Once you've started your business, and you’ve been doing everything yourself, you might feel like you’re ready for growth now. However, growth doesn’t always have to be someone extra doing manual labor. So, today, I’ll be doing a rundown of 3 software tools you could use to grow your business. Because growing your business can also mean investing in systems that will help make your business life a bit easier.
Why should you use software tools to grow your business?
Let me start off by saying: a lot of people, especially in Belgium, get brought up and taught that they need to do everything themselves. And in the end, we get greedy with our money when in reality the return on investment is much bigger than the 6 dollars you might need to pay for a certain software or application.
Because when you start using software to make certain processes happen smoother, you’ll free up your time so ask yourself: what is my time worth? Is your time worth more than the 6 dollars this software will cost you?
Keep in mind that no software is perfect, but it simply needs to do what you need it for and that’s all. So make sure you have non-negotiables you really need from whatever system you’re looking for because you’ll never find anything that will hit all of the spots.
1. Software for emailmarketing
Sending out manual emails to all of your clients is incredibly time-consuming and I think we can all agree that, as entrepreneurs, we don’t have time for that.
So how can you use software for your emailmarketing to grow your business?
When someone subscribes to your email list, through a lead magnet for example, it would be foolish not to use this piece of information to its fullest potential. With software such as ConvertKit you can create welcome sequences, to welcome people to your business or even to certain products.
Example: Someone buys my launching course ‘The Launch Gamebook™’, when that happens they get the tag #TLG_2023_BOUGHT and then they’re automatically enrolled in a welcoming sequence.
The first email they’ll get will tell them where they can find everything, such as the online course and if they have any questions what email address they can use to reach out. And in the end, I send an email asking them if they’re satisfied with the course and what feedback they might have for me.
Why is software like this pivotal to the growth of your business? When you’re solely focusing on socials, it’s kind of like building a house on borrowed land. Collecting contact information through products of your own will make sure you have something to fall back on when all else fails.
In short: make building your email list a priority.
2. Task manager software
There’s some huge planning software out there, but my favorite one might not be what you’re thinking of.
In my humble opinion, Google Sheets is the best tool in the world.
You can make a simple overview of your tasks, their deadlines and the sort of task it is. It’s easy to track everything you need to be doing and with the app, you can access your to-do list from anywhere and all you need is your phone.
If you’re a notebook lover like I am, please stop using them because all of your ideas and to do’s are scattered throughout 20 different notebooks and trying to find whatever you wrote down 2 days ago is a task in and of itself.
It’s crucial for your time management and being able to stay on top of things, that you collect everything in one spot. It’s what I like to call the Catch, Batch, Act principle and you can read an article on the CBA principle.
Google Sheets is my favorite tool to manage my tasks and it’s free, so you see, not all software has to cost money.
If you’re not the biggest fan of Google Sheets, you can always give Notion a shot. This is what my team uses to hand out tasks and manage their own.
3. Financial tracking tool
Are you keeping track of everything that’s going out and everything that’s coming in? At the very start, I tracked all of this manually.
Right now, I have different platforms where I can collect the necessary data so I can enter it in my financial tracking tool, an app called Money Flow.
If you want a desktop tool, in this scenario I’d also suggest Google Spreadsheets
There are other tools such as Exact Online or Silverfin, which are used as accounting tools but in reality, it doesn’t need to be incredibly fancy.
You just need to have a hold on the money that’s coming in and what’s going out.
A last tip I’ll share with you on the front of financial tools is to use an invoicing tool. I wrote an article about invoicing tools a while back, so if you’re interested, go ahead and take a look.
If you don't have any control over your numbers, it's gonna be really difficult to determine, am I ready to take a risk? Am I ready to invest or not? And you're gonna stay at a standstill.
Let principles guide you in decision-making
Sometimes, it isn’t entirely clear how to go about making decisions in business. Which principles do you let guide you? It’s something I struggled with too in the beginning and that’s why I created a Business Bible with principles that helped my decision-making immensely. You can download it for free through fastforwardamy.com/businessbible
And since we’re on the topic of bibles anyway, I only have two so I thought I’d share the second one as well, namely my systems bible. Do you have no idea where to get started? I’d love to refer you to my personal systems bible and you can find my top 10 systems I use and would recommend to other entrepreneurs too: fastforwardamy.com/systemsbible
PS If you're ready to take action and turn your passion into a profitable business, I invite you to join my FREE Business Summer School. This whole month I'm teaching you how you can make more money while doing what you love. Join me through fastforwardamy.com/bus
My business school is in Dutch, but I have tons of free resources available in English as well. Find them through fastforwardamy.com/freeresources
Watch this episode on YouTube or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and search for episode 195 of the Play To Win podcast.
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Ik ben zoooo jaloers op de vlotheid van het Engels. Daar heb ik nog heel wat werk aan. Elke dat zoom ik met collega’s en affiliaten die hulp nodig hebben in het engels. En aub maak meer grapjes, eender welke.😉