The Top 7 Technical Platforms EVERY Entrepreneur Needs To Know

 SPEAKERS 

Carly Meyers 

Carly Meyers 00:00 

Hello, my friends,  

I hope you're having a wonderful week. Welcome to another episode of the Made for More Podcast.  I'm so excited to chat to you today as always, I've got a bit of a different episode planned for you today,  it's a little bit more factual as opposed to my normal kind of emotional ramblings.  

I'm excited to share it with you but I just wanted to give you a little, I had a little insight this week, and I  wanted to share it with you. So this week, I actually had had the opportunity to go and watch ‘We Will  Rock You the musical.’ So as some of you may know, I used to be in that show and I loved it. It was  now I look back on it. It was actually one of the best times of my life. I absolutely loved it. I honestly  thought I was a rock star, I shaved my head, I would just do shots before the finale like head-banging at  the end. It was just, it was one of the wildest times of my life, I partied a lot. I got a lot of tattoos, a lot of  piercings. Definitely experimented and express myself in a wonderful way. However, the reason why I  had a little bit of an insight was that I went to go and watch that with my very good friend Lana, we were  in the show together and we always talk about memories of that time and how it was such a fun time. I  was watching it and I just I realised that, you know, when I was watching the show, there was so many  trigger points that I remembered, like sitting in the wings and watching certain scenes in the wings and  what I was doing in my dressing room at certain points. I remember at the time, always wishing I was  somewhere else and thinking that there was something better out there, you know? I just completely  took the whole experience for granted and I actually played one of the lead characters. When I think  about what I was doing, playing one of the leads in ‘We Will Rock You’ singing my heart out and singing  with all these incredible people and, you know, Brian May came on and did the Bohemian Rhapsody  guitar solo at the end. When I look back at it, I just completely took the whole thing for granted. The  whole time I was there, I was thinking, I wish I was doing this show or I wish I was playing that part or I  wish I was in this apartment, I wish I was earning this amount of money. I was never present in the  moment at all. It's so funny that when I look back on it now that is honestly, one of the best times of my  life. It just really reminded me to really appreciate where you're at right now, because I saw something  on Twitter the other day, and it was like, ‘I wish you knew at the time that you were having the time of  your life.’ It really made me think of that because, you know, this morning when I was I woke up and the  kids had woken me up early and they were, we were all in bed and Frankie was like jumping on me and  

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I was trying to get like a little bit of extra sleep. Margot was squealing, like this little pig noise thing that  she did and for a second I was like, Oh God, I just want to sleep and then I just caught myself and  remembered, you know, feeling that when I was watching, ‘We Will Rock You’ thinking these are  probably some of the most special days of my life. I know that it's really simple. But I'm going to look  back on this in years when I can hardly get Frankie or Margot to even text me back because they're off  with their friends and living their life. I'm going to remember these times and think, ‘oh my god, I  remember when they just couldn't get enough of me and they just wanted to jump all over me and  cuddle me all the time and I was everything that they wanted.’ So yeah, it kind of gave me a little insight  and a reminder today to appreciate where I'm at and stop getting so caught up in you know, the future  and what that looks like and what that has to look like and trying to control everything and just trying to  stay in the moment. So yeah, I wanted to give that little insight and I hope it gives you a little reminder  to do the same as you never know that these actually could be the best days of your life.  

