Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the systems that I use in my business, that help to make my life easier and enable my business success.
In this episode I go through the main platforms that I use, how I use them and how they help me in my business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Why it is important to have good systems in place
- The platform that I couldn't run my business without
- The things you need to consider if you're taking payments
Like this episode or have a business friend or someone that you think will find the content that I put out useful? I would love it so much if you would go and share the podcast with them!
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Get a 30 day free trial with Kajabi
Find out more about about the systems I've used and loved
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
*Please note that some of these links include affiliate links, which means if you sign up I may receive commission, but I would never recommend anything that I didn't use and love!
Transcipt
Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. I hope you are having a good day. I was going to say a good start to your week, but I really have no idea at what point or when you, listen to this. So it could be Monday when it comes out and if it is happy Monday, if not happy, whatever day it is.
So I was just doing a bit of planning around what podcasts I'm going to do coming up. And I decided to listen back at a few old episodes. And the first thing that was really interesting is how some of the old episodes, I now can disagree with what I say, which is so interesting. How people who I really enjoyed listening to and learning from are definitely not the people I do that now.
And how professionalized side, maybe a little bit stiff, but definitely more professional. And as I was going through it, I look back at when my first ever episode was, and it was February the fourth, 2018. Like that blows my mind. And in fact, one of the episodes I said my daughter's age in it, and I think, so did I say she was eight and she's now 13?
Like that is crazy that I've been doing this long and I have to say, you know, and this isn't what this episode was about, but you know, I'm just chatting. I have to say there are points where I question still doing it because, you know, we're on episode 310 or is it 311 now? It's 311. And I have to say, you know, I've done it since 2018.
Do I still need to keep doing it? And there's a part of me that really doesn't want to stop, but there's also a part of me that thinks, God, imagine if I didn't have to do that. Like, obviously it's a lot of content I produce and it takes a lot of work and it takes work with the team. And what would it look like if I no longer did my podcast?
But anyway, that's not a question for today, unless you have an opinion on it. Then by all means, come and tell me. But it's just, you know, sometimes we think about these things and it's all right, it's all right to sometimes change our mind, that's fine. Now, if I'd been doing this for three months and I changed my mind, no, that's not okay, I need to give it a good go, but I think, you know, 2018 to 2023 is a really good go.
Anyway, I'm talking like I'm cancelling the podcast. I am absolutely not. Now what would be particularly handy and helpful and definitely make sure I won't cancel the podcast is if you could go and share my podcast. So if you have a business friend or a business buddy or someone that you think will find the content that I put out useful.
I would love it if you would go and share it with them. If you would put it on your Instagram stories, or even on your feed, or on your Facebook, or your LinkedIn, or whatever Twitter's called this week, wherever you think someone might be interested, I would really, really appreciate you sharing that out there.
Because even after all this time, it's still not easy to get people to listen. So Anyway, that was a weird side talk. So today, what I'm going to be talking about is systems. Now, it doesn't seem a particularly sexy subject to talk about, and it's probably not going to change your life or give you some amazing mindset skill.
However, it is incredibly important that We have these systems in place. And when I say systems, I'm meaning actual platforms. So I'm going to be talking through the platforms that I have in my business, what I use, how I use it, and how it helps. And it's a really, really important, although, like I said, it's not the sexiest thing in the world.
It is really important that we have good systems in place to make our lives a whole lot easier. And what can often happen and has definitely happened with me in the past is I get swayed by the latest new system. Now, this doesn't happen so often now, I have to say, but either someone shows me this new shiny system is like, it's brilliant and it's this and everyone must need it.
And therefore you get it and it's only X amount a month. Well, that's fine. But then having 10 or 15 of them at only X amount a month soon adds up. And one of the things that I do with a finance point of view is we obviously have a a breakdown of our outgoings and I have one specifically for the platforms that I use and it comes to a lot of money.
There's no doubt about it that we could spend a huge amount of money on all of these different systems. So do we need them? And which ones do we need and are vital? And which ones would I recommend? So I'm going to focus predominantly on the fact that I have an online business. And that's really easy for me to focus on that because that's the business I have.
