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What tools keep my business running - especially when I have a day job?!

Well, let’s waste no time and dive in because I have some favorites!

01. practice

You may have heard of Honeybook and Dubsado. But, you probably haven’t heard of practice have you? Practice.do is pretty new on the scenes and though they’re imperfect, they’re rapidly adding features that I’m really excited about.

One of the biggest reasons I switched to Practice.do—from Honeybook, in fact—was the fact that I knew I wanted to pivot back to client work and Practice.do has a built-in chat feature inside of it’s platform. Your customers can create a client account for free, access shared documents and to-dos, and chat directly with you all inside of the platform. That seemed invaluable!

Practice.do also has some other added bonuses:

• Great Customer service! I’ve literally never gotten faster replies from a platform when I’m having issues!

• The ability to connect to shared Google Calendars inside the scheduler. It still shocks me how frequently this isn’t a capability of a lot of big-name platforms, including Dubsado (at least back when I used it!). I have a number of shared calendars that I need to avoid appointments on, including for my Day Job and for my Mighty Networks community. This makes it so easy to do so!

• The Library. This is a cool feature. Basically, when someone signs up for a package or program with you, you can automatically give them access to an entire library of documents and worksheets and videos to facilitate their coaching experience

Basically, Practice.do is a really cool platform that I’ve been loving and it’s a great change of pace from some of the other big-name, visually stunning, but limited platforms.

02. Squarespace

I’ve used other website-building platforms since I first built a website in 2015. I love Squarespace. I remember when I switched to Wordpress because I guess I felt I should, but I quickly was so overwhelmed by the platform. Nothing came easily. I needed a plug-in for everything. And squarespace just isn’t like that.

Even before Squarespace moved to the “fluid engine” - their new website build, which is even easier to use - I found this platform so intuitive and simple! You can easily build blogs, sell content in your own store, and with the addition of Member Spaces, you can sell courses as well inside of your website with easily to use and build customer accounts and members-only page integrations.

It’s just easy. And the fact that everything is in one place without the need to use outside plug-ins for sales, blogs, etc. is so amazing! I first started my website in 2015 and I will likely never move away from Squarespace.

What are some of the perks of Squarespace:

• It’s all-in-one. As I’ve said, you don’t have to have plug-ins for the basic functionality of your website. IT’s all self-contained inside of the Squarespace platform and you can make as simple or as complex a website as you like!

• Simple and easy-to-use. Squarespace was a simpler drag-and-drop website builder before and then when it moved to a “fluid engine” builder about a year ago, it got even better! It’s even easier to use.

• Templates galore! Whether you use templates from Squarespace themselves OR you use one of the many pre-built templates online, like mine from GoLive HQ, there are tons of templates to choose from. Basically, you can create a kickass, visually beautiful website, without having to pay $10K to a designer.

• No-code editing capabilities. This has gotten even better over the years, with new functionality and the ability to change the color of a single word or circle a single line on a page! It’s so easy!

• The community around Squarespace. Not only are there tons of designers that offer pre-built Squarespace website templates, but beyond that, the community of people online who offer insights and help on Squarespace is amazing. There are YouTube channels dedicated to teaching you tricks, people to help with custom coding, and tons more! If you have a question for how to do something on Squarespace, guaranteed, you’ll find an answer online.

• They’re making big improvements. In recent years, they’ve added Member Areas so you can sell members-only content. They’ve upgraded to the “fluid engine” for even easier website building. They’ve added in some fun ways to:

  • underline text

  • circle text

  • and highlight text to make it stand out

This is just scratching the surface of why I love Squarespace so much. I’m all about ease in my business and the long-and-short of it is that Squarespace makes it easy.

03. Notion

Of course I’m going to talk about Notion in this list! But it might also be the shortest entry because I talk about Notion a lot! And I’m pretty sure you already know how obsessed with it I am.

I’ve used the expression “organize your entire life” before to describe productivity systems, but, until Notion, I don’t think it was true. This program really does have the power to transform, organize, and systematize your entire life into a streamlined, simplified, and automated one. Plus, it’s constantly leveling up and improving with new features and tools that make it even better. So, it’s no question why I’m obsessed with Notion as a platform.

In my business, I - importantly - use Notion to:

• Organize, schedule, and store my content ideas

• Keep track of my finances

• Manage customers

• Host customer portals

• Outline and plan my goals

• Write books

• Take notes

• Plan launches

Basically anything that happens in my business happens inside of Notion. It’s a necessity for me and my business—and frankly my life—would not run without it.

04. zapier

You know those small, tedious tasks that can totally suck up your time? Like adding your new members to your member list or pulling in client information into your CRM? Zapier can do all of that for you.

Now, I’ll admit, I think Zapier is a little bit tech-y. I didn’t realize how tech-y of a person I was until I realized that certain technological challenges, including using Notion, came pretty easily to me and that I actually enjoyed the troubleshooting aspect of learning and using them. Zapier is similar, but the sheer number of things that Zapier can easily do in the background to save you minutes and seconds are unreal.

Now, I said minutes and seconds intentionally. On single tasks, it might not seem like Zapier saves you that much time. But what if you combine all of those tasks together? Let’s say you spend 10-15 minutes doing a tedious task per day. Over the week, you’ve saved over an hour. Multiply that by dozens of tasks? And the time saved on the tedium is so worth!

I use Zapier to:

• Add Community Members & Subscribers to a Special Segment in my Flodesk Account

• Add Members to a Database in Notion

• Import Subscribers from my quiz platform, Try Interact, to Flodesk

• Create a Welcome Post Each Time a New Member Joins my Community

• Update My Income Tracker with New Sales

• Upload Zoom Recordings to Google Drive

• Sync My Google Calendar to My Notion

And the capabilities are truly endless. It’s become so integral in my systems that I legitimately check to see if a service has a Zapier integration now before I try it out. It’s that important to me!

05. Mighty networks

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m big on experimenting with systems in my business. I’ve tried a bajillion productivity tools before choosing Notion. I’ve used Wix, Wordpress, etc. before staying with Squarespace. I’ve done the same with Mighty Networks and a community/course hosting platform.

I’ve tried Podia. I’ve tried Memberspace. I’ve tried Teachable. I’ve tried Kajabi even. Mighty Networks is my favorite. In my offerings, it’s really important to me that I have a community component so that I can create connections among those inside of my memberships and free community. I need the ability to host video training and courses, of course. I also need the ability to host Events inside of my community and membership spaces. Mighty Networks is literally the only platform that allowed me to do all of those things.

Every other platform I’ve tried, including Kajabi did something poorly. Yes, Kajabi has a community feature now, but have you used it? It sucks. Most creators and coaches I’ve worked with who do have their courses on Kajabi then have a Facebook group where they share content, make it interactive, and host events or lives. I did not want that for my communities! It was really important for me to have everything in once place, not just for my own ease of use, but for that of my clients.

Plus, you can use it like a website—my preference—or an app! And on said websites/apps you can send your users push notifications! How many platforms let you do that?!

06. Meet Edgar

This one is a new one for me, but—as you might have guessed—I’m a big fan of tools and apps that make things easy for me and keep things running in the background in my business. That’s where Meet Edgar comes in. Meet Edgar is a social media tool that connects to your different accounts, like Pinterest, YouTube, Podcast, etc., to places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and more so that it can disperse those pieces of content auto-magically.

Basically, it eliminates the need for you to manually go in and schedule your new podcast, YouTube video, or whatever other content you’re making to post to your various social media accounts. Note, it does not connect to Instagram, but honestly? I don’t need any help being on Instagram…

So, those are my go-to, fave business tools!

What do you think?
Drop a comment below!