AdviceTech Podcast #51 – Canva – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into Canva. And I am so excited. We’re finally getting to talk about Canva. I’ve been waiting a long time. I first saw her speak at an Australian blogging conference called Pro blogger way back in 2016. Would you believe then lucky enough to witness her speak at Social Media Marketing World in the US in 2020, just before the pandemic hit, I hope it wasn’t because of us. She’s a Canva verified expert and was one of Canada’s first 300 users who tested this tool in its infancy. 10 years ago. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Donna Moritz.

Donna Moritz
Thank you for having me, Peita. I’m very excited. I was very excited to talk to you about our early days in conferences times in Australia.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s so far we I’ve had to train myself to start going back to events. It’s it’s almost like a default for a little while there where it’s like, well, I don’t know now. It’s like Peter just say yes, you’ve got to go get out into the big bad world again.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, it’s good fun. And it’s always good to learn new things. And I think the people we meet are the most important thing out of all of it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And the diversity of that. Yes, getting out of that little world. All right, so keen to pick your brain about all things Canberra, and you are the perfect person to do that with but let’s just ease us in a little and get to know you through your use of technology. Yes, what’s your most used emoji? Do I even use emojis?

Donna Moritz
Yes, I think I make friends based on how often they use emojis. So yes, I use a lot of emojis. And I’m not surprised to say that my favorite my most used emoji is the laughing emoji. But it’s closely followed by the shocked face emoji and the eye roll emoji which are usually laughing at myself. And a fair dose of like love hearts raise hands fist bumps.

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect, perfect. I’m much the same. In fact, I’ve got a good friend of mine that calls you know, emojis are love language Ithilien that it just talks a different way to each other. It’s very emotive. Yeah, we all live with our smartphones almost permanently attached to a some of us around our risks. If you had to wipe everything off your smartphone and just keep three apps, what are the three you’d keep?

Donna Moritz
It’s a tough one. Because I, I struggle with working in social media and marketing. And I often just remove all notifications off my phone. And so I think the three that I would keep obviously Canva although I do most of my work on desktop, Instagram, and probably Spotify, just so I can have music. But like the things like phone, text, email messenger are kind of a given. But I just I really don’t like notifications on my phone. And I find that I just get so distracted. So yeah, it’d probably be more like lifestyle fun kind of apps.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s funny, isn’t it with in particularly with social media, because you’ll have feel like you’ve done something great. And it’s a great post or something in the interest of you’re announcing and for the first few moments of the reaction. That’s exciting the notifications. And then after that, it’s like off for goodness sake, just be quiet. Like, yes, I need this phone to vibrate constantly. This is ridiculous.

Donna Moritz
And if only I could get my kids to switch off their notifications.

Peita Diamantidis
Mm hmm. Well, let’s dive into Canva, shall we? So now the listener out there probably falls into two broad camps. And I sort of want to acknowledge this so that they don’t feel like they’re on their own, there’s going to be some of you listening that are are Canva users, and you’ve been playing with the tool for a while. Very few, I think in our game would necessarily be pro users or somebody really dives deeply into it. But then there’ll be a whole lot of others who are saying, Peter, I have no earthly clue what Canva is. So just for them, let’s take a step up and get a sense of where Canvas sits in the sort of tech space for you know, small business or sort of that sort of area. What other solutions would people be considering or using that might give them a sense of where Canva fits?

Donna Moritz
Sure, so Canva I think Canvas almost almost become an entity in itself now, you know, like Xerox, and some of the other things we talk about, like a, you know, like a brand. But they launched 10 years ago, literally, I think my anniversary was literally 10 years in July, to be a more accessible software for people to design to bring design to everybody, or, as I say, to democratize design. So I think, you know, it definitely has become huge like there’s 135 million active users. I think they did their 15 billion design in March. And and just for a fun fact, it’s become the second most valuable brand in Australia after CommBank I’m Brett, Woolies, Telstra and Bunnings. The specifics of that I don’t want to get into because it’s just a financial podcast. That’s probably one way of looking at it. There’s different parameters. But yeah, it’s pretty big. I mean, that’s how big they have become. So I, you know, as far as why they were developed, which will put into perspective, what you can compare it against. So when Melanie Perkins was tutoring, designed students at a university in Western Australia many, many years ago, she just struggled to get them to pick up the Adobe Systems, which are, you know, the gold standard as far as designers and doing your high end design. But learning those systems is very tricky. For the average person that just needs to create some content, it was, you know, she was finding that very difficult to teach people, you have to remember where everything was, it wasn’t intuitive. So that’s how Canva came about. So now, it is really, you know, it’s a full visual communication suite. It’s more than just creating, you know, social media templates. And I think you asked, like, what it would compare against for people to consider where it sits? Well, you’ve got like, the Adobe Systems, and, you know, like, short range, and yeah, and those sorts of tools, which are more full vector graphics, and, you know, full designers and tools, full disclosure, I don’t know how to use them very well, I can do a little bit on it really intimidating. Yeah, I would love to know how to use and work more every time I try, like, it’s, it’s a lot of learning. And what Canva does is bring design to everyone so that it’s bringing in a lot of different tools in one place, making it very intuitive and easy to use. And basically, they’re democratizing design or Lycos, I tend to think of it, it’s not so much that you’re going in as a designer, but you’re going in there to create amazing visual content quickly and easily without having to be a designer. Now, obviously, I am a designer for Canva, I was very fortunate to be put into a program where we create templates for Canva. So my 10 years of teaching non designers how to edit templates in Canva kind of came into good use, because I can design with them in mind. And, and so I do sort of sit from both perspectives of how this tool is useful. And I just know that it’s so powerful for small businesses and consultants and your audience here today can use it in so many really cool ways. So they don’t need to be designers and learn Adobe. But on this, by the same token, if they are designers, or they work in a team with designers, there are some really, really cool things that they can do as a team to work together with a group of you know, mainly non designers to be able to create branded content, and share their, you know, share educationally or share their message or share their, their company. So there’s a few different ways that it’s very, very powerful.

Peita Diamantidis
And what I like for me, what I like about it is design was always this mystical art, right? So you make a request to a designer and knows this mystical thing that occurred and it came back and they provide you with files, you had no earthly clue. Well, you didn’t have the program to upload the files, but it was part of the package, you know, you got the files and these funny, I guess it was Adobe format, whatever the format was. But once you got something designed, you know, any changes that needed to be made even as small as a tiny tweak, then needed to go back to them? Because it was really that siloed right, it was that sort of that was they will they take like you point out like it’s just meant that it was and for them. And I’ve got some friends who are in that world. All those little tweaks are a pain in the neck.

Donna Moritz
Oh, this is my email, right? It’s the client and the designer, he’s

Peita Diamantidis
boring, I don’t want to change the link to the whatever, like this is just you know, so I’m guessing that Canberra sort of empowered them to be the sort of true creatives. Yeah, and then for the you know, ground level work, where we’ve got, you know, that annual documentary produced that you just change a few things. Well, we can do that. We can do that in Canberra. Yeah. And

Donna Moritz
look, I trained teams to work with the in house designer to create templates so that the whole team can use it as a camera verified expert, that’s sort of part of my role, but also, I just, you know, there’s so much power in designers actually learning Canva as well as using their tools that they use. And there’s other tools like, you know, PicMonkey, and easel and a few really good design tools. But I think if they can, if they can use a tool like Canva, and be able to create templates and be able to help their clients, then, you know, if they’ve done all the branded or the logos and all of that, and then come in and give that to the client often as small business owners. If you’re not a designer, it’s very easy to use those kind of in that haphazard way and not use the brand design elements as they were designed to use so a designer can actually come in, offer an extra service in Canva, to set that all up for the small business owner, you know, the setup the brand, set up all the colors and the fonts and the logos and the images, and even some templates and then help them to be able to use it really easily. So there’s a lot of power in these types of tools. And designers don’t need to be scared of them, they can embrace them and have a whole extra added on service.

