15 Tools & Apps to Help You Be More Productive

Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. This is one of my favorite episodes to do every year, and this is where I do a roundup of my favorite tools and apps that have helped me run my business more efficiently. I'm going to share with you 15 tools that have been really great at helping me run my business, helping me get more organized and helping me be more efficient and also deliver a more professional image to the outside world. So I hope you find these useful. And, and I'd be really interested at the end to hear whether you agree with my list or whether you have tools that you would add on to the list instead. So let's get on with today's episode. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. So the first tool on my list, and it is number one by a mile, is the Remarkable two. And if you don't know what the Remarkable two is, then go and Google it. There's lots of videos out there that will tell you about it. But basically the Remarkable two is E Ink paper. So it means that you can take notes and it gives you an experience that is very close to writing on paper. You get that sort of scratchy feeling when you're writing a pen on paper. You get the same thing with this particular product. So what it means for me is that I have got rid of all my paper. I'm a completely paperless office now. In fact, I can't remember the last time I actually bought a printer cartridge. And that means I can find things because I am notorious for writing things on bits of paper, putting it somewhere, and then not being able to find it again. So the Remarkable has got rid of all the paper in my office. I put all my client notes in there. I. I scribble things to remind myself of things. I brainstorm using the product. And then once you've written something, you can translate it to text and then email it to yourself, or you can email the PDF document to yourself. And it also syncs up with the remarkable app that you put on your computer. So this just is revolutionary for me and I can't say enough how fantastic this product is. And if you want to get yourself more organized, if you like writing, then this is a product for you. And again, I'll put a link into the show Notes so that you can learn more about the product. But that is the Remarkable two. That is number one at the very top of my list. And it's at the very top of my list for a very good reason. So let's move on to my second tool that is completely foundational and completely fundamental for running my business and that is Kartra. And Kartra is an all in one platform that enables me to do all my email marketing. So store my emails and create emails and send them out and create sequences. But it's also a place where I host my membership program. So if you are in like a self running agency or the agency selling system or the Build, nurture, convert blueprint program, then you will access all the content through Kartra which is where the membership is hosted. It also hosts all my videos, so I can store my videos on there. You can also create web pages and, and because it's all integrated, can do particularly clever things. So tag people on the behavior that they've shown whilst they're on your page. So Kartra is where you create all the forms that people fill in to give you their email address. You can also do calendar booking system in there and most recently they've added in a survey functionality. So you can do surveys with your audience or create quizzes for your audiences and then you also create your products. This is where you would sell. So if you were creating an online product, you would create the membership site and then you create the product and that's where it takes payments and handles all of that stuff. So Kartra is a really fantastic all in one platform. Now the question you're always going to have to answer is do I want to buy a suite of best in breed products and then connect them all together or do I want to use an all in one platform like Kartra Or Kajabi is another alternative where they're all integrated together so they all communicate really well together with each other. But. But they may not be the best in breed. So there are other platforms that just do one thing and they do it better. But to be honest, Kartra is the platform for me. I've been using it for a couple of years now, as you'll know, and it works really well. Now it's not a cheap product, it costs me a couple of thousand pounds a year, but considering I don't have to pay for video hosting, I don't have to buy a separate email marketing platform, I don't necessarily have to host my website anywhere else, I don't have to buy separate calendar, booking system and all the rest of it. So when you add it all together, it's probably cheaper to buy Kartra than it is to buy all the independent products. And I don't have any of the headaches of trying to get them all to talk to each other. So that is Kartra. That is my second most used product, and the second product I really, really highly recommend. Now, the next products I want to talk about are kind of connected to Kartra because they're created by the same company, and that is Webinar Jam number three and EverWebinar number four. So let me just explain what they are. So WebinarJam is the platform I use to host my webinars. So when I'm running a masterclass or a workshop or webinar, and it's a marketing webinar, then I will host it on WebinarJam. And WebinarJam is a brilliant platform where you can obviously deliver your presentation, you can have chat with your audience, you can deliver files, you can deliver offers, and a whole bunch of other things that