So today I'm going to be talking to you about some of my favourite technical tools that literally make up  my entire business. Now, I've said this a million times but I honestly believe that we are in the most  fortunate time of our lives right now to be building a business, it literally could not be easier. All the  resources that we have available and the opportunities and the technology, it could not be easier. I hear  so many people say, you know, I can't do that, because I'm not technical and they really let technical  stuff get in their way. This is gonna sound really blunt, but I just, I don't buy that. In this day and age, I  don't buy that, because there are so many apps or websites or software programmes that make the  hardest of technical things so, so simple. Even if you then still can't do that, that thing, you can go on  YouTube, you can watch so many free tutorials teaching you how to do that and then if you still can't do  it, you can outsource it to someone on Upwork for like $15 to get the whole project done. It’s absolutely  nothing. So the reason why I feel it's easier than ever is that if you've got that attitude of I can't do this  now but I'm going to figure out how to do it. If you just always keep thinking, there is a way to do this so  I'm going to figure out how to, then you will be able to accomplish anything. There's things and skills  that I have now that I definitely did not have. I used to work at Apple, I used to work at Apple, when was  this…like, seven years ago, and honestly, at the time, I did not have a clue, I could barely tell you how  to reset your Apple ID password and even then I was a little bit ropey. Honestly, my technical skills back  in that time, you would never ever think that I would now be teaching people how to do the technical  aspects of business or doing it for them but I've really learned how to do it because I just had this kind  of curiosity. If there is something that I need to do for my business, I reckon I can learn how to do it. If I  go on a YouTube tutorial, or if I download a blog or something like that, then I think I can figure out how  to do it and you know it's taught me loads, and I've learned loads. So anyway, I wanted to teach you my  hacks, there are some things that make me look way fancier than I actually am and it's just because I'm  using these platforms, and they’re massively, massively help. If there are any that you have, if there's  any kind of, ‘can't live without, oh, my goodness, if they close this down my life would end apps’ or  softwares let me know because I always absolutely love to hear about them.  

So the first one is, this isn't a new one by any means. It's Canva. So Canva is Oh, I must be on  Canva…I think I go on Canva everyday, actually. I do everything on Canva. So Canva has tools for  graphic design stuff. So you can create posters on there, and invitations and banners and images with  writing on and social media assets and all of that. I literally do everything on Canva. So even the other  day, well not the other day. So probably about six weeks ago, I haven't really spoken about this much  but I started a business actually creating courses for people. So I build out courses for people or build  out landing pages or evergreen webinar funnels and all the technical side of stuff that people either  don't want to do, or really cannot get their head around. I am building it for people. So I absolutely love  

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1. Like I said, I'm a bit of a tech nerd and I do like to geek out but I was thinking I really don't know if I  can be bothered to build another website and stuff like this because a lot of this business that I'm doing  I’m doing it for fun and a lot of it is word of mouth that my clients are finding me and so I was thinking I  don't really want a whole website but obviously I do want to share my services and then I went on  Canva. I got this template of a presentation and created all of my services on there. It's like an eight  page document now, which shows everything that I do, explains it all thoroughly, has all my kind of  payment details and everything on there. It's all branded exactly as I want it and literally it must have  taken me 45 minutes and what do you know 45 minutes later, I'm up and running with my business  ready to go ready to start taking on clients and start sharing my services. So that's that just goes to  show how easy we have it today. I didn't have to reach out and find a graphic designer, go back and  forth pay all this money for them to put this thing together for me, you can just go on and find these  templates. So yeah, Canva is amazing, actually the free version is really, really good but I pay for the  upgraded version because with the upgraded version, it’s still not a lot I can't remember how much I  pay, maybe £10 a month or something but with the upgraded version, you also get access to all of the  stock photos as well. So you know images that make it look like you've done a whole photography  shoot. In order to get these images on your on your stuff, you actually get access to the whole stock  library which I really, really like. You also get access to different fonts, more fonts and more colours and  more branding kits and functionality like that. If you are just starting out and you just want a few quotes  done for your social media there are awesome posters. Canva is amazing. I swear by Canva.  

Okay, my second one is Kajabi, you've heard me say this a million times, I know, you know, you knew  that this was gonna come up, because I could not tell you a list of business hacks without telling you  about Kajabi. It is literally how I run my entire business. I remember ages ago, I heard about Kajabi and  I was thinking I don't know if I should do it, I was like, it's a bit more expensive than normal websites or  just the normal kind of email platforms and I thought, oh it’s a little bit expensive. Honestly, I would  probably pay four times the price that I pay per month, in order to get what I get. So Kajabi is one  platform, this is what I love the most, I hate having loads of windows open and switching between loads  of stuff and thinking right - now I've got to log into this and remember my password for this for my  emails and then I've got to try and link that to my… something else, it all gets so clunky I hate that kind  of in and out thing. Once I'm in business mode, I want to get in, do everything that I need to do. So  that's why I actually love Kajabi. So my website is fully built on Kajabi, all of my landing pages. So say  for example, if I release a course, or a workshop, or just something simple, like singular, then I can  have a page just dedicated to that. So it's not like a main page on my website, but it's a page that I  could just lead people to that will enable me to get their email addresses or anything or you know, give  them any information that I need and then they'll get access to that course, that masterclass. So, my  landing pages, all of my email automations. The automation functionality is amazing. So it means that  once someone is in your email list, you can set up a whole funnel of emails that go on behind the  scenes. So for example, if someone attends one of my events, like one of my free master classes, they  will get automatically tagged into the event. So they'll get their pre-masterclass emails automatically  sent out. So it will say an hour before, they will get this email 15 minutes before, they'll get this email,  then they'll get sent the event and then I can set up emails for the next seven days or so which will give  them some more information and remind them about the offer or give them the recording. That all goes  on behind the scenes, I don't even have to think about it. So normally, if you've got an email from me,  I'm not sat at my computer at that time sending that email out, it's all done automatically behind the  scenes. So as a busy woman, this is so, so, so important. The fact that I can automate all of that, it also  this is also where I host all of my courses. So I love this aspect of it because I can build out courses so  easily. It also means that my customers and my clients can just they get their own login. If they lose  

