Ep. 144: Some top tools for starting off as a Solopreneur

to start off with expensive tools and functions when you really haven't made significant money with your business yet. And in some cases, you haven't even made your first dollar online yet. So I don't personally see how to justify spending for the higher functionality, the higher cost of some of these online tools right off the bat if you want to work up to that maybe later on when when the money starts flowing in on a regular basis, that's fine. You know, I don't have a problem with that.

I guess with my IT background, it's been a lot easier for me to come up with the alternate way of doing things. And maybe for the average person that doesn't have an IT background, they may feel the need to sign up with these expensive tools because they just don't know any other way. And I understand that that's unfortunate in my opinion. But that's why I feel motivated to share, you know, how to do the alternate way so that you can save yourself a lot of money and a lot of grief on the financial side.

This is the Solopreneur Success Path podcast, a show dedicated to helping you launch your own personal brand business. So if you've been thinking about monetizing your expertise and finally make money on your own terms with a coaching or consulting business, then this show is for you. I'll not only dive into the myriad of topics revolving around launching and building your business, but talk to other successful solopreneurs as well so that you can hear how they overcame their struggles and pushed through their own barriers towards success.

For more information on my signature coaching program, you can go to TomClaremont.com slash coaching. Well, hello again. And in this episode, I want to give the rundown on the most critical things you should have when starting your online business and why.

Now, there's a lot of opinions out there. I get it. You know, one person is going to tell you to have these things as somebody else is going to tell you to have other things. But just for the record, I wanted to give my own personal list of tools and functions that I found to be the most important for me in my business.

And these are just general low budget functions. You know, I'm not a fan of spending a lot of money on things like ClickFunnels and Kajabi, HubSpot, you know, things like that. I'm more from the low budget perspective where you can, you know, learn how to get very similar results, similar functionality, but spend a lot less. Yes, it takes a little bit more effort.

Yes, it takes a little bit more creativity. but to start off with expensive tools and functions when you really haven't made significant money with your business yet. And in some cases, you haven't even made your first dollar online yet. So I don't personally see how to justify spending for the higher functionality, the higher cost of some of these online tools right off the bat if you want to work up to that.

Maybe later on, when the money starts flowing in on a regular basis, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. I guess with my IT background, it's been a lot easier for me to come up with the alternate way of doing things. And maybe for the average person that doesn't have an IT background, they may feel the need to sign up with these expensive tools because they just don't know any other way.

And I understand that that's unfortunate in my opinion, but that's why I feel motivated to share, you know, how to do the alternate way so that you can save yourself a lot of money and a lot of grief on the financial side, okay? So here a relatively short list for what online tools I think are the most important Now my list goes way beyond what I going to share in this episode but for the sake of core tools, this is the list. First, I'm a big LinkedIn guy. I think that's pretty clear lately.

I've said that over and over again on the podcast. But first, I just want to start off with on the social media side, I recommend LinkedIn Pro. Now, if you're on LinkedIn and you want to have a professional sort of business and you want to have sort of the business clientele, then I certainly recommend having LinkedIn Pro. You really need to have the who viewed my profile function.

And you can only get that with one of the LinkedIn Pro accounts. Now, what LinkedIn doesn't really promote very well, and I think I know why, they don't promote very clearly is that you can sign up for the job seeker level of LinkedIn Pro and save yourself like about $250 a year. Okay. So the first thing on my list is LinkedIn Pro.

They have a number of extra functionality for the Pro account, but just to be able to have that, who viewed my profile function, that's a real good conversation starter on the LinkedIn side, and it's well worth the money in my opinion. So I think overall the annual fee for LinkedIn Pro on the job seeker level is about $250. Next on the list is to have custom email. Now this I think is important because you'll want to have an email account that links to your domain name of your website.

Like I have Tom at TomClairmont.com. When you're on a Gmail account or some other generic free email account, it really sends a lower level of professionalism for how you operate. Okay.

Just my opinion to get custom email and link it to your domain. Okay. Next on the list is ChatGPT Pro. Now, I can't tell you how many times I sat there waiting for the free version to slowly, at the speed of mud, give me the information I was looking for.

So, for $20 a month, I signed up for the ChatGPT Pro version, and it runs a lot faster. Well worth it, in my opinion. Saved a lot of time by not sitting there staring at the screen waiting for the results. Next on the list is Canva Pro.

Canva Pro. Now, I love Canva. I use Canva for a lot of different things, a lot of different graphic design ideas. And hey, take it from somebody that doesn't know a thing about graphic design.

Okay, I know what looks good. And Canva Pro has a lot of templates that get me halfway there for what I'm looking for. And then all I have to do is tweak some things to finish the job for my graphic design thing that I'm working on. And I use this for me.

I use this for clients as well and when I'm helping them out with some things. So it saves me a lot of money by not getting other people involved. Okay. Next on the list is to get a Loom Professional version of Loom.