make running a webinar so much easier than trying to do it through a platform like Zoom. Unless you've paid for their webinar add on part of it. You can choose whether people can request to talk, you can choose how many presenters you have, and so on. So that's Webinar Jam, and then its sister product is everwebinar. And everwebinar is the same thing as Webinar Jam, but for providing on demand or evergreen webinars. So a good tactic when you're running live webinars is to run them a number of times to really refine them and get feedback from people and make the pacing right and get the contents right and all the rest of it. And then when you've had that webinar live for a while and it's proven to work, then you can turn it into an on demand or an evergreen webinar, which means people can watch it at their leisure. And it can simulate the same behavior as a live webinar. It can have chat and you can deliver content at certain time, you can put offers in, you can put slides and files in at certain times, you can simulate all of that. And the good thing is, because WebinarJam and Everwebinar are produced by the same company, you can very easily, literally, at the click of a button, turn a live webinar into an on demand webinar. So webinars are really important part of my marketing strategy, and I'll be really focusing on them in 2022. So having products like webinar jam and everwebinar make my life an awful lot easier. And I have one less stress to worry about when it comes to delivering a workshop. When you've got 50 things that you can worry about, well, the actual platform to deliver them is not one that I worry about. And recently Webinar Jam and everyone had a massive facelift. So they refined some of the look and feel of the platform, but they also added in some new functionality as well. So that is great. Okay, so that is Kartra, Webinar Jam and Ever Webinar, sort of three products produced by the same company that really helped me run my business. The next platform I want to Talk about is ConvertKit. And ConvertKit is one of those best in breed examples when compared to Kartra. So ConvertKit is an email marketing platform and it just does email marketing. So it enables you to capture people's email addresses, manage the email, send them out, cope with GDPR to do with unsubscribes, get create sequences, create automations and broadcasts. I won't go into that now because if you use email automation, you already know what, what they're about. So that's ConvertKit. ConvertKit is, it's a simple tool, it's free up to a certain size, I think a thousand subscribers and you've got a bit of limited functionality, but you can certainly try it out. And it's the email automation software that I use before I move to Kartra. So it's something that I've used myself, so I can recommend it. There are Also platforms like ActiveCampaign that is a little bit more sophisticated and things like Mailchimp and Mailerlite. I'd also recommend ActiveCampaign is great if you want to get a little bit more sophisticated and do things like lead scoring so you can start to identify your top prospects who are scoring those higher numbers. Again, that's something that you can look into. So that is email automation and that is my recommendation number five, which is ConvertKit. Okay, so let's move on to kind of planning and productivity. And the next tool I want to share with you is a tool called Amazing Marvin. Now this has been on my list for the last couple of years and I always say it's a silly name, but it's a good product and it has really helped me get myself much more organized. So if you listen to my podcast or watch videos, then you know I'm all about organization and I talk a lot about morning and evening rituals and planning your day before you launch into it. And so you want a tool to do that. Now, of course you can use a piece of paper, or of course you can use your remarkable two to do that. But I found that when I've done that and when I speak to a lot of customers about it, they tend to have a long list that kind of gets longer because they cross one thing off and add two more things onto it. So it's not always the best way of working. So with Amazing Marvin, it's just a piece of software that enables you to plan your day or your week or your month. And you can assign time to it, you can assign alarms, you can turn stopwatches on, which I use a lot in that platform to get me really focused. And the thing about that is that my goal is to plan my day and make sure by the end of the day that every single thing is crossed off. I'm not necessarily trying to do an advert for Marvin, although it's a tool that I really like. I just advise you to use a productivity tool. Another thing I like about Marvin is the fact that it works on my phone as well as on my computer. So when I have those random thoughts, I can quickly put them in to the app and then come back and schedule them. And they're synced up with my desktop computer as well. So that's amazing. I really encourage you to start every day and every week by planning your week, because not only will you make sure that you're getting the key things done, but you will also have a sense of satisfaction. I can't tell you how good it feels at the end of the day to see a list with everything crossed out. Because I have, you know, not overestimated how long. Well, I have overestimated how long things will take, but not overestimated how much I can get done in a day. And it's much better to have a list that's crossed off and feel really good about your day than have a list that's actually longer at the end of the day than it was at the beginning of the day. So you look