So some of these systems, I will make clear whether it is specifically for an online business. So the main system I use and probably one of my most expensive or the most expensive, however, it is one that I could not live without is Kajabi. Now, not only Is it a really awesome system, but they're actually really awesome people.
And I really, really enjoy being part of their community. And as you will know, if you're a listener to the podcast, I have been to two of their conferences, they've only done two in person and I love them both and they just treat their, their customers really, really well. And they have a really good system that is constantly improving.
So. What I use Kajabi for, if you have an online business, you are going to need somewhere to host the online element of it. Now, there are lots of ways that you can do this and you can, if you're getting started, you can, if you want, pay for something or not pay for something more like, and put it on something like Google Drive or Dropbox or OneDrive or something like that.
So. You could even just have landing pages where you put your content, but it's going to be a bit clunky and I don't know about anybody else, but sometimes when you share stuff through Google Drive, maybe it's just me because I'm not that tech. So I don't think I'm that tech savvy that, you know, are the share permissions right?
And can they move it out or have they got access to it? Can they edit it? What if they edit it? Like, It can just get a little bit confusing. So for me, I started straight off the bat with a system. Now I used to use something else called Wishlist Member, which I then moved quickly to Kajabi. But basically Kajabi hosts and holds all my courses.
All my membership stuff, and believe me, over the god knows how many years I've had this for now, I have a lot of content on there. And it's not based, the cost for Kajabi isn't based on the amount of content from a kind of like, so my membership, my membership is one product, but there is so much stuff in there, and the videos, and the content, and the audio, and the, like.
A crazy amount of stuff and it doesn't go up the more I add into that membership. Now I have a limit on how many products I can use and I'm not over that limit. I haven't gone over it yet and I don't see myself going over it. So that's fine. I think it's 15 cause I'm on the middle level of Kajabi. But yeah, so you definitely, definitely need somewhere to host your stuff.
And like I said, if you're starting out and you don't want to spend the money or you haven't got the money, then you could always do it through something like a Google drive. You can also, I was just thinking about another system I used to use and still do a little bit for different things is Amazon AWS.
And you can host things within Amazon AWS. The problem is if you've got a video that you want to send out to people. It will literally only just be the video. It's not like it puts it on a nice landing page or that you can put stuff around it. It literally is, here's the link to the video. And the way AWS works is the more content you have in there and the more downloads, i. e. the more, the amount that people have to go in and get it. The more you get charged, but again, like it's, I didn't actually say, so I don't know why I said again, but it's absolutely minimal cost. Like I think I've had my AWS for years and probably a good eight years and I pay like 23 cents a month or something ridiculous like that.
So yeah, so that's when it comes to hosting your course or your membership or your online offering. So the one of the other things you're going to need is you're going to need to take payment. Now that might seem really simple and really obvious, but there are a couple of things you need to consider about the system or whatever it is that you use.
I use Kajabi, that takes payments. So does it have a multiple different levels of offer? So for instance, because the membership has been around such a long time, I have so many different offers for that membership because it started on a different price to where it is now. And then you can buy it annually or monthly.
And then there was the price for this thing or that thing. So yeah, does it give you the option to have all those different offers? The other thing that you want alongside offers is coupons. So if I am doing a percentage off or members of the club, you usually get money off if I'm doing something. Do you have the option to put in a coupon code or the ability to create a coupon?
Can you do subscriptions? Now this is really important if you have a subscription based business. And some payment platforms do not do subscriptions easily. Oh, the other thing that Kajabi have introduced recently, which is becoming really popular, is pay what you can. So you can actually set up a pay what you can offer, where you say between this payment and this payment, in increments of or These are my three or four options for the payment amount and the person who's buying can actually choose the payment they want.
Also, does it do affiliates? So, within Kajabi, what I can do is I can set up an affiliate thing so that if someone promotes my stuff, they can actually become an affiliate and I pay them based on, obviously, if they get people to sign up. The other thing that Kajabi's just introduced is, pop up payments.
