- Hey everybody.
This is Roberto Blake, of robertoblake.com,
helping you create something awesome today.
As a creative entrepreneur, I run my on online business.
And that means that there are a lot of tools that I need
in order to help me get that done
and to be able to work with clients,
and to be able to help all of you guys
with whatever you're doing.
So today, I'm gonna give you my top 10 tools
that I use for my online business.
These are in no particular order.
One of the first and most important tools that I use
is my invoicing software.
I need to send invoices to clients and to bill them things,
because that's how I get paid.
So I use FreshBooks to do my online invoicing
and to be able to do my expense tracking.
Lets me put in my cards and be able to know
what I'm spending my money on month to month
for my business.
It really helps when it comes to tax time.
So that's tool number one for you.
Tool number two is a desktop and mobile app
called Trello.
Most of these are gonna be desktop and mobile apps.
I will be linking to them in the description below.
But Trello is amazing for being organized
when it comes to projects.
If you're a YouTuber, you should definitely be using it.
In this case, I'm primarily using it
to structure and organize things
for online courses that I'm putting together.
I've actually done a great video
on how to sell your first online course.
You should definitely check that out linked there,
and also up there.
But the reason I like Trello is one, it's free,
and then two, it's something that you can actually add
other people to your Trello boards and projects
so they can help you stay organized.
So for managing a team, like my team
for Create Awesome Media, it's very practical.
The third tool that I'm gonna recommend is Google Slides.
Google Slides is something that I use
for my presentations as a public speaker,
but it's also what I use to put together my media kit
as an influencer as well as my presentation decks
for clients.
Google slides is obviously part
of the Google suite of tools.
These are all free and available to anybody who
has a Google or a Gmail account.
And I would definitely recommend that you check this out.
It's actually really good.
Even if you're not a graphic designer,
you can put together great PowerPoint
and PDF presentations with it.
Number four is both Zoom and Skype.
These are what I use to do my consulting and client calls.
When people hire me to either do a YouTube channel review,
or a website and branding audit,
or just business consulting in general,
I need a way to communicate with them in live stream,
and also for us to share screens.
I also use Zoom specifically for Awesome Creator Academy,
my online group mentoring program.
So whenever I'm doing these things I'm able
to share my screen, see the person eye to eye,
and if I need to, we can record the session
and use those for notes later.
So that's why I like using both Zoom and Skype.
They are my live communication platforms
that I use for my clients,
and to also communicate with my students.
Tool number five is Buffer and Hootsuite.
You can pick either one of these,
but I like to use this to help
with managing my social media accounts
and doing some scheduled posts there.
A little bit of automation goes a long way.
And the reason I can respond to so many of you
in social media is because by using these automated systems,
I can use that to distribute my content,
and so I can focus on doing replies and video messages
back and forth to you guys.
So that's actually really convenient,
and you should look at those if you're trying
to be everywhere at once.
One of the most important tools is being able
to actually take payments and that's important.
So in addition to using FreshBooks for my invoicing,
I use PayPal, Stripe, and Venmo to be able
to receive money from people.
This might mean that I'm able to receive money from clients
or from people who are part of my membership program.
But also it lets me send money to freelancers that I hire.
And some of them, they can't get PayPal where they're at,
for whatever reason,
or they like another one of these platforms better.
Stripe is something that works with Kajabi specifically
for my paid membership group.
PayPal is the obvious one that's usually universal.
But sometimes people want me
to send them money via Venmo,
or sometimes that's what they wanna use to pay me.
So I allow for that by having all three
of these payment systems,
and you should probably have all three of these too,
if you're someone who's doing online business.
You also might wanna look into Square.
For cloud storage I use Google Drive,
and I also use Dropbox.
These are very convenient.
They start out free.
I'm in the paid versions of them,
because I just have so much that I need to manage,
and I like having more than one system.
The thing about Google Drive is it's part
of the Google ecosystem,
so that's very practical and convenient for me.
