Streamline Your Business: Less Tools, More Success | EP301

Ever feel like your business is drowning in a sea of software subscriptions? You're not alone. I've been there - desperately trying to keep track of payments going out at different times, juggling multiple logins, and feeling overwhelmed by the growing tech stack needed to run my business effectively.

What started as innocently adding tools one by one quickly spiraled into a costly, time-consuming mess. An email service provider here, a funnel system there, website hosting, course platforms, CRM software, social media schedulers - each solving one problem but collectively creating a bigger one. The financial drain was just the beginning; the mental overhead of managing all these disconnected systems was stealing my focus from what really mattered.

Three years ago, I discovered a solution that transformed my business operations. By consolidating nearly everything into one comprehensive platform, I've dramatically simplified my processes, reduced my monthly software expenses from three figures to two, and gained access to tools I previously couldn't afford. Now, instead of managing a dozen different systems, I run my entire business through just four essential tools - and the difference in my productivity and peace of mind has been profound.

The beauty of streamlining isn't just about saving money; it's about reclaiming your time and mental energy. When your client information, communication history, and business functions live under one roof, everything flows more smoothly. No more hunting through different platforms for information or trying to remember where you stored that important note about a client. Whether you're just starting your business journey or looking to simplify an established operation, there's tremendous power in asking: "Do I really need all these separate tools, or is there a better way?" Your future self will thank you for the clarity and focus that comes from intentional simplification.

Ready to declutter your digital business life? I'd love to hear what systems you're using and how you might streamline them. Share your thoughts or questions, and let's continue this conversation!

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Chapters

• 1:47 Welcome and Event Announcement
• 3:11 The Problem with Multiple Business Tools
• 6:52 Financial and Time Impact of Tool Overload
• 8:55 Content Creation and Scheduling Tools
• 12:07 Client and Community Management Systems
• 16:02 Sales Systems and Software Solutions
• 16:33 Introduction to FEA Create All-in-One Platform
• 22:48 Benefits of Business Process Streamlining
• 27:13 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:50

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I'm so glad to have you here today.

Speaker 1: 1:13

And before we jump into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my event is taking place on the 3rd of April and this is your last chance to buy tickets. So if you are listening to this on the day of release or on the week of release, then you still have a chance. Ticket sales end on Thursday, the 27th of March. Thursday, the 27th of March is your last chance to get tickets. They are available now. I have a few tickets left and I really want to get those seats filled. So if you use the code BIRTHDAY50 at checkout, you will get 50% off the price of your ticket. So run, don't walk. Grab those last few tickets BIRTHDAY50 for 50% off your ticket. I can't wait to see you there. We have got some fantastic speakers lined up. It's going to be an epic event and I can't wait to see you there.

Speaker 1: 2:14

But today we are going to be talking about streamlining your business. It is one of the core pillars of this podcast and I wanted to talk to you about how I have changed my business over the years, streamline my processes and make everything work so much quicker and so much more efficiently to save me time and money. So let's jump into it. So why is streamlining your business processes, your business tools, important? So there are a couple of reasons that I think it's important, and I will speak from my personal experience. So what I found was that over the years of starting a business, and if you're brand new to business, this could be a way of saving you from this issue. But if you are a few years down the line or more, then you will probably understand this that as you're growing your business, you come across things and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I need this piece of software to help me with this. And then it's a little bit further down the line. You're like, oh, I need this bit of software to help me with this.

Speaker 1: 3:22

So, for example, you need an email service provider because you need to be able to send emails to your prospective clients. So you need an email service provider. And then you've got something to sell. So now you need a funnel to be able to funnel those potential clients through to buy the thing that you want. Then you, of course, you need a website to have a presence and a shop front, because you're an online seller. And then, of course, you will need something to be able to house what it is that you're selling. So, whether that's a course, a digital product service, you'll need somewhere to house that. Then you are going to need some sort of system to look after your clients so that you know where they are in the in the funnel system, where they are in your processes, and you're going to need some way of following them through the process so that you know where they are so you can look after them properly.

Speaker 1: 4:20

And all of these things are another tool, another tool, another tool. And then, of course, you've got your marketing side. So you need to be able to create graphics for your social media, and then you need to be able to put your stuff out on social media, and preferably you'd like to schedule that, because you don't want to be in your social media all the time because you've got a business to run. So all of these things also need a tool, software, something to do to use to make those things happen. So as you go along, you start picking up all these subscriptions to these different softwares. So you've got a funnel software, you've got an email software, you've got a crm software, you've got a social media scheduling tool, you've got your planning document, you've got a sales process tool over here, like there's tools coming out of your ears You've got so many tools for so many things, and that is what happened to me.

