Ep. 182 - Tech Stack for Coaches

In this episode, we dive into the often-overwhelming world of building a tech stack for your coaching business! We know the thought of sorting through all the technology options can make your eyes glaze over, but fear not! We break it down into manageable pieces, discussing everything from accounting software to payment processors, calendaring systems, and even email marketing tools. Adding tech to your process should save you time and money, not cause you headaches and cost you cash. Our goal is to help you streamline your processes so you can focus on what you do best – coaching!

🎧 Are you ready to take your coaching business to the next level? Listen in as we share our personal experiences with different tools and provide recommendations that can help you build a solid tech foundation for a thriving coaching practice.

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    • Define the Role of Your Tech Stack: Before diving into the myriad of tools available, it's crucial to understand the specific roles each piece of technology will play in your business. By treating your tech stack like a team of employees, you can make informed decisions that align with your business goals. This approach helps to reduce overwhelm and ensures that each tool serves a clear purpose.

    • Streamline Your Processes: Adding tech to your process should save you time and money, not cause you headaches and cost you cash. That’s why integrating tech can have a great impact! For example, choosing a calendaring system that connects to your payment processor allows clients to pay at the time of booking. This not only eliminates the hassle of chasing payments later, but also enhances the customer experience by making it easy for them to do business with you.

    • Choose the Right Tools for Your Needs: Select tools that fit your current business stage. If you're just starting out, a simple spreadsheet might suffice for managing client relationships instead of investing in a complex CRM system. Remember, the goal is to make the tools work for you, and only pay for what you need. Choose tools that will genuinely save you time and effort.

    • Evaluate Your Tech Needs: Reflect on the specific jobs your tech stack needs to accomplish in your coaching business, such as marketing, sales, or delivery of services. This will help you make informed decisions about which tools to invest in.

    • Choose a Payment Processor: Set up a payment processor (we recommend Stripe) to streamline your payment collection process. Ensure it integrates with your scheduling system to allow clients to pay when they book appointments.

    • Implement an Online Scheduling System: Tools like Calendly, TidyCal can manage your appointment setting, communications, and follow-ups efficiently. Book Like A Boss is a powerful all-in-one that also allows you to build landing pages, sell digital products, and more!

    • Explore Email Marketing Options: If your current tools (like your website or scheduling app) can handle your email needs, keep it simple. But if you need a dedicated email marketing platform, consider options like Flodesk, Emma, or Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit).

    • Our other shoutouts:

  • Lisa: I'm Lisa. 

    Brea: I'm Brea. 

    Lisa: And today we are talking about the tech stack in your coaching business.

    Brea: Yes. Okay, so before people's eyes glaze over when we talk about all the tech and all the details, this is such a good topic because we need it. You need to get these systems and these processes in place in order to be more free to do what you do best, you know? So I'm so excited to talk about this. I've learned so many things the hard way.

    Lisa: Now you are making me think of a song because Tech Stack makes me think of nerdy. So I'm thinking of like the band Devo wearing those nerdy hats and the song Whip It. Like you got to whip yourself into shape. Shape it up. Like, yeah. Whip it good. Yeah, that's totally it. And you said freedom and that I think that album was called Freedom of Choice. So it is all coming up with the nerdery right there.

    Brea: That is so funny. I don't think I've ever heard that song in its entirety, but I recognize it from a movie with Kate Hudson. I don't remember which one, some rom-com, probably with her and Matthew McConaughey, but there's a scene where they're dancing to it. So I understand the reference. I get it. Okay. Okay.

    Lisa: Well, it'll make it a little more fun. Let's do it. Let's do it. Now we move into the exciting topic of things like accounting software.

    Brea: Yes. So we don't need to define this, okay? But I do want to just like set a little foundation. I think when we talk tech, when we talk systems, processes, things like this, it's important, at least for me, it's important to remember what is the job of the tech stack, the thing in the stack, right? What is the job that I'm trying to accomplish? Is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it delivery of your product or your service? Is it scaling? Is it, you know, what is the job that you're trying to give it. So I like to think of them almost as, you know, an employee or a contractor. Like, what's the role? And then that helps me to make the decisions instead of just being totally overwhelmed with all the details of the specificity of things. You know, hopefully that might help.