And with Dropbox, I need that specifically
for working with my new video editor
that's helping with some of these videos.
I'm still editing 90% of this stuff by myself.
I should not be editing any of it at all anymore.
But it's a great and convenient way to work with a team.
Since I'm someone who wants to work
with a team at this point,
then I think it's a really good thing to use.
Most of you could get away with the free version of Dropbox.
I am using the business version of Dropbox.
For email marketing,
I'm going to be recommending ConvertKit.
You should definitely use the link down
in the description below.
It is an affiliate link,
and it does help the channel whenever you use it.
The reason I moved to ConvertKit from MailChimp
is because I felt like for doing multiple lead magnets
and email lists, it was a lot more practical.
I like the fact that it doesn't duplicate,
so I'm not charged for the same amount of people being
on my list if they came in through multiple free offerings.
Let's say that you wanted a free getting started guide
on YouTube and you wanted a free ebook from me.
If I were over at MailChimp I'd be paying for you twice.
With ConvertKit I'm only paying for you once.
So as my list gets bigger,
and it's about around ten thousand or so now,
it just becomes cheaper to do things with ConvertKit.
I also like the way
that they handle list automation features,
and I like the fact that if I wanted
to give you guys a free micro-course,
that it's a very easy way to do it through an email drip.
So I think that ConvertKit is less technical
and a lot easier to use for those things.
Both of these integrate with all
of these other platforms for your online business.
So if you need to,
you should definitely consider either of them.
But I'm going with ConvertKit.
As an online business there's so many things I do
that require me to use these very long URLs,
and that's a little hard on people sometimes.
So I use Bitly as a URL and link shortener,
but it's also great for link tracking.
Sometimes you wanna know if something you're promoting
is getting traction and you need an easy way to track it.
Yeah you could be using Google analytics
to get really robust data on that,
but sometimes you just wanna know how many times
did this thing get clicked in a day.
And so Bitly is really convenient.
It's also free.
Last but not least, there is Slack.
Slack is what I use to coordinate with my team
in real time when I don't need
it to be a Skype recorded session.
We could just use Slack on our mobile devices
throughout the day.
By having the Slack app on our phone,
one we can have multiple channels,
which means we can even have a Slack channel
for our client to be able to keep them up to date
and have them interact with us day to day,
basically through simple texts.
They could also share images, videos, whatever.
And so it's a great project management system.
It's a great way to coordinate with a team
if you have an online business,
or if there are people that you collaborate with
on regular basis,
or you wanna put together kind of a micro-mastermind group,
then it's definitely a good tool to use.
So those are my top 10.
These are pretty much the tools I use everyday
in my online business.
And they actually really help me out.
They make things convenient.
I would have a hard time imaging my life
without the majority of these tools.
So anyway, everything is linked down
in the description below for you guys.
I also wanna thank our friends over at Trello
for sponsoring this top 10 list.
And again, they're one of my favorite tools
because they keep me organized and it's free.
So make sure you're downloading the Trello app.
You might wanna go ahead and use it on the desktop as well.
I actually prefer to use it on the desktop personally.
I have so many mobile apps for so many different things,
when I wanna get organized,
I'd really like to just sit down in front of something
and have everything laid out for me.
And that's why I like using Trello,
especially for putting together
and organizing online courses.
I just think if that's something you're doing,
then you need something that really just
keeps you focused and on track with that.
That's my list, but I'm curious about what you guys
are using for your online business,
and I'm curious about what online businesses you have.
So let me now in the comments section,
what are you using to make your online business function?
Is it any of the tools I mentioned,
or are there other tools that I should be looking at?
Let me know, and also let me know if you're interested
in me doing a top 20 list of the tools and apps
that I use for online business,
because there are a lot more than the ones that I
just mentioned in this video.
Like this video if you liked it.
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As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching.
And don't forget, create something awesome today.
Take care.
(relaxed music)