Behind the Scenes With the Tools We Use To Run Our Business

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As entrepreneurs we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient. When you run your own business anything that you can automate or streamline can help you save time so you can focus on creating, innovating, and planning for the future.

We have several tools and technologies that we use on a daily basis with our teams that make life easier. And as busy entrepreneurs with two young kids we greatly appreciate anything that simplifies our work. We both like to be active and on the go, not just stuck in front of a computer all day. But we also need to stay connected to our teams who are all around the world.

Today we are sharing the tools that we use and we are going to break them down into three buckets--project management tools, marketing tools, and podcast tools. Perhaps one or more of these tools could be helpful for your business. Or maybe this will inspire you to go out and find some things relevant to your business that could make your life easier.

You can watch the video of our full discussion below or just listen to the audio version as a podcast. If you want more content like this you can subscribe to our Youtube channel

 Project management tools

• Asana: We both use Asana with our teams. It is great for organizing and keeping track of projects. There are a lot of moving parts in our businesses, at any given time we are working on multiple videos, graphics, social media posts, articles, interviews, speaking engagements, etc...So having Asana to keep track of it all is essential. We both use the free version of the program, but if you have a bigger team you may have to pay a fee. 
• G-Suite: We both use G-Suite daily. We use Google Docs for our media kits, contracts, book drafts, and more. We use Google Sheets for keeping track of payments and speaking engagements. We use Gmail for personalized emails and Google Drive for storing and sharing files. It is great for collaboration and we love that multiple people can be in one Doc or Sheet making edits and you can see it in real-time. 
• Lastpass: This is the tool we use for keeping track of passwords. It securely stores the passwords, it also allows you to generate really difficult passwords instead of using something too weak. Once you download Lastpass you can go to any website you are a member of and it will automatically populate the username and password boxes so you can easily sign in. You can also share passwords with team members without them actually seeing what the password is. 
• Dropbox: This is where we keep all of our videos, courses, podcasts, pictures, and documents. It just makes it easy to keep everything in one place for the team to access it
• Skype: We use the free consumer version of Skype, not Skype for Business. We use it to record podcasts, message team members, have team calls, share our screens, and make international calls

Marketing 

• Kajabi: You may not have heard of this one, but we use it a lot. This is one we do pay for, but for us it is worth it. Kajabi is an all in one platform. You can build your website there, sell products, take payments, make landing pages, and create newsletters. Having it all in one place is convenient. 
• MailChimp: Blake uses MailChimp for marketing automation. It is an easy way to send out her weekly newsletter. You can also create landing pages through the site now. 
• Hootsuite: This site makes our social media management much easier. We use it for our three businesses so we put out a lot of content and it helps organize all of our posts.
• Social media: We both use social media multiple times a day for the business. We both use Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter

Podcast

• Skype: For the podcast, we use Skype to record most of the episodes, although Jacob does use StreamYard more frequently now to live stream the podcast episodes. 
• Libsyn: Our teams use Libsyn to post the podcast episodes to all of the channels--Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio
• Otter.ai: This is the tool we use to create transcripts for podcasts and videos. It is through AI, so there are times we have to edit a few things, but cost-wise it is less than other options out there. 
• Dropbox: As mentioned above, we do use Dropbox to store all of our files including the podcast interviews. We upload from Skype to Dropbox and then our team members make edits and re-upload
• Wavve files: To market our podcast we create Wavve files that allow us to post short audio clips with an image throughout the week that allow our audience to watch bite-size clips from the guest to pique their interest in the full episodes

This episode is sponsored by FedEx Office

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