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their password, they can go in and just figure that out. It's all really nice and slick, simple process. You  could also host your website on there, your website, your podcast on there, you can do webinars on  there, you can also, there's so much stuff, so much stuff. So Kajabi is literally my favourite thing in the  world. It's a great place to start. So I actually have a link in my, I'll put it in the show notes for you. I also  have a link in my Instagram bio, and you can get a 30 day free trial. So it means that you can for 30  days, just have a play about see if you like it, see how you get on. If you don't like it after 30 days, you  just cancel it and off you go. If you do like it, it means you've had a whole month for free. So yeah, I  absolutely love Kajabi.  

The third one is Evernote. So if you've heard any episodes by myself and Michelle, you will have heard  us talk about Evernote, I actually was introduced to Evernote by Michelle and when this was so good  for us. So myself Michelle started a business together a year ago, she lives in LA, I live in the UK. Most  of the time when we were having our ideas and our work-in sessions and all of this stuff was coming up  and we wanted to share it with the other person, the other person was asleep. So this was an amazing  way of sharing our thoughts and sharing all of our notes and ideas and everything like that and just  saying, hey, Michelle, when you wake up in the morning, have a look in our in our Evernote, I put a load  of stuff in there. If you have a crazy, overactive brain like I do, this is how you can sort your brain,  organise your brain, it’s so good. So you basically have notes, so you know how you have notes in  your, on your phone, you can then sort them into different books. So for example, physical books, I  think so I’ve just got sorted into different books. So I have one for my all of my personal business stuff  like my podcast and all of that. I have…I'm writing a book. So I have another section for all my book  notes so when I have this random thought of a chapter or a topic, I can just go into that book, that  notebook and then I can write my notes in there. I have my all of my stuff in my network marketing  business, I have podcast ideas, just so many different things. I can put it in the little notes. And then I  know that like coaching, training calls and stuff I can write in there. So when I want to find something I  go to the exact notebook it is in, I can find that note, and everything is organised. The amount of times  I'm laying in bed, trying to get to sleep and then something pops up in my head. The other day,  something popped up, it was a, an idea for an article to pitch to a newspaper, in order to link back to my  podcast course. I just had this whole idea in my head, and I was like, ‘Oh, if I pitch this to a to a media  outlet, then that'll be like a blog and that's evergreen content that stays on the internet and then that will  link back to my podcast course and that's going to have organic traffic all the time.’ Then I started  writing this thing in my head and I was like, this needs to get out of my head immediately, because I'm  going to forget this in the morning. So, I literally just got up and I wrote it down really, really quickly, and  then went to sleep. So, if anyone is like me, where in the middle of the night or when you're trying to get  to sleep, we have all these crazy ideas and you can't sleep because your mind's going crazy, then  Evernote is amazing. Evernote is free. So good, I absolutely love it. You can also voice to text as well.  So if you're walking along and you just want to talk into your phone, they will write it all out in a note,  which is also really good if you're thinking about writing a book and you know, lots of crazy ideas. So  Evernote is fabulous.  

