Hi there.
It's Sue.
And thanks for joining me for tips and Talk day.
These are bite-sized Topics that I pull from community questions and
things that I'm observing in the world of handmade small business.
If you'd like to submit a topic,
DME, over on Instagram at gift biz unwrapped In the name
of productivity,
I decided that today I wanted to talk with you about
eight tools that I use in my business every single day.
And initially,
when I was planning,
what I wanted to share with you,
I thought it was only going to be five,
but when I got right down to it and I sat
back and closed my eyes and thought of how I manage
my day to day,
I found that it was actually eight tools that I go
back to and resource all the time throughout my day.
Some of these are running maybe a little subtly in the
background and some of them I'm accessing on the regular.
And you might be shocked to know that the most important
tool that I use didn't make the list.
Can you guess what it is?
The iPhone.
I swear if someone came up and wanted to Rob me,
I would let them take by car before they wouldn't take
my iPhone.
But I'm feeling like the things that I might want to
talk with you about on my iPhone would take up a
whole separate podcast episode.
So for now I'm putting that aside.
Obviously my iPhone,
no question,
no even contender for second place.
The very most important tool I use for my business every
single day is the iPhone.
But let's extend beyond that.
Let's talk about some of the other things that I'm using,
because my list spans from the obvious to not so obvious
and probably some tools you've never heard of before.
Plus, I'm going to share with you the ways that I'm
using them.
So you may already know about some of these tools and
just aren't using them the same way I am.
So in the spirit of sharing,
here are the top eight tools that I use every single
day. I find these tools to be important for three reasons,
efficiency and productivity.
So being smart with my time versus spending a lot of
time on something.
Second is clarity of focus for a similar reason.
I want to stay on task with the projects that I'm
working on.
We all,
I think I've heard at this point that there is no
such thing as multitasking.
When you jump from one task to another,
you ultimately lose time in getting anything completed.
And then finally,
my third reason for using some of the tools that I
do is continual learning.
There are now so many tools available,
and I just want to make a comment here about my
strategy behind tools,
just because new great tool comes out.
I don't necessarily jump to try it out unless something is
missing from an existing tool that I'm using,
because we can spend so much time testing out the newest
and greatest when really it replaces and allows us to do
the exact same thing that we're already doing.
To me,
that's a waste of time and energy where I could be
getting something a lot more productive and useful done.
So with that,
let's go ahead and dive into my eight tools.
Some of these you're going to know,
some of them might be brand new to you first on
the list,
Gmail. Now I know there's a lot of ways we can
communicate with each other these days,
there's phone messages,
there's direct messages through social media apps,
but I still feel like email is a specific and very
important way that people are messaging,
but our inboxes are crowded.
I don't know if you have as much stress about this
as I do until I found a great system through Gmail.
So let me share with you how I'm using this,
because I think it could help you as well.
I have several businesses as most of you know,
and I have multiple email accounts.
So I have my personal account,
which is just a free Gmail account.
And then we have multiple emails for the ribbon print company.
We also have multiple emails for gift biz on wrapped.
Plus if you're getting email from me,
it's probably from sue@sumoandhight.com.
But the thing that I love and I'm able to do
is merge this all into one mailbox.
So I only go one place to see all of my
emails. The different areas of my businesses are color-coded like gift
biz. Unwrapped is color coded as green Sumo and height is
yellow. And the ribbon print company is red so that anytime
I need to look for a specific email,
I can just go and look at the color codes.
This makes it so easy.
I also really,
really I'm trying to get to inbox zero.
There were maybe two days in my whole life when that
actually happened,
but my inbox,
these days is much more manageable.
And the way I'm doing this is through folders within Gmail.
So I have a number of different folders categorized based on
the content of the email.
If I need to save them,
you know,
some emails you can just respond to and then you can
let them go.
But I have emails for podcast guests.
I have emails that are for some of the shows that
I'm attending.
There are personal emails,
all different types of things.
And I have folders on the side where I can categorize
those emails.
If I think I'm going to need to resource them later,
otherwise they get deleted.
The other things.
These are not specific apps that I'm talking about as part
of my aid here today.
But since I am on Gmail,
I also wanted you to know about two other things that
apply within Gmail that I use regularly.
One is boomerang,
which allows you to write an email on a Sunday night
and then have it delivered on Monday morning because heaven forbid
you start training people that you're working on Sunday night,
not a good thing in terms of bracketing and balancing it,
putting boundaries around your time.
The other really cool thing about boomerang is if there's an
email that you get about an event,
that's three weeks from now,
you can have it disappear from your inbox and reappear a
day or two right before the event.
So it doesn't sit and take up space in your inbox,
but it's going to come back to you at the exact
perfect time.
The other app I use connected with my Gmail account is
BombBomb. Some of you who have gotten messages from me have
already seen this in action.
What it allows you to do is respond via email with
a video message from you.
I'll do this for my coaching students,
people who have joined makers,
MBA support issues for the ribbon print company or other places
where I just want one-to-one contact love the fact that that
connects with my Gmail account and can use it for personal
messages of all sorts.