Peita Diamantidis
Definitely, because there is an element where I think most small business owners have managed to Frankenstein their brand because they got the rice, and then you’ve paid within an hour. And I just added this and I slightly changed that. And the original designer will just be harmed

Donna Moritz
designers. Yeah. Like,

Peita Diamantidis
this is terrible, you know. So I think by having that guidance of there, and there is an art in it there. Absolutely. So having that, you know, where they can then set it up for you. And but then having something you can use every day, I think is really powerful. Yeah, if it means we can do more storytelling, you know, visual storytelling, that, to me is the magic.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, because I mean, if you’re doing, you know, a presentation to pitch your services, or you just want to be able to, you know, maybe do a question of the month on your Instagram or whatever, having that template and being able to go in and just drag and drop a photo. And that’s one of the things that Canva does really well makes it really easy just to drag and drop elements in, you know, there’s a huge Photo Library video library elements. If you can sort of have that content ready to go, it makes it much easier for you. So

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So then, look, there’s the when I think about my introduction to Canberra, it came from me being sort of almost like operating like a solopreneur. I wasn’t I had a business, but I sort of you know, I was the practice owner or business leader, that would be one, but I’d imagine there’d be all sorts of team members in a small business team that could take advantage of Canva. Yeah, how have you seen that work? You know, when Who do you think that works? Well for on? And have you ever seen it go wrong? Like when doesn’t it work?

Donna Moritz
Yeah, I think, you know, as a, I think the key with Canva, whether you’re a solo business user or a team is to set things up well to start with, and maybe you can get someone in to help you do that, whether it’s a designer or consultant, someone like me that can come in and help you get things set up. But there’s a few key things you can do in Canva. To start with, so you don’t go down a rabbit hole of bigness. Have your brand kit set up, whatever, you’ve got logos and colors and fonts, you can set those up in there. And I do recommend, and just a side thing that they have a pro account, it’s not a huge expense, it’s like $120 a year. And then you get access to all the templates, the entire library of assets, you can do things like set up more than one brand kits are seeking you maybe you’ve got a sub, you know, so for your company, you know that the podcast might be a separate? Exactly, you can do all those things, you can set up folders more efficiently and subfolders. and organize your content more efficiently. So that that in itself, whether you’re a small business owner, or solopreneur, or a team, because you know, financial team or a bigger company, it’s really powerful. And then I think there’s so many ways that you can use the content, obviously, there’s like you can use the templates in Canva. And switch them out to your brand or your message and do things like social media and marketing. But there’s a lot of other tools in Canva that are very, very powerful for collaboration. So you can do like digital first documents. They’re called docs, which is a bit like you, you’re Google Docs, more designed to use digitally. And if you’re in a team, there’s a team’s account you can get as well. But you can even just share comments back and forth with clients or also other team members, you can get them to get feedback. So it kind of eliminates the whole email scenario. For a lot of it. You know, I’ve worked with mentoring other creators that create templates in Canva. Off of, you know, even just with clients, yeah. There was a team we trained in other retirement sort of retirement, aged care facilities in Yes. And we, they weren’t using teams to the functionality. And so he was emailing me back and forth and the designer, and I said, Hey, let’s do this in Canva. And so we were actually commenting on a document together in Canva. So there’s that potential, you can also take that content if you’re doing a document together. And maybe it’s a proposal or, you know, it might be a document that you create that you might run through with a client when you’re talking to them about whether they need to set up a self managed Superfund or something like that, right. Yeah. And then you can actually use some of the artificial intelligence in Canva. And you can convert that to a presentation just with one click and choosing a style that’s pre built into Canva. So there’s a lot of things you can do. collaboratively with team members or with clients, they also have a very cool. So this is part of the visual suite that they brought in. So you’ve got social. And then you’ve got on top of that, we’ve got a whole bunch of other types of documents. So you’ve got Canva, for print, you’ve got Canva for. So you’ve got presentations, whiteboards, Docs, Canvas for print, there’s a whole bunch of different things in the visual suite and video that comes together to allow you to sort of create visual content effectively. So that’s, that’s really powerful. And the whiteboards themselves are a really good collaborative document. So you can have a team of people or you can be remote. And I know we were talking earlier that financial planners or the financial service industry, you do a lot of, you know, obviously, it’s an industry that in my own experience, you would always usually sit with the person and bring out the whiteboard in a meeting room. Yeah, work through where you’re at what what, what we can do some options. The world’s changed a little bit, and we can do a lot virtually, I gather, a lot of your listeners might work virtually, with clients now. Yeah, Yep, absolutely. The whiteboards are really powerful. So sometimes even when I’m talking to other people through their Canva, Canva team, or my clients, you can jump on a whiteboard. And it’s virtually like, you know, you can move sticky labels around this, all these different templates that you can use to plan or do different projects. As as a team, so you’re literally, yeah, so you’re in the document together. At the same time working on whatever it is you want to work on. So it might be like a roadmap or I’m just looking at some here, you’ve got roadmaps, flowcharts, you know, mood boards, if you’re trying to work out your brand changes with a designer, it might be, you know, a plan for a financial, you know, you can set you can take a lot of these templates and change them around. You can have things like, people can put emojis or stickers or thumbs up on different things to vote, they can put whiteboard comments. So I think this is one of the coolest things for teams to be able to work collaboratively, collaboratively on documents. And I think it is probably, you know, one of the one of the little ninja tricks, I think it’d be great for or Ninja features, I think it’d be great for your audience to check out. If there were

Peita Diamantidis
lots of advisors will have a like a boxes and arrows diagram for something like it’s because some of the concepts we’re sharing can be a little complicated. So you draw like, like a like a flowchart and was, and you end up drawing and you know, and arrows and that sort of thing. I love the idea of having templates, for a few different strategies set up ready with maybe the elements sitting off to the side ready, and you’re dragging them over, you’re still sort of drawing in the sense that you’re pulling it together. But it doesn’t require the quality of your drawing skill quite as much. Because yeah, you’ve got those elements already ready to drag in. And so it sort of elevate, it’s still personal, it still feels like you’re creating it live, but it also has got a bit, it’s juiced up a bit, you know, it’s got to be installed to it.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, so if anyone’s listening now, just Google Canva whiteboards, and you’ll see all the templates come up, and you’ll be able to check them out. But I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s cool that it’s real time, too, you can do things like send set timers, so that you can, you know, say write five minutes, we’re just going to write our ideas or comments on these three proposal proposed strategies that we might take, and everyone can just jump in. Or it might be that, you know, you get your client to add some things on different sections there. And you can be in there at the same time, you see the little heads moving around on the on the whiteboard. So that’s very, very cool tech.

Peita Diamantidis
And that’s interesting, too, because there are other tools that will let you do it. Like there’s Miro, and, and other tools that will let you do some of these things, but office, that we don’t use them often. Like it’s one of those things that we think, Oh, that’s really good for that one thing I need, but I don’t use it enough to warrant getting the app. Whereas if Canva give us a version within something we use anyway, you know, that just just makes it more like we’re using more of the tool, more of the features. And it’s not another tool that we’ve got to then train your team on.