    Lisa: I agree. I think it's good decision criteria too because a lot of people talk about getting subscription fatigue because most of these are recurring subscriptions. Then if you look at it as a contractor and you say, if I paid a person to do this manually, what would that look like in the business? How would the cost compare? How would the service compare? How would the results compare? And sometimes you could have a human doing these things. examples, like if we start with accounting, you can, if you have five customers for the year when you're starting off and it's a side hustle and you don't really have much business, unless you just want to learn the software, you could use a spreadsheet and just give it to your accountant. So you could use something you're already paying for, like your Google Workspace or whatever you're using where you would have a spreadsheet available to you. So there are times when you could do the on the cheap version or use a human version until you get into the recurring software.

    Brea: Yeah, I love it.

    Lisa: What do you use for accounting?

    Brea: Oh gosh, do we have to start with accounting? We'll just get it over with, you know. Well, in the tenure of my business, is that the right word? I've used spreadsheets, okay, so been there, done that, and if that's you, no judgment. I use QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, yeah, because that's what my accountant uses, so. Okay, me too. I don't do accounting. I pay someone to do that for me.

    Lisa: Okay. Me too. I use QuickBooks online. Some people use Xero. Some people use FreshBooks. There are other things out there, but QuickBooks, at least in the US, that seems to be what accountants prefer. You could just give them access. They get access to the back end of it. It makes life pretty clean and clear and simple.

    Brea: Yeah, I actually really love using Stripe for my payment processor, which is not the accounting software, but adjacent.

    Lisa: Yeah, let's get into payment processing. So, okay, you use Stripe. I also use Stripe. I think Most small business owners starting up training, coaching, speaking businesses, you'll probably want to go over and have a Stripe account because it integrates with just about every software. So if you're like, what in the world is a payment processor? What are you guys talking about? It's essentially somebody takes a few percentage points and it allows you to accept credit cards and have that money electronically delivered to your business bank account. Kind of easy way to say it. And Stripe connects to, like, if you find any software out there that allows you to sell through it, like a very good example is your calendaring system. If you're a coach, especially a one-on-one coach, you really want a calendar system that allows you to accept payment as they book. Because then you don't have to spend a lot of your delivery hours chasing payments. They just pay when they book. So those will often be, we can talk about the calendaring systems next, but payment processor, if you have Stripe, for example, connected to your calendaring system, now you're done.

    Brea: Yeah, that's right. You know, I think Stripe is quickly becoming kind of a gold standard. It integrates with anything that I've tried to integrate it with. It allows me to take Apple Pay and Google Pay and credit cards and debit cards and ACH. And there are so many international currencies that it processes. I mean, there's so much you can do. The thing that I love most about Stripe and probably the feature that I use most is the ability to create payment links. So when I don't want to do a full invoice, I just want to take a credit card really fast, I can do that. I can create a custom link for a custom amount and send it to someone and then boom, it's done. You can also use the payment links on your website or other places where you want to have a button for people to click. You know, they click the button and then boom, it goes straight to the payment page and you know, it's done. Yeah. Right on. But other payment processors would be like PayPal or Square or Venmo or Zelle or that's what we're talking about. Yes.

    Lisa: Yes, yes. Okay. Let's talk about calendaring because if you are a one-on-one coach, really, you've got to be able to accept payments as you book. It's just, it just makes financial sense to have someone pay when you book. Yes, yes, yes. Just do it. And if you don't believe me now, when you're fully booked, you'll believe me and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm chasing payments. I did not want to be a collector. Okay, so that's one element of calendaring. If you're a speaker or a trainer, you want your calendaring or a one-on-one coach for things like discovery calls, prospect calls. Pre-event calls, things like that. You really want an online calendaring system. Some people use a VA or a personal assistant to do their calendaring, and some people do prefer that. But they are so sophisticated now. I mean, you can tell it, I take these kind of calls on this day of the week. And only from this hour to this hour, but on this kind of call, I take them on this day of the week. It's really cool what they do. So any thoughts on calendaring before we talk about which technologies we use?

    Brea: Yeah, I mean, I agree. If you are not Not that you have to always sync up your payment with scheduling, but if you haven't done that at all, you know, if you're not taking advantage of that, it's such a great way to make it easy for the customer and easy for you. So when I think of tech stack, any tech stacks, it's always how can I improve this process for the customer? How can I make it easy for them to do business with me and easy for them to pay me? It's just the worst when you've done all the work to get the sale and then they can't find the cash register anywhere. It happens so many times on your website or whatever. Go here to schedule, and then go here to pay, and then go here to do this, and go here to do that. And it's just make it easy. Just do it all, all together. I think that's so, so good.

