In this episode, we walk you through every platform and piece of software we use to run our business.
Get all resources at https://keeganlaniermedia.com/client-resources
Watch The Full Video at https://youtu.be/6pnUR-tm0RE
Keegan 0:00
What’s up Divi addicts, welcome to another episode, this one you’re going to hear it, we’re just going to jump right into it, it’s going to be a little bit different. So you know, we’ve been toying around with the idea of whether we’re going to keep the podcast going or whether we were not. We’re playing around with a little bit of a format change, and not not much. But what we’re going to be doing is recording video while I’m actually recording the audio. And that means that these podcasts are going to have their own playlist over on our YouTube channel. And that way, we can have all of our content in two places and give you the option if you want to listen to this. You can absolutely listen to this the same way you’ve always listened to it. If you want to watch it, you can go over to YouTube, and you can watch exactly what you would hear on the podcast as well. So the options are in your court, you can do it however you want. So without further ado, let’s just go ahead and roll the intro and we’ll get right into the episode.
Keegan 0:55
What’s up everybody welcome to another episode of the Divi addicts podcast. This is sort of a new beginning for us. So some of you are going to be listening to this audio over on whatever podcast platform you use. It will be uploaded into anchor which we’ll talk about in this episode. And some of you are going to be watching the video on YouTube. Completely different deal completely different process on my end. But the same content, the same style of content for this. So we’re going to get into our stack what we use for software as a business. And you know, if you go to our website, if you go to Keegan Lanier Media.com forward slash resources, we’ll link that below. But these are the tools that we use to run the business. And we’re just going to start going through these.
Keegan 1:42
So from hosting, hosting we use really one platform. But we’ve got two options up here because they’re the first one being Flywheel. That’s what we host all of our sites on every single one of them all of my clients sites are hosted inside a Flywheel. Siteground is just another one that is really was respected in the community. And it’s one that I’ve heard nothing but great things over and over and over again about so I’ve listed it here as an option that gives you something that you can get into for a little less expensive price tag than Flywheel, Flywheel will is is not cheap. Their site bare minimum is going to be 15 bucks a month, which may sound expensive to some but I promise you you do get what you pay for. The more you pay, the more will come with that site, the more resources and and support and so many different things. So these are our two options. This is what we use. And what we recommend. website themes you see there’s two spots, but there’s one of them that’s blank and that’s by design.
Keegan 2:44
Divi theme is the only theme that we use, with the exception of buddy boss for a few client, like communities and core sites and things like that. But Divi is the go to you know, as it says here it powers over 650,000 websites. So Divi is is huge. I mean it’s it’s massive, there’s a great community around it, it’s easily the thing we recommend the most now it’s not the lightest weight. And that’s for sure. But with it comes a whole lot of things that you can do. It’s it’s like the Apple designed Theme Builder for WordPress is kind of the way I always describe it. Everything works, it works really well in the design aesthetic is is really really good. So highly recommended. Divi is is great.
Keegan 3:30
To the next tools. these are these are a little bit different. We’re going into the business side of things here. 17Hats is a platform that’s it’s really rock solid. If you get in at first it looks a little dated, you know, it could use a facelift in the design space, but the flow and what it actually does is something that really cannot be beat. You can manage leads build automated workflows, you can build templates for invoices that include the emails, you can do recurring invoices, you can actually have people save their credit cards on recurring invoices so that they’re charged automatically like subscriptions, it works incredibly well you can you can actually log and track hours spent and automatically convert those hours that are spent doing work for a client, you can convert those into an invoice automatically and charge them it’s just a very beautiful thing it has even has minimal, very minimalistic bookkeeping, to where you can run a p&l, you can look at how much you’ve made from each client. It’s very, very useful if your website designer I would highly recommend this.
Keegan 4:37
It is again you know a system that you’re going to spend money on. It’s not crazy expensive, and it’s really good deals going on. If you happen to catch this video as soon as it drops, which is a good reason to subscribe. Make sure you hit the bell notification so that you get these things timely because we’re covering topics and saying things right now that may not necessarily be true if you don’t watch this video as soon as it comes out. So definitely do that. And, you know, that’s enough about 17 Hats. It’s a great program. If you’re interested or have questions, leave a comment below asking any question about any of these platforms and will absolutely answer those for you.The next one is more of like a personal one I wanted to throw in here, it’s why NAB.
