Creativity and ClickUp

Jess Mason
Founder, The Yarnpreneur Society + Academy
Jess Mason
Jess’s society teaches people around the world how they can master the skill of yarn through their academy, resources, and expert advice.
“I started The Yarnpreneur Society + Academy when I realized that there were no educational resources out there for yarnpreneurs. I wanted to make it easier for people that loved the fiber arts (and called it their business) to learn and grow. I knew there were yarnpreneurs struggling to create and grow their businesses, and I wanted to create a hub for education and resources so they could more easily (and more enjoyably) build a successful business they loved.”
3
Team members
4
Spaces
16
Projects

How We Found Her

The crew here at ClickUp fell in love with Jess and her team when they went above and beyond with sharing their feedback on our platform. As soon as the dev team had been enlightened with their ideas, we had to hop over to her site and take a look at what they were all about. We were delighted to find parallel motives of productivity and creativity. The synergy was real. We had to reach out, and discuss life with one of our favorite power users!
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Hey Jess! What niche has been filled by your company and how does Yarnpreneur add value to its audience?
The fiber arts market is so unique and so interesting to me. When I first started falling in love with yarn, I had no idea the size and breadth of the industry. Often, people who are on the outside looking in, don’t understand how extraordinary the market actually is. But once you become a part of the industry, it’s clear our customers are unique. The value The Yarnpreneur Society + Academy adds is the ability to begin, nurture, and grow a business in this market without the normal struggle and stumble that comes along with starting a new business. I focus on teaching yarnpreneurs to build not only a strong foundation, but a well-rounded business that can support their goals as well as fulfill their creative passions. But my favorite part of what the Society + Academy brings is the yarnpreneurs themselves! The community that has sprung up around us is amazing. Every day I get to see people asking questions, giving feedback and advice, and it’s just wonderful to watch so many yarnpreneurs working together.
Awesome, sounds like you stay pretty busy. What does your day-to-day look like at Yarnpreneur?
My day-to-day as the Founder covers quite a bit of ground. I spend chunks of time each day doing a few things:

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I check in with my Academy members, and respond to any support requests, questions, or feedback.
I check in with my team, currently small, but extremely mighty! Cara handles my customer service emails and account questions and Jay helps me with site maintenance, blog posting, and all kinds of miscellaneous tasks.
I check in on social media, and schedule that day’s posts.
I check in on the backend of my sites, making sure everything is up to date and running properly.
I work on various content projects, including writing new articles for yarnpreneur.com, creating new content for the Academy, or building new free resources to share with our email list.
I network with other expert yarnpreneurs, and coordinate collaborations for the Society + Academy.
Seeing lots of moving pieces. What system for managing tasks was in place before coming to ClickUp, and what was taking the most time away from your productivity?
Before coming to ClickUp, I used a combination of about 20 Trello boards, a Bullet Journal, and post-its. It was exhausting just figuring out what I was even supposed to be working on. Things would often slip through the cracks... I was spending so much time wrangling my productivity “tools”, and that was the biggest time-suck for my day-to-day. I can remember writing and re-writing (or typing) endless lists of tasks, and frequently just rearranging things, trying to make it work better. As someone who naturally likes to be organized, I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to feel so discombobulated every day!
So frustrating.. So how does ClickUp help in these areas?
ClickUp honestly has been a sanity-saver for me. I’m a “planner”. I love to map things out, write out all my tasks, get my notes in order, schedule everything just the way I want it… ClickUp allows me to do that without feeling overwhelmed. The flexibility in how I can set things up means I’m not stuck with someone else’s structure, everything is just the way I like it. For example, I have only a few Spaces, because I know if I have too many I’ll feel overwhelmed. But those few Spaces are the main areas of my business, and I’ve actually enjoyed being able to compartmentalize, because I normally struggle with that. The Spaces have allowed me to “shut off” other areas of my business while I’m working on content creation, for example. It means I’m less distracted, and because of the organization I’ve been able to achieve with ClickUp, I’ve noticed that I’ve been able to move forward on projects much easier.

That has certainly helped me achieve my goals in a way that no other productivity tool has ever been able to do. On top of that, I’ve often reached out to the team at ClickUp with feature ideas, or questions, and I always receive a quick, friendly response. I’ve only been using ClickUp for a few months now, but the constant rollout of exciting features and improvements has meant that I actually watch my inbox for that weekly email with the ClickUp updates!
I’m a ‘planner’. I love to map things out, write out all my tasks, get my notes in order, schedule everything just the way I want it… ClickUp allows me to do that without feeling overwhelmed.
Jess Mason

What we’ve learned from our ongoing collaboration with Jess Mason

The goal of this case study was to help us understand how ClickUp was being used by a startup we admire. Their team handles Operations, Marketing, Customer Retention, and Course Content Creation in separate Spaces. In all four, they have enabled Due Dates, Priorities, and Tags to help organize tasks with high precision. Team members know what what needs to be done and when to do it! Their Custom Statuses are unique to each Space and provide a simple workflow for their marketing agenda while giving more complexity to their excellent content creation process.
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Their expert course content must pass each step of their board before being published to the site ensuring clients get the best results from the great minds of the Academy.

Organizing their tasks with Projects such as Customer Service, Management, and Master Courses allows them to stay on top of every piece of the company and organize their tasks even further with Lists.

Thanks to Jess for taking the time to answer our questions, and her willingness to share her story!

Interested in becoming a yarnpreneur yourself or learning awesome productivity tips from yarnpreneurs like Jess? Check out The Yarnpreneur Society + Academy at yarnpreneur.com!

The Team

Cara Louise Reitbauer
Cara Louise Reitbauer
Head of Customer Service
Melanie Cheripka
Melanie Cheripka
Yarnpreneur Council
Thamo Hurly
Thamo Hurly
Yarnpreneur Council
Jay Sausa
Jay Sausa
Executive Assistant

The Yarnpreneur Society’s favorite features

Set clear deadlines and plan out your tasks. ClickUp will remind you when a due date is near, and you can even sort your tasks by what's due next!
ClickUp and Slack make a perfect pair. Manage tasks in Slack with ClickUp's simple integration that allows task unfurling. Why unfurl your tasks? To quickly change task statuses and assignees without leaving the conversation!
We want to keep things completely customizable. Some people believe there should be only one person responsible for a task, whereas others want to promote collaboration and team spirit! ClickUp gives you both.
Increase productivity, organization, and transparency. Custom Statuses are stages that tasks can go through. Basically, it's a workflow for tasks in your Space.
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