22: Behind The Scenes of InsideTheSquare
I have big plans to grow to a larger company over the next year, but for right now, it’s just me and a whole heap of software that makes me extra productive. In this episode of ThinkinsideTheSquare, I’m going to give you the list of my top 5 favorite time-saving software sidekicks, and I’ll explain how each one of them is a game changer for me as a solo business owner here InsideTheSquare.
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When I started sharing weekly tutorials here inside the square,
I had no idea that teaching would become my full time job.
Over the last few years, I have had to learn so much about running my own business,
and there are some amazing software programs that I wish I had known about on day one.
In this episode of Think Inside the Square,
I'll be taking you behind the scenes of my business to share what tools have helped me build
InsideTheSquare into the weekly content creation machine you see today.
Welcome to Think Inside the Square, a podcast full of quick tips and tricks
to help you create a Squarespace website that you're proud of.
I'm your host, Becca Harpain, Squarespace expert and creator of InsidetheSquare.co
In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the five programs that helped me run my company of one.
For a transcript of this episode, along with the links
to any resources mentioned, visit insidethesquare.co/podcast
The term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace, Inc. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace, Inc.
I've got big plans for my small but mighty business, but as of right now, December 2023,
it's just me and a whole heap of software that helps me be extra productive.
In this episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm going to give you the list
of my top five favorite timesaving software sidekicks and explain how each one
of them is a game changer for me as a solo business owner.
Here are the five programs I can't run my business without: Notion,
Mailerlite, ecamm chat, GPT, and of course, Squarespace.
You might roll your eyes at Squarespace being on this list,
but I do rely on it for selling digital goods.
I would not have a business without it, but we'll get into those details later.
I want to start this episode by talking about the program I have become obsessed with lately.
If you've attended any of my workshops in 2023,
or if you have my CSS cheat sheet, then you know I love notion.
Notion is a web based program that helps me organize my thoughts,
my tasks, and my projects, everything in one place.
I have my main content calendar in Notion, so I can see everything I'm creating at a glance.
I can expand anything to be a full page upload pictures, add tags and links, all kinds of cool stuff.
I love to use Notion for what I call my brain dumps.
When I'm feeling overwhelmed.
I sit down and I set a timer for 20 minutes, and in that 20 minutes,
I type out everything in my head, not the solutions or all the steps I need
to take to get that specific list item done crossed off my to do list.
What I do is just list every possible topic or idea that
I'm distracted by when I'm trying to get work done.
Then in notion, I can drag and drop these into a specific order for do, delegate, and defer until later.
One of my favorite parts is when I am ready to add those steps or assign a date
to that specific project, I can turn any list item into a page in two simple clicks.
Yeah, an ENTIRE page.
From that page I can upload images and content.
I can expand page after page, linking them together, adding them to my calendar.
The possibilities are endless.
I have discovered so many creative ways to use notion that I'm worried if I keep talking
about this software, it's going to turn into an hour long podcast episode.
And I still have four more softwares to share.
So let me pull back a little bit and explain
to you the main things that I use Notion for: my content calendar.
This is where I organize all of my tutorial Tuesday blog posts and videos, all of my Thursday
podcast episodes, and the emails that I write to share each aspect of content with my audience.
I also use Notion for my digital goods, my Squarespace CSS cheat sheet,
my website workbook workshop replays and guides.
I host them all in notion so I can share the link and still have access to update them.
Last but not least, I use notion for a lot of my internal documentation.
I have a gigantic tutorial to do list, and anytime someone sends me a new idea or a creative thing
to try with Squarespace, I'll pop it into this notion doc so when I do
have some time to work on brand new codes, I have a list of content to start with.
Notion has been a game changer for keeping me organized and staying
on top of all the content that I'm creating, and I absolutely love it.
But there are still four more softwares that I want
to talk to you about in this episode, so let's keep going.
Next up is Mailerlite, my email program.
That's M-A-I-L-E-R-I-T-E mailerlite.
I send out a minimum of two emails every week to thousands of squarespacers around the globe.
To be clear, I do use Squarespace campaigns to send people
emails after a purchase is made, but I outgrew their program.
In my first year of business, I offer so many free resources and guides
that I surpassed the auto email limit and had to find a new program.
