Marketing Resources
Adobe Creative Cloud
We use Adobe for all kinds of imaging and marketing in my business, like website graphics, book covers and product images. Mainly it saves us time, and I know saves my business manager from a lot of the headache and hassle she was expending trying to patch things together using just Word or free graphics software. Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we look super professional thanks to software like Adobe!
Joint Venture Insider Circle
JVIC is a powerful membership program for creating joint venture partnerships. Membership includes training and live coaching calls, access to an annual event where you can meet partners, as well as direct access to hundreds of JVs partners in the member portal. Joining this program was transformational for my business, and helped us to build successful affiliate marketing partnerships.
Canva
Canva is an amazing design program. We’ve used Canva for designing everything from book covers, flyers, Facebook banners and webinar images. Even if you don’t have a lot of design skills, Canva will make your images look amazing with lots of template designs! Plus, you just pay for what you download, or you can get a Canva for Work account, like we have, and share images with team members, and create your own brand design!
SpeakerTunity
This is a fabulous resource to help you find venues to speak at (SpeakerTunity), find radio speaking opportunities (SpeakerTunity Radio Insider) and be a summit speaker (SpeakerTunity Summits). SpeakerTunity promotes locations throughout North America. When you use this link you will receive one month of free SpeakerTunity products!
Client Management Resources
Acuity Scheduling
After a lot of trial and error with Google Calendar and TimeTrade, my team and I decided to use Acuity because we needed to offer multiple appointment types with automated reminders. We have had no issues with Acuity, and it integrates well with my Mac calendar and with our CRM.
Docusign
Docusign has been a game changer for us in terms of having new clients sign coaching contracts online – on the same day they commit to a coaching program! It helps alleviate any miscommunication about our commitment and our clients commitments to coaching.
Technology Resources
GoDaddy
Ah, GoDaddy, the place where we: register domain names, host and manage our WordPress sites, and manage our blogposts and comments. Email is also available through this platform, as is online marketing including SEO services. I’ve used GoDaddy since I was just a wee lass in the world of entrepreneurism. I love their customer service, and they have always been fair and treated me well. This link will get you 1 month free hosting plus 50% off their Economy plan.
Simplero
Before Simplero, we used Aweber, which originally worked well for my business, but became less effective the more we wanted to do with email campaigns, and sharing blogposts and especially with selling products and services. Simplero was like a breath of fresh air for us as a CRM – more flexible and with more possibilities than Aweber (because it includes a merchant account and tracking client purchases) and less complicated than Infusionsoft (also lovingly referred to as Confusionsoft).
And, best of all, my amazing business manager Beth figured out how to use Simplero on her own, because it is so user-friendly! It has lots of bells and whistles and they are always (like almost every week) adding new features and tweaks to make Simplero work better for your business. We could not recommend this CRM platform more highly.
WebinarJam
We use this platform for all of our live and recorded webinars, when we use Powerpoint slides. I manage all of the live webinars, and although my genius is not technology, I find this platform very user friendly. You can also record webinars and upload them to Youtube as video files! And, if you want, you can include email campaigns pre- and post-webinar to enroll folks and follow-up with them. Webinar Jam integrates well with Simplero and with Leadpages.
Instant Teleseminar
I use Instant Teleseminar for all of my private and group coaching calls, because it allows me to see who is on the call, and people can raise their hands on group calls, plus I can record all calls as mp3s to share with my clients! This platform also allows you to host webinars with powerpoint slides. Use this link to sign up for a 21-Day $1 No-Risk Trial!
Quickbooks
Honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with Quickbooks (I mean, who doesn’t? except maybe bookkeepers and CPAs). I, my business manager, and my CPA can all access all financials for the business and make changes when needed. For tax purposes, Quickbooks is great. We also use Quickbooks as one of our merchant accounts (we use three: Quickbooks, Stripe and Paypal). Quickbooks as a merchant account isn’t my favorite, because if a payment is declined, we have to manually go in and do something about it. Stripe, on the other hand, takes cares of this for us automatically. If we didn’t use Quickbooks as a merchant account I would be 100% satisfied because it handles all other financial tracking beautifully.
Stripe
This is a great software platform for running an online business! Stripe is one of three payment processing systems we use in the business. What I like about Stripe: you pay about 3% fees on transactions (which is industry standard), money appears in your bank account the next day (processing through Quickbooks takes 2-3 days), and you can log into your dashboard and know exactly what payments have been made and when to expect them in your account.
EverWebinar
This platform “evergreens” your webinars, meaning you pre-record them and your viewers can select a specific time that works for them to watch it. You don’t need to be there, and they could watch it in bed with their jammies on if they wanted. Because hey, why not? Everwebinar integrates with Webinar Jam (you record your webinars in WebinarJam and then upload them to Everwebinar).
Other Resources
ABMP Liability Insurance
I got this liability insurance back in the day when I was working as an energy healer and shamanic practitioner. Yep, you read that right. I needed liability insurance for myself that was (1) affordable, and (2) covered al the weird sh*t I was doing in my business. The Association for Bodywork & Massage Professionals has it! I’ve carried insurance with them for about a decade now and have never had to utilize it for anything so can’t speak to how they handle insurance claims, but can say the coverage meets my needs, even with a growing business, and they treat healers and practitioners VERY well, especially folks that offer “outside-the-box” services.