Donna Moritz
Honestly, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head like I mean, my background is teaching non designers how to edit, you know, social media marketing templates, I create templates for Canva. But one of the things I’ve been banging on about for the last six months is the fact that Canva has been using artificial intelligence as part of their software for a while now. So it’s baked into what they do. And there was a comment recently that cliff, the co founder, said he said people don’t open their commute computer at the start of the day away. Come in the morning thinking I want to use AI or some other tool, you know, right, they wake up in the morning thinking I have these certain jobs to be done. And we see it as our job as a company to help them achieve those jobs to be done. And that’s what I love about Canva is that they try to make everything intuitive. So there are things built into these tools. Like if you’re doing a document, you’re like, Ah, I just can’t, can’t think of the wording that I want to write about, you know, this type of financial proposal. So you have to write something, you’re not a writer, you’re more of a numbers person, you can actually in Docs, or in a write through Canva. In different documents, you can use what’s called Magic, right, which is a version of you’ve probably heard of chat GPT. Yep. Not been asleep for the last six months. So artificial intelligence tools, we’re all often having to go out and use chat TBT somewhere else. Whereas Canva has a version, it’s pulling in a version of the same, you know, software, into Canva. And it’s built into where you need to be doing the writing, you don’t have to go out your chat GPT and then copy it back in, you can just do a right slash use their special magic, right integration and boom, you’re off, you can start start using that, that software within Canva. So just just incredible. Yeah, and I think that’s the, this is like the the hidden world of Canva that people don’t realize is that there’s, like you said, you don’t want to be opening up multiple documents. And if you do the odd whiteboard, but you can do it in Canva. And then you can, you know, have a document there that you can, you know, pull into the whiteboard, and then you can say, Okay, well, let’s turn this into a presentation, we’ve got it now, guys, this is what we need to say, bam, you’ve got a presentation that you can take to the senior partners. These are, these are the tools that make it much easier, you know, and even if you’re just a one person show, working with clients to be able to jump on a whiteboard when they’re in Perth, and you’re in Sydney is super powerful. Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
it really is. And I think I mean, it’s, it’s interesting, the way you were describing AI there. And I like the mental shift. I think it’s like you say, I mean, if you’ve been on LinkedIn and haven’t noticed AI, what the hell are you reading because like, every second, every second post is somebody’s offering to help you with AI. But I think the shift to thinking of it more like electricity, like this is just something that facilitates the other thing we’re doing. It’s not a purpose in and of itself. And I think it’s an important shift. Because it’s just about making things that we do otherwise, easier, quicker, more exciting, more fun. I mean, I find, you know, like, I love words, I love writing, but I’m I really struggle with things like headlines like, you know, narrowing it down, my headlines need to be like, 56 words long, like

Donna Moritz
I’m a copywriter to like, I love that stuff. And I was like, oh, you know, I love AI. So pulling all my blog content and whatever. But I do love it. Because if used well is so powerful, like when I’m doing Canva templates, I, you know, might be five tips for how to become a runner, I would have had to go to multiple blog posts to get that Yeah, but I’ve done you know, you could go in today in Canva. It’s called Magic, right. And there’s a little button down the bottom to open that up. Or you can use right slash where you’re typing, and it will bring up the the tool. And you can say, Okay, give me 10 ideas for social media posts that are funny for the financial industry, for my clients. So you might be wanting to just like, you know, just bring a little bit of lightness to your social media posts in amongst some of the advice and the tips are giving magic, right, we’ll give you a whole bunch of different ideas for posts that you can do. And some of them might be amazing. And some of them might be like, I’ll leave that. But you can then tweak them. And sometimes it’s just that idea generation. And I know it sounds crazy. We’re talking about Canva, which is a visual first design tool, but it is a visual communication suite. And like Cliff said, you know, the design ecosystem itself was also fragmented. You know, you’ve got stock photos over here, you’ve got writing tools over here, you’ve got, you know, AI, printing, they’ve brought all of it together. Yeah, so it’s in one place, which could be a disaster, but they’ve done it so well, that it’s intuitively quite easy to learn, like,

Peita Diamantidis
look, that’s a really important point, I think because design is to advisors, what advice is probably to designers, right? So it’s yes, strange world that seems really complicated. And don’t you need 47 things and you’d look at the tools we use and go oh my goodness, I couldn’t possibly use like it’s a very similar, quite well quite separate on that spectrum. And when I think of the complexity of all the elements that Canva is pulling together such that me I mean, I am as numbers brains as they come. And so somebody like me Maybe that would never have been able to ever be in design, like, I’m just one of those humans, it’s just not innate to me. I struggled to put decent, you know, clothing sets together, you know, when I look at my girlfriend’s I can do the full, you know, glorious stuff and I’m envious, but I just will never be able to do it. To empower somebody to do it down, though. That’s the thing exactly got the dollars covered, not so much of the wrist. But I think they very cleverly have done that. And it’s something I don’t think we’ve done as well in finance is that tool that’s innate, that sort of brought together the complexity and just made it feel like, well, I feel empowered to at least put my toe in the water, you know, to really sort of get a bit done and yeah, and feel like I can understand more and, you know, engage particularly in a world where if you can’t do visual storytelling, you’re going to struggle the market at all.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, definitely. And I think, well, there’s an opportunity for someone in the financial industry isn’t. Yeah, but I think, you know, and I worried too, because I was used to Canva being a social media marketing, you know, content, visual content tool, and I knew what I loved about it. And when all this visual suite came in, I’m like, wow, that’s a lot that’s been added in. But it was the thing that kept striking me is that I can go in and do a whiteboard. When I’m in Canva, I’m on a call with someone, hey, let’s jump in and do that. And then it’s all there for me to pull the information out and create a social media post or create a presentation. And I did think, Wow, this is going to be interesting, but it’s all seamless. And the other thing that we haven’t even touched on is video and obviously you said visual communication is so important. Yes video tool. I mean, I’ve been a brand ambassador for other video tools in the past like wave dot video. You know, I’ve worked with companies like Animoto, you know, really good video content creation tools. And I have to say that Canvas just nailing it as far as video, they’ve, I do some longer form video. And I have to use tools like ScreenFlow. But I’m finding that I’m doing more and more in Canva. And I create social video templates in Canva for people to use in their library. So I get both sides of it. But there’s just so many cool things you can do with Canva videos. So it means you can basically just drag and drop in your content, there’s a really easy timeline to edit. You can add music or use their music library. The animations you can do on video are super cool. I just love playing with camera video. Now. It’s It’s um, so if someone you know, wanted to do an explainer video for their business or a social media real for Instagram, it just makes it so much easier. And you know, the they’re working on it all the time. So it’s getting better and better. And I’m finding that I don’t have to go outside of Canva as much. It’s interesting as

Peita Diamantidis
well. Yeah, right? aqueous you should be. I found it interesting when I realized because you know, lots of us live in YouTube, even if we don’t realize that’s where we’re living. A lot of what we’re seeing is coming through YouTube. And I’d look at some of the people that are producing a lot in there. And they’ve got all those like the videos clearly well produced, you know, and I’d look at it animations, all of that, right. And all of that look fantastic. And I was looking at the thinking, look, I’m just not going to be able to compete with that until I saw the templates in Cameron like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah.

