🤝 Partner Feature: Q&A with Jörg Koper [Consulting & Coaching]

Miša Hennin

Hello and welcome to our first Partner Feature!

In this series, we'll give you an insight into our partners: The experts who advocate for Meister tools and use their know-how to help their clients succeed. You'll find out how partners use our products to overcome a variety of challenges and find new inspiration from these expert users.

Ready to find out how Jörg uses MeisterTask? Read on!

Background Information

Let's start with the basics: where do you work?

My wife Barbara and I run an agency for consulting and coaching. We divide the core tasks of the agency according to our respective areas of expertise and work with freelancers when necessary. The name of our agency (as you could have guessed 😃) is Agentur Koper.

Among our clientele, I have the reputation of being a specialist in marketing strategic storytelling, corporate identity, process optimization, individual strategy development and effective coaching. Barbara manages the entire back office, and together we design the seminars and workshops.

We've already heard about some of your amazing life experiences in the Community - could you take us through your career and share how you came to consulting and coaching?

I have been in the entrepreneurial world for over 30 years. In the early days, I would have been considered a classic nerdish solopreneur. However, in 2005, Barbara and I founded our agency together. We first started with experience-oriented marketing events under our brand Sky & Fun, where we used turbine-powered helicopters, coordinated exciting events, and worked with world-class parachutists and actors.

Over the years, our range of services expanded and we became involved in the production of documentary-style advertisement films under our second brand Air Media Concept. To complement the turbine-powered helicopters we used under Sky & Fun, we later also built our own drones (UAV) for filming. During these early days of drone building, we were among the first to decouple the camera frame from the propeller vibrations, enabling high-resolution filming.

In 2016, it was time for change - we decided to start focusing more on our core competencies. Two years later, I received a coaching certification, and in 2019, a corresponding change in direction followed. Ultimately, we switched to consulting and coaching in order to pass our know-how on to solopreneurs and entrepreneurs in our very own way.

What's your favorite thing about your job?

I love being creative, developing new projects and supporting our clientele with fresh ideas and effective coaching and consulting. It is great to watch others realize their dreams with our help. And as a Meister expert partner, I have the opportunity to show my clients more ways to build, manage and lead their own business with simple means from anywhere in the world.

Using Meister Tools

When and how did you first come across MeisterTask?

We stumbled upon a MeisterTask webinar when we were searching the internet for a project management tool in 2018. Intrigued, we began using it almost experimentally for Sky & Fun and Air Media Concept. We used it to plan sightseeing flights, events, film shoots and much more, mostly because project software programs like MS Project felt overly complex.

Today, we map the entirety of Agentur Koper in MeisterTask. We have set up virtual departments in MeisterTask which, thanks to the many automations, collaborate like a well-coordinated team. This high-level coordination developed over years.

Why did you choose MeisterTask to help you overcome challenges you were facing?

MeisterTask was the first task and project management software that was ready to use without us having to install and configure it on all our computers (Windows and Linux) first. Barbara was tired of messing around with complicated software and just wanted to do her job - MeisterTask made this possible almost immediately.

What improvements have you seen since starting to use MeisterTask?

Since beginning to work with MeisterTask, we work faster and more effectively on our projects. More specifically, we've seen improvements in collaboration - The Guest function allows us to work intensively on projects or coaching with clients outside of our personal appointments.

I expect you have A LOT of projects, how do you structure these to make sure everything stays organized?

Simply put, we have one overarching project from which we control all other areas. But answering this question in more depth requires a bit of background. Let me explain...

Barbara and I imagine our agency as a safe harbor (our surname is shared with a small harbor in Slovenia). As a result, we have built our organizational structure around maritime themes. While this is indeed a very abstract concept, we love this way of planning and have seen many benefits because of it!

Harbors are full of ships: Each ship has a base which requires a load-bearing capacity, something our agency metaphorically also requires. The upper decks are reserved for higher classes; these reflect the premium offers in our agency. Finally, we have the bridge, from which we monitor and control all activities. Therefore, the bridge (Kommandobrücke) is the project from which we control tasks connected with other departments.

All other departments have their own project board. These are as follows:

• Agency management
• Creative department
• Agency planning
• Agency network home port
• Academy

I can imagine this structure seems complicate to others, but it works for us 😃!

The Nitty-Gritty

Do you have a project board template you can share with us?

Yes! Please check out this post in the Community. It gives a short introduction to the professional structure you might choose to use in a project board. At the bottom, you can find a link to the json file for the project - Feel free to import it to your own account!

I'd love to get a picture of how you use MeisterTask on a daily basis. Could you give an example of how you used MeisterTask this morning?

Of course, I first took a look at my Agenda, opened the task "Interview with Miša" and prepared myself to answer these questions. Once I've completed this task, I will go for a nice walk with my wife in the snow.