I did use Flodesk for a while.
That's Flodesk, and while I love that program and still promote it,
the reporting and stats were not robust enough for me and my email marketing goals.
I like to see who opens what and how many links they click.
Flowdesk didn't have an easy way to get all that info, so I went to Mailerlite.
Here's a little behind the scenes look of how I set up Mailerlite.
I have a future episode about list building with Squarespace,
where we'll tackle this more in depth, but here's the quick overview.
I have a lot of forms that people can use to join my email list.
If you're not on it yet, visit insidethesquare co email to see one of these forms.
But let's say you sign up there or on the footer of my website,
you'll get an instant welcome email and then you're moved to my main list.
So you'll get a free tutorial update on Tuesday and a podcast link on Thursday,
plus some exclusive content sprinkled in those regular emails.
If you sign up for my free class on CSS basics at insidethesquare co learn,
you get a specific sequence of emails that are focused on CSS.
When that email sequence is done, then you get added to my weekly email list.
That is a lot of email content and something Squarespace just couldn't handle.
So after some digging and trying flow desk for almost a year, I settled on Mailerlite.
Not only was I able to set all of that up on my own, their forms embed into Squarespace super easily.
And the best part?
I can use my favorite font in the forms and the emails.
I know it's silly, but having a consistent font
for my brand really matters to me, and Mailerlite made it easy.
It's Poppins, by the way, the best san serif font that I use for everything.
So we talked about
notion for keeping track of literally all the things,
then Mailerlite for emailing people about all the things.
So next up is ecamm, my new way to record all the things I know we're talking
about a lot of content here, so just a quick reminder to get a transcript
of this episode and a link to every single one of the software programs I'm mentioning.
Visit insidethesquare.co/podcast
This is the 22nd episode, so that would be insidethesquare.co/podcast/22
All right, back to ECamm.
For years I've been using Camtasia for video recording and editing and loved it.
But I upgraded to Team Mac earlier this year and I had a whole new set of programs at my disposal.
I also got a nice new camera and my video quality is so much better.
It's so much better that Camtasia couldn't keep up.
I needed a new program that would let me record with my camera and my screen and my mic all at once and all in high quality.
So thanks to a recommendation from a dear friend and phenomenal YouTuber Phil Pallen, I invested in eCamm and I am so happy.
This program is making my video creation process seamless and I absolutely love it.
Now, at the time of recording this, the version of ecamm I'm using is specifically for Mac.
If you use a pc, definitely check out Camtasia.
I used it for years and it's super user friendly, ideal for anyone new to video.
Now that I've moved on to using my Mac for most of my business stuff, ecamm has been a game changer.
It's great for recording my videos for tutorials that I share every week,
but it's also ideal for people that want to go live on YouTube and share their screens.
That's a big part of my 2024 content plan I'll be hosting alive
every month for at least the next six months, and maybe more.
And ecamm is making that possible.
I spent a lot of hours over this winter break watching YouTube videos on how to make ecamm work for me.
So get excited.
More live video is coming and it's going to look so much more professional than I've ever looked before.
Notion, Mailerlite, and eCamm. That's three.I have two more software programs I want to tell you about.
Next on the list is my new robot friend, Chat GPT.
I know a lot of content creators love to hate AI for stealing content, so let me be crystal clear here.
I don't use Chat GPT to write my copy.
I use Chat GPT to help me brainstorm, optimize, create hashtags, and, to be totally honest, for spelling and grammar checks.
Little known fact, I am terrible when it comes to spelling,
and improper use of commas and apostrophes are my signature move.
Every first draft of every blog post and podcast I write has
about 80% of it underlined with red mistakes.
Chat GPT cleans it up for me lightning fast.
When it comes to brainstorming, I like to have full on conversations with Chat GPT.
Here's a little example of the conversation that we had.
I sent it the 25 episode titles I'd already created, and when I asked it to create 15 more.
Some of the ideas seemed to be repeats, so I would ask Chat GPT to explain the differences between the two episodes.
From there, I was able to gleam some creative ideas that I never would have thought of and I cannot wait to share them with you.
Spelling and grammar brainstorming ideas, cleaning up copy there are so many
ways you can use the program that won't be stealing from other creators.
