All About Google Workspace with Guest Travis Schumacher

February 24, 2023

Google can do so much more for you than just Gmail.

In this episode, Monica is joined by Travis Schumacher, Google Partner (and Monica’s brother) to talk about all things Google Workspace. This paid version of Google provides your company or organization with powerful tools to keep your business running efficiently, so you can focus less on how to send a document back and forth and more on the important stuff. 

Transcription

Travis Schumacher  

You can’t really call Google on a free Gmail account if you’re having trouble, kind of just gotta, you just gotta kind of figure it out. Whereas with with Google Workspace with the on the business side, you can call a partner, you know, like myself, or you can even reach out to Google if you’re having a specific problem.

Monica Pitts  

If you’re a natural-born marketer, You’re one lucky son of a gun. If you’re like most people, marketing, especially online marketing is about as appealing as standing in a police lineup. The MayeCreate team of creatives has transformed websites and digital marketing from craptastic to fantastic since 2005. Our podcast Marketing with Purpose makes sense of marketing, so you can make purposeful decisions instead of carrying on with the same old crap you’ve been doing. And now your host, Monica Pitts, founder of MayeCreate, with another episode on how to make your marketing not suck. Hello, again, and welcome back to Marketing with Purpose. My name is Monica Pitts, and I’m super excited today, because I get to hang out with one of my favorite people on Earth, Travis Schumacher. And it’s not just because he’s really smart, it’s also because he’s my brother. So I invited Travis here to talk with you guys today, because he knows all about Google Workspace. And I have people ask me about Google Workspace all the time, because they’re looking for an email solution that will allow them to have a professional email. And then I send them over to Travis because I don’t know everything about it. Because even though I build websites, that doesn’t mean I know anything about your email, like really? So, Travis, why don’t you start by introducing yourself and telling us about your business?

Travis Schumacher  

All right, Monica, thanks for thanks for inviting me to hang out, virtually. Obviously, my name is Travis Schumacher. I’m general manager over at Tranquility Internet. And we’re an internet provider. So we give people internet, you know, at their home or their business. We also help them with email services like Google Workspace, and basically helping them communicate on the Internet, you know, getting to the internet that that’s kind of our specialty. So we’ve been a Google partner for 10-plus years. So we definitely know what’s going on there. 

Monica Pitts  

So where are you located?

Travis Schumacher  

We’re here in Columbia, Missouri. The heart of Missouri, in CoMo.

Monica Pitts  

Yeah, and you’re like, right, downtown, too. So that’s kind of fun. Yep. But you for this type of a service for Google Workspace. You can work with people anywhere, right? It’s not just in Columbia, Missouri, because it’s a hosted service out online, correct?

Travis Schumacher  

Yep. We can pretty much help folks anywhere.

Monica Pitts  

So I thought maybe we would start out by just explaining what Google Workspace is. Because I mean, not everybody knows. I mean, I feel like everybody’s heard of Gmail. Right? Can we all agree that everybody knows what Gmail is? You think? Yes, yep. Yep.

Travis Schumacher  

I think so. Yeah.

Monica Pitts  

So what the heck is Google Workspace, then?

Travis Schumacher  

Google Workspace is essentially Google’s business, you know, email platform. It’s kind of like Gmail on steroids, right? They, there’s a lot more stuff with it. And you can actually control a lot more stuff. So you can dictate what people apps people have access to, you know, Calendar, Docs, you know, all sorts of stuff, even restoring their email if someone goes and deletes a bunch of stuff. So it gives you more control to your to your email, as a business, and it’s their basic, it’s their business product.

Monica Pitts  

But it’s a lot more than just email, like I heard you mentioned, the Google Docs. And you have Google Drive, which that’s like, file storage, right? 

Travis Schumacher  

There’s a ton of core apps. I mean, there’s Gmail, you know, as part of its of Google Workspace, there’s Google Drive, where you can store files, there’s Calendar, where you can have your calendar invites. There’s Meet where you can have virtual meetings. There’s data retention, you can even manage devices, remote wipe, I mean, there’s tons of stuff that a lot of folks don’t even know is there, but it’s but it’s in there. 

Monica Pitts  

I didn’t know that. I actually if I’m being honest, I don’t even know what remote wipe means and I don’t even I don’t even tell me don’t even tell me in my head explode. Okay. Tell me. So are there any other products like Google Workspace out there that people compare it to that they might know exist.

