Episode – 003 – Beware Your Friends’ Software Recommendations
Researching the right software for your business can be a huge pain in the neck and it can be really helpful to reach out to your friends and peers, however, blindly trusting what they tell you, can turn into a massive problem.
Dive into today’s episode, where I’m sharing my own approach to researching new tools and software. I know all too well how frustrating it can be searching for the right tools to grow your business and so today, let’s master the art of picking the right software for your business.
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Full transcription
Episode 3 of the online business tech hub. This is your host, tech expert for online coaches and consultant on a mission to rescue my clients from tech disasters. And this is episode three. And we are talking about trusting your friends and colleagues.
So beware of your friends’ software recommendation is a really hot topic. I talk about this with my clients all the time, and in this episode, I want to share why trusting your friends’ recommendation could potentially turn into a massive money-sucking machine. So. First of all, I want to tell you that, yes, researching the right software can be a huge pain in the butt, can make you feel a lot more confused. And yes, it is really helpful to reach out to your friends and colleagues and ask for their opinion if they have a recommendation.
But blindly trusting their recommendation can turn into a massive problem. OK, so let me share with you my own experience. It just happened a few months ago.
A couple of years ago. I had found a really cool lifetime deal on upswell for a project management and all-in-one platform that would handle invoices, agreements, time tracking, task management, and a lot more. I took a look at it. I liked it. And I signed up for it. However, I wasn’t exactly clear on what I wanted, what I needed, and I found this lifetime deal.
It wasn’t only one platform, which is always very attractive to me, and I just went for it. OK, now, obviously, your business evolves in a couple of years and just a few the last few months of 2020, I realize that the platform I had been using wasn’t really the right one for me anymore and I was mostly using it for invoices and agreements. I wasn’t using the time tracker, I wasn’t using the task manager. And the thing is that when you use a project management software, you kind of are expected to use it for tasks and, you know, avoid being all over the places with tasks that you have to do.
And I wasn’t using that.
So I started making a lot of research, asking around a lot of people recommending cleaning up. Saw a lot of ads about it. Of course, I had been using Trello and Asana. I like them both, but I was looking for something more, something more dynamic, something more flexible. OK, and I didn’t like that Trello only develops horizontally. So if you have a lot of different tabs, you have always to scroll to the right or to the left to see everything.
And I wasn’t crazy about Asana either. I mean, I like it. I use it. A lot of my clients use it, but I don’t know. It never really struck me. As I said in episode 1 at the end of the day, when you pick software, you need to feel that it’s the right one for you. So doing research, asking around, and then understanding what I wanted finally led me to find out about Taskade.
And I love it. I’ve been using it since. I absolutely love it. OK, so what I mean by sharing this story is that I got fed up with the software I was using, I asked around. I made some research. Nobody had recommended Taskade, but when I found out about it, I was really excited because I really had the feeling that I had found the right one for me, the right platform for what I needed.
Nobody had mentioned it, but because I was told about Click Up. In one way or another, I found Taskade as well. OK. So recommendation can be absolutely a wonderful starting point, really, really useful for that. To send you toward the right direction, but don’t blindly follow your friends’ or peers’ recommendations, I want to give you an example of a client of mine. We were working together, and I was helping her create and launch her first online course and the webinar to launch it.
OK, now, at the same time, she had decided to renew her website, so she started working with another professional to update and change the website. She knew because we had already been speaking about it, that MailChimp wasn’t really the most amazing platform out there, but we could still use it for this first launch, given that it was the first time she would launch the program and that she would launch anything.
So I didn’t want to overwhelm her with you know, preparing the whole course structure and the content and preparing the launch three years ago, in this case, the webinar, I didn’t want to overwhelm her and add to her plate also moving from MailChimp to another platform, because, yes, I made it clear that, OK, maybe this is not the perfect platform. I wouldn’t really recommend using MailChimp. But the alternative is switching to a different platform, and this could potentially be really overwhelming for you.
So. I let her decide basically, of course, we talked about all the ins and outs and pros and cons and so on, and initially she decided to stay with MailChimp and then maybe later on after the launch, thinking of transitioning to another platform, another e-mail marketing platform. However, when she started to have a discussion with the web designer, the web designer was adamant that she should immediately move away from MailChimp and go to Active Campaign. Now, if you know me, you know that I’m fan number one of Active Campaign.
