Running an online business

✅ 💼 ⭐️ How my immature decisions led me to celebrating 18 years of my productivity business?

Monday, February 3, 2025 /immature/

Nozbe - the productivity app that I founded back in February of 2007 is celebrating 18 years in business. To commemorate the occasion, we bid and won the cover of iMagazine (see below) as all the proceeds from this auction went to charity. So… my Nozbe app is now mature. However, as I’ve been preparing today for this Wednesday’s celebratory recording of the NoOffice FM Podcast, I’ve realized that I’ve been making some very immature decisions on my way to getting here:

💼 🤩 ✅ ⭐️ Mighty Fridays in Nozbe - for 8 years (2016) we’ve been working only 4 days a week!

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 /workshow/

Let me tell you how my small but global company Nozbe became a pioneer of the 4-day work week, thanks to Mighty Fridays! We introduced this concept in 2016 and it was so successful that two years later I was invited to talk about it on national Breakfast Television. Which followed many articles in local and national press about our company. What follows below is more-less my speech at a conference WORKsHOW 2025. Here goes:

🙁 💼 ⭐️ I’ve stopped posting on Twitter/X indefinitely

Thursday, November 14, 2024 /twitter/

After many months of thinking, deliberating and soul-searching, I’ve decided to finally stop posting on my @MSliwinski account on X (formerly Twitter). If you want to follow me, feel free to do so on Mastodon or LinkedIn. Alternatively sign up for my Newsletter, which I’m sending every 2 weeks. If you’re curious how and why it came to this decision, here goes:

✅ 💼 🎬 Set up Nozbe in 5 minutes or less! You can change your company’s habits so quickly!

Wednesday, August 7, 2024 /nozbe-5min/

My app Nozbe is kind-of in productivity space, but now as we serve SMART business owners we are more in habit-changing space. Especially as entrepreneurs realize their companies are becoming successful and need to get organized, they need Nozbe but they tell me they have no time to set it up. That’s why I recorded this short video explaining that you CAN set up yourself and 2 of your closest co-workers in 5 minutes or less, from start to finish:

💼 🍎 180 degrees opinion change by Steve Jobs

Wednesday, July 3, 2024 /180/

Over the last weekend I’ve been reading a book compiled by the wife of late Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Laurene Powell Jobs: Make Something Wonderful (get it for free on Books) and one of the stories there was about Steve not being afraid to change his mind: “I have changed my position 180 degrees.” and I believe us leaders can learn a lot from it:

💌 💼 ✅ Free trials are a waste of everyone’s time

Wednesday, May 15, 2024 /trial/

Today I’m offering a very controversial take on trials. Industry standard is to offer them… but at Nozbe we just stopped doing that 🛑. We’ve found out that trials are ineffective so so let’s do something different:

🍎 💼 For Developers to win Apple doesn’t have to lose - why Tim Cook should listen to Steve Jobs

Wednesday, March 13, 2024 /good-job/

I am an Apple fanboy and happy user of their products: iPad, iPhone, Watch and iCloud and everything in between. However, as a developer of Nozbe which is available on both of Apple’s platforms: iOS and macOS I have very mixed feelings about the company. Actually, I’m disappointed in them and the way they guard the App Store “Services” revenue and exercise their position, making fun of anti-steering provisions or EU’s DMA laws. Instead of making their platforms better, they are doing everything in their power to keep the status quo. That’s why I think it’s time for Tim Cook and all Apple executives to listen to the late Steve Jobs from his keynote at MacWorld Boston in 1997:

💼 ✅ 🎥 🎬 Two Michaels walk into an office… and argue if virtual meetings are real!

Wednesday, March 6, 2024 /michaels/

I’m a huge fan of videos where there are two talking heads and both are the same person. Especially I’m a fan of Pitch Meetings by Ryan George. That’s why as I started my new @MichaelTeam YouTube Channel I wanted to try it out myself and finally yesterday as I had my favorite “Design Fight” meeting with my Nozbe team I decided to take this opportunity and try it out:

✅ 💼 ✏️ ⭐️ Nozbe - app for SMART business owners and teams - turns 17!

Tuesday, February 6, 2024 /nozbe17/

Last week, on February 1, Nozbe turned 17 years old and as I reflect over these last years I’d like to dig deeper into who is Nozbe really for? While working with Seth Godin’s marketing book I was thinking how to really convey to our current and future customers what we as Nozbe believe in. What’s our why? Because people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Not only our core values but also how we work, how we’re remote first, we don’t use email to collaborate, or have very few meetings. How to create this tension and play with status. How to say that people like us do things like this. Being a productivity nerd and loving the SMART acronym for goal setting, I decided to piggy-back on it and create my own way.