Travis Schumacher  

Yeah, the biggest one is probably Office 365. That’s Microsoft’s business email communications suite, you know, where they have, you know, Outlook, you know, for email, they have Word and Excel and PowerPoint and OneDrive, you know, Microsoft Teams for collaboration, you know, web meetings. So that’s kind of, there they go, Google and Microsoft go head-to-head, you know, with those two, those two product lines, the Office 365 and Google Workspace.

Monica Pitts  

I feel like one of the main reasons that we moved over to Google Workspace as a company was because we needed to be able to share all of our files back and forth with each other and not be just creating files on repeat over and over and over again, because back in the day, you had a Word doc, and then you email that to somebody, and then they put their revisions in it, and then they emailed it back to you, and then you saved it, the two versions, and then back and forth, and back and forth. And it was just, it was a mess. Like you never knew what was what and which one you needed to be working in. And so I feel like using a product, like Google Workspace can allow teams to collaborate a lot easier, especially in this day and age where not everybody is sitting in the same room anymore.

Travis Schumacher  

Right, no, totally.

Monica Pitts  

Okay, so I know, so we already discussed, we think we know everybody knows what Gmail is. And there’s a free Gmail though. So that just Google Workspace isn’t necessarily like the free version of Gmail. So what’s the difference between the free version of Gmail and the Gmail that comes inside of Google Workspace?

Travis Schumacher  

I’d say there’s, there’s three things. The first thing is what the very, I guess, the most important thing is the free version of Gmail, you have to use gmail.com, you know, as as the email address, with Google Workspace, you can have you know, your name at your business at your domain.com. Okay, so that man, that’s one of the biggest things, you can’t do that with a personal Gmail account, you can’t have that professional-looking email address. With, with with Gmail, okay. The next thing is ads. Obviously, you see some ads on the right-hand side, you know, with within Gmail and your work in or your, or the calendar, or whichever whatever app you’re using. And so you can see those ads and stuff, you know, on that, on that one side, they’re trying to, you know, advertise things to you. And then the last thing is, you know, support, you can’t really call Google on a free Gmail account, if you’re having trouble, kind of just gotta, you just gotta kind of figure it out. Whereas with, with Google Workspace with the on the business side, you can call a partner, you know, like myself, or you can even you reach out to Google if you’re having a specific problem. So it’s, it’s a paid service, so you can get, you know, actual support. So those three things, you know, again, it’s your professional email address, not just to Gmail, you know, no ads, and then you can actually get support.

Monica Pitts  

So, if you have the free Gmail account, I do like, okay, so I’m asking this question, because I really don’t know, because I’ve had the paid account for so long. We’ve literally used it forever. If you have the free account, do you have access to all the other apps? Do you get Google Docs and Google Sheets and that kind of stuff? Or are they not there for you?

Travis Schumacher  

Majority of them are there. And they’re tied to your specific user, your your Gmail user, you can’t really control. So if you have several employees, and they all have free Gmail accounts, right, you can’t really control or dictate what happens in those accounts, because those are theirs. On the paid side, you know, if you have a Google Workspace account, you can block those accounts out, you can change passwords on them, you just have you have more control than than just a free account, you can pretty much access you can even control which apps you want your your users to have access to. So if you don’t want them to create any YouTube channel, you know on their personal account that’s trying to talk about your business. You can you know, shut that down and they only certain people, your only your marketing team could have access to say your YouTube channel.

Monica Pitts  

We learned this the hard way once upon a time, because before Google Workspace came about, we had one of our new and extremely articulate designers create, like user guides for each new thing that she learned in our company. And they were all saved underneath her account. And then when she left, we closed her account. And we created a new account for the new person, these were paid Gmail accounts, they just weren’t all within Google Workspace together with our company. So we didn’t roll it over to another person. And we lost all of the user guides that she made. And it was so sad. It was so sad. It was awful. And I don’t know if we ever remade them. That’s terrible thing to admit. But like, that’s what can happen whenever you have those individual Gmail accounts. So another question that I have for you is, so we have the shared Drive, is that normal? Because so one of the challenges that we were having is that people would make their files but then only they had access to that file unless they shared it with all the other team members. And now we have our shared Drives, which means that everyone underneath the MayeCreate.com domain who has access to Google Workspace can get to all the things in the shared Drive, and you don’t have to share it with everybody. I say that clearly enough. Does that make sense? Is that in the normal? Or do we have something special?

