There are so many tools to run your business and choosing the right one for you can take a lot of time to find, so we thought it helpful to compile a big ole list of the things we use. It’s important to remember that technology should make your life more simple, not more difficult. So choose something that works and get back to business!
We’ve watched too many people rack their brains on which tool to use, that they forget to do the actual hard work of making a great brand. Don’t be one of those people!
Below you’ll find a list of tools we use. Dive into the comment section at the end of this post to let us know what tools you love and which you’re looking for.
Marketing
ConvertKit – Email Marketing for Bloggers
ConvertKit is quickly growing to be one of the preferred email marketing providers for content creators (bloggers, authors, speakers, YouTubers, etc). After split-testing deliverability vs MailChimp, we’ve made the switch. MailChimp is great for people who want to send emails sometimes and ConvertKit is great for people who are writing, blogging and selling. It also is a bit more user-friendly in terms of segmentation.
Klaviyo – Marketing Suite for Ecommerce
Klaviyo’s integration with Shopify is so powerful it’s hard to find another alternative for ecommerce brands build on Shopify. Not only is there all the normal sending of email campaigns, but the customization available is powerful. Adam’s coffee business and all of our ecommerce clients are operating on Klaviyo.
Sprout Social – Social Media Scheduling
For the longest time, we used Buffer for scheduling (and Buffer is still an AWESOME option), but as we’re managing our own social accounts AND the accounts of others, Buffer came back a bit limited compared to Sprout Social. There are loads of helpful scheduling tools out there, we like Sprout, but we promise that social success is more about the quality of content rather than the tools you use.
Google Analytics – Web Traffic Analytics
This one seems obvious, but after working with hundreds of businesses since The Wonder Jam opened our doors, I’ve gotta tell ya: GET GOOGLE ANALYTICS UP ON YOUR SITE! PLEASE!
Business Administration
Dropbox – File Storage
We keep all of our files synced to dropbox wich makes file-sharing ultra simple. We just had an external hard-drive crash, but we had no worries because everything was alive and well in Dropbox.
Calendly – Scheduling Tool
Scheduling meetings can be taxing and we use Calendly to keep the back and forth easy. Adam even uses it with friends to schedule happy hour meetups. Gone are the days of double-booking yourself or waiting for one meeting to be confirmed while another is still up in the air. When we send our scheduling link, the invite syncs with our calendar and only displays the available slots for a meeting. Easy peasy!
HelloSign – Simple Document Signing and Storage
Quickly and easily get contracts signed. We simply upload a contract created from Google Docs to HelloSign, sign it ourselves and then send to a client. This makes online signatures easy, keeps our projects moving forward and stores all of our contracts for easy retrieval.
Pulse Bookkeeping – Bookkeeping
The Wonder Jam just started using Pulse Bookkeeping in March of 2019 (after we helped out with some of Pulse’s branding. When you’re first getting started, we recommend you handle your books yourself (it’s a good learning experience for new business owners). We finally got to a place where it made sense to have pros handling the bookkeeping of our business. Bookkeepers have helped save us hundreds of hours when it comes to tax time and they make it easy to see important data about our business. (If you’re a tiny, new business that needs bookkeeping tools set up, Wave Accounting is an awesome
Mike Albert – Virtual CFO
It’s kinda funny to call Mike a “Tool We Use to Run The Wonder Jam.” 🙂 Mike is worth 10 times what he charges. In the past, we’ve used various apps and tools and widgets to work our finances, but Mike taught us how to bring all of those things under our own control. The moment we started listening to Mike’s advice, we became more profitable and have been able to pay ourselves and our team progressively better.
Productivity
Asana – Project Management Software.
Asana keeps our projects and files and tasks all in one place. With a team that might be working from (at the time of this writing) Seattle, Illinois, Portland, New York, Jacksonville, and Columbus it is key to keeping projects rolling while working remotely.
Slack – Team Chat
And since our team may be at any given time working from our studio, home, or who knows where we use Slack to keep communication lines open. Between Asana & Slack, we don’t have to send emails within our team very often.
