Ep 230 - Overcoming Tech Overwhelm: The Must-Have Tech Stack for Growing a Profitable Coaching Business

Feeling overwhelmed by technology in your coaching business?

In this episode, I share practical tips on overcoming tech overwhelm and discuss the essential tech stack needed to grow a profitable coaching business. We explore the importance of embracing technology, shifting your mindset, and taking small steps to learn and implement new tools. I also highlight five must-have tools for your coaching business and explain each tool in detail, with insights on why they are crucial and how they can enhance your business operations.

Don't miss out on this episode packed with actionable insights to help you navigate the tech landscape. Tune in to gain valuable strategies and inspiration to build a successful coaching business!

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Transcript

Hello. Hello. Today, we're going to talk about technology. I know this is your favorite topic. Do not shut off this podcast. I know you need to hear about this.

I'm going to talk about overcoming the tech overwhelm, and then I'm going to share with you kind of the must have tech stack for growing a profitable coaching business.

Here's the deal, ladies. If you want to have a business, You have to have tech. If you want to receive money, you have to have tech. If you want to do marketing so you can have clients, you have to have tech. There are always going to be challenges with tech. It's always going to be something that you need to keep learning, but it's part of doing business.

So welcome to the reality of having an online business.

Now I think probably that you could use a mindset shift around technology. Most of you guys have barriers around it thinking that you're too old for it. Like I didn't grow up with the technology. There's limiting beliefs about how, easy it could be, right?

You think it's going to be hard. So I want to encourage you To just know you cannot break anything. I think that's a big thing that people think sometimes it's like, well, I might mess up and something might break. You can't break anything and most everything that you do, you can erase and go back on or most everything can be fixed.

So I really want to.

I want to encourage you as I go through some pieces of technology, five tools that you need for your coaching business. I'm going to share details about each one of them, but I want to encourage you that if you want to have a profitable coaching business, you're going to have to get over the fear of technology.

I want to encourage you to just get started and stop stalling, stop stalling and using that. So when you sit down to learn some new technology. You coach yourself. You guys are the coaches. So coach yourself around getting it done because you will be able to learn it. You do have the skill. You are a smart woman.

Many of you have brought children into the world. You've raised children. You've had corporate jobs, look, a very big list of things that you've done. So technology is required. All right, so nothing's going to break. You can do it. And the last thing I want to mention about your thinking is that you think that you're going to fail in front of somebody.

So you don't want to do it. Like, if you show up on social media, and again, I'm talking about from the tech point of view, like, you're going to do something wrong, and somebody's going to notice it. And first of all, if they notice it, they have nothing better to do. Then see your mistake. Who cares about that person?

Right? Okay. So I do have people actually pretty regularly who've noticed something that I've done in a very kind, loving way. They send me a message and they're like, Hey, you know, you have a typo or, Hey, you did this. So I wouldn't worry about making mistakes. 90 percent of the people are gracious and they let you know you've made a mistake and that's okay.

Cause you can improve from there. So I want you to, Have the mindset shift instead of procrastination and not doing this. Think about having progress over perfectionism. Okay. So just learning anything one step at a time is progress. All right. Okay.

Let's talk about How you learn the technology. , I want to mention again, inside of the Life Coach Business Building School, we teach the technology.

We have trainings that are literally made for women, mostly over 50 because that's most of my clients are over 50. And the idea is that it is very, very basic. So we start with like download the software and this is how you do it and select this, Option to go to this thing. Okay. I mean, it's so, so basic.

So it is step by step training and it is broke down to very Micro steps. Okay. So it's not learn the whole thing. It's just micro steps along the way and then get some support. Find somebody who can help you when you're stuck instead of just spinning around. Don't reach out to the tech support for that company because you might be waiting forever.

Find another coach who's used that and then get some support in our VIP coaching experience. We actually offer weekly tech support. So not only do we offer it seven days a week in our Facebook group, but we actually have live tech support where you share something. So today in our coaching tech support, it was about Canva.

So people were showing projects or asking questions on specific Canva things that they had been stuck on, where I could show them in an instant, Hey, do this. And it was like, Oh my gosh, you saved me so much time. And also by the way, Because it's in a group setting, when I show the one person how to fix the one thing, everybody else is like, Oh my gosh, thank goodness.

I didn't even know I needed to know that. And now I do. So let me also mention about buying the software. Remember software or technology, whatever we want to call it, that does not get you clients. What gets you clients is marketing. So when you listen to somebody who's going to sell you a client management system, it You do not need that until you have more clients than you can possibly manage.

