#75 - My favourite things

And like I said, I was feeling so Oprah, like, when we were planning this episode, that we did decide to take it that one step further and actually create this huge and very nerdy holiday hamper.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd, Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit, too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode number 75 of the Doing It Online podcast. I am Kate McKibben, your host here from HelloFunnels co. And today I am, well, losing my voice as always. But no, today I am feeling a little bit Oprah. Like, who doesn't love Oprah, right? But today I am going to be talking about and sharing all of my favorite things, my favorite business building tools and tech. So kind of like Oprah, if she was a bit of a nerd. But I'm also to take it one more step in Lady O's shoes is we're going to be giving away a huge holiday hamper, chock full of a whole bunch of it. So we've got this amazing hamper worth over almost $2,000, which we're going to be giving away to one lucky nerd boss out there. And I'll be sharing all the details on that at the end of the episode. Let's dive right on in. So basically, one of the questions I get asked the most is, you know, what do I recommend for different tools, different types of tech stacks. And so I really wanted to sit down and go through and share exactly what we're using, why we're loving it. We do play with different tech and update things all the time. So this is where we are currently what we're using right now. You may have listened to previous episodes where we may have been using a couple of different tools. Like I said, we are always updating our tech stack. So this is our favorite things as of the end of 2021. My gosh, I almost forgot what year it was there for a second. So let's just, let's go. Let's dive on in. So up first is websites. Our website, and this one has been the same for years, ever since the lovely Jenna Kutcher got me onto it. But our favorite website build is Showit. So Showit is just. I mean, it's one of those things that's Kind of hard to explain because it's showit actually works with WordPress, but it is one of the easiest page designers I've ever come across and I've played with them all. Like you literally draw onto the screen like you were using, you know, InDesign or some one of those other kind of tools. Like you can just pretty much design it to look however you want. You don't have to try and fit it into columns or anything like that. And you can so easy to move things by a pixel here or there, rather than trying to learn crazy CSS or any of that more difficult stuff. It's super easy to use. It's beautiful. There's some amazing, amazing templates out there. So you can have a website that looks a million bucks up and running really quick for probably around, you know, $500 to get a really good template. Plus it's really fast to load, which is very important these days. And the ability to make it look amazing on mobile. Like not just a squished down version of mobile, which you kind of hope reorders things in the right way. You can actually granularly design exactly what it looks like on mobile, again with the same amount of ease that you do for the desktop version. I think again, that is super important these days. Plus it has the added bonus of if you want, you don't have to, you can just use it as a page builder. But if you want, you can opt for their plus WordPress option, which basically means that you have the same capabilities to design your WordPress theme. So just the same, like you literally just design it onto the screen, click, publish, and that is your theme. It's amazing. And people don't even realize that, you know, it's on kind of two different platforms that pages are sort of designed here and WordPress is sort of clicked in the back end. It's all the same domain. It looks really seamless. But you also get the benefits of having WordPress for your blogging. So the SEO benefits being able to use plugins and stuff like that for extra functionality as well. So as far as I'm concerned, tick, tick, tick. It's also really inexpensive, so definitely love, love, Showit. Five stars all rounds. My favorite email tool, again, this is another lifer is activecampaign. I don't think I need to tell you guys why and how. I love ActiveCampaign. I've said it before, but again, really easy to use. It has all of the logic and the smarts that you need for both to get started. Like A beginner level. It's easy enough and simple enough to use for that and also to scale up to any level that you like. And that's all on their lights plan. I know some people go into, they go, oh, it seems expensive because you're looking at the higher like business and pro plans and stuff. And you don't need those. You really, really don't. You can jump in. I think it starts at about $15 a month for their light plan and that has everything you need to go from day zero to, you know, multi seven figures if not above. So love, love, love activecampaign. They also, I mean, obviously every tech has their bad days, but traditionally, and I'm touching a lot of wood right now, I'm knocking on my desk. They have, you know, pretty good uptime and pretty good. I haven't had a whole lot of tech issues with them and I've had many tech issues with other similar services. So it's another tick in that column for courseware. So where we host our online programs. So we currently use Kajabi and I do like Kajabi for courseware. The main reason we like Kajab of courseware is the