Travis Schumacher  

So there’s, there’s four different tiers of Google Workspace, you know, there’s the starter, I believe, the standard, and then the plus. Okay, so the starter, you just, you don’t have access to, you know, the shared Drive, you know, functionality, you have to, you know, upgrade to the the standard version, or the plus version to have access to that. And what’s really cool about that, if you’re, if you’re needing a file storage, you know, a file type server, you know, those files, if you put them in a shared drive, they’re owned by the shared drive, they’re not owned by an individual. So therefore, if someone leaves, it’s like, not a big deal, it’s, it’s still saved and stored on the shared drive, not the individual.

Monica Pitts  

So that’s, that’s what we needed. It makes our lives a lot easier. Okay, so I hear that you can sign up for Google Workspace for free, if you’re a nonprofit, do you know anything about that?

Travis Schumacher  

You can, they actually have some great stuff, some great discounting for nonprofits, I believe, I think they discount up to 70% off the standard pricing. And you can have as many users as you want, they have the starter plan, the standard, the plus, you know, and the starter plan, you can, you don’t have as many users as you want, you don’t have to pay for it, okay. And then they have this standard, which has like the, my, the shared Drive, which is like, looks like they have a discounted to like three bucks a user instead of $12. It’s made pretty, pretty heavy discounting, you know, trying to try to give back and help out. They do have some, you there’s some requirements you have to adhere to, in order to qualify for that kind of stuff. And you have to be a 501c3, you know, nonprofit, yeah, to have that status. And then you they have a company that you register through called TechSoup, which is kind of a cool company. They sell a lot of discounted hardware. You know, from a licensing standpoint, and they, I mean, they’re, they’re a worldwide organization. And so Google uses them to verify that you are a nonprofit. That’s one of their ways of easing the burden, I guess on verifying you are who you say you are. So yes, there are free accounts, which are awesome. And in there, they’re the same as the the business ones, just discounted heavily.

Monica Pitts  

So a couple things that I really do love about Google Workspace for nonprofits is that you can actually embed a Google Drive folder in your WordPress site. So if you you can password protect that page. And then you can share, say all of your meeting minutes with your board, if you want to. That is super, super handy. And we’ve done that for a number of our nonprofits that are just looking for a way to easily share files back and forth with one another. And also, it is one of the things that I have run into many times as a volunteer or as a board member of a nonprofit is losing process documents. So for example, let’s say that you have an event and you only hold it every four years, well, you have to figure out the process of planning and hosting that event, right? And you’re always asking yourself, Well, what did what did the people before me do? Right? And, and they saved it someplace on their own computer, and you can’t find it, or you can’t find the file folder for it anywhere. And if you save it out in Google Docs, and your organization has their own Google Workspace account, you’ll be able to get it. And then you don’t have to relearn it every year, and it saves you so much time and energy. So I’ve seen it solves so many problems for our nonprofits, it’s just, it’s a really cool service. Okay, so, um, let’s transition into talking about, like, let’s say, the, you know, like, this is the thing, you really want to try Google Workspace for your business or organization near how does that go, like, if you have an existing email account, and existing documents, and then you’re gonna move them over to Google Workspace, like, what the heck, that seems like a gigantic tech vortex, like some type of black hole for me to fall into. 

Travis Schumacher  

Sometimes it can be, usually there’s a, there’s migration tools for to migrate from, you know, with to migrate your email, to suck it all into to the Google Workspace account. There’s, there’s free tools to do that with, there’s paid tools. And, you know, typically, that process looks like you started, you know, the, the migration. And then it, depending on how much email you have, some people have a lot, you know, several gigs, you know, multiple gigs, hundreds of gigs, and that gets, takes time to migrate to those servers. The nice thing is, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s backed up, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s there, you can access it, you know, wherever, through through a web page through the, the Gmail interface, or the webmail interface. So the migration can take some time. And they usually, there’s a couple different parts on typical migrations, it’s Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then you know, files, if you’re going to migrate, you know, use their, their Google Drive the file, the file server, like Monica was talking about, so that can take usually I look at that as like, hey, we’re moving, we need to throw out a bunch of stuff we don’t want. And we’re going to kind of reorganize the house, we’re going to try to put, you know, label these boxes, your kitchen. You know, Connor’s room, Sarah’s room, you know, so that when the movers go, they put them in the right rooms. And you know, that’s kind of the same process, you know, what I try to go through with our clients when they’re migrating, you know, files to help reorganize, it’s like a cleaning thing, you can export everything, depending on what it is, and carte blanche, upload, and just use the search functionality within the file server. And I mean, as long as your your name, your naming convention is something you can search for, you will find it. Otherwise, you may may be in a box that’s behind another box under box that you might not find for a little while.