You get no clients from subscribing or joining a client management system. Okay, how you get clients is through marketing. So when it comes to the technology I'm going to share today, there are a few of these that you would get paid versions immediately. The rest of these, you will wait. Okay.

So I'm going to talk to you about Zoom.

You need to have a paid version of Zoom. I'll explain to you why, but just trust me. You need to have the paid version. It's not much. It's like 15 bucks. Okay. You need to have the paid version of Canva as soon as you start your business. Now, I guess you could wait on the paid version of Zoom if you want to wait until you have your first consult, but do not use the free version.

Okay. Then in Canva, again, you want to have the pro version. If you're in business, I'll give you all the reasons why you want to be paying for Canva here in a moment. Calendly is the calendar, the online scheduling tool that we recommend. You do not need to have a paid version of that. I'll explain to you when you want to get a paid version.

Flowdesk is our email marketing tool that I'm going to talk to you guys about today. You do not need to have a paid version of that yet. And if you look in the show notes, I will include an affiliate link where you can get it for 50 percent off. And the last thing that I'm going to talk to you about is Google G Suite.

You do need to have what's called a domain based email, which means you have to pay for it. So, As soon as you start your business. Okay, let's get into each tool. I'm going to kind of explain to you the highlights and benefits to you as a life coach. Why you need those and what version you're going to get.

Okay, so the first tool is zoom and I'm going to present these, by the way, in no particular order. So the first tool is zoom. Why do you want a paid version? Well, the first reason is you get more than 40 minutes of time on a call. Do not host a consultation call or a practice coaching session or anything with the free version.

Because as soon as you get to like 30 minutes, 35 minutes, something like that, the timer goes on and it starts counting down that you're going to run out of time. That is not the way to host a professional. Coaching session. All right. A professional consultation. Remember the first component of the life coach business building school is about being seen as successful before you are successful.

Look, you will not be seen as a successful coach. If you have a free version of zoom. The other thing that is really cool is you can get a transcription. Now when you have a paid plan, that's beautiful. You guys get that transcription of your coaching session. Not only to You know, use for your own notes for that session or to go through and get the highlights for your client or make an action step list.

I'm not sure what you do with your coaching, but that's excellent. And also, it's a great place to find content ideas so you can go back through the transcription and find. Places where you said something that was like, geez, that was a good point. I should use that in an upcoming social media post. Then you can do branding and customization.

I get a lot of comments about this. When people come to my page, they see that, hold on. For the waiting room, and it has my picture, my logo and my brand on it. That's a nice touch. And you're gonna have to pay for the zoom anyway. So go ahead and do the added branding. Go check that out. Make sure you add it to your waiting room.

Then the final thing that I'll say is about. Space. You're going to pay more for storage space, but when you have a paid version, you can have cloud based storage space. So that means you could save it to your computer, which is really great because then you don't have to upgrade your Zoom to have more storage space on your Zoom.

You save it to the cloud, save it to your computer, and then delete it off of Zoom. So, those are the features of why you need to have Zoom in the paid version.

Alright, the second tool, again, in no particular order I want to talk to you about, is the email tool that we recommend for email marketing, and that is Flowdesk.

Now, the first reason I recommend this is that it is free. And it is most like Canva. So I want to teach tools that are simple to use, that people are less overwhelmed with. And if you know how to use Canva, then you will really be able to get up to speed quickly with Flowdesk. Flowdesk is an email marketing tool where you send one email to many people.

What I will say is their designs are very beautiful. We teach our clients though to create a custom design. So both, whether you use their designs or you create a custom design in Flowdesk, both of those are good options. Another piece is that they have flat pricing. So in other words, it doesn't change based on how many email addresses that you have.

So as you grow your business, you would be locked in at one. Price. I do have an affiliate link that I will share with you in the show notes where you can get flow desk for 19 a month. It's normally 38 a month. So for your first full year, and you will always be locked in at that price, no matter how big your list gets, where a lot of other companies, you have to continue to, you know, go to the next level to be able to add new email subscribers.

And I literally hear people talking about Cleaning their list to try to keep it below the amount. My goodness. Don't get rid of email addresses. Just get on a service like flow desk where you can have as big a list as you want to. All right. Automation. I think their automation is pretty straightforward and pretty simple.

What is automation or a workflow? It is literally a series of emails. you sign up for something with me in the first email. of a workflow, you're going to get the thing you signed up for, and you're going to get, hey, welcome to my world, a little welcome email with the freebie.

Okay. Then in a workflow, you'll get a second email a day later that says, hi, here's who I am. And this is what I do. This is more about me. Okay. Then one day later, you get a third email that is part of a workflow and so on. Okay. That's what a workflow is. They're automatically set up to go out. at a scheduled time.

