Morning!

How you faring today?

So, now that you know your tendency and you’ve hopefully started reading The Continuum Concept, I thought today we’d look at a few practical business tools.

Acuity Scheduling -meeting scheduling software, internet based, great for avoiding email ping-pong trying to agree times for meetings, both online and face to face.  Allows you to set your standard availability as well as different types of appointments with different lengths and prices.  Create packages and gift certificates which can be used to book a set number of appointments, set up different calendars for different typs of appointment, integrate with paypal, stripe, zoom and many more.  If you’ve booked in with me, you’ve used acuity!

Canva – graphic design software, internet / app based, quick, cheap and (most importantly when design is not your thing) easy to use.  Perfect for making facebook, instagram and blog graphics (like the one above!), infograms, logos etc etc.  You can’t beat professionally designed branding but before your budget allows that, canva is a great alternative!  And to be honest, even after getting your branding done, you’ll still need to make graphics.  The paid for version (approx £10/month at time of writing) allows you to save brand colours and templates speeding things up even further.

Hubspot – CRM system, great for keeping records of emails, meetings, calls and general notes relating to clients, suppliers, contacts, leads etc.  Easy to use, integrates with gmail and outlook as well as mailchimp (and about a thousand others if you use zapier).  CRM system is free, can add on additional features (email list management, sales tracking etc) for additional fees.

Mailchimp – email list management.  Set this up, collect email address via easy integrations with wordpress, facebook, squarespace and more, then design emails to be sent to specific lists.  Easy to schedule emails in advance, set up automated sequences that are triggered when someone joins a list and has option to make everything GDPR compliant if you are in the EU or targetting customers based there.

WordPress – easiest (imo!) way to set up a website!  Integrates with loads of different software, millions of themes (I use Divi by Elegant Themes – easiest theme I’ve ever used) and relatively easy (I’m told!) to set up under your own domain name – just don’t ask me how, I’m not techy enough for that!  Make sure you use the .org version if you want to be able to list it under your own domain without having to have it on a specific wordpress plan.

Zapier – software that allows you to integrate various software set ups with each other.  Some software has built in integrations (acuity with paypal, stripe and zoom for example), others can be integrated with the use of zapier.  Easy to set up, search for possible integrations and implement them.  Free version allows you to set up and run 5 zaps, plans available if you want more.

Zoom – video conference software.  Record calls to either your cloud account (pro plan) or your computer, invite up to 100 people to join your call, free version allows unlimited 1-1 calls and group calls up to 40 mins.  Integrates with acuity so clients booking meet get sent zoom link automatically – again, if you’ve booked in with me, it’s likely you’ve used zoom!

There is so very much software available that makes business easier and this is far from an exhaustive list, just a flavour of some of the most common ones, all of which I’ve used, to help you get started, expand and simplify your business.

Have you used any of these?  Any reviews, recommendations, alternative suggestions?  Any other types of software I’ve not listed but which you think are essential?  Comment below, join the conversation on facebook or email me!