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Our Favorite Apps and Programs For Work
40 Plays7 months ago
If you are a photographer / photo editor and you wish you had a list of the best, most essential apps and programs for your business...look no further! In today's episode we compiled what we believe to be the most important apps and programs that we use daily, weekly, and monthly for our business. Whether we discovered them via trial and error, by recommendation, or through research, each of these are at the heart of our operations and keep our businesses running smoothly.
Do you have a favorite app or program that you think we missed or that we should try? We'd love to hear it! Please send us a DM on Instagram at @artofintentionpodcast or an email to [email protected]!
Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a 5 star rating and review if you found this episode helpful!
Your hosts, Beth and Ayla
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Transcript
Key Productivity Factors for Entrepreneurs
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you want to know a key factor in your weekly productivity? How entrepreneurs are able to do all the things they do? Well, there's lots of things you need. Motivation, organization, drive, passion, and programs. Apps, organizers, schedulers, everything in between. It can be so easy to try and wing it and not invest in certain technology when starting a business, but we're here to tell you that there are some programs out there that are just downright essential when starting and running your own business.
00:00:28
Speaker
The catch is there are endless apps and programs out there, literally hundreds of schedules, organizers, team chats, et cetera. It can feel impossible to know where to start.
Meet the Hosts: Beth and Ayla
00:00:38
Speaker
And that's where we come in. We're a professional photographer and photo editor duo, and we're here to share some of our favorite apps and programs that we could not live without in our daily workflow. At the end of the day, how you run your business is up to you. But if you feel like getting organized and finding the right programs is overwhelming, we hope we can help you start out on the right foot. So here we go.
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome to the Art of Intention podcast with Beth and Ayla. Two best friends turn creative entrepreneurs. This is a place for us to discuss everything business, friendships, and faith and occasionally more. We're so excited for today's episode. We think you're going to love it. Stay tuned.
Top Client Management Tools
00:01:19
Speaker
Okay, really, honestly, the best way we're going to do this is Beth and I are just going to tag team go back and forth these programs or there aren't really in any particular order or anything like that. It's just kind of what we use daily and what we use them for and where we could find it. We included like a cost breakdown as well to help you guys out. So that's me take it away. What's program number one?
00:01:38
Speaker
Oh, program number one for me is HoneyBook. And we've talked about it before. HoneyBook is a client management system. So it's where all of my inquiries come in. It's where I do all my communication with clients. I can send them all their files, their brochures, pricing guides, everything through there. I can recommend other vendors automatically through there because I have all my vendors information hooked up through there. It tracks all my payments. They pay me through there online with their cards.
00:02:04
Speaker
It's everything. It's like all, not everything. Okay. Cause we're about to list a thousand other things, but it's all my client flow is right in there, um, in that way. So that's perfect. This is $390 a year. Uh, if you have a discount code from somebody, which I think we should probably link, I have a discount code somewhere. I can link it on our Instagram, but you get like half off or something or a certain percent off.
00:02:27
Speaker
We can do Instagram and show notes. We'll link any of our, cause Beth and I do have links for a few of these things if you guys are interested. So perfect. Yeah. But yeah, honey book is great. It was a big investment. I was afraid to do it for a long time. So I went a long time without it. And that's when, as I've said before, it was, I was getting text messages and DMS and all that for inquiries, but this has been perfect. Yep. So worth it. Yep. And my first one is also client organization. It's very similar. I just used Dibsado. It's a little bit, I think
00:02:53
Speaker
Again, I've never used Honeybook, so I don't know. I think Honeybook's great for the customization and the brochures and things like that. Dubsado's a little bit more clean cut, kind of just information. Really great for probably the not photo centered peeps. But anyway, I used Dubsado, same deal client organization. I get paid through there. All of my schedulers are through there. So when people book a consultation or anything with me, it's all through there.
