The People Platforms That Help Me Do It All Version 3! - When I Grow Up

The People Platforms That Help Me Do It All Version 3! - When I Grow Up l’ve been noticing that I’ve been getting lots of Who Do You Work With And What Do They Do For You questions coming my way via email, Facebook, Twitter, and face-to-faceand when I went to point ‘em to my People Who Help Me Do It All: Updated!  post, I saw that it’s a year and a half old! That’s so no bueno. So, here’s an overdue review of both the people and the platforms that currently help me do it all. It’s gonna be epic: you have been warned! The People Arwyn Todd When she arrived: She joined me in August 2011 as my Virtual Wizard and a real Jill-Of-All-Trades. How I found her: I stole her! Kinda. We were coaching together and I knew she was planning to leave her full-time job and wanted a super part-time gig while maybe-kinda-sorta considering being a coach. I thought we’d be the perfect fit, and I was right! What she does for me: Currently, she’s my technological go-to gal, client communicator, billing boss, project manager and general manager. She on-boards all recent hires as well as acting as their immediate manager. Hannah O’Brien When she arrived: Hannah joined the team in July 2013 as our Social Media Maven. How I found her: Another former client, Hannah responded to my call this summer when I knew I wanted to transition Arwyn out of loading posts and tweets and the like. What she does for me: She’s our go-to blog, newsletter social media loader, scheduler and poster as well as well as being the voice of me in blog-related and offering-related tweets and updates. She’s always currently involved in structuring, systematizing and implementing a Facebook campaign to grow our audience. Rebecca Pollock When she arrived: I’ve been working with Bekky since late 2009, when I needed a designer for a more professional website (nope, whenigrowupcoach.com has not always looked like this!) How I found her: Bekky worked with my husband Luke in advertising, and he recommended her right away when he knew I wanted a better looking site. I felt immediately understood and she uber-impressed me with her first mock-ups. What she does for me: She’s now my resident designer, having been the talent behind my website designs since 2010 and my logo rebranding. I run to her with all of my graphic and web design needs. Halley Gray When she arrived: May 2013. How I found her: Another former client! I work with the best ladies, you guys. But seriously, I interviewed about a half-dozen (or more?) strategists this spring when I knew I wanted some help with my marketing, and Halley knocked my socks off. What she does for me: I currently work with Halley quarterly, giving me a birds-eye view on the biz, how to leverage what we got reach new audiences via marketing plans analytic reports. She helped me tons with my Career Camp launch as well as the tightening-up of my sales pages and my recent rebranding. It’s worth mentioning that everyone on the team is a freelancer and not a full-time employee. This means their schedules are flexible and benefits are not given by my LLC. Other peeps I recommend are all right here on this Pinterest board. The Products Platforms (don’t go down the rabbit hole too far!) For CRM (Customer Relations Management): Batchblue How long I’ve been using it for: 2008-ish, since I started coaching. What I love about it: The most amazeballs thing about Batchblue is their super-sophisticated social media integrations. If you have a name and an email address, you can click the Search Social Network button and have Batchblue find their social media profiles. You can also add RSS feeds for, well, anything (I set ones up for blogs, Etsy and Pinterest) â€" so that person’s latest tweets and posts and pins and pics are all within their entry. It’s also really easy to attach files, create To Dos and Events (that sync with your calendar), run reports for whatever you find important (i.e. I have one that tells me how many consultation calls end up signing on as clients), create web forms that then sync with the contact’s info, and keep track of Deals. And seriously, the company is generally awesome. They not only send me goodies all the time, but the donated to my boob cancer walk! What it lacks: OK, so they’ve turned over to a new version probably a year or so agoand my account is still not up-to-date with them. It’s very odd to read the blog see all these new developments that I can’t get access to. Although I can ask them to switch it over.but some of the features that I rely on would disappearso it’s a bit confusing knowing what the new version holds and how it’ll affect my systems and files now. We shall wait and see! For newsletters: AWeber How long I’ve been using it for: August 2012, so just over