Speaker 1: 5:20

So I had all of these tools. And then there were tools that I didn't have because I just wasn't in a position in my business to be able to afford more on top. So I never had a proper funnel because I couldn't afford to get the funnel system. I wasn't able to do that. So there were lots of things that I felt like I wasn't doing my best at because I couldn't afford the software that I needed to make that happen. Yet I was paying out lots of money in all these other tools that I was using and that became an issue for me. And one of the things that became an issue was I had all of these different tools that I had bought all at different times, so the money was going out of my account at different times and I had like so many things.

Speaker 1: 6:09

I was trying to keep track of when it came to working out my business finances and if you're anything like me, you want to keep your business finances as simple as possible. Doing that tax return at the end of the year is a headache and it's just coming around the corner again, guys, but it is a headache and it's something that we don't want to overcomplicate. So if you can condense those tools down so that you don't have, you know, 12 different payments going out at 12 different points of the month or 12 different points during the year if you're paying them annually, there's another thing is that those annual prices just come around real quick and all of a sudden you've got to find a couple of hundred quid that you forgot that needed to go out this month to pay for this tool that you rely on. So there are all these things that happen within your business processes when it comes to your software that you're using and the tools that you are using to run your business, and I want to help you make it as simple as possible, because we don't need all the extra headache. There is time that it takes up, there is money that it takes up, there is systems process time that it also invades on. So there's lots of areas where this stuff actually impacts us. So if you have got to go through your bank statement and you've got to find 12 different payments each month for all of these things so that you can reconcile it and things like that, that's 12 minutes of time versus one, you know, for one tool that's going to do the whole lot. So there are lots of ways that this is going to save you time. So let's have a look at some of the core areas where we can streamline our business. One of them is our content creation and scheduling. So how can we make that as simple as possible?

Speaker 1: 8:05

Now I have to say that my number one go-to for this is Canva. There is a link in the description to Canva. If you are not yet a Canva user and you're not paying for Canva, there is a link in the description. It's actually my friend's affiliate link, so you will be helping another small business if you use that link and you decide to purchase Canva. But I absolutely love Canva. I have loved it since it like came out. It's brilliant.

Speaker 1: 8:33

So, as a previous photographer in a previous life, knowing how difficult it can be to learn Photoshop and Lightroom and all of those things, and to learn Illustrator and get all those graphics sorted. Canva was an absolute godsend, and it just keeps getting better, so they're always improving it. They're always bringing out new things, new abilities. So now they have come out with something where, if you upload a photo, canva will actually pick out like some core colours that are in that photo and you can change those colours. It's absolutely amazing. I'm sure it will improve over time as well, but it is something that really works for me. So there is a couple of pictures of me in items of clothing that are almost my brand colours, but not quite, so a picture of me in a pink jumper and the pink's a little bit off just because of the lighting, and so I could actually go into Canva and choose that photo and it will highlight that there is a pink in that photo. I can change it to my brand color, pink, and, hey presto, I'm wearing my brand colors. How fantastic is that. So I am loving that feature, and they are coming up with new stuff all the time over on Canva, so it's a really good one.

Speaker 1: 9:49

And the great thing about Canva is that you can schedule your social media posts directly from Canva. So that is a really useful tool to have If you don't or can't schedule from Canva, because I know there are some platforms where you can't schedule from Canva just due to the APIs and things. You know, some you have to do natively. It is what it is, but there are other ways of doing it. But Canva is brilliant and I love that tool. So that is down below as well. And then there are other tools that you can use to schedule, like Later, hootsuite, all of those kind of things. But again, that is an extra cost. So your extra cost is an extra software. It's somewhere else you've got to take it. I much prefer the simplification of creating it in Canva and scheduling it from Canva. So even though I have a tool that I can schedule my social media posts, I don't use that tool because it is easier to schedule the design directly from where I made the design. So less time downloading and uploading and scheduling. It's just create it, schedule it done. So Canva I highly recommend.

Speaker 1: 11:05

And then you need to look at your client and community management. So this is something that I really didn't have in my business when I first started. So having a CRM, a customer relationship management software wasn't something that I had, but it is something that we should have, and we should have from the beginning, because it can really help to nurture your potential clients. So a CRM is basically a system that will house your client's details, so their email address, any other information that you collect on them but you can also put notes in there. So if you have a call with a client, you can make notes on their file and that will stay with the file. So if you ever expand and get a virtual assistant or somebody who is going to manage your community or anything like that, they will be able to see all of those conversations, all of the notes that you have made, so they will be able to understand your relationship with that client and they will be able to respond appropriately. If you do not have this, then you end up making notes on scrap bits of paper that you've had this phone call and then you lose those notes because they're in a notebook and you've got 20 million notebooks. I'm not talking about me there, honestly.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Or you are making notes on a Google Doc that might get lost or mislabeled, or you are making notes in something that is not quite a management system. That, again. You know you could misfile it, it might not be in the right place, might not be obvious to somebody else that comes into your business where it is, it can just get messy, or you're not making any of those notes at all and it's all in your head. So if you did expand, nobody else knows about your relationships with other people. But the thing is is with the human brain brain we push things out to make room for other stuff and so you may well forget things like if you have promised to deliver something or send something or reach out again. All of these things you might forget and you could be setting up reminders in the wrong place and it's just not going to work. Potential clients and enabling them to feel like they are being seen and heard, because you can make those notes and keep up and remind yourself of the conversations you've had with that person, which is just going to solidify that relationship more.

