My Favorite Online Tools and Apps for Small Business Founders
There are many online tools out there and it's easy to spend your money on the latest, shiniest new tool, only to find out it's redundant, over complicated or you just don't need it.
After a decade of trying everything and anything, these are the tools that most directly help me grow the business and are 100% worth the money I invest in having them as a part of my tech stack.
If you click on a link below and you purchase these tools, I may receive a commission at no cost to you.
AuthoredUp
What It's For
Use it to create, organize, save and evaluate your LinkedIn posts. It helps you post more consistently, optimize the posts' formatting for improved readability and repurpose the top-performing posts to save time.
Who It's Good For
If you want an organized way to create, share, evaluate and repurpose content on LinkedIn, this is a simple and effective tool in your toolkit! I recommend it to anyone who consistently shares content on LinkedIn.
What I Like About It
It's great for someone like me who writes their own LinkedIn posts. Whenever I have a new idea I can create a quick draft and go back later, format it with bullets and bold. And look at the analytics to see which posts are working best and repurpose them with a click of a button.
Check It Out
Restream
What It's For
You need to have a 3rd party tool like Restream to do a "LinkedIn Live" on LinkedIn.
Who It's For
Anyone who wants to do a LinkedIn Live on LinkedIn.
What I Like About It
It has a clean interface and it's easy to use!
Check It Out
Future Fitness
What It's For
Staying healthy with an online fitness coach that gives you custom workouts and texts with you for accountability.
What I Like About It
I've used Future for over a year and a half. Accountability to a live human experienced workout trainer, workouts at home and when you travel. No cult-of-personality trainers. Great user experience and customer support.
Check It Out
Descript
What It's For
It's a swiss-army knife of digital media creation. Use it to create videos, podcasts, courses, social media posts. It allows you to transform long form content into short form or video content into blogs. It also allows you to create sharable instructional videos for clients. (Like Loom).
Who It's Good For
Anyone who creates content for their business.
What I Like About It
I've use Descript for nearly two years and I use it for everything digital media. I used to use 5 different tools - now I just use one.
They continually improve the tool with new features, especially AI.
Check It Out
Kajabi
What It's For
It's an all-in-one site where you can host your website, landing (sales) pages, courses, digital downloads, email and even your podcast.
Who It's Good For
Anyone who has an online business with courses and doesn't want complicated tech. I used to have 7 different tools and now I have one. It connects with Facebook Ads, Zapier and multiple payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
You will lose some technical bells & whistles but there's a high likelihood you don't need them.
What I Like About It
Gives me the simplicity of running my online business in one platform which means less log-ins, less payments, less confusion.
Check It Out
Maximize Your Ads Course
What It's For
The course teaches you how to create Facebook and Instagram ads.
Who It's Good For
Small businesses that want to run their ads in-house and need to know how.
What I Like About It
Excellently designed, step-by-step course created by Facebook + Instagram Ads expert, Stacy Reed, with monthly group coaching call.
I can go back to the course again and again.
Stacy also provides updates as Facebook Ad features are added.
Check It Out