We have labeled our Agenda sections by weekdays, giving us a perfect overview of our weekly plan. As a result, Agenda is always the first thing we open in the morning and the last thing we look at before ending our workday.

Which MeisterTask feature couldn't you live without?

Definitely the automations! As simple and intuitive as MeisterTask may seem, "under the bonnet" there is a veritable firework of automated workflows that make me happy again and again. In my opinion, time is the most precious thing we have in our lives, besides our health, and there is nothing worse than wasting time with the mindless repetition of basic tasks.

I'm glad you mentioned automations! In the Community, you've built a reputation as an automations master - Please tell us about your go-to automation.

Oh yes, I love automations and of course have several favorites. The combination of "Move task", "Update tags", "Add checklists", "Update status" and "Recurring task" makes perfect workflows possible for me. But the fun really starts when I incorporate the power-up "Task Relationships"! Correctly coordinated, these make navigating through the various project boards a dream. This coordination what I see as the core of logical working.

In running your agency, you must use many different tools - Which pairs best with MeisterTask?

I have always worked according to the principle "less is more" and done without unnecessary software. The age of cloud-based software has, of course, played right into our hands. With the Meister Suite, we have the most important tools at our fingertips, ready to organize ourselves in our daily agency life from anywhere in the world.

Besides the Suite, we use a CRM, a support system, marketing tools and our websites. I set up automations in all these systems to combine them with MeisterTask; for example, I forward information, reports or requests from them to MeisterTask. So, again, everything relevant to our work ends up on our "bridge" in MeisterTask.

Conclusion

Do you have any resources you'd like to share with the Community?

I can definitely recommend a few books that I find particularly worth reading:

• Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from My Barber (Tal Ben-Shahar)
• The One Minute Manager (Ken Blanchard)
• Das anständige Unternehmen (Reinhard K. Sprenger)

And I'd love to direct beginner users of MeisterTask to this post here where I outlined how to get started with MeisterTask.

Finally, if you're a solopreneur or entrepreneur wanting to map your business professionally and individually in MeisterTask, I am offering workshops in Hamburg this year - Feel free to message me for more info!

Thanks so much for speaking with us Jörg! Please let us know how other users can reach you with questions.

I have to thank you Miša. It is always a great pleasure for me to have a chat with you.

When it comes to general questions about the Meister Suite, I can always be reached in the community - I try to help there with quick solutions. When it comes to questions about corporate identity, self-management, process optimization, coaching or my seminars and workshops, I can be reached via my website or LinkedIn.

Admin BSF.company

Wow, thanks for this comprehensive post @Miša Hennin.

You to @Joerg Koper!

The references to harbor operations and how it relates to your agency's branding were my favorite, along with the picture of the helo 🚁

Moreover, the book recommendations are appreciated too, my friend 📚 🙏

Regards.

Andres

Eva Schindler

Wow, great interview. Super inspiring 💡 Thanks for sharing these insights with the Community, @Joerg Koper!

Raphaela Brandner

Very cool article! 🙌

Simone H

@Joerg Koper thank you so much for giving us such detailed insights in how you work with MeisterTask! I am also working in the consulting industry and it was expecially interesting to me how you structure your projects to be able to keep an overview - the analogy with ships is great! 😁

If you don't mind me asking, because your professional path sounds so interesting, did you study anything in the field of markerting or entrepreneurship at university before or did you go straight into working?

Joerg Koper

Thanks a lot for the nice comment @Simone Hofer 👋🙂

After a normal vocational training and a few years in the military, I went straight into self-employment. At first, marketing was a necessity for my own business.

Over the course of time, however, marketing has increasingly become my main interest. I was particularly fascinated by neuromarketing and experiential marketing. So I'm more of a nerdy autodidact with lots of experiences over 30+ years, that is now active as a consultant 😉

Great to see, that you're in the consulting industry too. What is the focus of your business?

Best, Jörg

Cathy Fanning

Thanks to https://community.meister.co/profile/Mi%C5%A1a%20Hennin and @Joerg Koper for the detailed interview. Excellent insight into the business and your use of MeisterTask. Very interesting!

Miša Hennin

Thank you all for your great feedback!

Rooster McNugget

Hi @Joerg Koper and thank you for the insight into your daily business work flow.

It's always interessting to see how others work with MT and how they create there own "Harbor" to build on it.

Best, Samuel

Joerg Koper

You're absolutely right @Rooster McNugget when you say, that we all create our own harbors with our businesses. Especially with the use of MeisterTask.

Best, Jörg

CL Webb

Thanks, @Joerg Koper - I'm just getting acclimated with MeisterTask. This post and links provided will give me a great start! 😀

Joerg Koper

Hi @CL Webb,

that's great to read. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Best, Jörg