Speaker 1: 13:57

And then looking at your sales if you are a course creator or if you are a podcaster or if you are somebody who sells digital products, you need a system of software to be able to do that. So with your podcasting, you're going to look at having a podcast host that is quite self-contained, so that's fantastic. But then you need a way of sharing that podcast. So you usually will get a website with your podcast host. But really you want everything going through your website, so you need a way of sharing it through your website. And then, with your course, you want to be able to house that. So you're going to have to look at something like Kajabi or Teachable or something along those lines, where you can keep your course, slash membership going and put your products. So maybe you'll have digital products and maybe you're looking at an Etsy store there or selling through eBay. So there are lots of other softwares that are involved in creating the sales part of your business. So there, as you can see just from that little list of things, there are lots of different softwares that you might need in that just that little bit that I've spoken about there, and I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of right now. But there is a lot of products that you could use and I use a tool called FEA Create and to me this is a no-brainer tool.

Speaker 1: 15:36

It is an all-in-one platform. So what it means is you don't have to remember logins for 20 million different softwares. You don't have 20 million different payments going out at different times of the month. You don't have the headache of trying to remember all the website addresses or having to go into your history and whatnot. You can just have this one button that opens up your whole business, has everything you need inside it one payment and everything is there.

Speaker 1: 16:05

And I have been a user of FEA Create Now for about three years, so I was one of the early adopters. It was something that they shared, I think, within their membership community to start with, and then they opened it up, and when they opened it up to the general public, that is when I joined. So it's coming up for three years this year, I believe and it has changed the way my business works, saved me money and really given me opportunities that I didn't have before because I couldn't afford those other softwares. So just to give you a little bit of a rundown of what FEA Create is, it is a platform where you can host a website so you can put well, you can put as many websites as you want on there so you can have your website on there. It has blog features so you can have blogs on there.

Speaker 1: 16:58

It has a CRM system, so, and an email service provider, so that I love having that together because that is really useful. So if I go into one of my clients sort of accounts on my system, I see them, I see all of the emails that they've ever received from me. I can see if they've opened them or not, and then I can see if they have downloaded a freebie. I can see if they have responded to an offer. I can see all of that in the history and then there's a note section where I can make notes. So if I've personally spoken to them about something, I can make a note of that so that that's there in the history as well. I can send emails directly through that CRM system that part of the CRM system as well as sending through the email service provider, part of the software. So it gives me lots of opportunity to talk directly to them as well as using them as part of a collective. If I'm going to send out a bulk email, it has the email service provider in there. So I can create automations, I can create campaigns, I can send emails by trigger links, I can tag them, I can tag all my clients, so that is really useful.

Speaker 1: 18:21

I can have all my sales funnels on FEA Create so you can create your funnels. You can create your payment options. You can have your courses hosted on the platform as well. So if you've got a membership or course, you can host that right there in that area. There is so much in there, some of the new things that they've added in, so there are things that they have added in that are paid top ups. I haven't got any of those and I haven't felt like I'm missing out on anything, but you might find them useful depending on your business in there, and those colors and fonts and things will follow you around.

Speaker 1: 19:09

You can do your social media planning from here. So there is a social media planner and you can there upload new posts so you can do your scheduling through this. So if you didn't want to do it through Canva, you can do it through FEA Create. They have AI assistance in there. You have got the ability to store media, so videos, photos, things like that. You have your calendar system. So this was one of the ones that I used. I used to use Calendly, highly recommend Calendly. I always found it really user friendly and I used that for a long time. But when I moved over to FEA Create. It has its own booking system in there so you can use it to put out calendar times where people can book time with you. So if you want to do paid booking, so if you have like power hours that you charge for, you can do that through there. If you just want to do one-to-ones through there, you can set up a calendar for that. So, just like Calendly, you can use that as well. What else have we got in here? So I do have my podcast blog in here as well. So I host my podcast in a blog format.