flexibility of the design. You can design have a really beautiful course on Kajabi. Much nicer looking I think, than like your teachables and stuff like that. Which, yes, you can customize a bit, but they all look a bit samey samey. Right. So Kajabi just gives you that bit more flexibility with design. It does come with a price tag. We don't use Kajabi for any of their other features. We, you know, we have our own page builder, we have our own email, we even have our own checkout. However, for someone who was wanting to maybe make the most of the fact that it is more of a premium investment, Kajabi also has a really good checkout built in that has a lot of features that the other courseware just don't have. So that's one of the reasons we really like Kajabi and recommend them. However, having said that, as our program is growing and evolving and we're kind of wanting to do some more customers cool stuff, we are actually looking at possibly moving to Member Vault in the new year. Don't tell my team. Sorry guys. When you're listening to this, just from a bit of a flexibility of delivery options that there's a few things that that Member Vault does that Kajabi doesn't. But Kajabi is way prettier than Member Vault. So I'm I'm tossing up between the two but usually they are the two that we recommend. Next up, as I said, is checkout. So look, Kajabi checkout is really great and to be fair, if we weren't already using the ThriveCart checkout and didn't already have it all set up when we signed up for Kajabi, we probably would have just used the Kajabi checkout and moved straight to that. I think the only thing that the ThriveCart one did that we needed was that the handling of different taxes for different countries and tax reporting and things like that was a bit better than kajabi. That for us it was just an ease of use. It's like everything's already set up in thrivecart. All we had to do is update the integration rather than creating everything from scratch. Yeah, so we use ThriveCart super easy to use again, lots, lots of options. They've also just added in their own courseware which is called Learn, which is sort of interesting. Very basic at the moment, but could be interesting down the track. But you know, I think ThriveCart is great. I think if you are looking at an independent checkout, I know a lot of people compare thrivecart and samcart and I think to be honest they, it's, you know, it's apples and apples, they are very similar. They each have probably a couple of things they do better than the other. So it would just be depending on the specifics of what you need. But really when it comes down to, I think the deciding factor for us was ThriveCart is a one time investment but whereas SamCart is, you know, it's a hundred bucks a month forever. Very quickly thrivecart sort of came out ahead in affordability wise. When you are kind of going from a premium tech stack, it does all add up over time. I think I've shared before last year we spent over $30,000 on software. So trying to find those little places where we can be a bit more economical is always good. Where we can. All right, next up, our team communications. Even though for our project manager we, they have inbuilt chat and things, we actually don't use those. We prefer to use Slack. Slack has just worked really well for us. It keeps everything sort of in its own little container, keeps the notifications and things a little bit more under control I think. And yeah, we've used Slack forever and we think that's great. We also use Slack for our client community. So it's kind of again like for me workflow wise, like I get up in the morning, first thing I do when I log into the computer is I check our team Slack. I make sure everyone is okay in there, they have everything they need to keep going. Then I check our client Slack, the same thing, go through, answer all the questions in there and then it's sort of like it sort of feels like it's all in one place and then it's all one task and then it's done and I can move on with the rest of my day. But yeah, since moving, we did a whole episode actually on why we moved from our Facebook group into a Slack channel for our client community. We discussed all the pros and cons and some of the setup stuff that we did. I've really like. It's been now, I think almost a year of using Slack instead of a Facebook group and we still really, really love it. It's still working really great for us. We're not haven't heard anything negative from clients. I think they've all kind of gotten used to it and finding that there's lots of benefits for them in there as well. And yeah, so still definitely recommend Slack for both of those. Now for project management, you know, planning out all our bigger projects as well as our recurring tasks, we use a tool called ClickUp. Again, we used to use Asana and Asana was pretty good. We really liked it, really loved the unicorns. I was very sad to leave just for that reason. But ClickUp is sort of had all the features that Asana had, plus a bunch of others. And particularly the thing which really stood out to us and made it a really great option was their automation options. They have a lot more automations available even at some of the lower price plans. And when you're sort of getting a bigger team again, you don't want to be paying like 50, 60 bucks a person to be able to get it, be able to automate a couple of things. So for our more complicated setups, so for example, our podcast episodes, they have a few moving pieces and so we wanted to be able to