Second on the list is Canva.
I absolutely love Canva for so so many reasons I originally
started using Canva just for what most people probably use it
for social media posting.
There are so many images available now,
fonts available templates,
so that if you're not a great designer,
you can go choose a template and just replace images and
text and messages that apply to your business.
You can add in your own brand color,
there's all of that.
But since then pretty quickly found that it could replace going
into Photoshop all the time and spending so much time there
manipulating and adjusting all those layers Photoshop.
I really only by very,
very rare exception ever go into Photoshop anymore.
Everything is done in Canva.
Social media posts,
my inspired daily planner that was all created in Canva.
I'm now doing presentations in Canva.
Some of my online courses have now been created in Canva
and even video montages for personal use.
So, so much capability there so much power,
and guess what it's super fun to use as well.
The other thing I'm doing in Canva,
and I just figured this out recently is instead of uploading
all of my images to that master file on the top,
as I make folders I've already been doing so separating the
work when I'm doing a presentation,
for example,
pretty quickly,
I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at some
trade shows here near the end of the year.
And as I'm finding images,
pulling them from my camera,
roll, pulling them from other photo subscriptions that I have now
I'm storing them in the separate folders that apply to the
project. Didn't realize I could do that before until now.
So Canva,
absolutely awesome for all the reasons that I just stated now,
utilizing and accessing all of these apps requires passwords these days.
Right? Well,
my favorite go to password.
Keeper is called last pass.
I have over,
I think last time I looked at 370 something passwords because
you have bank passwords,
you have product like vendor passwords.
If you're entering into purchase product wholesale travel membership sites,
shopping, there are swerved for entrance into literally everything these days.
And last pass keeps everything organized for me.
I can access it from my phone phone or my computers.
And the other group thing about this is it's great for
teams, my virtual assistant,
my content manager,
anybody who's doing any type of business and needs access to
social media sites,
the website,
anywhere that they need to go,
they can get access to it through LastPass without knowing my
passwords. So super safe,
super secure program.
Absolutely love it.
If you haven't checked it out last pass to store all
your passwords,
personal and business,
that one pretty much runs in the background for me,
unless I need to access it.
If I'm creating a new password,
it will automatically trigger up and pull in and say,
Hey, Sue,
do you want to save this into LastPass?
Which of course I say yes,
because everything gets saved there.
Another thing that runs in the background is Carbonite Carbonite.
It is a program that will store all your files for
you. So you never have to worry if your computer crashes
that you won't have access to your files.
Carbonite allows me to sleep at night so that I know
that my computers crash.
I have access back to all of my information also,
and this has just happened recently.
I've had to change out a computer.
And so by using Carbonite and having it programmed for that
individual computer,
I know that it's available for me in case of emergencies,
as I'm sure recording here,
I'm looking at the order in which I want to present
all these to you.
And I've just decided I'm saving my favorite one.
And the one you probably don't know about until the very
end, just to keep you in suspense,
I guess.
Okay. Next up on the list,
Dropbox. Oh my gosh.
We use Dropbox for everything and I'm not even kidding.
When I say I access this all the time.
It's kind of like a backup system for me.
And then also a place where I'll store files that other
people need to access.
So backup system,
for example,
we'll put files there that maybe I'll need,
if I'm out at a trade show and I need to
share it with somebody,
I can just access that file and email it to them.
But it's already sitting in Dropbox.
So I don't have to worry about finding it or figuring
out where it is or calling back to the office for
someone to forward it over to a customer.
We'll also send up our final edited podcast versions up to
a special Dropbox.
So people who need to access that can do so.
And then also some of the course documents with maker's MBA
are more easily accessed in that manner versus inside the program
because they might be documents that are only specific to a
certain class.
That's going through the program at that time.
So everybody who's in each individual makers,
MBA class then has access to a Dropbox folder that's specifically
and only accessible to those who are in that class types
of things.
I'll put they're categorized in separate folders for all very different
uses. The other great thing about this is if a document
is revised,
let's say Lori back at the office needs to change a
payment plan for ribbon printers or something.
Instead of her emailing me or sending it to me,
she just uploads the revised and edited version right into Dropbox.
So it's always accessible.
She doesn't even have to tell me she did it.
She just knows that that's where I'll go to access things
and it'll be sitting there waiting for me.
Okay. Moving on.
I have three more tools that I want to tell you
about, and let's see,
I think the next one up is going to be smarter
queue. So smarter queue is our social media scheduling app.
I'll tell you why I use this one,
but for the most part,
what we do try to do is schedule within an app.
We all know that apps like when you work within the
services and the tools that they have provided good for you.
So we are using business manager to schedule a lot of
things on Facebook and Instagram.
We're seeing scheduling our Pinterest posts right from within the tool
as well.
But the thing that I really like about smarter queue is
it allows for evergreen content reposting.
What I mean by that is if you have a post
that then directs people over to a blog that you've created,
and the content in that blog is good today,
it's going to be good next year.
And it's going to be good in the future.
You put it in there once and it just repost on
whatever schedule you've decided that it should be.
You can select individual platforms that you want things posted to.