Speaker 1: 20:20

On FEA Create you can have your sales pipelines. Those are really useful. So you can actually sort of put together a pipeline of how somebody would come and interact with you at different stages of the buying process and create a funnel and you can move people through those funnels and that's really good because you can start to see where your money is sitting and you can also find bottlenecks in your system. So if everybody is getting stuck at a certain point on that workflow, you can say, okay, there is something here that is not working and not allowing these people to go through to the to the final stage of buying with me. So what is that and how can I address it? So your sales pipelines pipelines are really, really useful. You can do invoicing through here so you don't have to have a separate invoicing system. You can do your invoices, you can do repeat invoices, you can do subscriptions for your memberships and things through there. There's a customer review section.

Speaker 1: 21:21

There is so much inside FEA Create, but what it did for me was it meant that, other than Canva and Zoom, I don't pay any extra for any other softwares bar FEA Create. Now I do pay for my because I record my podcast through Zoom and obviously use that for my one-to-one networking and etc. And Canva and FEA. So I have four payments a month that go out that give me the business that I have, and it means that I have a CRM system, I have funnel systems, I have my website, I have my email service provider, I have my social media sorted. My podcast is sorted, I have a calendar booking system sorted. I have got all of my automations sorted. I have invoice capabilities. I have an app on my phone where I can take payments like POS style, like on the go. I can share my products, services through that or just take payments for other things through it.

Speaker 1: 22:37

So it is a great tool and they are improving it all the time. They are bringing in new things. So they started using so you can use, like many, chat, so those automated dm messages you can use. That kind of software is in fea create as well, so you can use that. So there are so many things in there that you can use.

Speaker 1: 23:01

It is a great tool if you are just starting out, because you can get in there, you can start from scratch and you can make sure that you are building out those processes really beautifully, which is just going to help streamline everything. It's one login, you're in there, everything is in there that you need and you can run your business from inside this one piece of software. If you are later on in your business, it's a great way of collating everything. It will take time, but once it's done, it's that one again one software, one payment, but you've got everything you need in there and they are always taking on board customer feedback. So if there is something that you need adding, something that's missing that you would like to see, you can add it, ask for it, make a request, and they're really good at sort of juggling those requests and getting things sorted. So I think it's a fantastic platform.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Like I say, I've been using it for three years and there is a link in the show notes for you if you want to go and see. Test it out, have a look at what you think and whether you think it might be good for you. I think it's a fantastic system, but I think, regardless of what software you use, try to find softwares that do as much as possible, that do multiple jobs. You know they turn around and they say don't ever have a tool in your kitchen that is only useful for one thing. Make sure it has multi-purpose, and that's because it takes up space in. You know, a food processor, it can blend, it can chop, it can do all of those things, but a hand blender can only blend, you know. So make sure that whatever you are using has multiple uses to it, so that you are streamlining your finances, you're streamlining your time, you're streamlining your efforts, you're streamlining the software, you're streamlining those logins, that everything is streamlined, and the more you can streamline it, the less headache you're going to have, the less mental capacity is going to be taken up by trying to remember all those different things. So I highly recommend FEA Create. I have loved it from the day dot.

Speaker 1: 25:15

Technicality wise, I think you do need to have a good level of tech knowledge, but in the same breath, if you are somebody who can learn well, then they have hundreds of training videos and there are often classes that they do on different things. They have live help sessions so you can go in and ask for help if you get stuck on something. But they have so many videos that will walk you through exactly how to set it up. So if you need to transfer your website from another website, they have got videos to show you step-by-step how to do it, how to import your website. They have got step-by-step instructions on how to set up a sales funnel, step-by-step instructions on how to set up your email campaigns and your email service provider. They have all of that within there, so you are never really left on your own.

Speaker 1: 26:09

There is a group on Facebook as well, full of people that understand, know and work with FEA create on a daily basis. So not only have you got the FEA create team, but there are lots of people in the Facebook group that can help you as well, and that's what I love about it you don't feel like you've been left on your own with it. So if you are somebody who is looking for a way to streamline all to me, it just it gives me a headache just to think about all of those different softwares that I used to have and all of those it just it's mental clutter that I didn't need. Now I have one software for all of my business stuff, one software for my podcast, I have my video platform and I have Canva and that's it, and it's just. I can breathe.

Speaker 1: 26:55

So that is it for today, guys.

Speaker 1: 26:58

I hope that you got something from this and that you are going to look at the software that you use, how you use it, how many you've got, what that looks like. I mean, I added up everything that I was using and the software that I wanted to buy and that came into the three figures a month, and FEA Create is under that. It is two figures a month and I think it's highly worth it. So go and have a click on that link in the show notes, have a look, see what you think. If you join, then come and say hello to me in their Facebook group and let me know that you joined from this podcast, but there are other things that you could use to streamline your software. So have a look at what you're doing, see where you can streamline, because anything you can streamline, because anything you can streamline, is just going to give you a bit more brain space back as well as time. So that is it for today, guys. I will hopefully see you next week. Bye for now, thank you.