a year. What I love about it: Not much. Honestly, I left Mailchimp very begrudgingly. I loved their user-friendliness, their humor, and their customer servicebut when I started to branch out from one list to many lists, I noticed the Mailchimp pitfalls. Beyond charging you for every subscriber even if they were on multiple lists (for example, if 1 person signed up for 3 of your lists, they’d be counted 3 times instead of once), they would not allow someone to unsubscribe from just one list. Want off my Clubhouse Interest list, but you’re also on my VIP List and my Career Camp list? Then you’ll have to unsubscribe to them all! So not cool. So, I switched to Aweber because they don’t do that. But that’s the only benefit over Mailchimp, I think. Their data is pretty robust, but it’s presented in a way that’s not so easy on the eyes, so it’s not as effective. What it lacks: Prettiness. Ease of loading/formatting. Great customer service. Let’s just say that whenever something goes wonky in my biz that my teams know that “Damn you AWeber!” is the curse phrase of choicenamely because we said it all the time in setting the account up! For social media management: Hootsuite How long I’ve been using it for: 2008ish, when I started tweeting. What I love about it: Whether on my desktop, laptop, or iPhone, HootSuite is the one-stop-shop for me to update my Twitter account,  my Facebook profile, my Facebook fan page, my LinkedIn profile, my Google + account, and our Declaration of You Twitter account. So, no need to go anywhere else to update all your statuses, schedule updates/tweets in advance, shorten links, and create private and public lists (no more homefeed overwhelm!). What it’s lacking: For some silly reason the lists I create via Twitter don’t seem to sync to Hootsuite, so sometimes I lose peeps I wanna keep my eye on until I realize I need to do some double work. For email: Gmail How long I’ve been using it for: forever What I love about it: I’ve been using Gmail for my personal account for years, but it was a no-brainer to keep on using it when I became a Woman of the World (aka entrepreneur). I love me their folders, their filters, their forwarding, their starring system, their themes (the Bus Stop one changes with the weather!), their Priority Inbox, the amount of space I get, and their stacked conversation view. What it’s lacking: I’m not a big fan of their new Inbox, but only because I have a million and one filters set up to go exactly where I want each message to go. Confusion! For personal calendering: Google Calendar How long I’ve been using it for: forever What I love about it: I love the web-basedness of Google Calendar, as well as the ability to create multiple calendars for different categories (and color-code ‘em!). It also seems to Sync with every application possible. What it’s lacking: I can’t trust the google cal that’s on my phone. Totally frustrating to be out in the world trying to schedule something and not knowing if your calendar is accurate or not (usually not). For legal signing: HelloSign How long I’ve been using it for: May 2013 What I love about it: I used to use EchoSign so my new clients can sign their agreements quickly/easily, agreeing I’m not the boss of ‘em and that they won’t sue me and whatnot but then they were bought by Adobe and the price went up while the service went down. I was glad to switch to HelloSign, which offers the same sign-documents-electronically feature for my clients while also integrating into my Gmail so I can sign attachments right from my browser. Killer.  What it’s lacking: Nothing I can think of at the moment! But in all fairness, it’s Arwyn who deals with the platform the most I’m just the one signing stuff from my Gmail. For fancy schmancy online scheduling:  TimeTrade How long I’ve been using it for: on and off since 2008 What I love about it: TimeTrade was my super simplistic client calendaring system from 2008, when I started coaching, through early 2011. I needed something   uber-basic and uber-cheap, until I knew I needed more bells and whistles. I swear poor Arwyn went through over a dozen platforms and we eventually wound up right where we started Timetrade. They added some bells and whistles in the year or so since I left, the price is right, and it’s way easy for my clients to schedule their appointments in their time zones and then add it to their own calendars. What it’s lacking: I’m still waiting for the Holy Grail of calendars. There’s not an easy way for the client to cancel/reschedule on their end (I have to do it) and making a new calendar for every offering is totally crazy-inducing with room for error. Also, if I wanna block off time in my calendar without manually doing it in TimeTrade, I need to create a fake appointment in my Google cal to mark it as “busy” and it makes me nuts to see that in my calendar sometimes. For blogging/websiting: WordPress How long I’ve been using it for: since 2011ish What I love about it: I’m a bit spoiled here as I know this is tough to set-up/design and I had others do it all for me, so I can’t speak to that. What I can speak to is that I’m fairly developer-illiterate, and it didn’t take me too long to figure out WordPress so I could add pics, links, movies, yada yada yada to my posts. And all the plug-ins it offers rock. I went from an HTML platform to WordPress and will never look back. What it’s lacking: Uh, nothing I can think of. For conference calls: FreeConferencePro How long I’ve been using it for: since 2008 What I love about it: They give me my own number, allow me to customize the greeting (aka make a sexy lady voice say the word “amazeballs”), it’s easy to record. What it’s lacking: I can count the amount of times the line has been down on one hand, and while it’s soooooo not fun when it happens (and the customer service team doesn’t really care), it’s happened so infrequently it wasn’t enough for me to change providers. For file sharing: Dropbox How long I’ve been using it for: forever What I love about it: Whether you’re sharing files between computers, with other people privately, or with the world at large, Dropbox is the coolest. There’s tons of storage involved with a free account (I have a crapload of files on it and have only used half of my available storage), and the app is great for when I need to read files on the road. Simple explanation, simple to use, super amazeballs product. What it’s lacking: Uh, nothing I can think of. For virtual meetings/workshops/presentations:  Spreecast How long I’ve been using it for: Jan 2013 What I love about it: Ever since I was introduced to Spreecast by Kate Spencer in our Grown Up Gigs interview, I’ve been using it a few times a month to host interviews, group coaching calls, QA sessions you name it. I love that you can bring up to 3 other people (I think) on camera with you, along with the chat Submit A Question features, and that I can make Arwyn a Producer and she can do her technical wizardry behind-the-scenes. It also automatically records as soon as you hit On Air, but you can edit it when you’re done to start or end at another spot. Oh! And you can make Spreecasts public or private and stream them on your own site/Facebook page. And did I mention it’s free? It’s totes free. What it’s lacking: It could absolutely be prettier and sometimes there are technological glitches, but they’re few and far between. I’d love a dial-in option for participants, too! For project management: TeamworkPM How long I’ve been using it for: June 2012 What I love about it: This was another thing that poor Arwyn tested seemingly dozens of platforms for us to find the project management system that works best for usand I’m so glad we landed at TeamworkPM. With the account that I have, I can have 15 open projects to work on, which is great with all of my offerings! Then, I can add people on a project-by-project base and create milestones, task lists, recurring tasks, deadlines, priority levels it gets us down to the nitty gritty so the entire team knows what’s happening when and who’s in charge of what. I also just started using it for time tracking, and while it’s not as fab as Freckle, it’s great to have my project management and my time logs all in one place. What it’s lacking: The design was always super unattractive, but they just did a refresh and it’s much prettier. For money management:  QuickBooks How long I’ve been using it for: Jan 2013 What I love about it: The reports are stellar and easy to generate. What it’s lacking: Everything else. It’s really labor-intensive to get everything in there since I never seem to be able to download the statement from my bank account to upload into QuickBooks. I feel like I made a mistake in buying the desktop version instead of the online version, since I’m bound to my desktop and can’t bring in any outside help to work on my books for/with me. For online sales/affiliates/yada yada yada:  E-junkie How long I’ve been using it for: Spring 2010 What I love about it: Ejunkie is good at what it does namely, having affiliates, allowing you to sell something that’s an automatic download, using discount codes, etc. It’s also insanely cheap. What it’s lacking: I soooooo want it to be prettier and more user-friendly. It would make a world of difference. If you’re not already down the rabbit hole and want to peruse some more platforms that might be right for you, this Pinterest board o’ mine has your name on it. Any platforms you use/love? Anything I might have missed (it could happen!) that you wanna know about? Leave a comment I’d love to hear your recommendations and/or questions!