Like we have certain things that automatically go into the private
Facebook group,
gift, biz breeze.
We have other things that go into our public pages,
all different types of things.
And the flexibility there is fabulous.
And I have team members who have access to it,
how through the last pass password app so that they can
access and get into smarter queue.
Anytime they need to.
Number seven on the list has to be my podcast app
on my phone.
I listened to podcasts all the time.
Yes, you can call me a podcast junkie,
not just for business,
this learning,
but for entertainment.
Sometimes for the news,
all different types of reasons.
Why I access my podcast app I'm in there every day,
multiple times a day,
even in my short car ride to and from the office,
my office is like seven minutes away from my office.
But even then seven minutes on two times speed,
you can get 15 minutes of a podcast listen to.
So there's that?
I bet nobody is surprised if you've know me or have
been hanging out with me for any amount of time that
that would have been on the list.
And finally rounding this out is the one app that you
may not know about.
I'm going to guess that probably 95% of you are not
familiar with this app.
It's an app that you can download on your phone and
it's called brain toss.
And I use this to capture ideas,
things that I want to remember on the fly.
And the most important thing about this is it allows me
to capture information that I want to remember,
but it doesn't stop me with what I'm doing at the
time or completely get me off task the project.
You know how it is,
you are in the middle of something and all of a
sudden you think,
oh my gosh,
gotta remember to do this.
Like I better just do it now.
And then you get completely off task and you may or
may not ever get back to what you were already doing.
I use brain toss for this.
Well, let me tell you how the app works.
And then I'll give you a couple of examples of how
I use it.
When you pull up the app,
you have the option to either talk into your phone,
take a picture that you want to keep or write a
note down really quickly.
And when you do one of those three things,
and then you press send,
it sends you an email.
And so then later when you see that email,
you can take action accordingly,
you know,
put it into your day timer,
save that email for later,
you know,
whatever is appropriate.
Now here's how I'll use this.
Let's say I'm out with a group of friends and someone
tells me,
have a great book or a great movie to watch.
I'll just pull up my brain toss really quickly,
hit audio,
say the name of whatever it is that I want to
press send.
I'm done.
It doesn't even interrupt the conversation for the most part,
but I've captured the information and sends,
it goes to my email.
I'm going to see it again later.
If I just put it in notes or somewhere,
I might forget to even go back and ever look at
that again.
I'll also use it when I'm out walking.
When I listen to podcasts,
I'll often think of something that I want to remember.
And instead of saving that whole podcast,
when I'm at the end or forgetting where in the podcast,
that particular point was talked about,
I can just stop the podcast real quick,
right there,
go into my brain toss,
say whatever I needed to say that I wanted to remember
send it on the way.
And then I can keep walking and keep listening.
I'll use this out at trade shows.
If I want to capture a picture,
all different types of things,
you can think of multiple applications for this.
So if you've never heard of this,
you definitely need to go check it out.
It's called brain toss.
All right,
there, you have it.
My eight apps that I use absolutely every single day.
Let me list them for you again.
So if you are with pen and paper and want to
check them out,
you can do so Gmail for email,
consolidation, and productivity to get that inbox as low to zero
as possible.
But for sure,
to a level of sanity,
second Canva posting presentation,
photo manipulation movies,
any type of creative project that you can imagine can take
place in Canva last pass for keeping and sharing of passwords
Carbonite, to ensure that everything you have on your computer is
kept safe.
Dropbox for document sharing,
updating and accessing smarter queue for social media,
scheduling and posting,
but in particular,
evergreen posting my podcast app for continued learning and entertainment and
bringing us home brain toss for capturing ideas in the moment.
So you don't interrupt.
The moment can live in the now,
but access and use and act on information later there you
have it.
The eight apps that I use every single day with a
couple of sideline LUNs thrown in for good measure.
The really cool thing about this group of apps is that
they all are used and intertwined together.
And let me give you this example.
I just figured this out as I was recording the podcast.
So here you go.
This particular podcast,
I had the idea for it.
So I sent myself a message in brain toss because I
didn't want to forget that this is something that I want
I need to do.
Then I recorded it on my computer and always know that
if heaven forbid something happened,
there's a backup because I'm using Carbonite.
Then whether it's me editing or my virtual assistant,
we can get in there easily through last pass.
Then once it's all edited,
we do graphics in Canva.
We store the final MP3 file in Dropbox.
Then we schedule posts within smarter queue,
send out a weekly email,
telling everybody about the podcast and other important goings on at
gift biz on wrapped.
And then to listen to the show.
I just pull up the podcast app and listen away now
to be truthful.
I don't really listen to my own shows.
I listened to others,
but it's an app that allows us to extend the message
further. So in publishing a podcast episode,
we go through and use all eight of the apps that
I just shared with you here.
Can you think of ways that you can integrate some,
if not all of these,
into your business for the most productive use of your time
possible, we have a lot of living to do.
It's not just all about the business.
That's a wrap.
I'm a get to the point kind of girl.
And this is what you can expect from these quick midweek
sessions. Now it's your turn go out and fulfill that dream
of yours.
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