Hey everyone and welcome back to my channel. This channel is the go to place for solopreneurs, freelancers and content creators to bulletproof your brand and blow up your business, so you can move from barely surviving to abundantly thriving in your business and in your life.
In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to run a successful business online and the tools to make it look easy. So if you want to start automating and outsourcing most of your work, so you can scale and profit more while working less then this video is perfect for you. So definitely keep watching.
As a quick disclaimer, if you’re wondering how to run a successful small brick and mortar business, whether it be retail or service space and online based business, or even run a business from home, these are the absolute hands down best business tools for you to use. I actually happen to have a small base brick and mortar business as well as an online business, and these are the free tools that I use to run both of them from the comfort of my own home each and every day.
Asana
The first tool on how to run a successful business online tools to make it look easy, is Asana. If you’ve never heard of Asana before, Asana is a project management software that allows you to keep yourself systemized, organized and accountable, as well as work with teams to manage projects and tasks almost seamlessly.
So this is my Asana dashboard. And I just wanted to show you real quick how powerful this free tool is. Now, I’ve been using this for free for three years, and I have yet to feel like I need to upgrade because really, this tool is so powerful. It does everything that you need it to do, and you really don’t feel the need to add anything. So you know, I’ve got all of my little boards here. This is one for instance: content videos to repurpose. So for instance, these videos that I do for you guys, I choose to repurpose them so that way I can do one video each and every week. But I have a master copy Asana board that I use, and then I simply duplicate the tasks.
So I’ll kind of show you what that looks like if I have enough juice to actually show you while running loom. So as you can see here, this is my master copy. And what I would normally do is simply duplicate this task for each and every title of video that I choose to do. And then it’s already going to have all of these sets on it so I don’t have to add this or retype it or do anything like that because it’s already going to be here. And then the best part is, I literally will assign it to myself, but then I’ll add additional collaborators that I work with online that are part of my virtual team.
I can, at any given time, click one of these, assign it to them, because maybe I don’t have time to work on it or I’m done with it and I want them to move on to the next task, whatever the case may be. This allows us to work hand in hand, almost like we’re sitting in the same room together. And then I have master boards for each one in one of my projects that we do in my business, both for my brick and mortar business, as well as my online business.
And then I simply just have them separated over here. So like we have our studio client onboarding. Then I have my Rockstar virtual assistant weekly tasks, the owner weekly tasks, I have that one set up and weekly and monthly. I have my home and family stuff that I’m trying to do like birthday cards. I’m scheduling for my daughter’s birthdays at the end of September. Right now on Christmas cards. I start planning those here real soon. I’m collaborating with the photographer on that, things like that are my own content videos. But then I also have my trainer at the studio, do the content videos for our personal training facility. And then these are all the courses that I choose to engage in. So I’m constantly learning and evolving. And those are set up as an outline style form.
So you can see how powerful this is. And it really allows you to stay systemize organize and automate and outsource a lot of your tasks and let the people that you work with know what they need to do, how they need to do it, and when it’s due by, so Asana is tool number one that I highly recommend, so you can run a successful business, whether it be a small business, an online business or a business that you work from home.
Upwork and Fiverr
The second tool I highly recommend on how to run a successful business online tools to make it look easy is freelancing sites. Freelancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr will literally allow you to skyrocket your business while working less. This is my Upwork dashboard. And as you can see, you literally can find a consultant or Freelancer in any one of these categories, IT, legal, sales and marketing, customer service, admin support, you name it, you can hire a virtual assistant or a freelancer to help you accomplish those tasks. And you can even search through talent right here, as well as here, you’ve got reports messaging.
I also wanted to show you once you start a contract with a virtual assistant, there’s a way just like with your own employees, if they were local for you, you can click on their name and actually see everything that’s gone on with them.
So, for example, April is my full time virtual assistant. I absolutely adore her. When we started out working together until we, you know, wanted to see if we are a good fit. I started her off at part time about 20 hours, I’ve since increased her hourly. But you can see how many hours she’s worked for me on a day to day basis.
And there’s also what they call the work diary so you can see what she works on and what time she works on it for me because the system when she’s logged in, takes screenshots of her computer. So you can literally find what she’s been working on for you if you want to verify their work hours when they’re working for you. And the best part is, is when you post a job on one of these platforms such as Upwork, or Fiverr, literally all the talent that has those sort of specifications or that type of experience. They will crowdsource to win the bid of that job.
So you know if for some reason you get 10 people, you can kind of negotiate between them and kind of review the resumes, check their cover letters, things like that. And really seek out that a player that you’re looking for and you don’t have to discredit or accept somebody that you may feel might not be a good fit.
Upwork is the perfect platform for freelancers. If you’re looking for contractual help. If you’re looking for something that’s a little bit quicker than I would suggest Fiverr. Fiverr is great if you’re looking for just a one off job or task to be done, not so much contractual help. Here you can find just like Upwork, you can kind of search through it and sift through the talent, post a job, and then you’ve got your messages.
These are more for just one job, say, hey, I need this video editing for one particular video. And I’m willing to pay anywhere between 25 to $50 for it, and then you know, all kinds of freelancers will get and crowdsource and bid for that particular job. And then you can kind of match them against each other and compare and contrast based on their resume, their references, and their number of reviews, whether it be five star, one star, things like that. So it’s really nice to use fiverr for a quick task that you want to get done right then and there, that you weren’t like maybe a pop up task or something like that, that you weren’t expecting that fell on your desk. You need it done within the next one to two days. This is the perfect platform for that. So I highly recommend it.
