Streamline Your Tech: Avoid These Costly Software Mistakes!

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. I want to talk to you about your SaaS stack or your tech stack, software stack, call it what you like. It is all of the things that hum and make our business work and do the things that we want to do. Now, some of us get excited and overzealous and spend far too much time on AppSumo. And no judgments. I mean, there's some really cool stuff over there and certainly some things to enliven your brain and think about things a little differently. But I do want to caution you a little bit. Sometimes we go in and there's something cool and exciting and we purchase it and we think this is the next best jam. And we start using it and yada, yada, yada. What ends up happening is that we have so many things in our tech stack that we actually double purchase or we overpurchase. So you may have 2 different pieces of software that do the same thing, or maybe you have one piece of software that does 3 things, but you buy something that only does one of the things that this one does. You get my point. So I am encouraging you to start your year out right, streamline your business and your software stack. I have a free printout for you so you can go through and do this, go through the process yourself and keep track of what's happening. This is another one of these things that is important to check in on regularly inside your business because as we go through the year, we purchase new things or we get new things. Maybe there's freebies that we sign up for, all those kinds of things. So I want you to think about what are the essentials for decluttering your digital assets? This is going to make for a more efficient and cost-effective business operation. So the first thing I want you to think about is when you're looking at maximizing efficiency and going through the whole cost-effectiveness piece, it's important to not just streamline for the sake of streamlining your digital assets, but to look at the things that matter most to you and to help you with your operational efficiency. Because we do have times when we are using different pieces of software and those software pieces could be actually holding us back. So, one of the first things you wanna do is actually do an inventory of your software. Literally write out what is the name of the software? What are the features and benefits of this piece of software? How much does it cost for me to use this piece of software? Whether that's monthly or yearly, maybe it's even free. And then, What, how often do we use this piece of software? When you're going through this process of categorizing or cataloging, right, doing the inventory of your software, at first it might feel clunky because you're like, I don't know where I have all this information. The first place I would suggest, if you've not done this before, the first place I suggest you going is into your inbox. Oh, I know, creepy, right? But go through and look for any receipts or purchases, or you can use some keywords when you're searching your inbox. To look for items that you've purchased. You can also look up words like download here, those kinds of ideas. You might get a lot of crap with that one too, but when you're looking for, you know, you're basically looking for breadcrumbs as to what you can find. So once you start to use the search feature in your inbox, try to put the words together, what might work best for you. But certainly you're looking for receipts or thank you for your purchase or those kinds of ideas. You're going to look for those type of words inside your email box will help you to find some of the things that maybe you purchased and forgot you even had. If you are somebody who uses AppSumo, obviously you can search AppSumo in your email and see what comes up there. Look for keywords when you're looking at the subject line. Maybe, you know, a specific word keeps showing up, and maybe it's like invoice or purchase or something that shows up regularly when you're searching for things. And then try to use that to dig further and look for all the different pieces of software you might have. You'll be surprised. Most of us have a lot of software around. Some of it is free. Some of it is a one-paid-time kind of software. Other times it's our monthlies. Obviously, if it's a monthly bill or a yearly bill, you can always check out the source of payment. So if you use a Visa or MasterCard credit card of any kind, you could check there. If you're using PayPal to pay for those, you could check there and look and see what are these recurring payments that you have. This is a valuable exercise. And as you move forward with this, if you continue to keep this list updated, it'll be less work moving forward and you'll be in more of a habit of saying, oh, I've got a new piece of software. I need to add this. Here at Geeky Girl, we actually use ClickUp and we have a folder that is called Systems. And inside that Systems folder, we have a list for every single piece of software that we touch. Whether we're using it now, whether we used it a year ago or 3 years ago, it resides there so that we can see the history of what happened with that software. It makes it easier to do this kind of inventory. Okay, so that's the first step. Go through and do your software inventory. It helps you to avoid overlapping features and enhance your collaboration with your team as well, because you can see which team members have used which pieces of software. If you highlight that information, it'll give you the ability to see which tools overlap and whether or not you have multiple tools that are no longer serving you. Maybe you even have a tool that you thought was great a year and a half ago, but you haven't used it in a while but forgot to cancel it. And it maybe it's a yearly thing. And so maybe your next payment's coming up soon. So you could save yourself some money on that as well. So streamlining your software stack is important because the more tools you have, The more things you have to bounce around to in order to make things happen. There's a lot of times in our businesses when we are using 3 different tools when really we could use one, and it actually will save you and your team members time, which saves you money in the end. So this is important for you in terms of making sure that you're reducing the overwhelm, not just for yourself, but your team members as well. And, you know, reach out to your team while you're doing the software inventory as well, asking them, About what's working for them and what isn't and what their pitfalls are when they're dealing with the different pieces of software that you have. When we're strategically planning for our business moving forward, we get to understand which software assets are actually helping us, which ones are hindering us. Maybe we can even see where maybe the software we thought was doing a great job isn't, and there's an opportunity to change to something else. Or later on during the year, another piece of software comes across the desk and you're like, hey, this is awesome, but do I need it? You can compare it to the inventory you have and see whether or not it becomes a valuable purchase for you. Now, this practical tool I put together for you is simply just a download, and it'll give you all the information step by step to be able to do your inventory, to check on software optimization, you know, utilization, checking for overlapping features. And then, of course, the recommendations, giving you some ideas on how you would decide which software pieces to keep. And then perhaps even looking at your future considerations. As well as to what you need in your business moving forward. It is important and a very practical tool for you to plan and adapt your digital assets, building an infrastructure of tools that keeps your business running so that you aren't a slave to the tools. In fact, you're finding the right tools that work best for you, and this will be something that you can use moving forward as your needs evolve as well. You can continue to re— you know, come back to this piece of software list and see whether or not things are still working the way you anticipated. I would encourage you to use this list and pull it out at least a couple times a year to see where you're at. And certainly pulling it out every time you think a new software would solve a different problem. You can see whether or not that new software maybe knocks off 2 or 3 pieces. I know recently we moved over to a piece of software that actually removed a couple pieces of software pieces out of our tech stack just because that one replaced the other 2 as well as did something else. So there's always time for us to revisit and revise what's happening inside the business, and streamlining our tech stack is just one of those things. It can save you time, money, and your sanity as well. So if you'd like to get that, the link will be down below here. I hope you have a fantastic day. If you have any questions or comments about your tech stack and how you streamline, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment. You can send us an email at clientcare@geekygirl.ca as well. Hope you have a fantastic week. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group? Where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world. Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.