So, instead of clicking and going to a new page for a check out, you can actually click the pay now button and it will just open a pop up and the, apparently the science behind it is that people are more likely to buy on that than a checkout page. So check something to take your payments.
What have you got for that? Then you're going to need things like. Obviously, an email system. Now, I've talked about a million different email systems over time. If you're just getting started, MailerLite's a really good one. But if you're having an online business, then that might not do what it needs, enough for you to need it to do.
ActiveCampaign's really good, but it's a standalone system. So, therefore, when it comes to some of the other things, like taking payments or managing… Hosting courses and things and also hosting things like, not all the systems host things like lead magnets or links through to documents. So what email systems have you got?
Can it tag people? Can you do onboarding things? Can you do automations? All of that's super, super important. Now I'm going to be completely honest here about Kajabi. Because I am very honest, when I use Kajabi, the email system is not as good as something like ActiveCampaign. However, I was paying almost the same amount of money for ActiveCampaign as I was for the entire of Kajabi.
And although it was great, in reality… It's not a deal breaker, the things that it can do, that Kajabi can't do, and they are constantly improving. So Kajabi can definitely do all the stuff, or all the main stuff I need it to do. Some of the fanciest stuff, it isn't quite there yet, but the reason for that is that it does everything, and therefore it's not as… You know, it's not just an email system like ActiveCampaign.
So yeah, and are those emails triggered when someone does something? Because obviously when someone buys, you want those emails to be triggered. Do the, so one of the things that Kajabi has is an abandoned cart sequence. So if someone goes to buy something and then abandons the cart it'll send them an email going, you were going to buy this thing and you left it.
So that's another thing that obviously you really need in any business needs an email system and some of that automation, regardless of whether you have an online business or not. Landing pages, sales pages, anything like that.
Every business will need that. So depending on what you're selling, if it's an online business, then you will want proper sales pages. So. Sales pages are standalone pages that are kind of separate from your website. Obviously, they could be still hosted on your website, but they're not a, in the menu bar as such.
I'm not explaining myself very well, but basically when you go to a sales page, you don't want to be able to click anywhere else. So the only thing, the only click you want that person to do is to buy. And therefore, if it's on your website and you have a menu bar at the top, They can click away and you don't really want them to do that if that's an online product.
Now it's not to say that doesn't work for every other product, but that is really kind of crucial for an online product, but you're going to on landing pages, going to lead magnets to sign up to your email list to get discounts or whatever it might be. So again, what system are you going to use? Now I used to use lead pages.
I think they're brilliant. I love them. My only reason I don't use them anymore is because Kajabi does this too and actually. Their landing page builder is a really good and you can do some really, really nice stuff and it's optimized for mobile and you can put animation in there and it's really, really cool.
So, for me, all that's in Kajabi. So basically for my online business, Kajabi has all of my needs. There's a couple of other little bits that I use that aren't Kajabi, which I'll tell you about in a sec. But for me, that's why I'm with them. Now, I used to say, and I've got to stop saying this. I used to go, they're not the cheapest, but the truth is they are when you think about how much they do, they are really affordable.
And for me, one of the reasons I decided I actually paid annually and I still do. And. One of the reasons I decided to pay annually and join them before, I mean, like I said, I did have another system and I had sold a bit of a course, but I hadn't got my membership, was to kind of put my money where my mouth was.
It was kind of a case of, right, I've got 12 months to make this work and to pay this back. And I have to say, you know, I am, I have more than paid it back, obviously. But I think sometimes putting some money, skin in the game will make you work a bit harder for it. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes.
And also I will tell you the link. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/kajabi, you will find a link there that'll get you 30 days free of the system. And for me, this is brilliant. So you can go in and you can basically use the entire thing. You can set up a landing page. You can look at what the checkouts are like.
You can look at the product side. It has a load of AI now that kind of creates stuff for you. There's a lot of support and help so you can have those 30 days free in kajabi on me. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/kajabi, obviously that's an affiliate link. But as you know, I don't talk about stuff that I don't love or I don't use.