Loom
The third tool on how to run a successful business online tools that make it look easy is loom. Loom is a powerful free screen and video recording software. It’s available as a Google Chrome extension. It’s available for Mozilla Firefox, as a desktop app on your iPhone or your Android. It’s literally available in so many different variations. And the best part is, is there’s so many different ways you can use it. I’ve used it for onboarding my employees in my brick and mortar business. I’ve used it for training, my virtual assistants and freelancers. I’ve also used it to communicate with platforms such as AWeber, ClickFunnels, places like that, to show them glitches of things that are going on with their software to kind of speed up the communication and tech process when trying to fix problems that you may be experiencing.
So there’s so many different ways that it’s become completely indispensable for my business. And as a bonus, I actually use blue for all of my YouTube videos and all of my Facebook and Instagram ads. I actually upgraded my account, it’s free up to the first 499 videos. I went over 500 because I folder all of my videos, and it’s only 10 bucks a month. You cannot beat it for how much it makes it easy, how easy it is to use and how many uses you have for it for your business. So as you can see, this is my loom dashboard, and I have all of my live videos. You can see I have 653 all of them are divided up into these folders. And this is either how to videos or things that I’ve needed to show other people on how to use those types of platforms.
And the best part about loom is I have all of my YouTube ads, all of my YouTube videos, things like that, my webinars on here when I’m hiring a freelancer, a virtual assistant or even a local employee. I have all of these master boards made and then I do one for each person that I’ve hired.
So for instance, April, my full time virtual assistant, she’s in the Philippines, I can see all of the How To videos that have been shown to her. And literally, if she ever has a question about anything rather than coming to me on how to do it, she goes to her Asana board and pulls it up, and then she can go through the How To Video and reference how to use it. And then while she’s going through that platform literally have the video up on another screen if she has dual screens. So this is a big, huge time saver for me when it comes to human resources and onboarding, new virtual assistants and freelancers and employees into my business. And I get to use it as a master board. So I literally just duplicate the board. And then put their name beside it.
So therefore I’m not recreating the wheel each and every time I hire, so and for all of my tasks, this is literally when they have a question instead of answering them directly, I always answer them via video. So that way I can add it to the board in case the question were to come up again. So it’s a huge time saver. Totally worth it. And like I said, it’s free up to the first 499 videos and then after that, it’s only $10 a month. I highly recommend using it because there’s so many different ways that you can use it in your business.
Whastapp
The fourth tool I highly recommend on how to run a successful business online tools that make it look easy, is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a really reliable messaging system that you can use to communicate with your team, your virtual assistants, your freelancers or whoever It may be. And as you can see here, this is how I choose to communicate with my team. Now I’ve tried Slack, I’ve tried Jabber, all of which are very good platforms. But for some strange, odd reason this one is my favorite.
It literally does everything that you need to have it do. You can send screenshots, pictures, links to live videos. You can delete messages, should you just send something and say, Yeah, I’d rather not have sent that, you can delete it. You can delete chats, mute notifications. So there’s really nothing that you can’t do on here. That’s pivotal to communicating with your team. So I highly recommend WhatsApp. There’s also a desktop version that you can download, which you see here as well as an app for your iPhone or Android.
LastPass
The fifth tool I highly recommend on how to run a successful business online tool to make it look easy is Lastpass. It is a password manager for your business. So you can securely work with virtual assistants and freelancers online or with a team locally. And you have the security knowing that they don’t know your passwords, but are still able to log in to all of the platforms that you need them to.
This is what the LastPass vault looks like or the dashboard looks like once you’re in. And as you can see all of your software’s and platforms that you use on a day to day basis for your business or even personally, you have and you can share those passwords with people that you work with without letting them see your actual login.
So what happens is, if you go into your tool, and you can see that it’s all bubbles, you can click this little icon that has the share, and then you can share. Share it with all of your virtual assistants, your freelancers, your husband, your wife, your children, and you don’t have to worry about them knowing your login. And if at any time you want to take away their login, you can just simply revoke their access, click Yes. And it immediately removes them from having that password any longer. And like I said, it’s not even a password. It’s just the bubbles to login.
What they do is they receive an email as soon as you add them or you share it with them using this right here, you’ll click the share button, then it sends an email address like this right here, you can’t share with yourself but it’ll send them an email address saying that, do you accept the share for this password or for this platform, then they click yes. And then the system puts the bubbles in whenever they log into that system. So it’s awesome and for us for personal matters as well and for family, you can actually use these over here, bank accounts, payment cards, all of that stuff.
And you can keep everything nice and secure as you need it without. So for example, the other day, my mom needed my credit card for something that I asked her to do. And literally, I could give her my payment card to her phone, she was able to use it and then after the one use, it disappears.
So it’s the most amazing Password Manager and system that you can use to feel to have that peace and that sense of security, knowing that you don’t have to worry about them working on these platforms using your login, using your passwords and things like that because they can’t see it.
So that is the fifth tool that I recommend for your business. Now you’ve learned how to run a successful business online tools that make it look easy. So you can start automating and outsourcing most of your work so you can scale and profit more while working less. While you’re here, make sure you grab my totally endless topics cheat sheet, so you can blow up your business and bulletproof your brand.
And while you wait for next week’s video, I’ve also posted these other two videos, content marketing plan and getting ranked on YouTube so make sure that you check them out.
Thanks for joining me today and I will see you the next video.