The next one is Calendly. So Calendly is an amazing way of booking things in. So you know,  sometimes when you're trying to book something in, maybe it's a coaching call with someone or a one  to one with someone or you an interview, you can end up going back and forth all the time and it just  wastes so much time when you're like ‘hey, yeah, let me know when it's good for you. Yeah, no worries,  Wednesday is great for me. Okay, cool. What Wednesday is next? I don't know, this Wednesday, I'm  busy.’ And it just goes on and on and on until you die but when you're with Calendly, you can just set up  all of your calendars. So for me, I have a separate calendar for my one to one calls and I will just set my  

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availability. So I will say on Wednesdays that is when I'm doing my one to one coaching calls, and I'm  going to be free between these hours. Then I have my podcast interviews, I have different coaching  calls for something different. So anytime you want to book anything out, you can have these different  calendars and if someone says to you, 'Hey, can I book in for a podcast interview?’, I can send them my  podcast interview calendar, and I know that it's going to go in the day that I wanted to go in, I know that  if there's something else in my Google Calendar, because it's all linked up, if there's something in my  Google Calendar, it's not going to show an available slot, so I don't have to keep updating it. You can  update it, I had the calendar booked out for like the next 60 days or 90 days or 30 days. So it's a really  good way of organising your time. It's a great thing to have in your link of your bio as well. So if you're a  coach, or if you're wanting to get people onto a discovery call with you basically, what you want to think  is, you want to take away as many steps as possible because if your process of someone booking in a  call with you, is for them to send you a message on Instagram and then exactly like I just said before,  where they say, ‘I'd like to book in with you?’, ‘Yeah, yeah, no worries, what days good?’ back and forth,  back and forth, the amount of things that can crop up in between all of those little conversations that  can take the person out, is huge. It could be that they just get massively distracted, because they're  going back and forth. You know, they're trying to cook their dinner, they're in the queue in Tescos.  They're doing all these things, and then they just forget to get back to you. But also, it just prolongs the  process and normally by the point in which someone has messaged you to say, can I get on a call with  you, that's their moment of motivation, that's when they're most motivated to take action on what they're  feeling. So you want to capture that moment so that you can get it booked in there. Then if there is a  link in your bio, you have a link that says, ‘one to one coaching with a colleague’ or 'discovery call with  Carly’ or ‘booking an interview for my podcast,' whatever, you can send them that link straight away,  they can book it, they know it's going to be worth working with them. Also it will automatically send them  the Zoom details for that call as well. So you again you don't have to keep going back and forth. If you  want to upgrade to Calendly you can actually also take payments on there as well. So I did this for  some external coaching that I was doing. Someone was able to just book onto my Calendly link to pay  the fee for my coaching and then that went straight into my PayPal, they got their zoom details  straightaway and then we were good to go and good to do a zoom call. So yeah, what we want to think  about is taking out those little moments of time which can distract someone and get in the way of  someone booking but also completely waste your time. Ideally you want to have someone need to have  less than three clicks in order to book in with you. Click on your Instagram, Click on your link tree, Click  on your Calendly. Done. They don't want to be going back and forth and going on your website and  then they scroll and then they find this little alert, you want to shorten that journey as much as possible.  So Calendly is amazing for that.  

Okay, the fifth one is Teamsy. Oh, Teamsy is a game changer. So this one is mainly for my network  marketers, anyone in network marketing, if you haven't heard of Teamsy, you are literally, you're going  to love me for this one. It’s actually just a general CRM platform as well. So CRM is Customer  Relationship Manager. It is so good. So what I've realised now I’ve been in network marketing for  coming up nine years, which is crazy. Obviously, network marketing has a little bit of a bad rap for some  people and normally, it's not actually network marketing as an industry, but its network marketers, and  how they go about their daily business, how they reach out to people, you know, you've always got,  always got those ‘spammy’ messages, and it's come out of nowhere, you're like, ‘Hey, Hun, how are  you? This is random blanket message. Everyone has had them and to be honest, it is quite annoying.  So Teamsy is incredible because it is all based on relationship building. It's about building genuine  relationships and then if that relationship ends up going somewhere, where you then are offering your  opportunity or offering your products, then amazing, but ultimately, it's about creating and cultivating  