    Lisa: I mean, have you ever gone to a store? This is what you're making me think of. You Can't Find the Cash Register made me think of when you have an item in your hand, and then you see, oh my gosh, the line is so long at the register. That's going to take 45 minutes. That barrier is too high. And that is the same thing as when They have to go back and forth with you or your human, even if you have a personal assistant, that might seem cool. But what if they have to go back and forth 6 times to find a time that works versus being able to click? So I feel like that's sending them into that line with 45-minute wait to check out.

    Brea: I love it. Yep, I love it.

    Lisa: All right, what do you use today?

    Brea: So I still use Calendly. I've used Calendly almost the entire time that I've been in business. Every now and then, go check something else out to see, you know, can I get rid of this, whatever it is, $12, $13 a month? Like, can I get rid of that? Because TidyCal is $20 one time or, you know, for a lifetime or something like that. But I always come back to Calendly. It just has improved so much and has a lot of those opportunities to customize like what you were saying. It does everything, even like group events now. It's not just the one on one. They have grown into being able to schedule a workshop. If I wanted to do a public workshop, people can go in and buy one seat. So, really, there's nothing that I need that it doesn't do. So, I'm a Calendly girl. How about you?

    Lisa: Awesome. They keep stepping their game up. I was a Calendly girl for most of the years of my business. I currently use TidyCal. And I've used Acuity. Acuity was my first one and it's very solid. And I think as far as integrations, Calendly integrates with the most other software, so it can make your life much simpler that way. But I've been really happy with TidyCal as well. So I would say any of the three of those are great. And there are several more that are absolutely solid as well. Just get one. Get one that integrates with the software that you use. get one that accepts payments, but you're right. I love to experiment with one-time fee software, and if you're not familiar with AppSumo, A-P-P-S-U-M-O. Come on, guess. They have a lot, like TidyCal and BreezeDoc and a bunch of these pieces of software. BreezeDoc is for signatures. Instead of buying DocuSign, if you don't have a high volume in things, they have a lot of software that has one-time fees or a lifetime fee or a low fee and they just basically have these deals out on AppSumo. You could waste a lot of time just buying cool software, so there's of course that to look out for.

    Brea: Guilty. I know so many years ago, my introduction to AppSumo was through Book Like a Boss, obviously a scheduling app. And at the time, it just wasn't where I needed it to be. But now it's actually really great, you know. But my Calendly is just it's set up. It's so sophisticated. I've got everything I need. I just can't imagine. switching, you know? But yeah, that's another one you could check out is Book Like a Boss. Especially if you don't want to get into the whole website game, Book Like a Boss allows you to create landing pages for different products. And it's super, super affordable. So it does more than what a normal scheduling app would do for a fraction of the price.

    Lisa: Cool. Yeah. Well, let's take that mention to just go into websites, because there are people in two camps. I'm of a camp, you need a website. And it's fine, like anything that you could use what you just described, Book Like a Boss, and you could go get coachjohn.com and redirect it to your Book Like a Boss page. And I would still consider that having a web presence. But you need a domain name that you can give a person on the street that you meet, go to this web page, and it can redirect them to something scrappy that you've made through that, or Coach Accountable, or even Canva. I have a template for people to make a website on Canva to have something that you can get up within a couple of hours. So it doesn't have to be that hard. Get something. But it does look so much more professional to have a real domain name with a real email address. And by real, you can hear my quotes and my voice. Have that domain name. Because especially to corporate clients, this matters. It makes it look like you're a professional versus a rookie. And I think that is important. So personally, that's my vote. I use WordPress. That is not the simple way. That is hiring a designer and doing the thing. Today, if I started over, I would probably pick Squarespace today, but you can do Squarespace, Weebly, Wix. but I do use WordPress and if you want to do fancy things on your site then the amount of plugins that are available is really incredible and it does give you some mega power to be using a WordPress site. What do you use, Brea?