for a tool like Amazing Marvin to help you get really organized. Okay, so the next two tools are going to be ones that you know fairly well. So first of all, let's talk about Zoom. So obviously, in this kind of remote working world that we live in, Zoom has become one of the major platforms for communicating. And I use it both for my one to one coaching with my private clients. And I also use it as my platform for my group coaching calls. And it's Been really robust. It's never let me down. And of course it does all the things that, you know, it can do. So Zoom is definitely a platform I recommend. But I also want to recommend Loom. So the same as Zoom, but with an L at the front. And Loom is a screen recording piece of software where I can record my screen, I can record me on the screen or just the screen. And I use this a lot because once you finished recording, it gives you a URL link to the thing that you've just recorded. And of course you can download that as well if you want. But I use it a lot for communicating with my clients. So when a client asks me a question, I'll typically use Loom to give them a response. And there's two reasons for two doing this. First of all, it means that stuff in real time. And so for me, it means I can review things more quickly so I don't have to read them and then craft an email response. I just put them on the screen, read them, and if I need to pause the video, I can while I read a bit more and then I give my feedback. So that's one of the reasons, from my perspective, from my client's perspective, I think it's a lot more engaging to get a video from someone than just an email. Much more engaging. It's a great way of building relationships. And I also use it with some of my prospects as well. So have a look into Loom. If you've never heard of it, it's free to use again up to a certain size or with limited functionality. I pay for the paid version, which is about £70 a year, $100 a year, so it really isn't expensive. Now let's move on to finance. And I can't really run this podcast without sharing with you two tools that I use to help manage my finance. And these tools have been a game changer, although of course they've been around for a while now and they've become a bit more standard than they were when they first came out. And that is Xero and Receipt bank, or it's called Dext now. So number nine is Xero. And Xero, as you'll probably know, is a finance accounting system that you do online. And the thing I really like about it is it's cloud based, so my accountants have got, you know, a real time access to it. But it also kind of communicates in my language and I'm not a financial expert by any means, so it uses my language rather than fancy accounting language. And it just means things are very easy. It does intuitive things like lets you repeat the previous month's invoice rather than starting from scratch every time. It automatically reconciles with your bank, which is great if you connect, make those connections. And I don't go into that too much detail because I know you will already know about Xero. And then the next tool I use, which admittedly I haven't used quite as much, but I still think it's super important, is Receipt bank or Dext as it's called now. And Receipt bank is simply a really good way of capturing your receipts and then connecting them into Xero. I was notorious before about having a car full of receipts and not really claiming money back that I should have been and therefore losing out. Whereas now as soon as I get a receipt I just take a photo of it and Receipt bank or Dex does some clever things to turn that photo into a receipt. It tries to interpret it, you can correct it if you need to and then connect it into Xero. And Xero will try and then link that receipt to a credit card or debit card payment. So that is Receipt Bank. Highly recommend it. One of the functions in there that I really like is the fact that I can get an invoice for example, and just send it to my specific Dex or Receipt bank email address and then it will automatically be piped into Receipt bank and then into Xero. So that's really good. So it's just all these are just about making your life your easier now. Next on my list is Google Drive and this has been super important for me in 2021 and I think it probably will be for a lot of you guys as well. Where my team is remote working and therefore having a central place where we can access all of our documents, our tools and so on has been super useful. So we use Google Drive for that and it's amazing how easy it is to fill that up. So Word, of course you need to keep either keep buying extra storage or keep making sure you're keeping it clean so you don't get too full too quickly. But it's really easy to add a document into there and then create a link that you can share and set the permissions accordingly. So I tend to put all of my files that I share with my VA team, but also past call recordings for the self running Agency Implementation Group, we store in Google Drive and then provide a link to the group for that particular recording. So Google Drive super important, not very sexy, but it doesn't mean that I can run my business more efficiently. So that was number 11. Google Drive. Number 12 is Tobi. And I think Toby made it onto the list last year for the first time. But Toby is a free Google Chrome extension that I would highly advise you to go and use because it makes my life so much easier. So basically, tobii is the screen that opens up when you open up your Chrome browser, assuming you use Chrome. And I can store all of the regular used links, for example, to Google Drive and then to specific