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really good, solid relationships with lots of people. The great thing is that with network marketing, as  well, and actually with any sales system, people very rarely buy straightaway, very rarely do you send a  message saying, ‘Hey, Joe’ to join my business and they're like, ‘Yeah, sure, yeah, I'll buy your product.’  Lots of people need a few touch points. Normally, it's about eight to 10 touch points, where you're going  to have eight to 10 conversations, maybe they'll watch a video, maybe they'll try a sample, maybe  they'll see something else on a on a reel. They need those touch points in order for them to feel  confident enough to say yes, and with Teamsy we’re actually able to organise all of that. So you're fully  in control of your business, you're really, really professional, and you never miss a follow-up. The  follow-up is so, so important. So if you’re reaching out to all these people, but then you say, Yeah, I'm  gonna send you some information and then you forget, obviously that's not good for business but you  look unprofessional, you know, you don't look like you're in control of your business. You don't look like  someone that they're going to want to buy into and say, yeah, she's the one to lead me or he's the one  to lead me. So, Teamsy just helps you be so organised, it helps you be so focused, really, actually  intentional. It seems to make me a nicer person. You're actually reaching out to people and just having  genuine conversations, which is amazing. Yeah, I'm actually going to try and get the CEO of Teamsy,  onto a podcast episode to talk about all of that because even if you're not in network marketing,  learning about relationship building online is, I think, amazing and the way that he talks about it is just a  really natural way of selling and connecting online, you don't get that icky feeling ‘Oh, God, I need to tell  them about one thing’ and it feels really awkward. It's actually just really, yeah, relaxed and natural and  the results are so much better and it's better for our industry of network marketing, as well, hopefully. If  we all start building our business in this way, then the idea of network marketing will change and  people's perception of the industry will change and people will start to think actually it's an amazing  industry, once you take out all the noise of the crazy network marketers and they might suddenly start  to think actually, I see it, I see that this is a great opportunity. So that is always the goal. So yeah,  Teamsy is amazing.  

Then lastly, not lastly, there's another one after this but second to lastly is Boards. So boards is spelt B  O A R D S. Boards is so good. Oh, it's so good. It makes life so much easier. So you know sometimes  where you might have like certain messages that you're sending off or know of certain bits of  information. If someone messages you on Instagram or on Facebook and says can you send me some  more information about this, and you have your kind of go to messages that you want to send. This is a  great way of keeping those messages in one place or keeping those pictures in one place. You can  send it so easily. So basically it becomes part of your keyboard on your phone so you can download it.  It's an app that you download becomes part of your keyboard on your phone. You can upload text or  photos that you regularly are posting So actually, when you go to type, you can just click this little, it's  like a world symbol in the bottom left of your keyboard, you'll click that, and all of those posts and texts  will come up, you just click on the text, it will copy the text, and then you can just paste it into your  message, it is so much easier and saves so much time. But also, I've been using it recently as a way of  batch creating my social media content. So you may know and actually, I've seen this, this is so true.  The kind of the planning, software's social media software's like Planoly, or HootSuite or things like that,  where you can schedule your posts, they are actually terrible for the algorithm. So Facebook really  wants you to be on the on the platforms, being active, being present, really being there doing the do, it  doesn't want you to be automating it so that you're actually not on the platform by pretending that you  are. So that's why it kind of penalises you for using these things. So if you've scheduled posts, and  they're coming from HootSuite, or Planoly, Facebook is actually going to not show it to very many  people at all, it's going to really lower the engagement because it wants you to not use those platforms.  However, they are really, really useful. You know, for myself, I've got a Facebook group that I'm so  