    Brea: I found a home in Squarespace. Squarespace has really evolved a lot where they have You can do email campaigns now. I actually purchase my Google Workspace. Through Squarespace, I'm able to purchase that Google email, hello at briaroper.com. And I think that's what you're talking about, right? When you say like you need a real email, like an email that matches your domain. Like not a Gmail. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, yeah, we all get that. I, especially when I see Yahoo or AOL, you know, it's just like, like, that's just not a real, it's not a real business, you know? So get your domain name and you can do all of that through Squarespace. You probably pay a little bit more of a premium because they're handling it all, but it's just easier to not have to buy your domain over here from, you know, GoDaddy or domain.com or whatever. And your Google workspace and you know have all these small bills. I just do it all through Squarespace. So it's easy

    Lisa: I bet you inspired a lot of people who don't want to handle all the invoices, but also they don't have their email address because it seems intimidating. Like I have to buy a domain. What's a host? What's a registrar? How do I go? How do I set up my website? And then how do I do all these connections? And I'm going to have to spend a half a day trying to get my email to work and be able to receive it. And can I get it on my phone? And how is it going to go down? The execution of it all is so intimidating. I think for people to hear what you just said is possible will make people feel like, oh, okay, good. Somebody's making it easy. Yeah.

    Brea: You know, another platform that I love is ShowIt. Are you familiar with ShowIt? just mildly. Okay. It's so easy. It's drag and drop like Canva or like Wix. It's easy for beginners like that, but it pairs with WordPress for blogging, which WordPress, I mean, it just is too sophisticated for me, you know, but like you said, it has so much power. It does so many things and their blogs are excellent through WordPress. So ShowIt pairs with WordPress for blogging. And it's just so pretty. It's so like the templates are just, in my opinion, so far and above any of the other platforms, including Squarespace. So big shout out to ShowIt. ShowIt.

    Lisa: Nice. OK, so since you're bringing up the platforms that are easy to work with and also have beautiful templates. You made me think of people's comments on Flowdesk as their email marketing software. I love Flowdesk, yeah. And I am a Kit user, formerly called ConvertKit, and I love it. I'm an affiliate for Kit. I think it is great software. I use it. I have funnels. I make landing pages. I have a light e-commerce. You can sell digital products on there. It's just really easy to use. The automations are beautiful. I'm really into automations. As you know, if you've heard Brea call me the evergreen queen, I have years worth of emails that come out and that's all set through these really easy visual automations that Kit allow. So I'm into Kit for email marketing. I know you are not an email marketing gal. Do you have an email marketing software outside of what you described in Squarespace?

    Brea: Yeah, I mean, let's not forget that I have a background in marketing, so I've used plenty of things over the years. I just don't love it. So yeah, I think Flowdesk, love. There's also a smaller company out of Nashville called Emma, and I love it. It's super, super yummy and beautiful, like Flowdesk. And it's a smaller company that I love, you know, just love supporting. Supporting the small guys. Okay. HubSpot also comes to mind. It's not, you know, that might transition us into the CRM discussion, but HubSpot also does email marketing. Squarespace, you know, I use that too, so.

    Lisa: MailerLite, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, Aweber. I mean, there are so many. I had, I'm not going to name it because I think it's terrible, but one that I used that was terrible And I guess this is what I'll throw out before we move topics is, yes, I love Kit. I have a lot of reasons to love Kit. I love that it lets you do all those extras, but in a very simple, streamlined way. And mostly it's just great at sending email and it makes it easy in the user face to figure it out so that it doesn't feel intimidating. But think about long-term. So some of these offer really good free trial or free levels. Kit has a free level that allows you to have up to 10,000 subscribers, but of course these free ones are de-featured. So for example, you can have one automation, one sequence, if you get on the free version of Kit, they give you a lot of subscribers. But for me, I have like 40 different automations running. So that's not, that obviously wouldn't work even if I had 10,000, you know, under 10,000. So look at them. They, they tend to all have tiers. So look how they do their pricing tiers and see if that feels like it will work for you.

    Brea: Yeah. I want to stay on email just for a minute because, you know, everybody, everybody needs email marketing of some kind. Some things to consider might be using it to nurture your leads. dripping content that might be part of the different automations that you might do. Also reminding people about their events, which Calendly or your scheduler might do that as well. So you might not need a separate email marketing platform to email about the coaching package, you know, or the coaching events. So it's good to think, do I actually need a dedicated email marketing something, something, or can my website do it, right? Can my scheduling app do it? I don't know, that's where I've found I bought too many things and kind of spread myself too thin and I was able to streamline my process by utilizing things that I already had, you know?

    Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. Love all of that. And if you can get what you need out of an all-in-one, there are very powerful all-in-ones, but a lot of times what I think will happen is what you're describing. Somebody's in Squarespace and they're like, hey, they don't bill themselves as an email marketing software. No one would go to them thinking, I'm doing my research on email marketing, but they find them because they're like, oh, I already have a a website here and they cover me for the basics. I think it's a great way to get started. And then also just in the back of your mind, have a plan. When I get to X number of subscribers or this level of sophistication with how I want to roll out a product, then I'm going to switch over and there will be switching costs because it's a pain in the rear. And you have to usually pay someone to do a bunch of migrations. And any time you switch, it'll be a pain. But it's OK. That's just that's the cost of growth. And it should be an exciting milestone, even though it's a frustrating project.

    Brea: Yeah. Can I throw out one more email marketing adjacent? I love video. I love being on video. I love sending videos. And so I use something called BombBomb. which is video in your email and integrates with my Gmail. So I can, if I'm in my Gmail inbox, there's a little, a little bum bum button where I can just quickly add a video to the email. It can be either live, like it'll just turn on my camera and I talk into the email and then boom, I send it. So there's no uploading. There's no downloading. There's no, you know, any of that exporting and all the things. It's just there's a little button that's in my Gmail. So if I want to use my strengths of communication and and talk to them, I can do that. And then also I can set up email marketing sequences and do all the things, you know, but just. With video. So I'm a huge huge fan.

    Lisa: I love that for Walking someone through a proposal feels totally custom like here. I'm gonna send you this document, but I'm going to talk you through it and There's a technique out there where they have a whiteboard or something and it has your name I'm gonna say that's my favorite thing to do So that and the thumbnail they know this video is specific to me this video doesn't go out in every email this bit I made this video for you So, that one definitely gets me. When I see a video, even if I think the product has nothing to do with me, if it says Lisa somewhere on it, I know they did it for me, then I'll give them that time of day and I'll watch it for a couple minutes.

    Brea: Right. Why wouldn't you? Absolutely. I really do think that especially if your strengths are good on video, I mean, you can't sleep on it. It's such a tool for you. And there are so many ways for you to use it in your business that you're not using it right now. So this is appealing to those of you who love video and are strong on video. There are so many more ways that you can you can apply it. And email is one of those ways that we just don't think about. I would much rather receive a 20 second video from someone saying, it was so great to get coffee with you. Thank you so much. Seeing that person that you just networked with and had a great interaction with, right? getting an email from them that said, hey, it was great meeting you. Have a nice day. Or re-experiencing in just a quick 20-second video, you're brought back to that conversation that you had or that exchange that you had. You see their face, you feel their energy, and it's so much stronger, you know? It's so much stronger. Sold. And it's faster.

    Lisa: Yeah, sold. Yeah. OK, I'm done. You're selling me on this. I don't use BonBon currently, but now I'm sold. It's so good. Well, let's talk about one. This feels like the final foundational, most kind of critical path is talking, and no, I'm not even going to say CRM. I'm going to say platforms for memberships, courses, communities, because I know you're excited about that, Brea, and it is, more likely critical than CRM systems, even though people will obsess over those from day one. So let's make sure we talk memberships, courses, communities. What do you like for hosting?

    Brea: Oh, well, I'm a Mighty Networks girl. I mean, from almost the beginning, when Gina launched it, I just, I love it. And they continue to upgrade, continue to add features. Every week I'm getting emails with, hey, we just added this, and now you can do this. So I love Mighty Networks.

    Lisa: Cool, cool. And stay tuned, everyone, because you'll hear about Brea's Strengths Hub, which is hosted on Mighty Networks.

    Brea: Yeah, that's right. In another episode though, yeah?

    Lisa: Yeah, oh yeah, we totally, that needs its own episode. Of course you can use Circle, of course some people use Facebook groups. I host my courses on ThriveLearn, so you might have heard Brea say the word ThriveCart, and ThriveCart is a software that allows you to have a cart system and a full-on e-commerce, so if you're selling If you're selling a digital product that's more than like, here's your one page PDF, I think having a more robust cart system and delivery system is useful. They also have a module called Thrive Learn, which is their learning management portal. So you can build a course in Thrive Learn and host it there. And then you can have your checkout process through Thrive Cart, the cart system, your checkout page, a sales page, however you want to do it. It includes those things Brio was talking about, upsells if you want to do those. I've been Definitely satisfied with ThriveCart and ThriveLearn, but I also would say it's quirky. If you're listening to this and you know me and you're like, oh, I want to get into that, reach out to me and I'll think through some of the pros and cons to give you. It's not quite as intensive as WordPress, but it's more like that. It's effortful software compared to some where it's like, I click this button and what I see is what the user sees and it's super easy. it's not that.