Keegan 5:18
Everybody’s familiar, at least most people are familiar with Dave Ramsey, and his concept of using the envelopes, right? The the Debt Snowball all those different things that he talks about as far as managing money. And why now is phenomenal. If you keep things very simple, basically, you build out your budget, your categories, and you say, I’m going to put this much money towards it towards this category, if it’s gonna be $400, this month to go and eat either groceries and dining out or whatever that number might be for you. And then you can attach it to your bank, your cards, and every activity that you do will be tracked inside of why NAB, and you can give it a category and you can watch the totals go up. And you can balance at the end of the month. Did I overspend or did I understand and you could take the money if you understand. And you can assign it to savings. And it’s just a it’s a very easy representation of taking money in an envelope, and only having that much to spend and putting the rest of savings.
Keegan 6:16
The biggest thing with this one is that it’s not. It’s not just setting categories, it’s literally giving $1 every single dollar that you have has a job. So if you struggle in your personal life with your own finances, this is a great place to start. But back into the business world of things, the creative tools that we use, we don’t go over the top with it. Like we’re not scheduling social media posts, and all those things. honestly don’t really rely on social media all that much for for the business with the exception of YouTube, because it was a platform I chose to spend time on. Again, like like the podcast, it’s a platform I wanted to spend time on because I knew that it’s visual, and I can teach, I can actually give people a lot of really good information and go a little bit longer and deeper with those tips. And so YouTube is definitely one of them, that we’ve put in that we’ve put a lot of effort into. So you know, you’ll be able to go and see my channel. And you’re almost almost to 600 subscribers.
Keegan 7:16
So if you’re listening to this on the podcast, and you’re big in YouTube, and you’d like you like the podcast, go over and hit, hit the subscribe button on the YouTube channel, it would be awesome, we’d love to continue to grow this community, there’s a lot of cool things that happened in the comments. And it’s something that I would just love to continue to grow and build on and be able to help as many people as possible.
Keegan 7:38
And then with YouTube, there’s a there’s a tool called Tube Buddy. And Tube Buddy is it says it you know, that’s the number one rated YouTube plugin, it’s it’s an extension for YouTube. And it allows you to do keyword research, you can search for your rank results, it really helps you fine tune your videos, by you know, doing tags, and having analysis on each one of your videos. It’s just a very, very rock solid addition to your YouTube, I know I wouldn’t have close to 600 subscribers if I didn’t have the keyword research tool and the SEO optimization that Tube Buddy brings with it.
Keegan 8:18
So I know that for a fact because I’m not smart enough to put those those tags together and really do that side of the business. So Tube Buddy is a huge, huge resource for me. And if you you know if you want to use Tube Buddy or You’re interested in doing it, again, that that resources page we have linked up below is going to be a great way to find all of these in one place. And there will be affiliate links you know, we’ll also link those below here, either in the podcast episode notes or in this video if you’re watching on YouTube.
Keegan 8:50
And then the last one is Active Campaign. You know, so many people are familiar with MailChimp, and MailChimp was definitely one of those that you know took email marketing to the next level because they pumped a ton of money into their marketing. A lot of people knew about it. And a lot of people use it also because they had a free promo or free option a free membership. Now it was very limited. And as you grew your list that price for MailChimp got high very quick, personally, really like Active Campaign is what we’re using now. It’s what we’re going to use for quite a while, unless of course, things come out and new platforms come up they do a better job. We may have interested in jumping but you know, I really truly love Active Campaign. It’s very easy to integrate with WordPress. It just works. And you know right now, again, it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, there’s a ton of options, so many different things that you can put out there are options and savings that you can get.
Keegan 9:52
So it again, I won’t say it again. But you know, you know what I’m talking about. Do that and make sure That time, everything is time sensitive. And then you know, what we use for processing our business. So we talked about 17 Hats. We talked about invoicing and all those different things. that money’s got to go somewhere, right? So we have used stripe as a processor for the last year, year and a half, at least switched over from PayPal into Stripe. And it’s been phenomenal, super easy, great reporting on the back end, easy to transfer everything into the account whenever you want to take it out of Stripe.
Keegan 10:36
And then one that’s not listed in our resources is one, we’re actually on a on a trial of right now I’m trying Basecamp, three out. And I have to say I really love it. I mean, it’s great for the task for project management for communication back and forth. It’s huge, really enjoying it again, this is one of those that is that is not cheap. You know, if we go in here Basecamp is $99 a month. You know, many other people use Asana or Trello, or things like that. And I’m very particular about the way my project management setup in Asana is phenomenal, is really, really good. But the custom fields are what I really want. And I can’t do that without paying for it. And when you first get in, it’s not super expensive.
