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Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Doing it Online:
- All the details of our AMAZING nerdy hamper giveaway (+ how to enter!)
- Which software platforms we use and recommend…
- The tech I’m nerding out over right now…
ATT: All Nerd Bosses who like to win amazing (+ nerdy) things…
This episode is for YOU.
I’m channelling some serious Oprah vibes in Episode 75, because I’m sharing my absolute favourite biz-building tech and tools today…
That’s right, I’m going to give you the full scoop on all the best tech and tools you could ever want in your biz, including what we use and why we love it!
…And not only that, but I’ve also got a HUGE holiday hamper worth almost $2K up for grabs for one very lucky Nerd Boss out there!
Is it going to be YOU?
There’s only one way to find out! All you have to do to enter is CLICK HERE and pop in your details!
You can also share the comp with your biz BFFS if you want extra chances to win.
Ok, let’s dive into my list of favourite things that I know you’ll love too…
My Fave tools for…
Websites:
Showit + WordPress. What a combo. Despite the fact that we change our tech stack all the time, this one has stayed the same for a while now.
Showit doesn’t have its own blog capabilities, it leans on WordPress for that, (seamlessly- it’s all in the back-end) which is great because WordPress as a blog host is super powerful. So you get the best of both worlds if you take this option.
I’ve played with all the page designers out there and none of them come close to Showit. It’s so freaking easy to use. It’s fast-loading and it’s beautiful. Plus, there are so many gorgeous templates to choose from. So you can get your website up and running and looking like a million bucks with a $500 template.
Boom. Done. Next!
Say it with me: “Active Campaign.” Ah, you know me so well.
Active Campaign is easy to use, and it has all of the logic you need to get started and then to scale up to any level you like. You don’t need the higher business or pro plans, the lite plan starts at about $15 a month and it has everything you need to go from day zero to multi-seven figures.
They’re not perfect, but I haven’t had a whole lot of tech issues with them and their support is amazing too.
Courseware
Currently we’re using Kajabi for our courseware and the main reason we love it is because of the design flexibility. The courses you can design and build out in Kajabi can be beautiful and a bit more unique compared to something like Teachable and Thinkific which can all look a bit same-same.
It does come with a higher price-tag however as it comes with a lot of other features (like shopping cart etc) built-in. And even though we don’t use their other features, we do recommend Kajabi as a stand out courseware option.
Having said that, as our program is evolving and growing, and we’re looking to do some more bespoke cool stuff…
…We’re looking at moving (possibly to Member Vault). It’s not as pretty as Kajabi but it does offer some great flexibility in program delivery. So, we’ll see next year!
Checkout
We use ThriveCart for our checkout. And to be fair, if we didn’t already have our checkout all set up and good to go, we probably would have just used the checkout within Kajabi, because it’s great too.
The one area ThriveCart does do a little better than Kajabi is in their handling of different taxes for different countries and tax reporting etc. But Kajabi checkout is still a great option if you’re using them for your courses.
SamCart is another option that tends to be compared with ThriveCart. The difference is in the affordability, ThriveCart is a one-time investment, whereas SamCart is an ongoing monthly expense which can really add up.
Team communication + client community
We use Slack both for communication within our team and also for our client community.
We’ve found Slack to be great at keeping different topics and threads in their own neat little containers and it creates a great workflow for me. I get up in the morning and check in with the Team’s Slack and make sure everyone has everything they need to keep going and then I check in on our client slack. So it actually feels like the one task.
We did a whole episode on why we moved our community from Facebook into slack and went through all the pros and cons in there if you want to check that out. It’s still going great for us and our clients have found there’s lots of benefits for them there as well.
Project management
For project management, both for ongoing and planning bigger projects, we use ClickUp. We used to use Asana, which we loved. We were very sad to leave the unicorns in Asana. But we made the switch to ClickUp about a year ago now because it had all the features that Asana had plus many more. The one that stood out to us the most was their automation options. Which makes recurring tasks so much easier. So now we’re ClickUp all the way.
Reporting + Dashboards
We’re working on some amazing options for our reporting and dashboards, and I go into a lot more detail in the episode itself, so give that a listen. But let’s just say, this is an exciting space to keep an eye on here at Hello Funnels…
Podcast recording + hosting
We use the app, Zencastr, to record the podcast episodes. The app also allows you to do video. But let’s face it, I’m rarely video-ready when I do my podcast episodes. But the app is really easy to use, and it can also work well in the future when we start doing guest episodes.
To host the podcast itself, we used Podbean. There’s a bunch of podcast host options to choose from, and they all seem pretty similar but Podbean has been really easy to use and super reliable and cost effective.
The best of the physical tech…
My DELL 49 inch ultra wide monitor
Was this a splurge purchase? Indulgent? Look, I don’t blame you for thinking that…but no.
This thing is hella-useful. Especially as a Mac user, because Apple is super stingy on plug sockets and USB ports these days. There’s just nowhere near enough when you’re wanting to put in external mice and monitors etc… So the thing that got me over the line and had me “Add to Cart” was the fact that everything plugs into the monitor, not the laptop.
No more gross wires everywhere, it’s amazing.
Blue Yeti USB mic
To record the podcast I use the Blue Yeti USB mic. I picked this one because it’s pretty. It’s got that old-school retro look and I loved that. My office isn’t set up for sound recording and I don’t have a closet I can sit in to record, so I’ve added a few things to the mic like a pop guard (doesn’t look as pretty now) and I also have a portable audio booth and this setup has been working really well for us.
Webcam – Logitech C920 Pro HD
Now that my laptop is basically closed and underneath my fancy-pants big screen monitor, I needed a webcam. After some research, I landed on the Logitech C920 Pro HD and it’s working great.
My iPad Air mini
And the last piece of physical tech which I love and couldn’t live without is my iPad Mini… with Apple Pencil. It’s my notebook, it’s my planner, it’s my backup laptop. And it’s so damn pretty.
It’s also awesome for travelling…
…as soon as we can do that again. (Soon!)
The Nerd Boss Hamper
As I said, planning this episode gave me Oprah vibes, and so I had to take it one step further and create a HUGE holiday hamper to giveaway to one very lucky Nerd Boss…
Want to look inside?
We’ve got:
My top 5 fave business books of all time: Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield-Thomas, The Pumpkin Plan + Profit First both by by Mike Michalowicz, Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.
It also has tech goodies like:
- the Blue Yeti Mic,
- Logitech Webcam
- and YES even the iPad Mini!
And because Nerds deserve a bit of fun too, we’ve got:
- A gorgeous pair of Baxter Blue bluelight glasses. (Like the ones I’ve got!)
- A DamselFly candle (which smells amazing!)
- A Kate Spade designer laptop sleeve
- And my absolute fave Haig’s chocolate speckles…
Plus!
$500 cash to either splash out either on your business or just a nice spa day. (Because we all need one of those after the year we’ve had, right?
And that’s it! Isn’t it the stuff of nerdy heaven?
We just wanted to end the year with a bang and give you all the goodies we could. So we’ve chocked full of $1972 worth of goodies for one lucky Nerd Boss…
So, all you have to do to enter the giveaway is click here and pop in your details and you’re done!
The giveaway closes on Boxing Day and the winner will be announced in the first week of January next year!
And if you want more chances to win, share it with your business BFF’s too!
We’ve got our fingers and toes crossed for you!