Donna Moritz
You want to say I did a little. I have a Facebook group for my community, just mainly about Canva. And I did just a welcome video, I updated it. And one of the girls said, How did you do all those animations? I said, I did them in Canva. Like before, it would have been such a rigmarole to do them in another software and get the answer. Sometimes he had to buy animations before ago, they weren’t all integrated. And I said most of it’s in Canva, right, there’s a little bit of green screen stuff I had to do out of Canva. But even with Canva Now you can remove the background of video so you can leave your video talking, remove the background, and then overlay it over any gradient background or beach or whatever you want. You can do a lot more in Canva we used to have to send you know videos and images off to a designer or Fiverr or someone to remove the background was a huge process. Yeah, now it’s just one click in Canvas. So again, that’s one of the Pro features that is well worth buying.

Peita Diamantidis
Definitely definitely enough.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, go and get a photo shoot done get all your backgrounds remove. So you can then overlay them on some images if you’re posting on social media or you know do a new LinkedIn photo or header or whatever you want to use it for. But it’s just it’s super powerful in the video. The video tool itself is worth the price of entry alone, I think. And it’s been

Peita Diamantidis
like it’s it’s a it’s a bit of a bugbear for me because I’m I like I’m relaxed doing video. I’m quite happy. Anytime anybody wants a video testimony. I’m like, No problem. I’m happy to chat. But it’s the the minute I’ve finished. You know stop what to do. After that. It’s like all the stuff you used to have to do whereas I’ve just realized in US Talking then you know, I’m not taking advantage of that using Canva. Because I think the trick and I do it with the podcast now as well, the trick is if you can do whatever you’ve got to record like that bit in in one hit, try and do it such that what however you’ve designed it, it can be relaxed enough that if you fumble a bit, it doesn’t matter if you can just go with the flow, and then all you’ve got to do is the prettying. And you don’t need to faff around too much, and you’ve got a tool like camera, which can just give it you know that lift, then we can actually be producing far more content.

Donna Moritz
Yes. And actually, there’s you touched on something really important. The in the built in recording features in Canva are just getting better and better too. So you can record voiceovers, you can do some video and then record a voiceover or you can just record present and record you can do grab a template for a presentation, record that presentation while talking and then it’s all recorded into camera and you can save it and share it. You can also you know, have just record a screen without yourself. Or you can add your self in the corner. And a little little circle video. So there’s so much you can do like it’s just blowing my mind. I you know, the other day, they added some new animations that were just like these little subtle animations you could do and I’m like, Ah, I put them straight into templates I was creating for Canva because they just made this just an effect that just simple but it makes you look like you’re a pro video creator. Right? Right. Yeah. Because we

Peita Diamantidis
don’t need wait particularly financial services like some of the some of the virtual events now happening from the big of we’re talking big fund managers and things like that, like they really go to town. These are like, you know, pull it political launch quality, you know, that really insane virtual thing. The funny thing is, we’re all actually conditioned to to enjoy a video that’s more relaxed. We’re actually at the point now where I think our brains actually filter that as as much as advertising when it’s too polished. You’re like, wait a minute, is this advertorial what’s going on here. So actually wearing this sweetspot were doing it yourself and it being more personable and relaxed, but with some great, catch your eyes sort of attention grabbing stuff from Canva is probably the best place to be.

Donna Moritz
Yeah. Just straight face to camera, and then they just add like a funny little animation or a GIF in the corner. Rock, I think you can do a lot of that in Instagram. But I listened to your interview with James about tick tock and how he was using tick tock to mostly I think from he was just basically answering questions will help find finances. And he’s doing really well. You don’t have to add animations. But you can do things like add captions. And I mean, captions is fairly new in Canva. There’s, there’s a whole bunch of things you can just add in, you know, and you’ve got the integration with giffy. So if you want to add a funny GIF in the corner, like just to make it a little bit humorous or whatever, like those sorts of things, make it more accessible for people because nobody, you know, finances can be a world of emotions to talk about. It is also the more Yeah, the more interesting fun and just real you can make it like you’re not speaking to people from on high, like, you know, your advice. And sometimes we just don’t understand what we don’t know. So I think it’s, it’s important financial literacy has never been more important for people. And, and, I mean, I’m speaking about someone just, you know, doing marketing for their services. There’s obviously a whole different bunch of things that you could use video for. But that’s just one example.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. Now, you mentioned something that before we dive into another question I have here you just mentioned something in passing, and I’m putting you on the spot here. So I apologize in advance. Getting photoshoot getting some photos done so that then like you say you can get take the background out and put it on different things in Canva. The thing I’ve struggled with is a lot of photographers are used to headshot photo shoots that are corporate II is Do you know of a list or anything that can be like almost a whole lot of stances or styles of photos to get done that are just more usable for social media now because you sort of want different expressions and different you know, like what are the list of things you could do so that you’ve got everything you might need to the content?

Donna Moritz
Probably is like what do I do with my hands? I think I think the thing is like if you’re going to do a photo shoot because I’m probably going to do another one soon. Finding a photographer that is used to brand photoshoots like Ron maybe a little bit different from your just your headshots like talk to them. Get some examples and find you know if you can see them show some examples of brand shoots have done with a person is outside or in a coffee shop or in different places with different props. I think if you can come with some different outfits. Some have a photographer that knows the location or the area so they can suggest some different code had a shoot in San Diego once and the guy knew where to go. Like he knew different places we could go. He had some suggestions of how to pose. But also you can come with, you can come with some props, and maybe a couple of jackets and clothing changes a few bright pops of color, if that’s you. The other thing I suggest is maybe doing some shots that are holding up devices, if that’s sort of you might might not be that you’re a social media person, but you could even just hold up an iPad, so then you can overlay some text on them or yes, you know, it might be that there’s some blank space in the photos, you can do that, or maybe even some pointing photos. I know that sounds silly, but you know, or looking in a certain direction. And then looking in the other direction. Yeah, be really powerful if you’re trying to do you know, a LinkedIn banner or something and you want to put yourself on the left or the right. Yeah, so a good photographer will probably know all that stuff. You know, for me, I’m a copywriter, and designer and a trainer. So I might turn up with a typewriter and some devices and, you know, maybe some social media things, and anything to do with coffee.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, and that personal thing, I think is really important, right? It’s something I didn’t do in my last shoot is, you know, I’m a Star Wars geek and all sorts of things like that is I should have taken some with that, because it’s actually sharing more of yourself, which is the point of some of this is them getting to know you.

Donna Moritz
And I think maybe just keep an eye on what you like, like if you’re on LinkedIn, and you see people posting some photos, you think, Oh, that’s really good. Like, maybe reach out to them and ask them who their photographer is, if they’re local. But yeah, I think, I think if you’re going to do a shoot, and I’m doing in that position, now just start watching for who you are the styles that you like, and yeah, talk to a couple of them to grow. And the other one is to get access to is I know we’ve gone off track here, but it’s still not an issue is make sure you get access to all the photos, there’s nothing worse than being shown 100 photos and you can only choose 10 It’s just Matic

Peita Diamantidis
well, and also, in this day and age, we need the 100 To be quite honest, you need variety, because over all the time as

Donna Moritz
photographers that want to, you know, charge per how many you get, like, just give them all to me, but even if they can just edit the ones out that are terrible first and then yeah, yeah. So.

Peita Diamantidis
And interestingly, I’ve noticed, actually, and it’s only a few people doing it, but it’s really effective is they’re doing some with like unpleasant looks on their faces, whether it’s stern or upset. I’m surprised and yeah, you don’t think anything at the time. But actually, when you’re depending on the What’s your marketing, or the story you’re telling it’s perfect, like it is your attention, because that person is really cheery, why are they looking so horrified? Like it’s yeah, you know, we just don’t think that way, when we get some shots done.