    Brea: I love those kinds of things. That's my, that's my jam. Yeah. So we, we kind of threw out there CRM. If you don't know what that means, it stands for customer relationship management system, right? A CRM system or a CRM program or platform or whatever. But this is where, um, you do need a place to, To keep all of your people, you know, so you want a place where you see your pipeline? Visually, right what what is out there? What are you working on who are you talking to when was the last time you talked to a Previous customer, right? When when will you follow up with them next? I mean that's Having a system that helps you manage those relationships. That's what a CRM does I have used HubSpot, I've used other things like that, but I use Mighty Networks to do all of these things. Mighty Networks really is my all-in-one. It does my email marketing, it does my community building, it's where I store resources. I don't have a vault per se, but that would be my vault. There are things in there that people in the community can access, right? So it does all those things and it integrates with Zoom. It's just like, that's my all-in-one that I really, really love. So I'm excited to share more about that in another episode. But again, I think you don't have to, you might need to, or you might want to have unique tech for all of the different things, I've found that I enjoy having all those things in one place.

    Lisa: Yeah, and you may or may not need this. The reason why I get on my rants about, hey look, don't obsess about your CRM before you have five clients because just stick it in a spreadsheet, you know? Like, or if you don't do one on one clients, so you don't have a giant list, like, for example, there were years when I had 15 active clients, it didn't sound like that many, but I would have 50 events for some of them each per year. But then it was more about event management, not so much about managing the individual customers. So it was very easy to use customer information and QuickBooks or tagging them in Kit, and I could get all the info I needed. And then the rest of it was just in Asana, where we did our project management. So you could have a very thriving business and depending on Whether you have high volume with a few number of customers or a lot of customers to keep up with, a lot of prospects to keep up with, then you sure, you know, you probably do need a CRM to prompt you. You can use Pipedrive, Keap, K-E-A-P, Zoho, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Kajabi. So there are a lot of them to choose from.

    Brea: Yeah. And again, remember, what's the job of the tech? So if a CRM is, is a system to manage your customer relationships, but you don't have any customers yet, you don't need a CRM, right? Or you only have five or 10, like you can manage those relationships without a very complicated and robust, but complex Salesforce, um, program. And expensive, by the way. So pay for what you need. Pay for what helps you. Pay for the things that save time, that save money for you in other places. But you don't need a CRM if you don't have a lot of relationships to manage. And you might be managing those relationships through email, right? So your email marketing might kind of serve as customer relationship management if the managing that you're doing is nurturing those relationships by dripping them content or by keeping them up to date in your email. but you're not planning on reaching out to them or making sales calls or things like that, you know, you don't need a CRM. You can just manage those relationships through email or, like I do, through the Mighty Network, you know. So just

    Lisa: Let it become a need before the spend. Yeah, yeah. They all have helpful bits. I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year not using a CRM. I didn't need to have it ping me to say to reach out to a prospect. I was getting more prospects than I could possibly handle. So it was great. I didn't need it to do that. So I just used email marketing exactly as you described. I use it to keep up with and nurture the relationships and that all happened through my email marketing platform.

    Brea: Yeah. So I love having a CRM because it helps me visualize the different. I mean, I've used pipeline, I've used pipe drive because I need that. I need a place where I can go and see these are the people that I reached out to. These are the prospects. These are the things that are in the pipeline, you know, and I can see where they are. You know, am I at the very beginning? Are we close to the end? That makes sense for my brain and I want a visual representation where I can see all the different deals that I'm working on at once, you know, and where they are in the progress. And I also love their relationship management aspect of, you know, when's your birthday? Or I love doing a little reach out when it's their CliftonStrengths anniversary, because on their, on the reports, it tells you when they took the assessment. So I love like following up, you know, those little reach outs. That's where a CRM is helpful because you can put all that data in there and a spreadsheet gets really full really fast.

