How Terrell & Jarius Use Microsoft to Run their Influencer Family
As influencers and parents of two four-year-old kids, we have definitely learned a thing or two about juggling. Not, like, literally juggling (although our life sometimes resembles a circus, that’s not what I’m referring to), but managing several things at once.
The most essential part of making life as stress free as possible is taking advantage of the technology we have at our fingertips for household planning.
Making the most of their 365
From running a family to rowing across the Atlantic, learn how real users unlock their best selves with Microsoft 365.
When we would sit back and dream about becoming parents, I knew immediately that I wanted a daughter. It is something about the bond girls have with their fathers that I yearned for. My problem was I had ZERO experience with girls. I have no siblings and most of my close cousins are males. But I was determined to make it work. When we found out we were expecting a little girl, I promised that I would do everything in my power to make sure that I would be able to meet all her needs. I never wanted her to look back and think that she was somehow less than other girls because she was raised by two dads. Before Aria was born, I researched caring for daughters and one of the biggest things that most dads avoided was doing their daughter’s hair. I knew our daughter was going to have long hair, so I made it my business to learn how to manage her hair.
Fast forward to having a four year old in our influencer family. I’m sure you can imagine how glad I was that I learned to do hair. Most times, we are filming videos for each platform and doing a photoshoot in tandem. It became so hard remembering what hairstyles to do for specific things and how to do them. Then, I had the a-ha moment and thought of using Microsoft PowerPoint to keep a slideshow of hairstyles and step-by-step instructions for each. Not only does this visually help me but it also helps our kids’ nanny when she gets Aria ready for a shoot. I even have the styles separated: My quick hairstyles are at the beginning of the slideshow and the more complex ones are at the end. This is also amazing for Aria because I love to involve her when picking styles for her hair and the PowerPoint app in Microsoft 365 helps her pick something that she truly wants.
It makes me feel a bit nostalgic, thinking of how I used Microsoft PowerPoint maybe twenty-plus years ago in school to present group projects and presentations, to now in my day-to-day parenting. So much has changed and evolved in the program, but one thing that hasn’t is its ability to be multi-functional. I started sharing hair tutorials in 2020 and the world fell in love with them. Some videos received nearly 10 million views and our audience demanded more. Using PowerPoint helps me remember styles, organize lists of products needed to do each style, and eases stress for everyone else when I’m not there to do her hair. It has definitely saved the day plenty of times.
Household Time Management & Planning for the Influencer Family
Another huge area of our lives that needs balance is our time. Our time as parents to our children, as business owners, as a married couple, as friends, etc., is so important. Before beginning to use Outlook for our calendar, our desire to be organized was overwhelmed by our need to really learn the program and all of its benefits. Here are our tips for how to best use the tool:
Color code for your life! We came up with categories that our schedule most often fall within and colored them as such. This helps us not only to organize but prioritize. Darker colors are often things we cannot miss or are otherwise really important. Lighter colors are optional and let us know if we have any flexibility to move things around.
My schedule goes where I go! Syncing our calendar to our mobile device ensures we never miss a beat. The average person often has their phone in their hand most of the day and we are no different. Being able to check our schedule at any moment has been life changing.
ALERT ALERT ALERT! We often need a few alarm-clock nudges to get out of bed in the mornings. I need the same when it comes to reminders of meetings, events, and obligations. I set alerts in Outlook to notify me 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 5 minutes before every event. This ensures I am always aware and don’t “snooze” and lose.
I have repeatedly mentioned how time is invaluable, especially since I also chase around two toddlers all day. Our workdays often turn into work nights once the kids are down for bedtime. This means that emails we received throughout the day and have not responded to are now getting attention. However, nobody wants to be that person who sends 2 a.m. emails to the team and risks interrupting their sleep. One of our favorite features is being able to schedule emails for a more appropriate time in the morning. There’s nothing like the feeling of getting a few extra minutes of sleep and knowing you aren’t waking up rushing to meet deadlines and requests.
When we decided to get married, we were told we had to now share everything with each other, but they didn’t mention how sharing calendars should be a love language! We share our calendars with everyone essential—including our moms! Sounds harsh, right? “Your mom has to check your calendar to contact you?” The answer is no, but she loves it because she also calls me 20 times a day, and like most parents, if I don’t answer, she gets worried! Sharing my calendar allows her to see if I am in a meeting or otherwise busy so she doesn’t send over an officer for a wellness check. The best part about calendar sharing is that I get to choose what she sees listed in that block! Maybe I should schedule some more me time.
Dad Influencers + Microsoft = Education Dynamic Duo
Another huge area of household planning and management improvement we’ve realized thanks to Microsoft 365 is our ability to support our kids’ educational needs. Now, I’m sure you’re probably thinking, “How can Microsoft 365 help with kids’ education?” We certainly wondered the same thing, at first. But sure enough, it did. We utilized the Immersive Reader tool to help our children with their reading assignments and it was amazing! One of the major benefits of the tools is the independence and sense of self-accomplishment it gives our children.
Immersive Reader is a free tool that implements proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people, regardless of age or ability. Immersive Reader can enhance reading comprehension and increase fluency for English language learners. It can build confidence for emerging readers learning to read at higher levels and offer text decoding solutions for students with learning differences such as dyslexia. Here’s how we use it in our daily lives:
We allow our children to use it in the classroom to help facilitate and fast track their reading abilities.
We use it in Microsoft Teams to collaborate with team members who are not in the office with us.
We use it to translate from Spanish to English when our children are doing Spanish lessons or when we are working with clients who are completely Spanish speaking.
Speaking of Teams, that is also another huge benefit of the Microsoft 365 suite. Teams is a collaboration app that was specifically designed for hybrid or virtual work so you and the team you work with stay organized, informed, and connected all in one place. In the world of Covid-19, Teams was and is still one of our go-to apps to make sure our business runs smoothly and efficiently. Let’s be honest here: I am sure we all love being able to roll out of bed, throw on a business shirt, and hop on video chat, but work still has to get done. In my opinion, working from home requires a higher level of accountability than we had to give in the office. Being creative to stay productive was a must for us. Here are some of the top features of the program:
Chat. Being able to message team members individually or in a group to talk about work, share files, review special projects, or have a little fun (love the GIFs section!).
Calendar. Being able to connect with people before, during, and after a meeting so prep and follow-up are easy to find. The Teams calendar syncs with your Outlook one.
Apps. Find familiar apps and explore new ones to simplify, customize, and manage how you work.
Microsoft 365 has been beneficial to us in so many ways—especially when the world as we knew it changed and we had to adjust to new ways of doing things. Whether using PowerPoint for hairstyles and spending quality time with our daughter or using Immersive Reader to help build confidence in our emerging readers, M365 covers all of our needs from top to bottom. Having the ability to create, collaborate, and communicate in a very seamless way makes our family’s day to day more efficient. M365 has allowed us to do some of our best work, so we are beyond grateful to have it at our disposal.
If you’d like to follow Terrell and Jarius and their influencer family, find them on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Everything you need to achieve more in less time
Get powerful productivity and security apps with Microsoft 365