Donna Moritz
That’s true. Like I saw, I think I went on a down a rabbit hole and looked up James’s Tiktok. And he’d done a video about people being surprised when they had to pay tax because they’d had you know that they couldn’t work and they had the income protection insurance was being paid out. And they needed to pay taxes on it, and then didn’t think about that. You could do a shock, surprise or a worried surprised face on that. Exactly, exactly. I think visually to like, once you get those photos, you can if you’ve got a brand you need in your brand area, if you’ve got to pay a pro account with Canva, you can upload them all into your photo area, or into a folder and have them all ready to go. And then you can sit there and remove backgrounds on all of them. So you’ve got a version with the background on it and without the background. So and I mean, I think I mean, you’ve got curly hair than me. But the cool thing about Canvas background remover is that it removes background even from people that have really curly hair. It’s good. I could say amazing,

Peita Diamantidis
that it’s better, because I’ve had I’ve used other tools and it doesn’t work for mine, but it does it does a really good job. Yeah, really talking to a little tip if you need to.

Donna Moritz
I think I showed that at probably the conference, you were at, like just the background remover works for curly hair. It’s just everyone’s like, whoa. So yeah, I think that just having those photos accessible and easy to use, and then you can create something and just put the photo over the top. Yeah, and, you know, some of those design skills can come quite easily too when you’ve got the assets set up properly.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s the doing that to the assets every time you try to do something new is the delay. Whereas if you do it once, like I say, and I’ve just wrote down actually listener, s done, it was talking that I’ll get my VA to do that with a whole lot of photos I’ve got whereas I manually do it each time. Whereas to give them a task, load these up, please, and then do this to them. And then we’re going to save them here so that then I don’t

Donna Moritz
again, I’m guilty of it too. Like the other day I couldn’t find I knew I had one with the background or moves with a yellow background because it’s quite bright and it’s good to get into like a any sort of profile image because it pops. I couldn’t find it. I’m like, obviously I didn’t save any caregiver. But yeah, having organized or if you’ve got a team of people and you need to do something for your business. You want to be able to access everyone’s headshots, so having that in there as well as good,

Peita Diamantidis
definitely. Now integration. So one of the things that, and I actually haven’t used this, but I noticed that the other day is you can link your social media accounts into Canvas so that then you can, you know, post directly or, or even sheduled. Is that right? You can actually share. So

Donna Moritz
I’m pretty sure don’t quote me, there’s a lot of features. And I sometimes have to check which, yes, so it’s on the pro account, you can schedule sheduled, depending on which platforms. I come across a few social media management tools, and I can’t I’m not sure the actual specifics with things like reels etc. Yeah, my mic, headphone sorry. But it is, it’s pretty good. So you can and the other cool thing that they have in place is that when you go into the calendar, it will show you some of the days of celebration. And I know we don’t want to post about that all the time. But it could be you know, it could be you change your password day, and you’re like, Oh, excellent, I needed something to think about to post that day. So they have that in the calendar, and then you can click and get templates for those topics. So it’s, again, Canva, bringing everything together together to make it easier. And I’ve spent many years having to create stuff in Canva, download it and then schedule it in another tool. So it’s good that you can now schedule directly from Canva.

Peita Diamantidis
And for those of you who are sort of wondering where we’re going there with the dates, I’d encourage you to check out Donna’s blog that socially sorted.com.au, because she each month will come out with Hey, did you know these? These are the days like like we’re talking like some yesterday, but think about that? Yeah, right. But all sorts of other weird and wonderful, you know, world Penguin, or whatever the thing is, that can just be another way to bring either some humor or even just be a link, a pivot to a story you need to tell and it’s just a perfect pivot.

Donna Moritz
Yeah. And I think that’s key, like people don’t, you don’t want to be just posting you know, it’s Apple day, one day, every single day. You can, you can bring that into your own personality and your own brand. So it might be one day, but you, you know, you’ve had a really big week working on a project. So you might say, hey, like we’re getting to Friday, it’s sure as day to day, which is a good thing, because we’ve just finished XYZ project. And I think I need a glass of Bourassa. You know, so you just pivoted to talk about your project. Yeah, versus just talking about one day. And even the templates in Canva, like most of my templates are photo based, or element based, so you can change out the photos and change out the content, and it will be a completely different topic. Yeah. So yeah, those days are quite helpful for just getting the ideas flowing. Or if you’re really stuck for something, but you can always pivot it to be about about you or your audience more. So like making it about your customers

Peita Diamantidis
who they are or what they might be doing. Yeah, for sure. For sure. In terms of then sort of any other secretly little things, I guess, we talked about the sort of AI and the digital first documents and videos, I think I did want to touch on presentations, I feel like it’s Well, in my or in our world. It’s the one I think most people have no earthly clue that Canva has it has what I would call VC level pitch quality documents, like presentations designed ready for you to tailor to your brand and your topic. Definitely 1000s of them.

Donna Moritz
Yeah, and I think the thing is, with presentations, I used to always use PowerPoint. So I was always downloading everything into this whole photos into PowerPoint. So now you can do them completely in Canva, you can present from within Canva when you if you have to do something over zoom, which is really cool. And I have not used PowerPoint for three years because of Canva. So there’s just no

Peita Diamantidis
reason to, and no and it doesn’t force you to because like very few. Okay, so when I started doing public speaking on a more sort of structured way and out into the into the public forum, rather than just in the industry, I actually paid a designer to sort of design some template, look and feel that was my brand. And that’s the thing. So that’s unusual, right? That’s not where most people go. But what we don’t do is recognize that you’ve got these slides up there, it’s a visual story. And then we use the most bland, dull look, image or, or bullet points on a white screen. Like it’s, we are so far beyond that. And these templates in Canva mean you can really lift your game here.

Donna Moritz
Yes, and I think the cool thing is to like as a template designer for Canva. Like we’re always adding keywords in the background. If you can go on find templates you like you can click on that template, you can go down to the bottom and you can see a bunch of keywords and then you can actually click and find and there’ll be other presentations suggested for you as well. Well, yep, so you can find more like that you can also find more by the same designer too. If you want similar style, you can actually follow us. So I’ll give you the link for my Canva profile. But you can follow creators in Canva, like me so that if you like someone’s style, you can find more of their content. And if it’s someone that does a lot of presentations, you can check those out. But the cool thing is to that. I think I mentioned before the docs, yes. Which is a bit like, a bit like Google Docs, but it’s, it doesn’t really have line breaks. It’s just one long document in section like

Peita Diamantidis
a landing, like like a scroll through. Yeah. And that’s

Donna Moritz
one of the most common questions like how do I print it? Well, you can print it as a PDF, but it won’t linebreak exactly where you want to. So that’s but but then kava will say, Well, this is visual. First, it’s digital first. Yeah, not meant to be design, printed it, maybe at some stage, they’ll do that. So the idea is you can collaborate with your team, you can comment and you can also tag people with when you’re commenting and send a share by email, there’s lots of different ways you can share things. But if you’re working on a document like that, and you’ve sort of got a bit of an outline, you can then do what’s called docs to decks, there’ll be a button button at the top will say, Do you want to convert this to a presentation, and you just click the button that will give you some style formats. and off you go click the button that will take all the information from that document and turn it into the base of a presentation. And she sometimes Canva really nails it? Sometimes you like, oh, well, I need to change that. But like I it’s the artificial intelligence is pretty amazing. So there’s

Peita Diamantidis
just that step. I mean, that’s a good hour, that’s at least a good hour you’ve saved.

