Tools That Make Running my Coaching Business Feel Effortless
You can take the girl out of business coaching but you can't take business out of the girl. I used to be an Intuitive Business Coach. As of this year, I am now a Freedom Alchemist. So generally, I've moved away from sharing business tools like I'm about to do now.
Lately, I've been really thankful for all the tools that support me. Especially since I run my business without any human assistance. Everything you see, I've created. I'm considering hiring help after the SANCTUARY launch.
In the meantime, I wanted to share all that I use to run my little Hey Sheedia LLC empire.
Website
My website runs on Squarespace. I used to save a little bit of money using WordPress. The headache of making sure everything runs smoothly wasn't worth the minor savings.
With Squarespace, everything is easy to edit and manage. It's in charge of all my website hosting, and management.
Podcast
I use Spotify for podcasters (formerly Anchor.fm) to host my podcast. From there I’ve distributed to other platforms like Apple Podcasts so that it’s available everywhere.
Generate show notes, timestamps, newsletters, and more for your podcast with one click!
Podsqueeze is the tool that really allowed me to be able to record and share 9 podcast interviews easily. It provides the transcription for the podcast episode.
It doesn’t stop there!
Podsqueeze also gives you a title, writes an email, provides some quotes, and gets a summary of what was talked about. Plus so much more. It will generate all of that automatically at the same time. Within minutes of recording an interview, I had all of that ready to go.
Just check out the screenshots of all that you get…
Booking Calendar
When I first got TidyCal in 2021, it was way too basic for what I needed. I signed up because I loved the one-time payment option for a booking calendar and the promise of growth.
Fast forward to today, they've added way more features than I need. It's easy to use and has a whole lot of bank for your buck.
TidyCal is what I use for people to book:
Selling coaching
Back in 2018 when I started my coaching business, my first coach was using Teachable. I liked it so that's what I used and I never moved away from it.
Generally speaking, I really like Teachable. They're constantly adding new features and I feel like I've grown with the tool. Lately, they've increased their prices and changed some of their plans in a way that I'm not a huge fan of.
I'm still using them though because it's easy, I like them, and moving to another tool will be more complicated. Plus, the prices of software have been increasing everywhere.
I use Teachable for:
Email marketing
I love using Convertkit for sending emails, automation, and landing page creation. To be honest, Convertkit alone can be used to sell coaching. It has that capability. The only reason I still use Teachable is because it can host courses, recordings, and documents for my clients.
The Freedom Box freebie for example is hosted on Teachable but every time someone signs up, they get added to my email list on Convertkit. The integration works seamlessly.
These landing pages were created on Convertkit:
Receiving online payments in the Global South
Australia and Antarctica are the only two continents that I haven’t traveled to. I've seen firsthand the unfairness that colonization still has on our world today.
I come from Curaçao. Which is unofficially still a colony. As such, it's impossible to receive online payments through things like Stripe or PayPal. When I first started my business, I used to receive payments through my friends who had bank accounts abroad. There was definitely a cap on how much money I could receive back then.
The best way I found for me to fix all that was to set up an LLC in the US. Which I was able to do without traveling. I learned how to do it through Belema Ronabere’s LLC Formula course. The course walks you through the step-by-step on how to do it yourself. I ended up paying Belema’s consultancy company to set it up for me. Even though I didn't do it myself, the course is what made me understand what I was paying for.
Transcription service
Podsqueeze is perfect for podcast episodes, but what about general transcription? For that I use Otter.ai. It's used daily in my business. Every day before starting my Morning Nugget, I start an Otter.ai transcription. This means that I have a transcription of every single Morning Nugget I've done.
This also means that it's easy to find something I said, summarize things, and create other content from my transcripts using ChatGPT.
Btw, the morning Nugget refers to the daily livestream I do on Facebook sharing a wisdom drop. In essence, it's free daily training. Check out all the replays here and join the group if you want a notification when I go live.
ChatGPT’s pros and cons
Ok, so I love tools that assist me in making things easier. ChatGPT is all the hype this year. It's helped me a lot in creating things like the 275 Unconventional Ways to Make Moolah.
That being said, I can't stand how it makes all copy sound like a robot. I've played with it so much that I can pretty much predict the roboty results I will get from it. So it's definitely not a solution to everything like people have hyped it up to be.
What it is, is a great assistant. When doing research, brainstorming or when needing a summary, ChatGPT is the way to go.
Brainstorming
What would I do without my Mural? I brainstorm, I plan, I journal, and I collaborate in Mural. It’s a tool I’ve been already using a bit of in my coaching and I’m really excited to fully integrate it in SANCTUARY. Since the program will include a ton of brainstorming to find innovative ways to experience more freedom in all areas of life.
I would say, create your free account and go check it out for yourself. It’s amazing!
Creating Reels/TikToks from a long video
With Opus.pro you can upload a long video and it will cut it down into short ones for Reels/TikToks with subtitles. It will also sort which ones will be most interesting. The first 120 minutes are free.
Other tools
That’s pretty much all the tools that I use and love. Here are some very popular tools. These tools I either don’t use often or I don’t feel need further explanation:
Canva
Photoshop
Adobe Audition
Voxer
Zoom
Now Enrolling
As a Freedom Alchemist, I'm always looking for ways to make my work more efficient and effective, and these tools have been invaluable in helping me do just that.
If you're interested in exploring more ways to experience freedom in your life, I invite you to check out SANCTUARY, my coaching program designed to help you do just that. Enrollment is open now, and I'd love to help you on your journey to greater freedom.
Hustle Culture is an illusion. Learn why that is and how to succeed without forcing oneself inside this blog post.