Googled for some questions.
13:20 If you've tried to figure this out in some other ways, and it didn't work out, that helps me get away from the immediate answers of, oh, didn't you try this?
13:29 Um, but let's keep it. We keep it a sync, uh, just email and I'll reply. I do reply to many emails and feel free.
13:35 If you ask me a question and I don't reply to you, feel free to follow up as many times as you can, or want seven times you can follow up with me.
13:45 Um, what might happen is your email could go to spam or, um, I accidentally mute your email. I use, uh, key board shortcuts to go through email every day and I'll use J and K, but M mutes a conversation.
14:03 So if you email me a question and you share me a sheet and you, uh, show me a loom video and you don't get a reply and you've followed up seven times, um, start a new email and just say, Hey, sorry, Hey, like maybe a plain text, email to Andrew, a better sheets.co.
14:25 And, uh, let me know that you've sent a longer email somewhere. Um, sometimes spam filters can be brutal, uh, with links with, um, a lot of texts, a lot of questions send me maybe a plain text email that says, Hey, sorry, I'm trying to ask a question, maybe subject line question, instead of like, how do you do spam stuff?
14:48 I don't think you're asking that. All right, so you, but you need more help. Maybe async is not right for you.
14:56 You don't want to make a one minute screenshot or you have made a one minute screenshot. You have gotten my help.
15:01 Maybe I have replied to you. And you're like, man, I just need this help faster. Or I need more of it.
15:08 Like maybe I'm only replying to you a day or two days later, or three days later. And you're like, God, if we could just get through these few questions, like my life would be better.
15:18 Here's some things that also work. Um, wait, I'll get back to this. You need extra help. You'll need, you can pay $99 per hour for consulting.
15:28 I will schedule a call, um, pay upfront. You know, me, I've helped you already, um, email me at Andrew, better sheets.co.
15:36 I will send a, um, Stripe payment link and, uh, we can work from there. Um, we can usually just start with one hour.
15:49 We don't have to schedule any weekly calls. We don't have to schedule any thing for longer than an hour, so don't worry.
15:55 You won't be charged more. You'll just pay up front and then we'll go. As long as we need to spec out some work or figure out the answer.
16:02 I've worked with a couple people actually within the last couple of months, uh, that we just fixed whatever they needed to fix within an hour.
16:09 And we're done. Um, there's another way to help. I can help you build the sheet directly. So this is usually six to eight hours, uh, per day.
16:20 Um, and I charged 4 99 for that. We will have a 30 minute call to start off with. We'll usually spec out and you'll, you'll usually have an idea of what you need and I'll be able to estimate and scope out the work, uh, asynchronously.
16:36 And then we'll sync up on the day and I'll do a day of work for you. We'll usually do a half hour in a meet at the beginning and a half hour to an hour at the end to meet, to say, here's what I did.
16:49 I will also send you loom videos by during the day, giving you updates on how it's going. Um, the last couple of times that I've done this, we didn't, we also didn't have to do all the work in one day.
17:04 So if you are not able to do two calls in one day, which is totally fine, but you do want the help.
17:11 We can do the calls on another day or even over a weekend, like over past the weekend. Um, but this is very good if you need, uh, some scripts written, if you need some automations installed, if you need some design work, um, this is a very good option.
17:30 All right. But if you're like, Hey, I've emailed you and not getting a reply. You might, you might try other ways to get in touch with me, which is any email that I've sent you.
17:46 You can reply to that email. Sometimes the question that you're asking is based on a video that I've already made or I've made that week and I've emailed you.
17:56 Um, so just reply to that email that gives me the context of, Hey, you've watched this video or you're replying to this email that helps it gives me a lot of context comment on loom.
18:08 If you have access to the loom video, there is a dis uh, comments you can do. That's really good because you can comment on a specific time in the video.
18:17 So that gives me a lot of context. If you wish to ask a question in public. Totally. Okay. Sometimes I actually prefer, sometimes I actually do prefer public questions so that others can learn from the answer.
18:31 Um, obviously if you have a personal sheet, you might not want to ask on YouTube, but definitely ask as a comment on YouTube.
18:38 Uh, I try, I'll try to answer on YouTube, but can also, if you have some personal identifying information I can try and you say, Hey, can you email me, email me and comment on YouTube or both?
18:50 Uh, also reply on Twitter. I'm fairly active on Twitter. Uh, those, I check at least once a day, maybe twice a day, more like three or four times a day.
19:01 Um, and on LinkedIn, if you are connected with me on LinkedIn, um, feel free to reply to any, uh, posts I make on there.
19:09 Again, that helps me have some context. If you're asking a specific question about a post or a video that I've made.
19:15 All right, thank you for watching this. I'll go through this again, summarize that basically you can get free help. We do it.
19:24 Asynchronously asked me for one minutes, ask me via a one minute screen share, show me what you're doing and share me on the sheet that you're working on.
19:34 If you can, uh, I do have consulting. I do. And a sheet build AI can do for you as well.
19:42 Um, I don't have any answers about Microsoft Excel, sorry, broad themes and overarching topics are pretty hard to answer. Um, so hopefully this helps you make better questions.
19:56 Thanks for watching this video. And you can find me at Andrew. I've got her sheets taco by.