Harvest – Time Tracking
Our team all uses Harvest to track our time. We used to use another software because it was half the price of Harvest, but we ended up spending so much time putting reports togehter that Hravest just does automatically. Hey, we all make mistakes.
If you use THIS LINK, you’ll get $10 off your first month.
Sanebox – Sanity for Your Inbox
If you don’t use Sanebox, we’d doubt that you care about your sanity. Sandbox keeps unwanted emails out of your inbox and learns from you as you use your email. It grows to know what’s important and what isn’t.
WordPress
YOAST SEO Plugin – SEO Made Simple for WordPress
For those of you with a WordPress Site, this helpful plugin makes it easy to keep your website SEO friendly. From checking the articles you’ve written about how strong they are from an SEO perspective to formatting the way you’re site appears in search results, this plugin makes it easy!
WP Rocket – Speed Up Your WordPress Site
This plugin makes your WordPress site faster. Minimal configuration and easy to set-up. We’ve split test it and sites are always faster after installed.
ManageWP – Manage Multiple WordPress Sites
ManageWP makes managing sites a breeze. Backups, plugin updates, SEO tracking, and headache-free transfers. All of this is really important for us as we manage client sites!
Web Presence Starting Points
Namecheap – Domain Registration
Namecheap is a better version of GoDaddy. It’s simpler to navigate and doesn’t try to upsell you something you don’t need. They also offer lite hosting and email packages.
SiteGround – Professional Grade Hosting
In the past, we’ve used other hosting services but have been blown away by Siteground’s service, reliability, and price. Siteground is simple and has a lot of the premium tools offered by higher-priced services baked into its normal packages. When we first signed up, Adam spent 30 minutes on the phone with them to make sure that there wasn’t some trick or gimmick behind the affordable pricing.
HitTail – SEO Planning
HITTAIL is the secret weapon for helping bloggers better rank for search terms in Google. Long tail searches makeup 90% of all searches and ranking well. This is no secret to the SEO community. Being strategic about what you’re writing is the most time-consuming part and HitTail takes the mystery out of it all. If you’re a blog that makes money on advertising, this will pay for itself VERY, VERY quickly. 🙂
Teachable – Online Course Creation
Teachable is the simplest tool we’ve seen to go from nothing to something when it comes to an online course. Simple to use, build and manage. Teachable is great for bloggers, authors, podcasters, and coaches who want to put together an online course.
Shopify – Ecommerce
After enough experience, The Wonder Jam won’t build an eCommerce store for someone that isn’t on Shopify. Shopify is insanely fast, has unbelievable uptime and lots of great support to help make your store a success. Snag a free theme, upload products, and your store could be ready to roll in no time!
Google Apps – Email, Google Drive & More
After creating hundreds of websites, I can tell you the top, most annoying part of it all is handling the email servers. Google Apps does all of that for you and gives your company the power and simplicity of Gmail. If they tripled the price, I’d still pay it.
Wistia – Video Hosting
We create a lot of video tutorials for our clients and we use Wistia to host them. These videos are very easy to embed across the web or simply share a link to a project and our clients can view them on any device. We also keep a lot of online course videos hosted on Wistia as well.
Tools used for The Gem Club Membership & Coaching
Mighty Networks – A platform for intuitive online community
After a LOT of searching, we landed on using Mighty Networks to house the Gem Club’s private membership. We love that it includes a very intuitive layout, is built for mobile, and lives outside of other social networks. The team behind Mighty Networks is also well-versed in online communities and they just GET what makes communities tick.
Tools for Mac
MemoryClean – Free Up Some RAM
This is the ultimate app for optimizing your Mac’s memory. In two clicks, your MacBook or iMac will be humming again.
Alfred – Shortcuts and Hotkeys for MAC
This app built for Mac OS X boosts your efficiency. You create hotkeys, keywords, and text expansion. You can search your Mac or the web quickly.
Disk Doctor – Free Up Some Harddrive Space
With a few clicks, Disk Doctor will help you empty application caches, logs, downloads folder, trash can and will identify large files eating up your drive.
Anything else?
Head to the comments below to let us know which tools you love!