Donna Moritz
Like, where do you start, I mean, I can spend an hour choosing a template and I create templates. So that’s pretty sad. So I think that powerful. And once you get a design you like you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel, just use that template. And I would recommend using templates that are, you know, really easy to switch out the images or the you can also do like pie charts and tables and things like that in Canva. Now, they have that all integrated as well. Even animated kind of flow charts and things. They’ve got software in there. That’s pretty cool. So I think, you know, find a template that’s got some of those pie charts are just as interesting and interesting way to share. I don’t want to tell everyone to use pie charts. That’s a bit boring. But, you know, sometimes they’re necessary, but just find one. That’s an interesting, engaging presentation. And there’s some pretty cool ones in there. Yeah, my advice? I don’t know, this is a bit of a segue. But if you’re doing if you’ve got a template and you want to make it a little bit on brand, I have a few tips for that. So Oh, yeah, yeah, so they’ll start with S. But I think it’s the five s rules of non design. So if you’re a non designer, if you want to use a template and not sort of have to design from scratch, I always suggest that you stick to the design or the main design elements. So don’t move the borders around, don’t move where the photo sets don’t move where the elements are, keep the text in the same place. Because the designers already done that for you. Yeah, so when we create a template, we do that with that in mind. But you can switch some of the things so you can change the font to another similar font, if it’s a big bold font, and you want to change it to your brand font, like use a similar sort of brand bold font. And then you can also do things in Canva. Like there’ll be a button pop up, say switch, or, you know all of these fonts to this new font. And you can click that and it will do it right throughout the document. So it’s hard explaining these things when you’re just audio, but hopefully, you’ll see that pop up when you do it. The other thing you can do is I just suggest switching one or two things. So don’t go in and change the fonts and the colors and the photos and the elements and try and just start with one or two things, change the fonts to your your fonts and the photos. See how that looks. If you want to then change the colors to be a more brand you can but just do one or two things at a time. And just make sure it sort of looks visually appealing. And then same for same if you’ve got like if there’s an icon of a like a target and you want to change it to a house. If you’re doing financial advice for real estate or something. Then choose a similar style of icon or design like a little illustration. Don’t use like a painted one you use a block. Yeah, icon. If it’s a photo that’s of people then maybe change it to a similar kind of photo or if it’s a really busy photo, change it to a busy photo. If there’s lots of space in it, choose something similar, but don’t move them around too much. So that same for same. Yep. And size matters. So if there’s a line of text, that’s, you know, like five or six words, don’t go putting a paragraph in that space because automatically you’re going to ruin the design of the template. So whitespace matters and size matters as well. So they’re just a few tips as a non designer you can use so you don’t sort of come in and just sort of break the template and make it look like it wasn’t designed by a designer.

Peita Diamantidis
And I’ve, like 100% support those, because I’ve done all of that breaking and frankensteining on designs, and I have to

Donna Moritz
over the years, you know, like, being a template designer for Canva, we basically go to design school, you know, I had some skills, but I’ve learned a lot since then. And, yeah, eight years ago, I did exactly all the things I said not to do. So yeah, it’s pretty. So, you know, it’s, and it’s also more efficient for you, if you can learn some of these skills and not have to try and design from scratch, you know, you can get on with the work you need to do.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think you know, the other thing is, I mean, there’ll be members of, of our teams who, who love playing with these things. So if you said look, I only want you to allocate half an hour, but I want you to dive in, we’re going to use it, you know, we need to Instagram time we’re going to use it for this, this, you know, these are the words find something similar that you’ve like a selection of similar ones for me to pick from, like you can, you can have where it narrows it down for you. So you’re not doing that because one of the mistakes I’ve made is picked a template that might have two or three words, but I need to put a sentence. Yeah, and it’s truly messes it up. Yeah, so

Donna Moritz
and I think to like Canva is getting better. This has all the artificial intelligence built in in the background, like when you open one of my templates, just to look at the preview, it will show more of them below. So sometimes you can see other designs by that designer, there’s lots of ways that the information is coming through. Yeah, but um, yeah, it can be hard when you want to put a certain amount of information in like, there’s always going to be times when you sort of break the rules a little bit. But I think the more you can be aware of whitespace and not crashing everything up against other other things and a jam it all in. Yeah, I think you know, most of us understand that presentation should always be less word heavy. If we can manage it. You know, like I love doing once a big photos in the background and let people distract. We’re looking at the image versus looking at me.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, and I think the thing I’ve realized I’ve so when you’re in Canva listeners, then there’s an opportunity, there’s a little thing, I think it’s the bottom right, where you can change the size in terms of what you’re seeing. So you can see it at you know, 10%. Right. I always want some done. I all particularly for social media, you know, image, I always zoom it to make it quite small like it was on a phone. Because something fabulous, the size of your Mac does not necessarily look fabulous. Once it’s,

Donna Moritz
that’s really clever. And also just you know whether you want the word or the image to pop out. Yeah, that’s

Peita Diamantidis
because I’ve made I’ve spent a lot of time doing something. And then when I did that, I went oh, no, yes. Can’t read that. Rookie mistake learn from me, listeners don’t make mistakes. So in terms of what’s coming up, I know, you mentioned to me actually, before we were recording that you guys are sort of, you know, pain of death of sharing too much of what’s coming up in Canvas. So I don’t want to get any secrets from you. But what are the themes of where it’s going in the future? What are they focusing on in terms of

Donna Moritz
development, one of a couple, a few dozen, I think there’s about 40 of us camera verified experts around the world. And so we are getting insight into some of the features coming up before they’re released. So we’re under NDA signed with them. And that because you know, you’re still developing it, and but sometimes, you know, things are being rolled out. And we can talk about at the moment, it’s funny, I think I just had a look at what’s under development that I’m aware of, and I think they’re in kind of, you know, busy bee mode, working on a lot of things in the background. Sometimes we can see a lot of stuff coming out, it’s probably more, you know, updates and improvements. But I will say that they are constantly at the moment, you know, working on improving what’s already in there, like the visual suite is well established. And I think things like video, we’re seeing new things pop up all the time, where you know, the team’s been working on stuff like the other day, I said that there’s animations came up and then you know, and then we can add slow motion on a video with tools. And there’s different things being added all the time new integrations with they announced to an integration with a big Audio Library recently, all those things are constantly being rolled out. So I think, you know, what you’ll see with Canberra is just more and more improvement of what they’ve already got in place at the moment. And I’m sure they’re working on some cool things in the background, especially in terms of video in terms of AI. In terms of teams and collaboration. I think there’s always new things being improved upon but added in. And for the most part, it’s it’s integrated quite well. I will recommend there’s they’ve had two events now called Canva. Create, and I’ve been fortunate to be invited down to both in Sydney. I don’t know if you’ve ever you remember the old Apple launches. Well, that’s awesome. Yeah, you know, I love them. They’re very cool. but this is like if an apple launch was done at Disneyland, I don’t know, it’s just the coolest day. We’re in a room with like 3000 Canberra employees, there’s more around the world but and it’s just such a cool event, it’s so well produced and they release, or they, they preview or show a lot of the things that they’ve been working on and they launch them. So I’ll give you the link to put in the show notes. But it’s called Canva. Create, you can go and watch the last one, and I highly recommend watching it purely also, because Canva talks about some of their mission. When they started, they wanted to democratize design. But that changed? Well, I think Mel, Melanie, already Melanie and Cliff and Cameron, the three co founders always had this grand plan. But I remember having coffee with her years ago, she said they’re only 2% of the way there. Now they say they’re 1% of the way there. But their goal is to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, which as I said they’ve done. But then step two is to do the most good they can do and the charity side of things is amazing. That step one fuel step two, they have a goal currently to eradicate extreme poverty in the world, through their charity, and Melanie and Cliff have donated 30% of their share in whatever to that, which is billions. So you know, so interesting,

Peita Diamantidis
you know, from because we all focus on people, you know, Microsoft, and all these these guys, these older white gentleman, throw them all his money, and all and they’re giving their money away. But generally when you hear about it, it’s it’s way down the path. Like it’s it’s decades down the path. Yeah, I’m really very early, right. And it’s part it’s sort of it’s part of who they are and what they want to do from day one. And I love that because oh look away, they’re going to make decisions is going to sort of fuel that.