00:03:17
Speaker
Same deal, and it's $350 per year. They have a very generous free trial, which I really like about them. There's a lot of time to really try it out and get your workflows set up before you have to start paying for them. And I also have a Debs Autocope, so we'll put those in the notes.
00:03:35
Speaker
Love it. Okay, moving right along.
Photo Editing Software Discussion
00:03:38
Speaker
Now we're talking about editing. So Lightroom Mobile. This is free. And if you're a photographer and you haven't used this, you're missing out. There's just so much amazing things about this. You can get it on your iPhone or your iPad. And I have edited many sneak peeks. You can download RAWs onto your phone and onto your iPad, and you can be editing RAWs in Lightroom Mobile. And it's completely free. It's amazing.
00:04:00
Speaker
I love it. And just I'll move right on to, of course, Lightroom just in general. So Lightroom on the laptop is $9.99 a month, I believe. And that's, of course, just how I do all of my editing. So there's that. Yeah. And I'll say I use Lightroom Classic, which is also $9.99 a month. Don't ask Beth and I how we file share and move from Lightroom to Lightroom Classic because it's a whole thing. But yeah, it's Lightroom Classic.
Website Building Platforms Compared
00:04:26
Speaker
Next up from my website, I use Show It.
00:04:30
Speaker
I love show it I couldn't say enough good things about it it's drag and drop based and I think it was actually designed for photographers but you could very easily use it for online stores and blogs as well it was super easy to design and set up I I don't like I'm not sponsored by them or anything but I
00:04:50
Speaker
felt like the most freedom. I tried like Squarespace and stuff for a website, but I just found like the most creative freedom when setting up Show It. Super easy to use and they've got really good customer support. Show It is $228 per year. That's for the most simple plan. You could upgrade your plan to be more shop friendly or more blog friendly, but that's just the plan I use.
00:05:12
Speaker
Love it. Yeah, show it. I've always heard really great things about. I know a lot of people who use it and love it. I'll talk about my website really quickly. So I use Wix website and they're all free if you want, but you can also upgrade to different paid plans. I pay for the, I think it's like $16 a month. It's just very basic to get their branding off of it. And you get a couple of like benefits as well. And of course I pay for my domain and everything. But Wix, one of the reasons I love it is actually kind of like you were saying, it's very customizable. Anything, I can do literally anything I want on Wix.
00:05:42
Speaker
There's a little bit of a learning curve, but I can do anything I want. My website can look like whatever I want. I can hook up my honey book contact form into Wix, so it's great. Wix is just, that's what I use for my website. And then I'll just go to the next one too
Graphic Design with Canva
00:05:55
Speaker
real fast. So I use Canva, C-A-N-V-A, like Canvas, but Canva.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's $12.99 a month if you do the paid plan, which for years I didn't, but now that I use it for business a lot, I do do the paid plan. Or it's $119 per year, and I will be honest, I can't remember if I pay monthly or pay by year, but something like that. And it's just for all graphics and designs, all social media graphics. I make all of my client brochures in Canva. I do anything for workshops, like if I make fake menus or fake invitations for workshops, all done in Canva.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I will say Canvas nice you can get away with the free plan for a very long time Like I initially did a lot of my Instagram posts and stuff with a free plan I will say if you're in the photo or general media industry the pay plans 100% worth it because then you just it's completely unlimited There's so much you can do with it. Yeah, yeah access to a lot more graphics and stuff and a lot more fonts But cool features a lot
Efficient File Sharing Solutions
00:06:53
Speaker
of features. Okay next step
00:06:56
Speaker
My holy grail, what I use almost every single day is WeTransfer for file sharing. Their pro plan is $12 a month. Again, you could upgrade to make like teams. I'm not sure how ton of that works because I don't really need it in my business, but the $12 per month does everything I need. It's free for others to use with your link. So my photographers who send me work, multiple bits of work every single week, don't have to pay for it.