    Brea: So, again, just remember, like, what's the job that you want it to do for you? And then figure out what tech do I need or what tech best supports that job, you know, that I'm looking to fill. There might be aspects of the CRM that you want to use, but could be done by a different type of tech or vice versa.

    Lisa: I love it. That is a beautiful way to describe when things that CRMs are great for that the other pieces of software wouldn't do. I want to give an honorable mention to Canva because even though I don't consider it to be the most critical when you're starting your business. It has been one of the most important pieces of software. I use it every, probably every day, definitely every week. It has such incredible power. And when I left and found that I had an alternative to using PowerPoint for design, for my delivery, everything from creating images to videos to editing, editing a photo, like just having a photo editor and not having to buy Photoshop, all kinds of things. I love, love, love Canva. So there's my 20 second Canva commercial.

    Brea: Do you have one? I also am a Canva girl. I do have a graphic designer that I hire out marketing assets and my logo, my brand, things like that, especially any printed things. I usually have her design. But for digital stuff, for quick things, I mean, Canva does so much. So I use it. you know, I use it to create the images for the podcast. I use it to create so many things. So Canva Pro, I am a subscriber and it's worth it to me for sure. Yeah. Same. I use it for presentations and slide decks a hundred percent. It's so much prettier and so much easier than Google Slides or PowerPoint or anything. And you can, again, talk about something that has like really grown over time. I mean, Canva continues to really innovate. And now not only can you design your slide decks in Canva, but you can present from Canva. And now you can present offline too, which is great. So there's, it just continues to get better and better and better.

    Lisa: Yeah, they have added so many AI features in the recent months and even I mentioned website. If you don't have a website, you can literally build a website as a type of when you click create, it's like you want to create a document, a social media image, whatever. Website is one of the choices and then you click publish and all you have to do is redirect your domain name to that link they give you. It's wild what you can do.

    Brea: So easy, yeah. I actually love teaching coaches how to use Canva, so if you're interested in learning more about all the things that you can do in Canva, come find me and I'll add you to the list to be invited to the next, you know, Next thing, one thing that I love creating in Canva that I used to pay my graphic designer to do for me and now I don't have to anymore is customized top five cards for like a lanyard or just a postcard for a workshop or whatever. She designed the card itself, but now Canva actually has a mail merge feature that not a lot of people know about. What? There you go. See?

    Lisa: I wouldn't have even thought to ask it to do that. It's amazing. So incredible and there's so much I know if you're a listener and you're like this episode alone Was a ton to think about write down Map out and I have all these other questions. What if I want to make a quiz on my website? What about a PDF editor? What about those documents signing? I mean, there's so much software that you'll find crops up the need or the desire for it will crop up as you go through your business. So if you want a mega list, I have one, you go to leadthroughstrengths.com/techstack. And I have this list with every category I could think of the day that I made the list. It's pretty big. It's six pages of technology, where it's like, I need X category. What can I look at? It'll give you that. And then I also put asterisks by the basically the foundational tech stack stuff that we talked about today. So, you know, if you're getting started, you don't want to kill yourself with the six pages worth of things to go figure out. And then I put my specific tech stack in there. If you're like, well, what do you use? What do you buy? I have that in here as well.

    Brea: I love it. And of course you can come and talk to me and other listeners at our biweekly meetups. So if all of this sounds a little bit overwhelming, you want some clarity around some of the things we've talked about, or you want to learn from other listeners what they're, what they're using, um, come join us on zoom. So we meet every other week. Come to my website, BreaRoper.com to get the invite. 

    Lisa: We'll see you in there.

“Remember, hard work doesn’t have to feel hard. Aligned with your strengths, it actually feels easy, energizing, and fun!”
— Love, Brea

MEET YOUR CO-HOSTS

BREA ROPER
Communication | Woo | Activator | Futuristic | Connectedness

If you need a Strengths Hype Girl, for yourself or your team, connect with Brea at brearoper.com. She’s ready to deliver an inspirational keynote, empowering training, or transformational workshop. If you’re looking for an expert guide to support your internal Strengths efforts, reach out today! 

LISA CUMMINGS
Strategic | Maximizer | Positivity | Individualization | Woo

To work with Lisa, check out her resources for independent coaches, trainers, and speakers. Get business tools and strategy support with her Tools for Coaches membership.

The Fine Print: This podcast is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views and interpretations of CliftonStrengths© are solely the beliefs of Lisa Cummings and Brea Roper.

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