Loom is a function where the online tool where you can record videos and edit them right on the spot. But the free version of Loom gives you up to five minutes for video recording. And for a lot of people, that might be fine. right But something that I needed was to get past that five barrier So for me being on Loom Pro was something that I needed in my business I do a lot of social media video I created an online course with video training that way.

So I just needed to, because of the course, I needed to go beyond the five-minute barrier. All right. Next on the list is Elementor Pro. This is a professional version of the web page building tool called Elementor.

With Elementor, you're going to get the next level functionality for web page development. But you're also going to get a feature that I use quite often, and that's a redirect function for your forms. Somebody puts their name and their email into a form, and you can have a multi-layered sequence added in the process where you can redirect them to maybe a different page. You can have a PDF automatically come up for them as a free download from your lead magnet.

It'll send you an email on who just filled out your form. It's really a multi-layered function. It's really an extra feature that you don't have to spend any extra money on to get those other functions done for you. So Elementor Pro is well worth it for a number of reasons.

Next on the list is something called DocuSign. DocuSign. So on the topic of client conversion and having a smooth conversion process from them being interested in you to them signing up with you, DocuSign is going to be that tool that will help you to seal the deal in a professional level. So real quick, what DocuSign does is give you the ability to email a contract that could be customizable if you want it to be, like maybe the terms for payment, how much of the services are they going to receive.

As an example, I have different timelines from my coaching program. If they want a 90-day coaching program, they can have that. If they want a 180-day coaching program, they can have that. If they want to have me on retainer instead of coaching, they can have that.

So there's different levels of services that I offer that I can just send them in a generic document to start off with. But through DocuSign, just type in the specific terms for what we discussed. You know, there's blanks, deliberate blanks in the DocuSign form that comes up and you can type in the specific terms, right? Now, whether that's, you know, payment on a different timeline, you know, those are the specific terms that we agreed on.

And in DocuSign, it makes it very easy to help convert somebody into a client in a formal and more legal way. Okay. Next on the list is a function called Yoast. Y-O-A-S-T.

It's a plugin for WordPress. And it's used for SEO, for search engine optimization for your website. Now, is there a free version of Yoast? Yes, and it's okay.

But in my opinion, paying for the professional version of Yoast is well worth getting the extra functionality so that you can get organic traffic to your website. And, you know, yes, organic traffic is still something that I talk about and still find that it's worth putting effort and a little bit of money into. And Yoast is very inexpensive. I think it's only like, you know, $60 a year or something like that, $80 a year tops.

Last on the list is optional, but I think pretty important nowadays. It another plugin for WordPress It called WordFence WordFence So WordFence will allow you to block entire countries or entire regions of the planet from viewing your website or hacking into your website And in my opinion this is important because there's a lot of bad players out there that have only one intention, And that's to hack into your email account or to your website, you know, to either gain information or to use your website as a hidden platform for them to sell their stuff.

And I've seen this many times where someone's website was hacked and they were selling like Viagra and they didn't even know it. There were hidden links leading people to their website to buy products, pharmaceutical products. And I've seen that in real time many, many times. But with WordFence, I can see the attempts that were made to hack into my website.

And it's a lot. And I'm just little old me. I'm nobody important. I'm not a big player.

I'm not an influencer. But there's these programs called bots. They're called bots because they're like mini robot programs and they just work on autopilot 24-7 to scan the internet and to find websites, to find logins and to try to hack into website logins, to find email accounts and to try to hack into those email accounts. And it's a big deal lately.

It happens all the time. And regular people are feeling the results and the consequences of being hacked into. So that's why I recommend WordFence Pro, you know, to give you that extra functionality to block whole zones or whole countries that traditionally are bad players in the area of malware or hacking. You don't really need North Korea viewing your website or having anything to do with your business.

You don't really need every country in the world viewing your website or even getting close to your business. There's a lot of bad players out there, folks. Now, if you want to get the free version of WordFence and then see for yourself the traffic that you're getting from these other countries and then decide which countries to block, that's up to you. But I wouldn't wait until it's too late.

I'd get in front of this problem and just generically block certain countries right from the start. That's my opinion, okay? So I hope that this quick list helps you to see what I believe to be the most important tools to start off with. Now, your list may vary, of course.

You have specific needs and they're probably going to be different than what I needed to start off with. But just in general terms, I wanted you to see what my most important tools are and why I felt they were needed. Okay, hope it helps. hey friend that's all we have for this episode thanks for listening now if you're struggling with your new solopreneur business and maybe struggling with sales in 2024 it's probably because things are getting a little too complicated and you might be wasting a lot of time and a lot of money in the process it's very possible that the solution is just tweaking one or two things that you're already doing.

Now, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, right? So let's schedule a time to talk about this and what will work for you. Go to tomscalendar.com and book a time slot for us to connect, okay?

So as always, though, stay encouraged, follow your dream, and don't give up.