00:07:22
Speaker
We transfer basically gives you a domain. So it's like a liby edits dot we transfer comm I just send that to people and they get to send me stuff for free That's how Beth and I run the podcast a lot sharing files that way So yeah, we transfer for file sharing and that's I guess not an app But you just make an account on it and then it's just like it works like a website basically
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I will just say real quick, Ayla introduced me to that and it changed my life. It's the best thing ever. I used to just use Ayla's link or I used it for free without signing up. Then I actually started paying for it for myself because for other photographers or second shooters or if I ever associate shoot or second shoot, that's what I used to transfer all the raw files. Yeah.
00:08:02
Speaker
Okay, um, for calling, I just recently started getting into calling, uh, programs and I use narrative select. I believe I tried out imagine AI or something else like that recently. And it was so complicated to figure out when I first downloaded it that I gave up, tried narrative select, got it set up in like two seconds and it's I'm, I like it.
00:08:19
Speaker
It's convenient. It is self-explanatory. It's a calling service. I have the free plan right now. I actually will be honest. I don't know if I'll ever have to start paying. I have to double check that and see if like I only have a certain number of galleries or a certain number of time. I'm not on a free trial. I just have the free version of it. So there's that. Gotcha.
00:08:37
Speaker
Next up, for content creation, I like to use CapCut. I don't use this all the time. I tend to create in Instagram quite a bit, but sometimes if I'm just doing different stuff with audios or whatever, I like CapCut just as an extra option for content creation. It is free with their watermark. I have not checked into their paid plan, but I don't think it's very much.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Also something I use all the time, definitely weekly, monthly is Google sheets that I use for timeline creation for my clients and budgeting for workshops and stuff like that. Yeah, it's free. My next one. Okay, so this is one I don't use anymore in business, but I did use for a long time working for a different company.
00:09:21
Speaker
But if you are the head of a team, I highly recommend Asana for team and task management. It's a free plan for a team of up to 10 members, and then it goes to 1349 a month for teams of up to 500. And what Asana is, is you can, I think, communicate on there, but what I mainly used it for was like task management.
00:09:44
Speaker
So you could assign tasks to different team members throughout the day. And then that way whoever assigns the task gets notified when they're done. And it's basically if you're a lists person, which is 100% me, then it's really nice to use. You probably could if you wanted to create a sauna for yourself just to keep your tasks throughout the week organized. But anyway, like I said, that doesn't apply to my business now, but I have happily used it before.
00:10:08
Speaker
Awesome, love that, love that recommendation.
Communication Tools for Teams
00:10:11
Speaker
Another one is called the Grid Preview app. I believe it's just called Preview and I use this to plan out my feed for everything, all my Instagram accounts. It's really helpful, really simple, easy to use and it's free.
00:10:23
Speaker
Amazing. Love it. I used to be on the preview train a lot more. I have it on my phone. I just stuff. I wing it in life, but I really like it for that. If you like planning and how your grid looks is really important to you. Next, this is Canada specific, but there's things like it that exist in the US. But for employers and employees who need a clocking in and out and scheduling service, I recommend Seven Shifts. They're actually a small startup here in the city Chris and I live in.
00:10:52
Speaker
But I've used many of these clock in clock out scheduling employee domains and just seven shifts has been my favorite one. I'd have to check for which ones are in the US at this point, but I just wanted to throw in one that could be for employers and employees if you need staff message, staff messaging, schedule creation, clocking in and out and seven shifts specifically is free with higher up plans available.
00:11:16
Speaker
Love that. And kind of on the train of things for groups. I love the WhatsApp app. It's for messaging. I use it for international clients to communicate like that. And actually, Ayla and I, now that we live in different countries, we use that to communicate as well. Yeah. And also, yeah. And for groups. And it's great because you can send voice messages, which if you know us, we're big fans of that over here. So we voice message through that. I can voice message with clients or with family members, no matter what phone they have.
