My Favorite Business Tools
These are the tools I use and recommend:
Note: Some of these are affiliate links. Help me, help you. 😊
Squarespace
Website Builder
There are a lot of website builders these days, but I think Squarespace is in a league of its own. It’s all about the user experience. I recommend and work with Squarespace because I want people to feel like they own and understand how to use their website. Your website is your virtual home, the most important piece in your business — it should be easy for you to use.
Squarespace’s platform is simple and offers a robust forum for any questions you have. The built in templates are great for new businesses getting off the ground and they also provide supportive business add-ons like, Email Marketing, Scheduler, Members Area and growing eCommerce capabilities.
If you are currently building your website, download this checklist.
Notion
All-in-one-Workspace
This tool is everything in my business. It’s the brain or engine behind my business. It took me year to really start using Notion to its full potential — it has transformed how I organize resources, notes, client information and tasks, marketing ideas, financial check-ins, store brand styles, collaborate with others, create templates, build databased and so much more.
If you’ve downloaded any of the my resources, you’ll have had a taste of Notion.
The relief that I don’t need to remember where everything is in my business has given me peace. I trust that I will find it within Notion because its the structure for all my business goings-on. I think every business needs a tool and a space like this.
I recommend starting with simple tutorials and easing your way into Notion.
Notion is free for personal use.
Flodesk
Email Marketing
Flodesk has risen into popularity real quick because they finally made it easy to create beautiful emails. Ah, thank you.
It’s a refreshingly simple platform which takes the overwhelm out of email marketing. It consists of:
Emails — use a template or make your own and send beautiful emails
Forms — to collect names and emails
Audience — to organize and segment subscribers within their interests
Workflows — automated email sequences for new subscribers
Canva
Design Software
Canva is a web based design tool that is free to use. It hosts tons of templates, has pre-built graphic sizes, and has made the use of video easy. You can make reels in Canva!
Store your brand fonts and colors (in paid version), share files, export and even send to print all in one place.
I admittedly use to not be a fan of Canva and favored Adobe XD. But with the rise of video content, Canva has converted me to a user.
Loom
Video Screen Recorder
If you are looking for a way to communicate beyond emails and cut down on meeting hours — this may be the solution. Video recording allows folks to communicate visually and verbally and it mimics the communicate style of a meeting. If you do any in person video meetings this is a much more personal way of connecting.
This video content on the rise, give Loom a try for more intimate communication.
A few things I love about Loom:
What use to be an hour meeting can now be a 10–15 minute recording
Folks can watch the recording in their own time, rewind, speed up, and watch again. This allow people to sit this how they feel so they can process and respond.
As you watch you can leave emoji reactions, leave time stamped comments and make a Loom video back in response.
Planoly
Social Media Planning & Automation
Planoly is a visual planner for your social media content. You can upload your images or videos to their desktop or mobile app, write captions, schedule and post all from the app.
This is a great tool to batch and store your social media marketing.
For Instagram, I love being able to visually style my feed and see the types of content I have lined up to share.
For Pinterest, I love being able to post the same piece of content to multiple boards, batch create and schedule it out.
Dubsado
Business Management Tool
Dubsado is a beast of a tool. I was hesitant at first but now I am incredible grateful I’ve integrated this tool. It has saved me so much time. This tool is perfect for photographers, coaches, designers, virtual assistance, event planners, artists, bookkeepers, marketers, and more.
If your business requires scheduling, proposals, automated payment notices, forms, canned emails, automated bookings, and more — this tool will transform your admin hours.
Not only does this make general admin and booking easier for you but it also provides a nurturing, branded experience for your clients.
A few thing I love about Dubsado:
Clients can book meetings in their timezone based on my availability. They can reschedule or cancel as needed without any emails back and forth. I would totally screw up timezones if I had to do this manually. 😂
Automated Workflows can be built so your client receives validating emails, next steps and forms to complete while I get notified of their progress and assigned to-dos. I no longer need to keep all these to-dos stored in my brain or process this manually. This provides a far more grounded and easy experience for both parties.
Create templated form and style them to your brand. I have a lot of forms and check-in points within my client process — templates are a must to save time from asking the same questions and recreating the wheel. I can now work from a base template and tweak it for each client. I also love that you can create stylish forms that maintain a consistent brand aesthetic.
Google Suite
File Storage, Custom Email, Docs
This tool may seem obvious, but organizing your files is key to saving time. Get things out of your desktop and download folders and start creating nested folders. Download Google Drive for desktop and keep all your files organized within nested folders while also backing everything up to the cloud.
Google is a robust tool — you can also use gmail, google docs, google sheets, google slides, google forms, google analytics, google ads, google chat and more.
PSA: If you are working with other professionals, handing over organized files is the first step. Please be respectful and take time to organize, hyperlink, share permissions and name your files so others can navigate and find what they need. We can’t read your mind and you likely didn’t pay us to organize your files. 🫣 Okay, PSA over. 🙏
Teachable
Course Platform
Teachable is a beautiful and more affordable course platform. I love the user interface from the students perspective and the ease of uploading new course content. I watched this tutorial to quickly build my first Teachable course.
Teachable offers course sales pages, multiple purchasing plans, tracking of student progress, quizzes, certifications, content drip, upsells and more.