use those automations to be able to just have that workflow working better. And ClickUp allows you to do that on the lower price plan. So for us again, it plus a bunch of other things which we feel like we've barely scratched the surface of. We decided to make the switch, haven't looked back. It's been amazing. And again, I think we're about a year into using ClickUp now. So next up is reporting and dashboards and this is Something I've really been diving into this year I'm actually going to do a whole episode around the different dashboards that we've created and I'll create some templates for you guys and stuff as well as like a little download, so look out for that in the new year. But really been trying to, particularly as a business has been growing, trying to figure out how, what's the best way to have that overview of the numbers that I really need to know. And we've always been fans of tracking, you know, creating manual dashboards in Google Sheets inside a lot of our programs we have lots of templates for those for different types of funnels and different parts of your business. But they sort of. There's only so far that they can go. We've been still loving our Google Sheets. We've actually been deep diving into making even more intelligent Google sheets and dashboards and we're going to be releasing those to people in our programs as well. I'm very excited about that. But to go that next step further, we actually invested in two systems this year. One is called Segmetrics. That one I've really been loving for that sort of more granular deep diving, you know, being able to go and set up a little dashboard for each launch. And that shows us which opt ins got the most people, you know, which opt ins worked best as far as converting to leads and the amount of time the average person who signed up was on our list and pretty much anything else that we really want to be tracking, you can set it up to, to track in there. And it's been really great. It's very visual as well, which I love. The other one which we invested in and if anyone's like, I didn't understand what you just said. Can you spell it out for me? Your accents. Weird. Don't worry, in the show notes we'll have all of these bulleted out with links, so very easy for you to find. So the other dashboard or that I've been loving is one called Hiros, which again is a bit more of an investment definitely, but it has came in and it was a bit of a lifesaver when all the iOS 14 changes happened, where it just basically meant that with your Facebook ads and when you're running particularly evergreen Facebook ads or even launch Facebook ads, to be honest, you know, if you're running a lot of ads and we're running more and more of them, losing that visibility, losing that insight and the speed of visibility, that happened. So for example, in case you're not aware with Facebook ads now, like, sometimes it can take up to 72 hours for a conversion to be attributed to an ad, which means it can take up three days for you to know if your ad even worked. So meantime, you've been spending money and going, okay, don't know if this ads worked or not because the data hasn't come through yet. And I don't really understand fully how they've done it. But Hiros have set up some other kind of touch points which just allows a bit more visibility on that data. And neither of them is perfect. And we find sometimes one works better than the other. But having both the being able to look at Hiros and being able to look at our ads manager has just given us a more fuller picture and has made it much easier for us with running ads. But yes, it is definitely it's an investment that one and I think but one that definitely pays for itself. If you are running thousands of dollars of ads a month, it's going to save you money in the long run because you're not going to be spending money on things that aren't working and you can't tell that they're not working. All right, so next up, podcasting. So we use the app zencastr to which I'm using right now to actually record the episodes and the audio. It also allows you to do video, but I am rarely video ready when I do my podcast episodes. That's why we set up a podcast. Don't really use that feature, but makes it really, really super, super easy to just jump on the computer, hit record and, you know, then all the files are saved and things like that. And, and if, and when we do ever start doing guest episodes, which I sure at some point I'm going to run out of things to just things to preach to you guys at about funnels. And I'll probably have to go, you know, make the most of someone else's brain power for a little bit. I know it's super easy to do that with guest episodes. Well, like I've been interviewed on a bunch of podcasts that use Zencastr and that's kind of what got me onto it. And there's obviously the other part of the podcasting puzzle is our podcast host and we use Podbean for No, I mean there's a bunch of them out there. They all seem pretty similar really. We found it really easy, really reliable. So definitely. And cost effective as well. So can definitely recommend both of those for podcasting. So Those are my SaaS tools, my favorite SaaS things now I talk about sort of the physical tech, like the stuff you can touch and use every day. Because there's definitely a couple of pieces of tech that I just couldn't live without. So first of all is my Dell 49 inch ultra wide monitor. And if you're not quite sure how big 49 inch is, it's big enough that anyone who walks into my office goes, holy be.