Also, Flowdesk has forms. So if you want to sign up for my workshops, you can go to a Flowdesk form or your workshops. You can also have checkout pages. So if you sell a product, you can have a customized checkout page and their pages and their forms involve no coding. So you don't have to have any high tech computer skills.

You literally Can do it like a Canva graphic and click and change colors and fonts and those things. So that is brilliant. And then the last thing I want to mention for someday, the benefit of being in flow desk is you can have unlimited amount of emails sent. So again, that could be. multiple thousands of emails a month sent and they won't charge you anymore.

So it's flat rate structured pricing. I will mention too, I don't know how to explain this to you really, but Flowdesk has better deliverability. And when I did the research on this, I did find a couple of things. And let me just say deliverability means that it actually goes into people's actual inbox instead of their spam folder or their trash folder.

So you can imagine that email deliverability is very important. Now, the research that I did gave me a couple of facts that are interesting. And one of them is, is that the emails, the structure of them don't have a lot of email. Internal coding. Now that's some higher tech, but there's not a lot of coding in the email.

And also the images, there's not a lot of image overload, which means that it takes a long time for it to download. And so it ends up getting stuck and going to spam. They also mentioned that their emails can be easily optimized for mobile or for desktop, which again is Very user friendly. You want your emails to automatically adjust and look really good on a mobile phone.

Okay, that's what I can tell you about flow desk for now until we work together. Then I'll give you all the tools, teaching and strategy on how to use it.

The third tool I'll talk to you about is Canva. This is the one where I said, I want you to have a paid version immediately from the very first thing that you create.

It's much easier to have a paid version. Now we have clients who will use it for two or three months before they get a paid version, but this is one of those things. It's like 15 bucks, pay for it. And the reason why I say that is once you have a brand, you have your colors, your fonts, your logos, you can set that up in Canva and everything you create with just a few clicks.

You can use that brand kit is what they call it in every graphic that you create is just saves you tons and tons of time and it keeps your brand consistent. So you're not typing in the color number every single solitary time to highly recommend that you can also use their magic resize tool. So I was actually demonstrating today in our tech training.

For our clients each Tuesday, we have a tech support session and today it was about Canvas. So I was showing them how to take something and use this magic resize tool and resize like a Instagram post to an Instagram story. So that is another big, big time saver. And the last thing I'll mention is that you can also use the background remover.

I demonstrated that today as well. If you take a picture. Like your picture, you can remove the background on it. So a lot of times clients will come to work with me and they have one photo of themselves. And so I will put it on their website for them. And I'll say, okay, use the Canva tool, remove the background, and we'll use that photo.

This way in this place on your website, and then we'll take the same photo and we'll flip it going the other direction. So if you're facing to the right, you'll be facing to the left, which makes it look like a different photo. So there's some things that you can do with the 1 headshot photo that you have, or any other photo that you have.

And then, Finally, one of the things you can do, and you'll have to understand this part too, is that you can download something with a transparent background. So imagine that you have your logo in the free version, the only way to download your logo is with a square white box behind it or a colored box behind it.

In the paid version, you can download it as what we call transparent, which means the logo has nothing behind it. So it can sit on top of anything you create.

So it could sit on top of your photo or on top of Any design that you make. So transparent backgrounds really will help you have that professional look that I want you to have. Remember to be seen as a successful coach. You have to look like you have been in business and that you are a professional.

Okay, the next tool, the fourth tool is Calendly. You can use many different calendars. I actually personally use Acuity. I wish I didn't, but once you get started with the tool, it's difficult to change. So Calendly, I recommend because again, it is the easiest one, the most straightforward. It's intuitive to learn how to use it and manage your appointments.

Now, why do I want you to use scheduling software? Well, the first thing is we want to make it easy for clients to book a consultation with you. Do not go back and forth via email, like you're inconveniencing the person that you want to pay you. So, rarely do I ever say, I'm available at 1 tomorrow, does that work for you?

I just send them my calendar link. That's the way that you make it easy for the client to be able to schedule with you, or you have your calendar link on your Instagram page, so it's much easier for the client. I want you to make a beautiful client experience. Then the other thing is, is that you can integrate it with your payment platforms, so you can integrate it with Stripe, which is what we recommend.

You could integrate it with PayPal if you're using it. I do not recommend. or Venmo or cash app. Okay. I recommend that as a professional, you use something like Stripe or PayPal, but you can integrate Calendly with your personal calendar. You can integrate it with zoom and that's through the paid version.