Monica Pitts  

So one of our clients like in their website rebuild, to going into the closets of your house, and being forced to sort through every single item and then doing like the most massive spring cleaning, like ever. And, and I totally understood that. Because there there are so many things that we have and that we create, especially when data is so easy to create that you I mean like why do we even need it like there’s on any given day, I could open up my Google Drive and see multiple Untitled Documents. And it’s because I just opened up a Google Doc took three words worth of notes so I wouldn’t forget them. And then just closed it and it’s not even there. And so I know other people are doing the same thing I could see where it would be really beneficial to have someone take you through that emotional process of claiming your data. Now I have a question for you. You’re you were talking about how the migration process takes time. Do you keep using your normal email as the information migrates or do you wait or how does that work?

Travis Schumacher  

Typically, you know the files once you once you said up, you start with Google Workspace, it’s pretty much immediately ready, you know, for use after you’ve verified it in, you know, it’s up and going. So as far as when you’re transitioning email, usually we import, we do it one or two ways. We either do, you know, basically a hot cut, where we send all new mail to Google, and then we import the, you know, the, the, the existing data from a previous, you know, email provider. And that way, anything new is coming in into the new house. And then everything else just starts, you know, starts coming in, you know, just like, just like the movers, right, they keep bringing in, bring it in, bring it in, and eventually all your data is there, once the migration is complete. Other times, we will do will deliver email to both places, they’ll be going to your old one, and then go into your new one. And we’ll do that migration, and then most everything’s there, it’s the same in both places, and then we just stopped delivering it to the old one. Okay. So those are typically the two and dependent upon the size of the organization. You know, usually the bigger the organization, you know, we used that latter process with smaller ones, you know, 10, 15, 20, you know, less than 50 users, we probably, you know, and also, depending upon the nature of the business, you know, we would probably just, you know, cut things over, and then migrate the mail, because at all, we do it on like a Friday, and it starts being in there. So come Monday, most all, your mail is probably going to be there already. So that’s how the kind of typical migration options and how that how it usually works.

Monica Pitts  

Okay, so when you’re explaining all this stuff, to me, I’m realizing how I like never did this for myself, like it was totally taken care of, for me. And I’m just asking myself, like, how hard is it really to switch from another system? To Google Workspace? Even from maybe the free version of Google to the paid version of Google? Is it something that somebody can do for themselves? Or is it really something that you’re like, maybe you should, hire someone to do it for you.

Travis Schumacher  

I mean, it kind of depends, you know, usually on the business side, it comes down to one or two things, you either know enough to be dangerous, and you kind of want to kind of want to do it yourself, or you’re like, I just don’t really want to mess with it, I want to I want to know kind of how it works. But I just want it to be there, I want you to take care of it. Because I’ve got other things I need to be doing, you know, to operate, run my business, you know, have a Gmail account, you know, they have if it’s going Gmail at Gmail, there is a migration tool within Google Workspace that, you know, you can put in your username, you know, your your password of your existing Gmail account, and it will, you know, suck in that data. It’ll it’ll bring in your, your email. I don’t know if I have to double check, but I don’t think it it. It may migrate your contacts and calendars, since it’s kinda Gmail, the Gmail. But I know for sure it migrates, you know, the email, your docs typically won’t, you’d have to export those and re-import those. 