So the next couple of few systems that I want to talk about again, specifically online business system is AddEvent. Now, AddEvent is the thing that I use. So basically when we schedule all the calls for the club and for the executive club, we put them into AddEvent and the members can subscribe to that calendar and it adds that calendar directly into their calendar.
So for me, this is like such a cool thing to do. Also, if we do things like insider experiences, if we do. Before when I've done bootcamps and things, then I create a calendar just for that and they can subscribe to it. So AddEvent is a real, really good one for me, especially when you're dealing with multiple different days and multiple different things.
And also the other thing that's cool about AddEvent is in the actual calendar. Like, event, you can put this is the link for it. This is what we're going to be covering today. So, again, you can add some additional things. And people can subscribe, and then you can unsubscribe them to it. But AddEvent ‘s really, really good.
Now, I should have had in front of me how much it was a year. I pay annually for that. I want to say like a couple of hundred dollars a year. So, it's not extortionate. But we'll make sure we put a link to AddEvent in as well. And then the other thing that I used to use, but I don't so much now because I don't do as much live now is when I go live, I would use Ecamm.
So really, really like Ecamm. It's a great system. If you are planning on going live, not Instagram, as I speak at the moment, it would be more going live into groups or going live online. In fact, I can go live through Kajabi, but I don't know how to do it because I've never used it and because I don't go live very often, everything we do is through zoom.
So I guess I should have included zoom in this. So all our calls are on zoom because I like to see people and have conversations with people rather than just talking to the ether. So, yeah, so if I was going to be doing lives and when I have done them, I've used the Ecamm, it's a really, really good system.
So a couple of other systems, generic use that I wanted to mention was Google storage, and Google drive and all that sort of jazz, my emails are hosted through Google, so all of our stuff is in Google on the Google drive. And obviously my team have access to that. Asana. I use Asana, for the to do list and for managing things and processes, which come in really handy with things like the podcast.
We do it for content for social media. Obviously, I also use things like Slack for conversations for me and the team. And then when it comes to the podcast, I use Captivate to host my podcast. You need somewhere to host it. And I would highly recommend Captivate. I used to use Libsyn. Personally, I find Captivate much, much nicer, much more intuitive and much nicer to look at.
Also, the analytic, analytical stuff on that is so good. Oh, that was something else I should have said about Kajabi. That you want to be able to read your analytical. Obviously that's the technical term, and having it all in one place, having Kajabi do everything in one place means it can tell me all the stuff I needed to tell me, like not just your open rates and your emails, but your views on your landing page, how many people converted, how many people have bought, what the subscription matrix are, metrics, God, I can't speak, what your churn rate is and all that sort of good stuff.
So sorry, going back to Captivate. So yeah, Captivate, I used to host my podcast, and that's where we upload the podcast to, and obviously that sends it to Apple and Spotify and Stitcher and everywhere that you can listen to this podcast, and we use Descript to do our transcript, and that's all we use Descript for. I know Descript can do a lot more than that, and to be fair, I don't use it.
The lovely Johanne uses it, and she'll get the transcript for this, and that will go on the website, but, Other than that, that's pretty much all we use from a podcast point of view. I know there's going to be some systems that I'm sat here thinking, well, yeah, you use that. Don't forget to tell them that, but.
I can't remember. Oh, the only other thing actually is to record my podcast. I use Audacity. I used to use Adobe Auditions when I had the full Adobe suite and now I don't. Obviously the other thing I use is Adobe Express and Canva, both equally to do design stuff, but I don't have to do as much of that now because I have the lovely Becci McEvoy who does my social media.
So yeah, so, that was, like I said, a bit of a whistle stop tour in terms of the, systems I use and why I need them. I've done a lot of work in reducing them. I used to have a lot more, but I'm trying to keep things very simple now. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/resources, I think she says, or just check out my site and you'll find the resources page.
You will find links to pretty much every system that I've used in previous ones. And like I said, if you want to check out Kajabi and get 30 days free, then go to teresaheathwareing.com/kajabi. Okay. Have a great week and I will see you next week.