Donna Moritz
And look, I could talk about Canberra all day, but I really passionately love talking about this side, because it just impresses me so much like they’ve given Canberra free to, I don’t know, 350,000 just looking at the stats here non for not for profits around the world. Education, it’s free in high schools, and now they’ve got a new product, they’re trying to get it into universities, like schools can use it for free. As districts they have also just, I mean, there was something they said at the last Canva create that everyone is part of this. And I think that there’s such a good community vibe. With what they’re saying is that it’s not just Canvas team that’s contributing to this, making a difference. It’s it’s the users, it’s the people producing apps that integrate with Canva. It’s the community, it’s the creators, it’s the the you know, it’s everybody. If you’re a user of Canva, then you’re essentially contributing to this, because when you are paying for your software, it’s going to these amazing courses causes Yeah. So yeah, I just think it’s really empowering, that they’re really focusing on quality education for kids, not for profits to do their best work and trying to end extreme poverty. So you think you’re coming into a graphic design tool? And yeah, that’s, that’s no, I think we agree that behind the scenes,

Peita Diamantidis
right, I think we’d all agree, though, you know, if somebody can be six successful at what Mellon crew have done, then maybe they’re better. Like, maybe they’re the better people to hit some of these big things than the politicians are. Like, yeah, maybe they clearly got drive, and they listened to their consumer, and they, like, they’ve ticked all the boxes, so maybe they’re better off, like, maybe they’re the right ones to have, these are the things to get done.

Donna Moritz
And definitely, they’re definitely getting stuff done. And also, it’s not just throwing money at problems, they’re researching, you know, like, I think that recently, correct me if I’m wrong, they came back and said, you know, like, we’ve researched what, how we can actually help at a grassroots level with poverty. And it is actually giving money to these people to use in the ways that they need to use it versus you know, you know, there’s always the argument, do you give money? Do you give resources and they go in and research? But yeah, and the best thing is that it’s an Aussie company. It’s super cool.

Peita Diamantidis
Don’t you love it? Yeah, we all love it. Well, you know, we’ve just all watched the material is going out. So I think we’re all very excited about all things underdog Ozzy, not that you could call care for an underdog anymore. Although it still has that vibe. Can I say? Yeah, still

Donna Moritz
feels feels startup, kind of

Peita Diamantidis
sort of understated. There’s an understated tone. I can’t quite describe what I mean there. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like Salesforce.

Donna Moritz
Oh, look. I mean, I know. And I have met the founders and you know, I met them early on and they’re just that they are genuinely down to earth people. Lovely. You know, they’ll come and say hi, they’re not it’s yes. Yeah, it’s pretty special. Well, I didn’t come Yeah. I think it’s been a big week. Yeah. And I’m still recovering. I Yeah, I feel like emotional now talking about

Peita Diamantidis
the you know, the listen to this will be coming to you a few weeks after the Matilda’s got knocked out. And, but, but I think it’s an interesting example again of yours. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, having just different people doing different things, diversity, inclusion, all those things are all things that Canva does particularly well, as well. Is there anything we’ve missed any features? We’ve

Donna Moritz
let me think, I think we’ve talked about a lot of the features. I mean, I think my my recommendation is to go set up a free account, like, you know, get a pro account, if you can just start off. And just go in as I think I did neglect to mention Canva has what’s called Design School. And you can find it in the toolbar, up the top, there’s a few menus of places you can go to find extra help, but they have a lot of really great videos on how to use Canva. And some of them are very interactive, interactive activities, you can just open it up and start clicking and moving things around, that’s always been their MO to like, be able to go in and hands on, do the training in Canva, like, you know, most of these photos, drag it in and put a hat on the monkey, that was the early version, they’ve still got those, but also really short little 101 videos. So if you go into Canva, you know that it’s easy to find their tutorials, it’s called design school. So I would recommend you do that. And, you know, start checking out the templates, check out, maybe go and watch the Canva, create videos of their last one and just see the sorts of things that you can do in Canva. Because it’s kind of just a fun overview of what is coming into Canva. But I think it’ll just give you an idea of what’s possible. And then yeah, I mean, I didn’t even touch on some of the things like magic design, which is where you can drag some photos into Canva. And then it will give you, you can just say what you want to design and it will just design things for you. It pulls in templates that we’ve you know that that Canva. And the creators have all designed and pausing elements of those templates to produce something for you based on what you input. So that’s the artificial intelligence for some of that stuff is pretty cool. So yeah, I think I think the best thing with Canva is to just dive in and have a play like pick one thing, start to have a play around and and just click and see what you can create. You can’t really make mistakes.

Peita Diamantidis
No, no, absolutely. All right, advice. Explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Canva than the website link is in the episode shownotes, along with Donna’s LinkedIn details, so feel free to nudge her if you’d like to find out more about how she can assist. And I’d really encourage you to check out her blog, socially sorted.com.au, thank you so much for joining us here today, Don is sharing how Canva can help out the artistically challenged.

Donna Moritz
You’re very welcome. And yeah, well, let’s call them artistically empowered now because Exactly. So

Peita Diamantidis
no one has been a pleasure, all excited. Thank you so much for your time,

Donna Moritz
No worries, I look forward to seeing what they will create.