Monica Pitts  

I know that with our company we had do you guys do all of our emails. And then Stacy took care of most of the Docs. And we were just moving from a different style of Google account into the workspace when it became available, because it wasn’t available. Like it was like it is now in the past. And Stacy took care of the migration of all of our files, because we really did do a cleaning of house and some stuff just like never moved because the amount of data that we create, and I think I remember you just being like, Monica, the amount of crap that you guys make on a daily basis with these design files is astronomical. I think you were grossed out at one point about it, but the file is going to be like multiple megs it’s not like it’s tiny, and no, it’s not. There’s what we do every day, we just make crap. Okay, so if somebody did need help with it, is there a way to find somebody in their area? Or is there a directory that they can go to to find a provider for a transition?

Travis Schumacher  

Yeah, I mean, for for Google Workspace, if you hop on their site, you can look for a you know, I think under the resource section, you can look for Google, you know, partners. We’re obviously listed as one of them. And you can try to find one in your area. You know, from a from a migration standpoint, it’s it’s nice to work with a partner, because you’re going to have someone local, that you can actually, you know, reach out to and work with. I got a lot of folks that sign up with Google direct, and they’re like, man, I didn’t know, I could just sign up for you. And it’s the same price. You know, it’s, why would I just work with you, because I can actually talk to you. You speak. You use you speak to the language I speak. So, you know, get getting a partner, I think is is definitely a bit a big benefit, even if you’re, you like doing things yourself. Yeah, I think it’s a good place to look, look there and asking other you know, business owners, if they have a partner that they work with, that they can point you in the right direction.

Monica Pitts  

And you guys offer training, do a lot of the partners offer training, because I know that there is like an administrative component to it. And you’ve even described it during this podcast about how there’s different apps that they have access to, and all kinds of different stuff. So do you do training from like, an, I’m assuming that most Google partners are not training people how to use Gmail, they would be showing you how to administer your accounts. Right?

Travis Schumacher  

Yeah, I mean, there’s, so typically what we do, when we when we onboard, you know, we’ll do we’ll do some might do migration, unless we’re just starting fresh, usually do a quick intro of the admin panel. So you know, what’s going on where things are at that, you know, of it. And, and then I point you, we talk a little bit about the business what, what tools you think you’d use the most, some, you know, are like we’re going to use the email and the calendar, and then the meeting functionality, we’re not really going to use the the Docs or the Drive or anything like that. That’s what we use. And so we’d kind of, you know, in the, in the little, the little onboarding, you know, our session that I usually do, we run through those areas, and I put him to the Google Learning Center, they have a great tool, where you can see that they’ve got videos, there’s a bunch of great content in there. And that gets folks started and get some answering those other questions. And we could do another follow-up where if we need to do a more specific tailored training, then we can and we usually just charge a, you know, like, an hourly rate for that. So that they get, you know, the most pertinent content for what they need. But I usually yes, they hopefully you do get your whether you use jump on with me or another partner that they do give you a general overview, that admin dashboard, because there’s a lot of power. That’s that’s back there that, that a lot of clients just don’t know about. 

Monica Pitts  

We discover things all the time, I’ll be like, hey, what is this? Why is this and then all like Google it and it’ll be like, Oh, you go into this admin thing. And I’m like, Hey, Stacy, can you make this happen in the admin thing, she’s like, I don’t know. And then she loves me, she starts digging around in the admin. And it’s just, it’s kind of fun. And we’re always finding different things that we can and can’t do. Okay, so before we wrap up, I have to ask you that like, burning question of all people who are thinking about buying a service, which is like, if someone were, obviously you can go out and find Google’s pricing out on their website, because it’s out there. And we’re not going to quote it here. Because if it changes, and you listen to this podcast, and you’re, you get the wrong stinking number, so we’re not. But and as Travis mentioned, if you did sign up through a partner, it’s the same monthly price most of the time through to partners. So then if they chose to have someone, like your company, migrate their content, or migrate their user, like, Is it super expensive? Or how does that work?

Travis Schumacher  

It probably it kind of depends on the content, you’re wanting to migrate, obviously, we’re just doing some basic, you know, some email, it’s not going to be as is heavy hand, heavy lifting as, you know, migrating and importing, you know, two terabytes worth of documents, you know, and helping you structure that. So typically, it typically you’ll see, you know, for for data migration, you know, anywhere from like, I’d say, you know, 20 to like 75 bucks per user to migrate data, you know, probably somewhere in the in that ballpark. And then for your, your specialty things like we’re migrating all this data, we want to do extra training, onboarding, those who kind of be you know, a case-by-case basis. You know, quote it out on like a, you know, like a project, you know, type you know, consulting rate. 