However, I know my client and she wasn’t ready for Active Campaign. Honestly, we had been working for some time already and I knew, that she just wasn’t ready for that type of platform, which is why I never even mentioned Active Campaign to her. And I always mention Mailer Lite because I knew it would be the more the most appropriate for her competence with technology. She was sold into Active Campaign, she signed up, and then when she went to check the pricing when she went to check how Active Campaign structure, she got back to me and said “God, this is a mess.”
Yes, of course, it’s a mess. Of course, it is. Because you’re not at the right stage, you don’t have the competencies to handle Active Campaign on your own. That is why I told you that, like I didn’t even mention Active Campaign, that’s why I mentioned to you, maybe it will be a better idea to move from Mail Chimp to Mailer Lite and not Active Campaign because it’s too advanced for you.
So what happened is that she trusted this friend of hers recommendation to move to a platform that was way too complex and expensive for her and of course, this made us hit a bump on the way because then I had to kind of go on hold because I knew that she wanted to then start to change platform. And I obviously had to wait for some time. Until then, she realized that, no, no, this Active Campaign is not for me. Let’s move to something else, which is then she moved.
She decided to move to Mailer Lite. So she blindly followed this friends’ recommendation. And the result is that or was that we lost time because I had to go on hold with the project. She was about to risk investing a lot of money for something she wasn’t ready to use. And ultimately, she was about to sign up for a platform that was way too advanced for her, so trusting your peers’ recommendation. Can really turn into a massive problem and into a big money-sucking, frustrating machine.
OK, so. You always need to keep in mind that your friends, your peers, your colleagues can be at a different stage in business, they can have a different goal. They can have a different experience or skill set related to technology. So, yes, by all means, do your research. Do ask around, but don’t just trust the recommendations you’re given about the platforms out there, it’s a great starting point, but at the end of the day, you always need to keep in mind that you are the one and only who is going to handle that platform until you decide to outsource it.
But you’ve got to understand how the platform works if you want to make the best out of it. Otherwise, you would just waste a lot of money. I mean, think about it. If you sign up for a platform just out of a recommendation and maybe you pay for the, like, one-year subscription because it’s more convenient and then you realize that it’s not the right one for you, that it’s way too complex, that you don’t really understand how to use it because it’s way too advanced.
So the alternative is that you have to invest now a lot of time to figure it out and understand how to use it, which can lead to becoming a massive headache or option B, you’ve got to hire someone that will set up that platform for you and still hope that once it’s all set up, you will take the time to figure out how it works, to make the best out of it. I mean, one way or another, you are using a lot more resources, money, and time than you would have had if you would have actually taken time to figure out if the platform was the right one for you or not.
And I mean, when I say this, I don’t mean that you need to go through all the technical settings and all the features. What I mean by picking the right software is understanding where you’re at right now, understanding where you want to go. So what’s your goal for this year?
Do you want to launch an online course? Do you want to grow your e-mail list and kind of automate all the deliveries and set up a lot of free resources and find those which leads to paid products and upsells and down sells and tripwires and so on? Or do you want to go on to one-to-one work with your clients?
Be clear on what is your goal this year and then at that point you can adjust the technology accordingly. OK, this is really, really important. This is a topic that is really close to my heart because I’ve seen the frustration of my clients when they invest a lot of time trying to figure out the software that isn’t the right one for them and it really breaks my heart because I can see the frustration.
You have an idea. You have a vision in your mind, and you can’t turn that into reality because you’re using the wrong software. OK, so always take a bit of time before making a choice in terms of any platform out there, whether it is project management, whether it’s an online course platform or an e-mail marketing platform, a webinar platform. Just take a bit of time to understand what you need from it. Give it a try. Sign up for the trial and play around with it. Don’t just blindly trust the recommendation you got from someone.
This is the end of episode three. I hope it was useful. And I know that this can be a kind of a hard topic because as I said, I saw so many times the frustration in my client’s eyes, but it’s really important. So before I bid you bye-bye for today, remember, kickstart your email marketing, which is my 5-day free email course where I advise you on only two platforms to email marketing platforms that you can pick from, because in my opinion and experience are the best out there and tell you all the ins and outs about them so you can make an informed choice, set up your email marketing platform and finally starting to build a list of engaged and raving fans and obviously hit the subscribe button.
Remember to do that so you can listen to the latest episode as soon as they are published. So I will see, you know, not see you. I will catch up with you next week and you can find the link for Kickstart your email marketing in the show notes. And one last thing. Pop me an email, pop me a direct message, and tell me about your experience picking a software. What happened when you had to pick a software and you had no idea where to start.
How did you make your choice and how did it go? Absolutely. Tell me if you picked the right software or not and how it then went on. All right. That’s it for today. Talk to you next week.
Bye-bye.