Okay. So you can have it integrated with zoom. So it creates a unique meeting ID. For your client to use and also it can sync with your calendar so you don't have to go back and forth and like keep changing the calendar in Calendly to reflect your schedule. So if I have a hair appointment, I can block off the time for the hair appointment plus travel time back and forth on my Google calendar and it will override anybody who might want to schedule a time.

Nobody can schedule during that time because it would be synced with my calendar. You know, my client facing calendar, my calendly calendar and my Google calendar. And of course you can send automatic reminders too. So again, if you do the work to get a consultation, It is not up to them to remember that they have a consultation.

It is up to you to provide a seamless way for them to connect with you So with Calendly, you can send text message reminders. You can send automated reminders, highly recommend that. And then the final thing I'll say about Calendly or any online scheduling tool Is it manages time zones for you?

And I cannot tell you after all the years of doing this, I still mess up every time I schedule outside of a time zone, I still mess up the time zones. So if you're going to be a coach who is successful, who looks like a professional, you have got to use a calendar where it will manage the time zones for you.

So your client gets the reminder in their time zone. You have it in your time zone. Okay. You don't have to do the math to figure out the time. All right.

The fifth tool I'll mention is google Workspace, formerly called Google G Suite.

Okay. And there are several reasons why you want to do that. The first main reason is because you can have a domain based email. Now I want to tell you that you can have your domain based email before you have a website. We have a client who is ready to start communicating with people. She does not have her website done, but she does own her domain and so she can make her email work.

So she can do debbie@debbieshadid.Com. That is a domain based email. Now why do you do this? I'll just tell you. Number one. It looks like you're professional when you send it from a dot com, your dot com email address versus Debbie Shadid at Gmail. Okay. Look like a professional 1st, look like you've got a big business, but also you are not supposed to send.

I don't know the Internet laws say. You're not supposed to send business emails, multiple business emails from your Gmail address. So you do need to have domain based email. And again, that deliverability thing I was talking to you about, it will end up in your inbox, in their inbox, much more likely if you send it from a domain based email.

And then with Google workspace comes a couple of other things, which is your Google drive, which has cloud storage. This is where you're going to organize all your documents. It is your file cabinet for your business. So you're going to have all your documents in there.

You're going to have all your workbooks. You can have your client notes, like your headshot photo. You're basically, it's your business file cabinet and that's where you're going to store it all. It can be that it's accessible to anyone else, like my team works in our Google Drive. They store all of their files there.

And then the last thing I'll say is Google Calendar. Highly recommend. Even if you have an Outlook email. Please, Get a Google calendar. If you have an Apple calendar, I know these are hard changes to make, but the world operates off of Google. Okay. You got to get with it and get with this day and age and have a Google calendar.

Okay. So recommend that you do that. I use my Google calendar. To schedule private coaching sessions, which by the way, if you don't know this, we did just start offering a handful of private coaching sessions. If that's something that interests you, what I do when I have a private coaching session is I add that to my Google calendar and then I invite the person.

via my Google. You know, when I create an event on my Google calendar, I invite them via that event. I do not do it through calendly. I share the actual invite through my Google calendar. So highly recommend that you do that and listen. Google calendar is pretty cool because if you guys looked at mine right now, you would see it's all color blocked.

I have all of my coaching calls here in one color. , The bills that I need to pay are in another color. The workouts that I do are in another color. Everything is color coded so I can look at my day and I know what I am doing. You know, going to have on the schedule without even reading anything. Let me tell you, I do not recommend as part of Google that you use Google meet.

I know sometimes people will say, well, I don't have to pay for zoom. Then if I use Google meet. Here's the deal. We want to create an experience. It is really phenomenal for your clients and for the people you have consultations with. And the world does not use Google Meet. The world uses Zoom. So when I have tried to use Google Meet, people do not know how to use it.

I don't know how to use it well. So Do not recommend Google meet again. That's part of the Google workspace, so you are paying for it already, but don't use it. Okay.

I hope that was helpful. I know I've covered these before, but we continue to have questions over technology every single solitary time we meet.

So I want you to overcome the overwhelm with tech. I want you to remind yourself you can do hard things. And by the way, tech is not hard. The technology that I just shared with you, it is all easy to use technology. You just have to approach it with a mindset like, I got this. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but no big deal.

I got this. All right. So if you want to have a profitable coaching business, you want to be seen as a successful coach. My dear one. Get with it on this technology. Let me know what questions you have, and I'll be happy to answer them. Okay. Until next time, you guys have an amazing week. Go learn the tech needed for your coaching business.

All right, we'll see you later. Bye bye.