Monica Pitts  

Like $20 to $75 per user for like the email kind of data here, right?

Travis Schumacher  

Yeah, so like, our standard is usually 25 bucks a user for just migrating email, contacts and calendars. If we want to start migrating, you know, drive docs, you know, and help them with all that. If we, if we’re just migrating just the user stuff, and not creating my shared drives and things like that. Usually, it’s, you know, in that $75 to $100 a user range known for helping to restructure everything and doing all that, and it’s more of a project based on the scale of what, what’s needed. 

Monica Pitts  

Man, now, I know why I paid you to do it. But, of course, I would not have wanted to do it myself. Like, my theory with outsourcing tasks is that if I’m never going to have to figure out how to do it again, I don’t want to figure out how to do it right now. So I would just rather you do it for me and not even move on. Because like, what am I going to migrate mail again, to my Workspace account? Anyway, so that gets us my mentality of it. But yes, okay, well, awesome. So before we wrap up this podcast, is there anything else that you feel like people should know about Google Workspace?

Travis Schumacher  

There’s so much it’s so much more than just email, and calendar. There’s so many more things in the back end of it that that you don’t think about. I mean, I’ll tell you a story. There was a contractor, electrical electrical contractor that we were working with. And they I think they had 20 users or so. And they one of their users kind of went, one of their employees kind of went rogue and deleted everything they had been working on for like two weeks, and quit. And you know, in his account, and they were up in arms, they’re trying to figure this out. They, they they couldn’t find this data, they’re trying to put things back together. And they they picked up the phone called and said, Hey, Travis, what? Is there any way we can recover any of this stuff? And I said, Yeah, we go in there, and I click a button, and poof, I got the last 30 days, it all comes back. And they’re like, oh, gosh, I didn’t know that was there. You know, and it’s like, there’s so much stuff in the back, you know, in that content, you know, that you’re that you don’t know, that you could be using to take advantage of that. It’s just so much more powerful than just email, in calendar, storing a few files. So that’s probably the you know, that’s a whole story. I like to share that.

Monica Pitts  

Well, I’m from a technology and a progress, progress progression perspective. Like one of the things I love about Google Workspace is it integrates with like pretty much anything, especially if you are familiar with Zapier, which will connect to systems like I clicking buttons basically. And I’ve integrated it with websites and all kinds of stuff to do like just awesome, almost unimaginable things that you would have at one point had to pay, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars to a programmer to do and now you can do it in a Google Sheet or with Gmail or connecting all of them and some of it isn’t even through like Zapier, Stacy makes it send emails to people when you click a button or automate tasks. When you check a box, its darndest thing. And so fun. And like I said, it used to be something that you would have to pay a programmer to do and now you can do it on your own. Because you have all these resources at your fingertips. It’s so easy. And like it, it makes my life better. It really does. And it makes my business run smoother. So I love it. Now, Travis, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. If people want to contact you, like if they are like, hey, this student seems alright. Maybe he should do my Google Workspace stuff. How did they find you?

Travis Schumacher  

They can find us. You know, our website is probably the easiest place tranquillity.net. You know, or you can call our office mean, we’re 573-443-3983 is our number.

Monica Pitts  

Only one digit off from the Humane Society, by the way. You answer the phone there. People will be like, hey, do you have any puppies? And I’m like, no, this is internet service provider. And then I finally looked at the name for the or the number for the Humane Society and it’s one digit off.

Travis Schumacher  

Yeah, or, you can email us, you know, support@tranquilly.net. I mean, you know, any one of those will definitely get to us. We love to help you. 

Monica Pitts  

All right, so tranquility.net or support@tranquility.net t or 573-443-3983. That’s it. Well, thank you so much. And thank you everybody for listening and learning about Google Workspace today. Hopefully, we helped you. Well, at least learn something and if not solve a problem in your business. If you enjoyed this episode, or if you learned a thing or two, please consider giving us a review because when you review our podcast, it helps us meet more people just like you and help them solve their marketing and technology challenges, which is what Marketing with Purpose is all about leading with helping people solve their problems. So thank you again for listening. And until next time, go forth and market with purpose.