Coffee with a Rebel Podcast 

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Show Notes 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• About different tech tools that I use and know about

Links 

• The Entrepreneur Tool Kit - I have the list of resources here
• Book a call with me 

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Full Episode Transcript

During the last couple of months, I've had different people come to me and ask what tools and resources I use in my own business. And here's the thing. Well, I'm happy to share any of that, which I'm actually going to do today. I'm also a believer in choosing what makes sense to you, because my way and the tools I use may not be right for you. And I love exploring different tools. My logical side loves exploring new platforms and figuring out how they work in any kind of way. And so I'm sort of versed in a lot of these different tools that I've explored before I settled on the ones that I'm using. And there are different website tools you can use the one I'm familiar with is WordPress. I've been using WordPress since 2008 and I currently still use it for several of my websites that I am running.

Some of them use DIVI, some of them don't. There's square space and Weebly. I am not necessarily a fan of those, but I have worked with them. I have clients that use Wix. So that's probably the second one I know more about than the other two.

The email tools that I am familiar with are convertkit, active think campaign, mailerlite, MailChimp, and flow desk. The one I'm using is activecampaign. I have used Infusionsoft, which is, I think now keap or something I don't even remember, but I didn't love that one. It was very confusing but I feel like activecampaign is like its baby sister in some kind of a way. And I love the things you can do with activecampaign, even on the lowest level. And it will literally grow with your business. And I love that. I don't dislike the other tools necessary. They all come with their own pros and cons.

Then there are tools for booking and scheduling and there's tidycal, acuity scheduling, calendly, Dubsado and timetrade. The one I use is tidycal that I've got it through appsumo, I own several of their products actually. And that's the one I use for some of them, but I also use calendly because tidycal doesn't allow me to not include timeframes, it just doesn't work for my VIP days is what I'm saying. And so I use calendly because that does what I need for my VIP days and all of them are synced with my Gmail calendar, which is connected to my computer and my phone so that I know when's what, so that's that.

And then the course and or membership platforms, there's membervault, new zenler, wishlist, podia, teachable, thinkific, Kajabi, Kartra, and a few others that I haven't listed or explored, but those ones I've explored and I use membervault and wishlist primarily. I'm familiar with all of the other ones and have worked with them and in some kind of way I have clients that use podia. And when I first started doing courses and memberships have used teachable and thinkific, but I prefer membervault and wishlist really. I use them for very specific things and in very specific ways.

And then there are shopping carts, such as thrivecart or Samcart, where you set up a page and then people can choose how they want to pay. I use thrivecart and I've not explored Sam card in any kind of a way. Thrivecart is the only one I've been with, but I don't hate it.

And then there's the community piece. I know a lot of people are trying to get away from Facebook groups and things like that. And I am one of those people. And so I've looked into circle, tribe, and mighty network and I've settled on circle. I didn't like mighty networks, how I was set up. I don't particularly care for tribe, even though it's very similar to circle and it's set up if I remember correctly. And so I use circle for my community piece and the thing I love about that is that I can also do private coaching through there with clients, if they want to not use voxer or volly, we can just use a space where we write it out. I can still do video postings and things like that. So that is my preferred resource for community.

For social media there are so many. Socialbee, Edgar, HootSuite just being a few of them. I use socialbee for my social media support element. Some people probably prefer the built-in tool that Facebook has to offer for Facebook and Instagram. I like Socialbee, that's just how that is. But there again, there are others that you could explore.

For graphics there's canvas and relaythat I use both of them. I purchased a lifetime thing for relaythat, and it's not quite as flexible as Canva as far as creating a design, but it has some very great templates that I use for some of the images and graphics that I need.

Then there's bookkeeping tools that because you know, every business needs a bookkeeping tool. There's wave, zero, QuickBooks and FreshBooks. I switched from wave to FreshBooks and I set a day aside every month where I enter data that doesn't automatically transfer to make sure that everything is good because that's important. It's not a service I actually offer anymore. Even I have an accounting degree, I decided to not go that way and don't offer bookkeeping service, all these other things I could potentially help with.

And then if you are somebody with digital products or art, there are some shop marketplaces, if you will, you could explore one of them. You know, we probably heard which is Etsy. And then there's goimagine. And what I love about goimagine is that it's, it's literally just for handmade only, and you have to get approved and they donate to charity 100%. And, and I know there's an ongoing work in progress on how they create funding for the platform in making things happen. But if you're selling handmade art, goimagine, check them out could be really good. And then I still use WooCommerce with the WordPress platform for my art business primarily and all of my digital stuff is at membervault.

So that could be if you're doing the digital stuff, you could use membervault for that if you wanted or wishlist if you wanted, which is what I do for the other two things I've got going on WooCommerce. I use it from my art staff and I have plugins that allow WooCommerce to communicate with Etsy and stuff, which is really, really helpful to me and reduces some of my workloads.

And then there's Shopify. I don't actually know much. I've tried it a couple of times. I didn't particularly care for it so I let that go and no longer use it. And then there is squareup which has some of my clients, it's a website and a shop all at the same time. So it kind of falls into different categories.I have clients that use it. I have a free version of it for, um, it just helps me when I do in-person things. And there's a way for commerce and square up to communicate and for etsy and squareup to communicate. But some of that can get pretty complicated. So these are just some of the tech tools that you could be exploring to use your business. I'm versed in some of these, if you have questions that I can answer for you, let me know. I'm happy to do that. And of course, if you wanna jump on a call, we can do that as well.