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Before I had a team of humans, I had a “team” of tools that helped me run my business with efficiency. They saved me time, kept me organized, and ultimately made doing business as a solopreneur possible. Now that I have a team of real live humans, we still lean on our tried-and-true tools, and have incorporated new ones to help all of us run this business with ease.
Kylie is back on the show to help me walk through our standby programs, services, and apps, while also exploring the splurge and save alternatives for each tool. We also share some new things we’re using. It just might surprise you how much we rely on free and cheap programs to run this thing!
From web design, project management, communication tools, and podcast editing software, we’re unpacking it all from the Jenna Kutcher toolbox.
Tonic Site Shop
Having an online presence for your business in some way is pretty much non-negotiable at this point. That might look like a landing page, a social media profile, or of course, a full website with your own spiffy domain. When I started my business, I thought I’d need to be an HTML expert to have a beautiful custom website. While I managed to make-do with free templates and basic customizations for a while, it came time to uplevel the branding and experience for my clients when they landed on my website.
Fully custom websites are very much a splurge, and I wouldn’t even recommend you go that route, especially if you’re just starting out. You can get that custom feel with Tonic Site Shop. Jen at Tonic has designed all my website, and she offers a line of templates built on the ShowIt platform that make website design a simple drag and drop process.
The average cost of a Tonic template is $1250, and then have payment plan options up to 6 months of payments. Save 15% with the code: JENNASENTME.
FloDesk
If you’ve been around a while, you know we love the female-founded email marketing platform called FloDesk. These women answered all of the issues of the email marketing game with a beautiful, intuitive, and unlimited feature platform.
Honestly, FloDesk is about as affordable as it gets and you’ll start with a free trial. This is one of those services that’s worth paying for, even if you don’t have a website yet.
Curious about getting started with email list building and email marketing? I’ve built out a free 5 day email list building challenge that includes tutorials on the FloDesk platform.
Honeybook
Honeybook kept me sane when I was a wedding photographer, and I mean that with my whole heart. Now, it’s still a part of my business in different ways. Essentially, Honeybook is a client management system that allows you to organize and track every potential, current, and past client from the inquiry phase all the way to the last invoice paid.
We primarily use it for sending and signing contracts now, especially on the podcast side. It’s a really seamless way to collect e-signatures on important documents that doesn’t involve emailing PDFs and getting lost in an email chain.
Honeybook starts at $9 a month, but you can get started with a free trial to test the waters and then get 50% off your annual subscription.
More Tools We Love
We are huge fans of Canva and everything you see on the social media channels, our Facebook and Instagram ads, even the new cover art for the Goal Digger Podcast was created in Canva. The free version has tons of functionality, but I think the Pro version is work the upgrade if you want to upload your own brand fonts and colors, and have access to library of stock photos, videos, and other elements.
Kylie started using Descript to transcribe each podcast episode and write show notes. It now takes her about one-third of the time to prepare show notes blogs for each interview episode. The app is also great if you want a very intuitive and visual editing option.
We also use Monday (try it at jennalovesmonday.com) Slack, and Tailwind for both Pinterest and Instagram.
Remember: You don’t need all or any of these tools to be successful. If you have limited money to invest in your business, start with the tools that will save you the most time and take the place of hiring a human until you can build out your team. Join in the conversation in the Goal Digger Podcast Insiders Facebook group: What’s your favorite business tool or app?