pages in Google Drive or to in client lists or client folders or coaching tools that are all stored on Google. I can just create and categorize all the most used links so I can access them really easily. No more searching around or trying to remember where I stored something. So go and look at tobii. It's completely free and it's just a Google Chrome add on. And I highly recommend you install tobii if you haven't already, because it makes organizing frequently visited sites and pages really easy to find. Okay, a couple of new entries coming onto the list now. And the first one is Final Cut Pro. So I know you know, but I have launched a new website and a new YouTube channel focusing on my Camper Van adventures. And because I'm editing two videos a week for that platform and I'm editing a video a week for Da Costa coaching, I decided that I needed to kind of step up from Imovie and just get a little bit better at video editing. So I invested in Final Cut Pro, which is like the grown up version of Imovie for a Mac. And I'm slowly still getting my head around it and getting to grips with it. But it has made my video editing, I hope you'll agree, more professional. And there's just more things that you can do with it and more adjustments that you can make and more titles that you can add on and just it makes things much easier. Although of course with all these platforms there's a really steep learning curve. So one thing I would advise is to take notes. And of course I do that in my remarkable two where I've got my Final Cut Pro Pro tutorial. And every time I learn something, I write it down. Because of course in the moment we think we'll remember it and then two days later we like, how the heck did I do that? So Final Cut Pro has made my life easier and it's helping me get more professional with my video video editing and indeed this, this video, if you're watching it as a video, has been edited On Final Cut Pro. Now another really important tool. And again, this won't be one that you're not familiar with, but it's Canva. And Canva is super important for creating more professional YouTube thumbnails and social media posts and ebook covers and everything else. And so I'd highly recommend that you use Canva because it means you don't have to outsource to a designer to create good looking documents. And Canva keeps improving their functionality and one of the things that they've recently added that is really good and is making my life easier is the fact that you can import a PDF and then you can edit that PDF from within Canva. So we are going through a process at the moment of reviewing all of my ebooks and guides that you can get for free on my website. We are reviewing them to update them, we are putting some of them to bed to not be used anymore. And at the same time we're making them all look much more professional and we're doing all of that in Canva. So we can import the old PDF and it doesn't get it quite right. So you have to do some editing, but it's 90% of the way there. And then you can start editing it and updating it. And of course it gives you lots of pre designed templates for different things and access to hundreds of royalty, three photos. You can do animation in there. So Canva is a super important tool and for the cost, I think it's been a big game changer in the industry. So highly recommend Canva. We use a paid version, but you can get it for free if you wish. So that is number 14 on my list, Canva. And the final thing I want to talk about is a tool called Vidiq v I d iq and if you are into YouTube as I am trying to improve my DaCosta coaching channel and grow my on the Road again channel, then having some smart analytics and some smart advice about how to improve the SEO and the performance of one of your videos is Vidiq is a great tool. So it's like a Chrome extension or a YouTube extension that once you've uploaded a video, it'll give you an SEO score. It will enable you to find the competition. It'll enable you to search for keywords and put those right keywords in as hashtags into your video. It will tell you an overall score of the performance of your video so that you can keep improving them. Because trust me, if you get all of that stuff right and a video goes viral that's how you can grow a channel. So Vidiq, a really great tool. Again, you can use it for free or I use a paid version which cost me about five or six pounds a month. And there's various different classes that you can use, but the basic version I'm using is good enough. And that is Vidiq. So that is my number 15 tool on the list. So there you go. Those are my favorite tools from 2021. That's 15 tools. The remarkable Kartra webinar Jam and every Webinar for webinars, ConvertKit for email marketing, Marvin for my to do list creation, Zoom and Loom for videos, Xero and Dext for finance, Toby to organize my tabs in my Chrome browser. Final Cut Pro for video editing, Canva for thumbnail creation and social media creation. And finally, Vidiq for video analytics. So there you go. That's my top 15 tools. I hope you found this episode useful. I'd love to know if there's a tool that you've used that has changed your life. And if so, do let me know. Drop me an email. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review because that helps me grow the channel. And of course, make sure you subscribed so you are alerted every Thursday when we release the next episode. And I am so excited about episode 100 that's coming up shortly. It's taken us ages to put this episode together to celebrate our hundredth episode, and so make sure you've hit the subscribe button and you are the first to be alerted when it comes out.