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committed to serving, it's my favourite place to show up at the moment. By the way, if you are not part  of my Facebook group, definitely, definitely join it is called the ambitious female entrepreneur Club is a  free Facebook group. I do loads of, you know, free master classes in there. I've got some leading  experts in lots of different areas that are coming in. We did a master class the other day, all about  branding. I've got lots of amazing ones coming up. So join that Facebook group, if you're not part of that  already. I love to serve that group that that Facebook group, but sometimes say, for example, this week,  Frankie's on half term, I'm not going to have the usual time that I have to create loads of content and  create loads of posts and be posting it in real time. Which means that with boards, what I've been doing  is creating my content, creating a board for that Facebook group. I plan out each day so that when it  comes to posting tomorrow, I don't have to sit and think, right, oh, what am I gonna post? What am I  gonna post because I've already got a whole week's worth of content already mapped out, I can just go  onto my boards copied up the posts that I've created into that post, but it's not going to affect the  algorithm because as far as Facebook is concerned, I'm there creating that content there. Then I  physically pasted that into a post. So it doesn't affect my algorithm, but it still enables me to be mega  mega organised. So yeah, perhaps some of you are using boards already, but you're maybe not using it  to schedule your content. That has been a major, major lifesaver for me. So there you go. Then the last  one is something called Zapier. Now Zapier is actually now where it is, we're going to venture into the  full tech nerd space at the moment. So if you're really into your tech stack, and you've got lots of  different platter, platforms, running and stuff like that, this is a way of actually connecting them all  together. So you know how I said about with Kajabi, my my website and my email list, and my course  builder, and everything is in one place, if you currently don't have that, so maybe you have a website  that's built on Squarespace, maybe you have an email platform that's built through ConvertKit. Maybe  you have a Course Builder through, I don't know Thinkific or something like that, if you have everything  kind of split between lots of different platforms that Zapier is actually what helps them all speak  together. So for example, if someone was to purchase your course through Thinkific, but you wanted  that to then those email addresses to go into your email list on ConvertKit. Then you could have Zapier  and you create a zap, which basically means that it takes the information from one platform and shoots  it over to another. So you create a zap that says, when someone buys this course, please create an  email subscription in ConvertKit. So you create this app that links the two together. So for example, I  have a zap in our use Zapier for my Facebook group. So I with my Facebook group, I have a bit of an  automated system going in the sense that the questions that are asked in my Facebook group, they go  into a spreadsheet and then in that spreadsheet, I can have a zap or set up which then sends that  information over to my Kajabi because like I said, I like everything in one place. I don't want to be  signing into loads of different things, but it means that the emails or the questions that I've asked for  market research purposes, can go into Kajabi and I've got everything in one place. So yeah, that would  be Zapier. It makes it really easy. If you like I said if you have got different platforms, working that don't  naturally speak to each other. You can help them Do it like that. So that was that was that was a nerd  bit though you don't if you're kind of just not doing it off loads of different things then then you don't  need to worry about Zapier. But yeah, I appreciate it a lot. I love a little zap. Anyways. Then of course,  you've got the absolute staples like zoom, Google Calendar, you know, the kind of everyday things that  everyone is using. But they are absolute lifesavers. For me, there is so many others. You know, for my  podcast, I use Buzzsprout. That's what I host my podcast on, I actually edit all of my notes, I record. I  used to edit everything on GarageBand, I now actually have an editor. Things like video production  stuff, I actually just use iMovie to really, really simple. It's pretty, pretty simple stuff. But I love it. And  then something else that I've become a little bit obsessed with a bit a bit of a become obsessed with  sending out questionnaires in order to get market research off people and really understand my ideal  client and for that, I just use Google Forms. So easy, completely free, enables me to send out these  

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questionnaires, ask questions of my ideal client, just to really, really help understand them, and then  they can send it back and I've got all that information ready to go. So there we go. Anyways, I hope you  found that helpful. If you had then, you know, if you have got that story yourself where I can't do this,  because I'm not good at tech, then please challenge yourself to try and become good at it. Because it is  so loads of it is so not that complicated. Lots of these platforms that I've just listed there, they're so user  friendly, and they're not built for really, really technical people they've been made in a way to help non  technical people still be able to do these tasks themselves. So yeah, definitely just challenge yourself. If  there's anything that you're looking at, and you're like, I have no idea how to do this 100% There is a  YouTube tutorial, answering that exact question. Just give it a watch, he can learn how to do it. If you  still don't know how to do it, then ask a friend how to do it. But just don't cut yourself off and say I can't  do that. Because I'm not technical. Just challenge yourself and keep pushing your comfort zone and  just seeing how much you can learn. Just be curious. I just love that. That phrase, just be curious. You  know, be curious of all the things that you can learn, and how much can you challenge yourself? How  much can you keep stretching your potential and your capacity to learn? So thank you so much, my  friends. I hope you found that helpful. I can't wait to talk to you next week. I've actually got an amazing  interview lined up for you next week, which I think you're going to absolutely love. Just keep being  incredible. Remember, you are made for so much more than you can even imagine. Your potential  would honestly astound you if you had any idea how big it was. Thanks so much guys. Have a  wonderful week. Bye.