Peita Diamantidis
So we covered an awful lot there, folks, I hope it didn’t blow your little minds there with it, particularly if you’ve never used Canva. However, I’d love to know, have you used Canva before or maybe only used it a bit and didn’t really think it had much value? You know, do you agree or disagree with the discussion on you know, on Canva, because I’d love you to share your insights on the ensemble community platform. And specifically for this, if there’s something great that you’ve created with Cranford that you just couldn’t believe you could pull off and think is wonderful, historically, go in and share with the community because I think people you know, as a community advisors, we need to see what’s possible, right for our industry. So if you’ve done something really cool, please share because there is just so many applications for this tool, it will be the Aside from free tools, it will be the least expensive business tool you pay for. And it will have an impact right across the business, I can absolutely guarantee you that. I now see camera as a core part of what I do. And what I just realized in my conversation with Donna is that I’m not then giving my team access to that, which is crazy. So let’s dive into sort of my general thoughts. Like I said, in the chat with donner, I’ve been a user for like eight years, you know, and what stands out to me is, you know, these guys are the unicorn of unicorns in terms of tech and you know, Silicon Valley and all that sort of stuff. You know, everywhere else we’re hearing about these major groups, Google these people having to sack up hundreds and 1000s of people you know, and they’re all contracting look at the economy bubble. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. Canva He’s still quietly hiring, right? This is a business that is not just providing a solution that’s resonated across the world, they’re also doing it in a really responsible way. They take their role as founders and, you know, holding people’s well being in their hands, really as their employees really seriously. And so I think, you know, understanding that can give you an insight into why this tool is taken off, because they put the same thoughtfulness into the tool itself. And, you know, the rate at which they’re now releasing high quality add ons, is incredible. Donna and I were just chatting as after we pressed hope, there’s a number of things we didn’t even cover that they’ve just started adding in. And I’ll mention one of them later. But, but there’s just constant value, I would have been this excited about Canva, even well, before all of that, because I just think it can do some basic designing stuff for us really easily. But it’s also taking it to the nth level. And so, you know, if you’ve got kids, they could be using it for assignments, or for their invitations for their parties, or, you know, I just, I just had a joint 100th birthday party. With my husband, we both turned 50 this year. So we had a big soiree for a whole weekend. And I did a whole thing I did invitations in the Facebook event hitter and, and you know, the wrap for the design chocolate for the things that we did I know it sounds ridiculous, but all of that idea in Canva. And did it in a matter of seconds, we even had lanyards that were like a VIP lanyard for going behind at a rock concert, all of those were done in Canva, right. So it’s super easy to use, and I am the least design skilled person on the planet. And if I can do it, you can too. The other thing I’d say is, you know, I’d really call out to anybody that isn’t a business owner or a practice manager or, you know, the senior adviser or anything like that anybody in the other the other roles in the business and you might even be in your professional year, you might be really new to the industry. And I’d encourage you to get one of the free Canva accounts if your business doesn’t have an account. And it feel free to ask them if you could become part of the team based account. But if not, then get your own free account. Because you can even start, you know getting some icons to use in the advice doc that sort of those anchoring, you know, topic icons that you can do for the executive summary, you could come up with a summary of the of the SOA that’s almost like an executive summary. But it’s the infographic of that you could start like you could start playing with this just for your own benefit. And you could really add value to the business you’re in. By helping them see the different ways they can communicate these concepts, let alone playing with the social media aspect and video, you could even do videos explaining concepts internally just practice for internally for people, and then show them what they could be doing otherwise. I think, you know, younger members of our industry can really contribute to this because you have far less fear about video, audios, social, all that sort of thing. And so if you can show us how easy these tools are to use, and I think more more people in the industry will start using them. One of my I’ve got a couple of ninja tips for you. But one of my ninja tips is you may have previously got something designed, put together by a designer, one of mine was a speaker kit. So this is sort of a PDF that a speaker might send to somebody, it gives them a sample of their style. The topics they cover has some testimonials like it’s like a brochure about me as a speaker. And I got it designed by a wonderful designer who I love dearly. But it’s out of date, right? It’s a couple of years old. And it just needed tweaking, it didn’t need completely redesigning. And so you can upload a PDF into Canva. And it will break down the design elements so you can tweak things and update them. So even if you need to change a sentence or there’s a link that needs to be changed or a person’s name, you need to take a team member out and add a different one in like any of that stuff where otherwise it’d be going all the way back to the designer and it is a plava and all sorts of things, you could just upload that PDF in and Canva will break it down for you so you can tweak some of those elements. So that’s why one ninja tip that’s actually saved us a bit of time and energy. Another one is there are so there’s designers like Donna who who come up with designs you can use in Canva that are free once you’re once you’re a member who wants your user of Canva. But there’s also and there’s loads honestly there are loads, loads of templates, right so like, like Donna said, like it is a bit of a black hole. Once you start looking, it’ll you know, you’ll dive into down into the black hole of design templates. So you sort of need to allocate allocate time when you’re looking. That’s one way to do it. The other though, is if you’re embarking on talking about a particular thing You want to collate a whole lot of maybe it’s, as you know, social media tiles, and you want to get a whole lot of templates pulled together, this sort of got a similar feel. And that then you could just update for your brand, then there are people online who sell Canva template packs, they’ve got them for health care, you know, health and well being they’ve got them fit, like all sorts of things. If you Googled Canva, Instagram templates for financial advisors, then it will come up with people on Etsy and other places that are not much money. So you these packs now the reason that can be cool is, it’ll be a big long list, we’re talking like three or 400, that are all they’ve designed specifically to work well together. And so then you just tailor you know, change it for the colors, and maybe the words you use, and then you’ve got a whole lot, backlog ready to go. So that’s just another alternative I just flagged with you. There’s also the other one I’ve used is there are designers that pull together Canva templates for ebooks, and course documentation. So if you’re doing your own online course, or something like that for your clients, wonder mini program, then there’s people that have packaged together those templates. And so they’ve laid out all the possible designs you might have or a one on one, I didn’t mean design, I mean, like a chart or a graph for it. And then you can just tailor it. So it can save you an enormous amount of time. And these, these templates are not expensive, folks. So if you can’t quite find what you’re looking forward, then head off into Google Landia. And see what you can find if you’re willing to pay just a little bit. And you may find exactly the template you need and be able to knock up something really, really quickly. That’s really high quality. Now, the other thing I’d say is, the way that I engage with graphic designers now has changed now that we use Canva. And that is that when I get them to design something, it could be because you know, I’m doing a new podcast or something that needs a whole lot of design or a new presentation topic. And I’m going to really get into it into a whole lot of elements of design. Then what I now do with designers is that yes, they they come up, you know, what’s the what’s the font, the coloring, and styles of photos, all sorts of things. But I also get them to provide that to me with a whole lot of Canva templates already set up that I can then tweak. So sort of asking your designer to work within Canva with you will mean that you’re better able to use the tools and that they’ll actually design that with that in mind. And so, you know, they don’t want to be all we want that one to be upside down this time, can you your designer doesn’t want to be doing that work, to be honest, it’s a waste of their time. So they will love the fact that you’re ready to then have it sitting in Canberra and ready to go.

So I’d encourage you to do that as well. All right. Now, as you know, if you have listened to the podcast before, there’s only one skill, we need to become bionic advisors. And that is avid curiosity. So to help you build that habit, today’s curiosity corner tool that I want you to take a look at is called dynamic QR codes. Now this lives within Canva. They’ve actually this is a business that sort of partnered with or integrated with Canva. The business is called on I’d actually give you a hover code is the actual business. But it’s an app that sits within Canva. So it’s an add on. And basically it creates customizable, dynamic QR codes for your brand. So let’s imagine that you’ve got a brochure or an FDS. Or maybe it’s your investment philosophy document, whatever it is, and you want to take the client or the prospect, they want to be able to go like a video, maybe there’s a talking video that you’ve got that is through to YouTube, right? This is a document you’re sending them. And so you could have a link, but you could have a QR code that they could just open it on their phone, right? And then scan it and then yeah, okay, we’re looking at the video, well, you can have that in your color with your little logo inside it, like your QR code can be something that goes beautifully with the rest of what you’ve designed for that document. So that is something that’s well worth checking out in Canva. But you could also check out hava code.com, as well. They have circled QR codes. And instead of the squares, if the squares offend you, then feel free you can have a circle QR code. And then you can also infect with their service, you can track how often their QR codes used and when the spikes are. So it’s just I just think about when QR codes might be usable. Now we’ve all become so used to them do, you know during the pandemic, they’re getting used more and more again. And so just think about if there’s ways that that could be helpful maybe if you do any virtual sessions that you prefer prospecting or even for clients and you you want to provide them with resources then you could use that QR code is the way they can get to the resource quickly while you’re there watching you. Fantastic. Welp, that’s all we’ve got for this week, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice tech fix automagically sent to you each Friday. And if you’d like a speaker at your next event, or maybe for a virtual webinar for your group, then I have a keynote on tech overload to take delight. And this is all about helping financial advisors navigate the digital maze not overdoing it, making sure they’ve got rigorous processes and structures in place so that they don’t just end up chasing after every next Tech advance. Then, you know, I’ve also got workshops that can dive into that with some practical techniques as well. So if that piques your interest, then please reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D. That’s PEITAMD. Otherwise I look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember, advice explores: Stay curious