#085 - 5 Must Have (Mostly Free) Small Business Tools

Show Notes

Whether you’re in the early creative launch stage or you’re a seasoned side business entrepreneur, there are times when it seems there aren't enough hours in the day for all the tasks. From writing proposals to meeting with prospects to responding to emails and other administration tasks, your days are full.   
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With a goal of helping you work smarter and not harder, co-hosts Nola Boea and Lori Vajda are on a mission to find you free or very low-cost software tools to help you streamline your business and make your work less stressful. 

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• Why you need small business tools and software
• Which software tools will be the most effective for your side business.
• The ways in which tech tools can save you money.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

(02:05:78) A grammar tool can help you with spelling, punctuation, clarity, tone of voice and more. This is the one free tool we can’t live without.

(03:29:52) As a small business owner there’ll be times when you need client signatures, partnership agreements and more. This free tool makes getting signature easy-peasy. 

(07:58.35) What phone number are you going to put on your website or your email signatures or collateral or whatever. While this tool is not a free tool, it is an essential one.

(9:38.70) High resolution images are an important part of branding and marketing your business. This tool can help you find awesome free high resolution images.

Resources 

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tool links:
Grammaryly:https://www.grammarly.com/
Eversign:https://eversign.com/
​Fireflies (transcriptions)  https://fireflies.ai/
Openphone: https://www.openphone.com/
Yayimages: https://yayimages.com/ 
ConvertKit: Our #1 Favorite Email Marketing Platform 
(This is an affiliate link)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nola: a business, even a side business, is challenging, whether you're working a full-time job or a few freelance jobs. But having the right tools and technology can not only make you look like a professional business right out of the gate, it can also help you be more efficient. Stay tuned friends because in this episode, we're sharing five business tools, plus one bonus resource, every business owner should have.

[00:00:24] Announcer: You're listening to the Sticky Brand lab Podcast, where time strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

[00:00:35] Lori: As An entrepreneur just starting out, it's important to make good use of the time you have, both for working on and in your business. And the more you can maximize your resources, cut costs and draw more customers to your business, the better. So to help you with that, we're sharing five business tools and one resource, as Nola had mentioned, which by the way, is loaded with a ton of free tools and templates we think are worth, exploring. All the links can be found either in our show notes or on our resource page of our website.

[00:01:10] Nola: Okay to get started, just imagine you've written a blog or sent a prospect an email, or you've sent a client proposal and you discover spelling mistakes after putting in so much effort. Has this actually happened to you? I know what's happened to me.

[00:01:27] Lori: Yes, you caught one. After I sent a proposal, you're like, I said, what did you think of the proposal? And you said there was a spelling mistake.

[00:01:33] Nola: Case in point. Any content you generate reflects your business, which is why we think the number one tool you need is a grammar tool. Our favorite is Grammarly. You can have it as a Chrome extension and this free tool is a must have in our opinion, because Grammarly not only catches spelling and punctuation errors, it also shares insight on the tone and language of your content. And I know Lori, you actually put that to good use.

[00:02:05] Lori: I do. I have Grammarly as an extension for myself. And even though you caught that mistake, which, now we can say, so does it catch spelling mistakes? Yes. Yes it does. But if you ignore them, then that's where the problem lies. Or if it's the right word, but the wrong spelling of the word, which I think may have been the case here, it's not going to tell you that on the free version. It could tell you that on the paid one, but there's another thing. Aside from the spelling and the punctuation, one of the things that Grammarly, even the free tool does, is it lets you know, tone, or in language of the content. So, often when I'm sending an email or putting together a proposal, the icon will pop up to let me know what the tone of my content sounds like. And I have reworded many emails, especially, to have a more friendly tone, because when I'm in my business mindset, I want to record the information and get to the point as quickly as possible. Recognizing that there's a know, like, and trust factor that I'm also trying to build that rapport. So a friendly email can really make a difference. And I find that Grammarly, I use that every day without question.

The second tool that you really need for your business is an e-signature tool. Especially today. Often, when we're talking to people who are starting online businesses, they don't even put together contract agreements. So one of the big complaints that happens is the work got out of scope that is common for coaches, consultants, and freelancers. A contract can really help limit that because you can go back and say, this is out of scope. So having an e-signature can make a big difference. People are usually familiar with, like a DocuSign. If you have Dropbox, Dropbox, depending on the paid version, has a limited number of free DocuSign's. I was looking for a signature tool that you could use right from the start. And the one that I found was Eversign. And it is limited. It's five free documents. That you can use per month, but when you're just starting in your business, that's going to make a big difference. And so why pay for the upgrade when you can use it in the beginning for free?

[00:04:43] Nola: Absolutely. And because so many businesses are online now or have an online component, it's getting more and more common to expect to receive or provide an electronic contract with an actual electronic signature. It used to be a novelty or a weird thing, but it's really common these days.

[00:05:04] Lori: Agreed. You can use it for business agreements. You can use it in partnership. When you're working on your taxes and you have to use a signature. There are a variety of uses for an E signature.