I love using Chat GPT in my business and I know I would
not be creating so much content without its help.
And here's a game changer for next year.
Are you ready for this surprise?
I honestly wasn't planning on talking about on the podcast, but I'm just too dang excited I've got to share it.
I've subscribed to Chat GPT four a few months ago, and I have been spending weeks
training a GPT model on my own content so it can be my Squarespace CSS chatbot.
Yep, robot me is coming, friends, and you can use it for help.
I am beyond stoked to share this with the world,
and I'll be releasing it sometime within the next two months.
But you don't have to spend weeks teaching a robot how to think like you.
You can still use Chat GPT for help editing content and brainstorming new ideas for your business.
I think it's an amazing program and everyone should be using it.
There's one last software that I have to mention on this episode
because it's the reason I have a business, and that is Squarespace.
I use Squarespace for my website, for my hosting, for purchasing domains, and for selling digital goods.
I also use it for email marketing, not to the degree that I use Mailerlite,
but Squarespace sends out auto emails for me after someone makes a purchase.
I have my Google workspace set up through Squarespace, and again, domain and hosting.
It's all there so I don't have to worry about recurring payments or separate logins.
It's all in one easy peasy place.
Squarespace is my go to for my website, domain hosting,
storefront, customer communication, and payment processor.
And again, it's the reason I have a business.
I'm so excited about it that I love teaching other people how to use it too.
All right, we're here at the end of the episode.
I'd love to finish this up with a recap of all of the software
programs I just shared with you, but I'm going to do it backwards.
So Squarespace, that's what I use for my website.
That's what I use to sell digital goods.
I have my blog on Squarespace and I use it for all of my domains,
and I use it for managing my Google workspace accounts because it's all in one place and I love it.
Chat GPT is my new robot friend who helps me brainstorm
ideas and fix my egregious spelling and grammar errors.
Fun fact, I don't think I could spell that word egregious without Chat GPT.
I'm pretty grateful I've got it.
Before that, we talked about eCamm, the Mac video editing program that I've fallen in love with.
My 2024 videos are looking so freaking good and I cannot wait to share them with you.
It's going to make going live a breeze, and that's a fun thing I'll be doing next year as well.
But if you're still on a pc and you want to dabble with video, try Camtasia.
It's a great program, but I grew out of it when I moved over to a Mac.
Then we have MailerLite, what I use for most of my emails.
I have workflows set up to send out a welcome sequence that changes
depending upon where you signed up for my email list and I used to send out my
weekly tutorial videos every Tuesday and podcast updates every Thursday.
Last on this list, but certainly not least, is my favorite software of 2023, notion.
I use Notion to organize all of my content and I absolutely love it.
It has a calendar feature so I have an overview of what to work on next.
I can expand items to be a full page with pictures, tags, links, all kinds of cool stuff.
It's very intuitive and I know it's made a big difference in the way I run things here inside the square.
I have links to all of these programs in the show.
Notes for this episode at InsideTheSquare.co/podcast this is episode 22, so if you want to jump right to it, that's Insidethesquare.co/podcast/22
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Inside the Square.
I hope you loved it.
I have a lot more tips and tricks to share with you about making an amazing Squarespace website that's uniquely yours, so be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode, and if you have a second, a review from you would absolutely make my day.
I am still new to podcasting and I've heard that positive reviews will help me reach more people who could use this info.
So thank you for your support.
Thank you again for listening and most importantly have fun with your Squarespace website.
Bye for now.
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Many of these resource links are affiliate links which means that I may receive a commission if you use a program based on my recommendation. InsideTheSquare is not owned by any of these companies and affiliation with them is subject to change.
Notion: how I keep track of everything
MailerLite: what I use to send emails every week
Flodesk: what I used to use to send emails when my list was smaller.
My affiliate link will get you 50% off your first year of Flodesk!Ecamm: Mac friendly software for live video
Camtasia: PC based video editing software
ChatGPT: opensource AI chatbot
Squarespace CSS Class: insidethesquare.co/learn
Join my email list: insidethsquare.co/email
Squarespace CSS Cheat Sheet: insidethesquare.co/css
Company of one: I said it in the podcast and realized it was the title of a book I read a few years ago by Paul Jarvis. You can check out his book here; his website no longer exists but the book does!
