As business owners, we need to make so many decisions every single day and it can get stressful and overwhelming, am I right? Decision fatigue is a real thing and I’m sharing with you the tools and resources that I use and love in my business and have put my official stamp of approval on. I’m about to save you from the analysis-paralysis and free you up to start doing the important work (without having a million tabs open trying to choose the right tools.)
These tools have saved me hours upon hours and are almost like adding another member to my team in many ways. So without further ado, here are the 10 tools I believe every entrepreneur needs in their business (and some discount codes to take advantage of too because I love you!)
Our #1 Tool at Team JK: Slack
I can’t say enough how much we love Slack at Team Jenna Kutcher. Wondering what Slack is? It’s a way to communicate with your team without having to send emails. It allows us all to stay connected while we work virtually each and every day. Say goodbye to emails and introduce an instant messenger to your business (AIM anyone?) to create efficiencies and up your team culture. You can chat, notifiy, share documents, group chat and more plus, it’s free.
Crazy about Course Creation: Kajabi
If you’re a student in one of my courses, you likely love Kajabi as much as we do! It’s where we host all of my online courses and makes it easy to customize your content in a branded way while walking your students through in an easy to follow and beautiful way. We love that we can communicate with students directly within the course, track their progress, get them direct access and so much more.
Payment Processing: Samcart
Need an easy way to accept payment for your online products or courses? We love Samcart as our online shopping cart because it is super simple to set up, has a clean interface and really detailed reporting on our sales. You can create payment plans, collect payments, track your progress, even add in things like upsells and downsells. Samcart integrates seamlessly with our other online tools and allows us to accept payments from our customers without a ton of setup.
The Shop Jenna Kutcher home: Shopify
Wanting to sell products online? Yeah, then we highly recommend Shopify! I could not have gotten my online shop up and running so easily (and made huge profits too!) without the help of Shopify which hosts Shop Jenna Kutcher. Shopify is simple, easy to use, and makes your customers shopping experience enjoyable! It works awesome for both digital and physical products! If you’re considering a shop for your business, this is the way to go!
Your Password Saver Solution: LastPass
If you’re like me and have 5,000 different passwords, a million accounts to log in to, and have trouble remembering all of them or keeping them organized, Last Pass is going to be your new best friend. It’ll allow you to track your passwords (and give your team access without sending passwords over the internet). This has honestly saved me countless headaches over the years and has streamlined the way my team can have shared access to certain accounts without threatening our security!
Grab your own digital wallet here!
Email Marketing Made Easy: ConvertKit
It’s all about those email lists but how the heck do you choose the right provider? If I were starting with email marketing for my business today, I would pick ConvertKit as my email service provider. Their ability to take what can be complicated email marketing strategies and make them easy to implement (with 24/7 support) is impressive. We’ve tested out their platform and we’re kinda jealous we didn’t start there.
Sign up for a trial account here.
Our Project Management System of Choice: Trello
I’ll be honest and say personally I don’t use this but my Type A team loves it! As the visionary of this business, I’m getting less and less involved in the day to day, but Trello is an all-in-one place to lay out your plan, assign tasks, and it’s a great way to organize your projects, streamline workflows, save links to documents and have communication as a team (outside of email!) specific to a task.
My design secret: Canva
If you don’t have a graphic designer on staff or you’re graphically challenged, this next one is for you! (Heck, if Drew can use it well, I’m confident you can too!) From graphics for inside our course, to Facebook ad designs to the pins we use on Pinterest, Canva is an awesome way to up-level the design of your company without paying for a professional. You can choose from thousands of templates and even ones perfectly sized for whatever it is you need to create.
Create your first design here!
Professional stock photos: Social Squares
Starting your day wondering what the heck you’re going to post or how it’s going to look professional? Stumped when it comes to posting content on social media and wishing you had a professional photographer following you around to document the “Instagram-worthy” parts? Social Squares is my favorite place to go for professional photos to use in my business. It’s a subscription with endless gorgeous images updated monthly to use on your social accounts, website or other graphics needs!
Social Media Automation: PLANN, Tailwind and Meet Edgar
Social media can feel overwhelming and knowing you should be posting daily can feel like a total drag. You get a three for one here because we love using all three of these to automate and streamline our Instagram and Pinterest strategies. These programs fit well with my batch working strategy because I can sit down and plan out weeks worth of content all at once and know that they will be shared with my audience without me having to push a button.
Check them out here:
PLANN
Tailwind
Meet Edgar
Create Awesome Quizzes: Interact
Have you taken my free quizzes? Are you someone the falls prey to every Buzzfeed quiz out there and you desperately want to know which “Friends” character you’re most alike… maybe creating an online quiz is your next brilliant move! Not only are they fun for your audience, they help grow your email list with ease. Email marketing is kind of my thing and one of my best list building tools is the online quizzes that I build with Interact. Get creative with serving your audience in a new way by creating a quiz to gain valuable insights into their needs and pain points!
What’s for dinner: HelloFresh
Because sometimes we need to outsource our life to give us more time in our business. Drew and I have never eaten this good since joining HelloFresh years ago. We are kind of lost without now and we get a diverse menu delivered right to our doorstep of fresh, delicious meals each and every week. No more takeout every night here!
Save $40 your first meal delivery with HelloFresh!
Tell me, what are your favorite tools in your business? Any listed here that you’ll be trying?
Hey Jenna!
Thank so much for providing so much guidance and advice , especially for those of us just getting start. I was a little confused when I say that you use 3 different programs for social media automation. Since I’m just starting out, is there one that you would lean towards more than the others?
Also, out of curiosity, why do y’all use 3 different programs?