Keegan 11:21
But as you continue to grow and do more things, that business gets more, it’s more and more expensive. Same thing with Monday.com I tried that really loved it, but it adds up it gets it gets a bit expensive. So this one, it doesn’t matter how many projects you have unlimited users, everything is unlimited, as many clients as you want, all the all the things, they’re there, it’s a flat rate, it’ll never be more than that. It’ll never go higher than that. And even I know people who are on Basecamp to and are grandfathered in, they still pay the 50 bucks a month, the old plan. So Basecamp really takes care of their people. They’ve been around for a very, very long time. Now if we come down here, you’ll see they started in 2004. So they’ve been going for quite a while. 16 years is a great track record. And I love Basecamp it works really well.
Keegan 12:09
Now the next one is what we do this podcast on its anchor.com or anchor.fm. I’m sorry. anchor.fm is like the simplest way if you’re interested in having a podcast, sign up, get a little bit of artwork, go to fiverr.com get somebody to design you a thumbnail for your for your podcast, find a topic that you love that you just want to talk about all the time and start your podcast. It is really, really simple. I mean, I can’t tell you how simple it is. We’ve been doing this podcast for almost two and a half years. So since May 9 of 2018. And it’s as we’re recording, this is November 28 2020. So we’ve been going for a long time on this podcast.
Keegan 12:53
And it’s all been done on anchor, and I wouldn’t I can’t imagine doing it anywhere else. You know, let’s little jump through a couple of the tabs that we’ve talked about earlier and didn’t mentioned Flywheel as the host Flywheel’s got some great specials going on to for cyber monday and Black Friday for months free on any of their their annual plans. It’s a great savings, a siteground. Again, Black Friday specials save up to 75% off, you know, as low as $3.50 a month is very, very cheap hosting. And it’s hosting that’s not cheap, and crappy. It’s cheap right now because of the special and everything I’ve heard is just that they do a very very good job. So I’m sure like everywhere else You know, there’s there’s hurdles to jump through and there’s there’s troubles that you’re gonna run into with hosting, but at least they’re they’re one of the one of the shared hosting plans that I know do a really nice job.
Keegan 13:48
Talked about why NAB, you know, this one’s phenomenal as well. And then the theme that we use Divi, there’s a black friday special going on as well, right? One more day or day and a half. And we’ll click through this to show you what the specialists because honestly, I don’t know what it is. I’m a lifetime member. And I don’t need to upgrade. But if you were to get Divi today.
Keegan 14:10
You get $800,000 in free prizes. 15,000 free prizes. This is insane, right? Biggest discount of all time. It’s 25% off, let’s get the deal. So lifetime membership used to be 250, I think or 260. This is 187. 187 is the cost of basically three themes off a theme forest. And you get this incredible theme, access to monarch and bloom and an extra and website layouts packs designed by some professionals who know what they’re doing for 187 bucks, or you can go $67 a year when it’s normally 89. I highly, highly recommend if you can pull it off 200 bucks, get Divi, get it today and and don’t even think twice about it, just roll, roll ahead because you will not regret it. If you’re building sites for clients.
Keegan 15:07
We talked about Tube Buddy, we talked about Active Campaign. And that like, basically brings us to the end of this. You know, there’s a lot of great tools. And all of these we use to drive our business forward, whether it’s through email marketing, content creation for YouTube, business development workflows, to do lists, project management, payment processing. All of that is done through these platforms. So if you’re interested or have questions about any of them, leave those in the comments below.
Keegan 15:42
Again, I super appreciate you listening to this, whether it’s in the podcast form or the video form, if you’re on the podcast, hit subscribe to that podcast. If you’re watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe button below and hit the bell for notifications that way you get these things as soon as they come out. We appreciate you thank you so much for being here with another episode of the Divi addicts podcast, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I hope that you have an absolutely amazing rest of 2020 and just get ready to kick ass in 2021. Thanks, guys. We appreciate you. We’ll see in the next one.
Keegan 16:21
So I really hope that you all enjoyed this episode of the podcast. Again, it’s a little bit different. We’re trying some things out. I wanted to be able to put the audio in multiple places and give you the most option and give you the choice. You can listen to this, you can watch it and you can get the content in the best way that works for you. So if you really liked it, let us know. Reach out, DM us on Instagram, and let me know what you thought of this episode. Otherwise, again, go out there and have an amazing rest of 2020. If we can help you with anything, please feel free to reach out ask any questions. There’s nothing off topic or there’s nothing out of bounds. So Have an awesome day. Thank you so much. Stay safe, put that mask on and keep everyone next to you safe. We appreciate you and we’ll see you in the next episode of the Divi addicts podcast.