It's kind of like having three monitors strapped together. It's huge. And I was, I didn't know if I like it's one of those things. I saw a few of my friends, had them online, I got the FOMO and I was like, I actually use this. Will this actually be useful for me? I mean I already had two monitors, like just a normal sized monitor. And then obviously my laptop, I was like, you know, this is being a bit silly. What kind of got me across the line was well first of all, everyone who had one swore by them and said, you know, you don't realize how much how useful they are until you have it. And I thought, well that could just be them self justifying because they're not exactly the smallest investment. But the thing which really got me across the line was that you can plug everything then plugs into the monitor, not your laptop. So the laptop plugs into the monitor and then everything from the monitor plugs back into the laptop. And anyone who has a Newer iMac or MacBook Pro, which is what I have, knows that they are just real stingy on the plug sockets these days. Like there is nowhere near enough when you're putting in webcams and monitors and external mice and microphones and you're wanting to charge things at the same time. And you know, there's always just so many things I need to plug into this and it's not enough plugs by half. So I was having all these adapters hanging off and it was a real pain in the butt every time I took my had to disconnect my laptop out if I want to go and use it somewhere else in the house. This has actually been amazing. And it plugs in, charges my laptop as well and there's not cables everywhere and it's made everything nice and clean. So just for that I love it. But also the having the widescreen, I do use it all the time. It is actually super, super useful. Next is my microphone, the thing that I am chatting into right this second. So I use a blue YETI USB mic, you know the old school kind of Looking one. And that's the reason I picked it, really. I didn't do a whole lot of research. I was like, that one looks cool. I want that one. Did have to add on a whole bunch of stuff to it to stop it being so echoey. I mean, my room where I record my podcasts, I'm not lucky enough to have a big walk in closet like a lot of people record theirs in. So I just do it in my office. But yeah, that was really, really super echoey. There's a few episodes I think, right at the start where we didn't have this set up and you can go back and hear and listen to that. We've got pop guard and one of those little fuzzy things over the top of the mic and also a portable audio booth. All which I just got off Amazon. You know, it's not. Doesn't look pretty anymore. Sadly. I can't see the cool retro looking mic. It's all hidden under all this other stuff. But at least it works really well. That's worked for us also, webcam wise, now that I do have this gigantic monitor and I have my laptop basically closed and slid underneath it. So I needed a webcam, I got a Logitech. It's the C920 Pro HD and it's fine. I mean, I know there's ones out there that are sort of like 4k and next level, to be fair, I'm nearly 40. I don't want 4k on my webcam. If I can be a little bit, a little bit fuzzed in my not flattering overhead lighting at all times, I am grateful for it. So that one works, works fine. You plug it in, it's there, it does its job, I'm happy with it and it's not crazy expensive. And then the last piece of physical tech, which I just love and couldn't live without, is my little iPad air mini, which, you know, with the iPad pencil as well. I use it for everything. It's my notebook, it's my planner, it's now that my laptop kind of lives under my monitor, it's almost kind of become my backup laptop that I take around the house if I'm wanting to. If I'm looking after my son and you know, I'm out in the house and I've sat him down in front of some bluey or something so I could quickly answer some emails. That works really, really well as well. And it's, it's light and it's small and it's great for traveling whenever we get to do that. That was like, when I bought it. That was at the back of my mind. It's like, one day I'll be allowed to go on an airplane again, and when I do, I'll be really glad to have this. So, love, love, love. My iPad air mini. Okay, so that's my, my, my list, guys. That's all of my favorite tech. This is the stuff that has really that their business is built on and that we've used to.

This year. And like I said, I was feeling so Oprah, like, when we were planning this episode, that we did decide to take it that one step further and actually create this huge and very nerdy holiday hamper. You know, I'll miss Oprah. Chock full of some of my favorite things, like the physical things. Anyway, it's really hard to get software into it. But, guys, this includes. I'm going to run through what is in this hamper and then, and then how you can enter it. So it includes my top five business books of all time, which includes Children by Denise Duffield, Thomas the Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, Profit first, also by Mike Michalowicz. Yes, we really love him here. Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman, and the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, which is a new one, but I just freaking love it. It also has all the tech gear that you need and I talked about. So we've got a blue Yeti microphone, Logitech webcam, and yes, even a gorgeous iPad air mini. And it doesn't stop there, because I think even nerds deserve, you know, something a bit special, something a bit fun. So we've also got a gorgeous pair of Baxter blue, blue light glasses. They're the ones that I use. Like, they're in all our photos, and people always ask where we got them from. Gorgeous, divine damselfly candle, which just smells amazing. A Kate Spade designer laptop sleeve, and my absolute favorite guilty pleasure, which is Haig's chocolate Speckles. If you're from Australia, you'll know how good they are. If you're not, then you're in for a treat. Plus 500 cash. $500 in cash. So for you to splash out on either investing in your business or just pampering yourself, going and having an amazing spa day, because we all need that after the year we've just had, right? So the purpose of this, this hamper is we just wanted to give you all of the goodies, all of the stuff that us nerds love to make. You know, just to celebrate this year and end it with a bang. Total value of this hamper is $1972 Aussie and all you have to do to enter is head to hellofinals co win link will be below and pop in your details and that's it, you're in. You can also share the competition with your biz BFFs if you want to get some extra entries. The competition ends on Boxing Day, Aussie time and the winner will be drawn when we're back in the office first week of Jan next year. So that's it guys. I said super amazing comp. Just head to hellofinals Code forward slash win. Pop your entry in. I've got my fingers and toes all crossed for you. Hope who I can't wait to see who wins and announce it. I think it's gonna be super exciting. But that's it for this week guys. So until next week guys, when we've got even more value packed goodies for you. Keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sal to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@StealMyFunnel.com.