The third tool is, we can't live without this one. It's a transcription tool. Whether you're using it to record meetings and transcribe that. I personally take notes when I'm working with clients or talking to prospects. And the challenge is actively participating in a meeting and still getting the important information documented. So transcription, if you can record transcription is great.

We actually use transcription for our podcast, but for meetings not so much. So I was looking for a tool that would help me capture the elements that I miss in meetings and the free version that we've tested out, which the plan is to upgrade is Fireflies. It's an AI tool that you can use with Zoom, you can use it with Teams, you can even use it when you're doing phone calls through your computer are on your desktop and it transcribes the meetings. It gives you great notes. It says, speaker speaker, you know, so you have that broken down. Of course, it's not perfect. You're going to have to do the editing. But one of the things I also like about Fireflies is it tries to capture action items and give you a list of those action items.

[00:06:44] Nola: I love that part.

[00:06:44] Lori: Yeah. From the tool. Keep in mind though, anytime you're recording, you need to let people know. And if you're recording out of the US, GDPR or General Data Protection Regulations, do play a part in here. So do know, that can either have a limitation or not, depending on the country or where your transcription services is happening.

[00:07:11] Nola: Yeah. And speaking of, transcription, I mean, whether it's Fireflies or just, the down and dirty speaking into your Word doc, using the microphone function or taking an audio dictation and just uploading it to any transcription tool. Just doing that, it's really helpful for capturing your thoughts or any key points without losing the flow of the moment. So that's why we really like to use this.

[00:07:35] Lori: The other thing is, it helps you repurpose content. So whether it is, in our case, the show notes or meeting, it gives you the context, the conversation, and you can repurpose that for blog posts, articles, social posts, a variety of things. And it's right there. We definitely can't live without it.

[00:07:58] Nola: Absolutely. Another important tool to have is a phone. We're talking about for your business. So what phone number are you going to put on your website or your email signatures or collateral or whatever? This is important because that number will be on public display. And so you don't want to use your personal phone because you will get spam calls. So what is the alternative? What, buy a second phone? Well, for us, the solution wasn't to buy a second phone, but a second phone number. And while not a free tool, we use OpenPhone because it's inexpensive and we're currently on a month-to-month plan for only $13 a month, which drops to $10 a month with an annual subscription.

[00:08:44] Lori: I did so much research to try and find a phone. So trust me, when I talk about, what's out there and looking at reviews and ease of use and OpenPhone had such positive feedback. So, you get a number. It comes through on your personal phone, it is highlighted through OpenPhone, so, you know it's a business type of number, you know, granted it could be a spam number, but it still is coming through. If it does turn out to be a client or a prospect you can add in the details for that client name, business name, all of that information, it gives you data information about the length of the call. You can text through it and it's on your personal phone, but it is through OpenPhone. So it does not register your personal number.

[00:09:38] Nola: Yeah, which is really helpful. And it's so important. The fifth and final tool that we will say every business should have, is images. Images are important part of creating a sticky brand, but buying high quality images can be really expensive, especially if you're just starting out. We like to use yay images. That's the name of their website and this platform. Yay Images. It's a great website. They offer great deals, but before you spend a dime, check out their free images, they do have a ton of free images.

[00:10:14] Lori: We taught a DIY website class where people were designing a website. And then at the end of the course, they press publish and they have their business website. We referred them to a number of different resources for images, but Yay Images produced the most, like what you would want to put on your website, type of images. They were great. You put in what you're looking for and it populates, but for free, you will love it. Or at least we did. And so did our students,

Our last recommendation is our bonus. Woo. And that is HubSpot. Now you might have heard the name and thought, wow, that's a pretty expensive tool. Especially if you've been working for a big company. They actually have a lot of free resources. So HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM or customer relationship management tool. Great for sales, which is why we're recommending them here. They have a number of free tools for small businesses. Everything to help you create business operations, like templates for invoicing, sales, email marketing, your email signature, and a lot more.

[00:11:32] Nola: Yes. And they also have a lot of, free online courses, all having to do with content marketing, inbound marketing, outbound, emails, lead gen. A lot of real practical things that you would want to use for your business, whether it's just starting out, or diversifying your income stream.

[00:11:50] Lori: We'll continue to bring you free and low-cost tools future shows, including ones for SEO keywords and writing tools. But we think the five plus our bonus will take you pretty far.

[00:12:05] Nola: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope it makes all the difference in you getting started on your business so you can create your best and most exciting life. If you found the information shared here today helpful, let us know by posting here, where you're listening, or on our Facebook page.

[00:12:21] Lori: Not sure how to turn your idea into a profitable business? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. We'd be happy to help you.

[00:12:31] Nola: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember. Action creates results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

 [OUT-TAKE]

[00:12:51] Nola: Starting a business, even a side business is challenging, whether you're working with full-time job or a few freelance job, or if you free blaa.

[00:13:06] Lori: It's when you spit your tongue out that's really funny.
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[00:13:09] Nola: Yeah. Blah, blah, blah.