00:11:45
Speaker
Oh, it's so nice. We used to voice message on Instagram. Oh, sorry. You said it's free. Yes. Yeah. We used to voice message on Instagram, which was a minute limit. So we would just send so many then with WhatsApp, it's unlimited, which is really nice. Exactly. And then the last one I kind of have for team organization is Slack for team messaging and calling. Um, as I kind of build up my business a little bit more, I plan on using Slack.
00:12:08
Speaker
You don't have to have it like you could just text I've always liked the idea of having a third-party app for messaging that's like work so that you don't have people texting your own number or Instagram or whatever and Yeah, and slack is again free with upgrades available
00:12:23
Speaker
love it. Um, also again, kind of along the same train, uh, an alternative for zoom. So this is really cool. It's called where a B or whereby it's W H E R E B Y. And it's free, completely free. You don't need to download an app. Your clients don't have to download anything. It's literally just a
00:12:43
Speaker
You open a tab on your browser, you go to Werribee.com and then you end up just sending a link. You create a meeting, you create a link for it. It takes two seconds and you send that link to your clients or whoever you're going to call with and they just click on the link and it opens up in a browser on any device. And I believe it's a 45 minute time limit for the free plan, which is better than Zoom. And yeah, anyone with a link can join. They don't have to create an account. They don't have to download an app. It's so convenient. I've started using it with my clients and I love it.
00:13:11
Speaker
That's amazing. Zoom, I don't use Zoom either for clients I used to, and I find it super inconvenient because it sends them a code, then they click link and then enter code and all this stuff. I just do Google meet, but what you described actually still sounds more simple. So I might look into that actually.
Podcasting and Editing Tools
00:13:28
Speaker
And then for the podcast, fun little insider information. We've mentioned this before, so I'm all good to share it, but Beth and I use Zencaster for podcasting. Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
super nice, such a nice video chatting platform. And we pay $18 a month for that. And then for editing the podcast, we use audacity for editing. And that's free to use. So fun little insider info there. Yeah, exactly.
00:13:56
Speaker
Okay, and so for delivering client photos, I use Pass Gallery.
Delivering Client Photos Effectively
00:14:01
Speaker
I had the free plan for a while, absolutely amazing. I recently upgraded a couple years ago to the paid plan. It's $17 a month and I upgraded just because you have a little bit more features I can make slideshows and then I also can have more galleries at one time in Pass.
00:14:17
Speaker
Amazing. And then the last one that I have to share, this is kind of niche, but I promise you, I use this one all the time. It's called Simple Scanner. It's an app for your phone. And it takes photos. So like, say you need a document converted into PDF, and it's a physical document, that you have like an actual piece of paper, you can take a photo of it on your phone, and this app converts them into PDFs. So it's really great for documenting receipts for taxes,
00:14:44
Speaker
I like to do my taxes fully electronically, send them to my bookkeeper electronically, and I couldn't do it
Document Scanning Made Easy
00:14:50
Speaker
without this app. I take pictures of all my receipts, it converts them into a PDF, and you can actually make it look like a scanned PDF through the app just to make it look a bit more official for travel documents, bank statements, everything. I will say it's free with a ton of ads, which is a little bit annoying, but I just kind of deal with it for the time being. But it's really nice for any piece of paper that you need to be a PDF. Awesome.
Call to Action: Rate and Review
00:15:13
Speaker
Love it.
00:15:13
Speaker
And there you have it. That's a little glimpse into the tools we use to run our businesses. And we hope that helps you narrow down the many, many options available out there. We love sharing our favorite business resources with you all and we want to continue to do it. So if you love what we do, then make sure you leave us your five star rating and a review wherever you listen and subscribe wherever you listen. We are on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and Zentaster.
00:15:36
Speaker
For guests or episode requests, you can email us at art of intention podcast at gmail.com and make sure you're following us on Instagram at art of intention podcast so that you never miss a new episode and to continue the conversation. We will see you again next week. Bye.