How to Use Basic Technology in Business | Ep 053

Join us as we explore tools and technologies that can make your business operations smoother!

Small businesses often underutilize technology due to the overwhelming number of options available. If what you're doing is working, why change it, right? But we're here to show you how technology can take your business to the next level.

In this episode, we discuss digital notebooks, accounting systems, task management tools like Trello, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. These tools can help you streamline your business operations, save time, and ensure that you're staying organized.

As we delve deeper into this series, we'll also cover social media, video editing, and other technology solutions to help your business thrive. Stay tuned for more valuable insights. Don't miss out on improving your business with the right tech tools!

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-Kacie Bryant and John Crespo

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Transcript

Kacie: So today we're really excited. This is part one of two, we're going to be going over technology. And tools that you can use, things that make your life easier, uh, working with businesses. I see that they way underutilized technology and I think that one of the reasons is because there are so many options out there and it's overwhelming.

And if what you're doing is working, why change it, right? Yep.

The Business Project Podcast. Business can be complicated. We break it down so regular people like 

John: us can understand and find success. I'm John Crespo, accountant and consultant. 

Kacie: I'm Casey Bryant, marketer and event planner. If you run a business or want to run a business welcome to the show. What's up everybody?

Woohoo! It's Thursday. It 

John: is Thurs No, it's Friday. 

Kacie: We record on Friday, but it comes out on Thursday. So it's Thursday for that. My bad. It's Thursday. You guys, you could technically be watching any day of the week, but That's true. Whatever day it is in your world right now, we hope that you guys are having a wonderful one.

It's your day. And we hope to make it better. Yes. By giving you some amazing information today. I 

John: always learn something. Me too. So, I mean. As long as I'm learning something, we can have these conversations 

Kacie: all the time. Because I can take it and implement it. Yes. And I'd be like, wow. And I think a lot of what we go over is stuff that you guys probably already know, but as business owners, we need these reminders, man.

We do. We talk about all the time how we don't do things that we talk about in our podcast. Yep. Yep. 

John: Everybody knows what they're supposed to do, but nobody implements them. So, you know, we all 

Kacie: go through that. Yeah, so we're hoping by hammering it in your brain every week that it's going to get you on the right track.

John: You can only hope. Yes. 

Kacie: So today we're really excited. This is part one of two. We're going to be going over technology. Yeah. And tools that you can use, things that make your life easier, uh, working with businesses. I see that they way underutilized technology and I think that one of the reasons is because there are so many options out there and it's overwhelming.

And if what you're doing is working, why change it, right? Yep.

John: And people, believe it or not, are still kind of old school. They are. A lot of people like paper, you know, and writing stuff down. You know, crumbling, crumbling up old notes that they need and throwing it in the trash and then can't find it later.

Nope. We still like doing that kind of stuff. The worst, 

Kacie: I do that all the time. I like paper and pen and I'll bring paper and pen to a meeting and I'll take notes and then I'll leave it at my desk and I'll need it at home and I'll be like, dang it, if I were to use my iPad. 

John: Yep, then you're shifting through that 50, 000 notebooks that you have trying to find out, you know, what happened a year ago in one of those meetings and yeah.

Yeah, we just add work to ourselves. 

Kacie: We do. So today, today's podcast, we're going to talk about just operations, so great apps, great programs, great systems, online tools for operations, and then next week we're going to get into specifically creating content, video, which by the way, if you're a small business owner and you're not doing video, man, you are missing out on the boat because sorry, You're gonna have to get to no video, but it's okay.

Don't get overwhelmed. We have a bunch of tools that we'll go over next week that'll help you. Yes, good stuff. Yeah. So speaking of the, I said my iPad, which is what I use and you use Remarkable. Remarkable. Right? As a notebook. So what do you, what do you love about Remarkable and not love about Remarkable?

John: So I'm one of those old school people, right? That likes to write on a notebook. And, um, and you know, they're not, they're not sponsoring this thing, which they should, but, uh, I'm going to go in on them cause I love it. This, the remarkable is a kind of like a notebook tablet. There's no, you can't do anything else on it except take notes, right?

You can, and you, and what you write in there gets shared to all of your like Google inbox, Dropbox, all that stuff. And you can even email from it. Right, but you can't there's no internet. You're not going to get on the internet Although it has the wi fi access so it can sync And but you're not going to get apps nothing like that.

It's meant for You know productivity a notebook notebook. Don't get distracted by all the apps exactly Yeah, and the the thing that I really like about it though is that when you write on it It feels like you're writing in a notebook. It does feel really cool. Yeah, so it gives you that kind of like old school feel.

And the, uh, the pen and the, you know, the writing is very, you know, it's very responsive, so it's just like you're writing in a notebook.

Kacie: That's really cool. And if you mess up, you can, or want to move something, you can like circle it and move it and do those types of things too that you can't do on a regular notebook.

John: Exactly. So it's a lot cleaner. And you can, and then you can write it and then it converts to text if you want to, you know, if you want to have sloppy writing, exactly. And you want to share it in like an email or something like that, it'll convert it to text so you can share it. Um, so it has a lot of functionality that, uh, you know, us kind of like old school heads would like, but also, um, and introduce us to the world of technology at the same time.

So it's like a bridge. I consider it like a bridge into, into the technology 

Kacie: world. That's cool. Yeah. And I went with the iPad, which is very similar to the Remicrable as far as what I use it for. But what I like about it is I do have all the apps in one place. I can do all of the other things with it. We use, um, Trello.

I've mentioned that several times in past podcasts, which is that again, none of the organizations that we're talking about, the businesses that we're talking about today. Are sponsored. It's just tools that we personally use or that some of our businesses that we work with use. And I do love it because it's, you can do everything.

I check my email on it. It's like a one stop shop if I don't feel like carrying my big laptop around. That's 

John: another thing, is that um, when you embrace technology, you know, you can carry less. Mm hmm. You know, it makes your Makes your ability to get up and go that much easier. You don't have to worry about, I gotta grab my book bag of notebooks and all that stuff, even though I carry my book bag with my laptop and my remarkable in there and all of that.

But that's about it. So it's a lot easier and lighter. You 

Kacie: do have to make sure that it's charged though. Oh yeah. That's the downside. Many of times I have opened up to make notes and it 

John: Nope. Get you a charging bank, right? Yeah. What are those? It's like a charging bank. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Get you one of those clickable charger.

Kacie: Create a good charging routine. Yeah. Yeah, so the one thing that I don't like about the iPad is that it, it doesn't feel like you're writing on paper. I wish that that was, I think if the iPad had a different feeling when you were writing, they would be 100 percent on board, yeah. 

John: Yeah, I'm not in the Apple ecosystem, but when I was searching for, you know, the ability to have a notebook.

Um, I was looking at the, uh, Samsung Galaxy Tab. They have the, they have, you know, it's the competitor to Apple. And it's the same thing, the, the glass on it, you know, you don't have that feel. And it gets, and it smudges, you know, you get all that stuff on it. You have to worry about cleaning it all the time.

Um, but the Remarkable has that kind of like opaque. Kind of like cover and it's doesn't get smudgy is, you know, you don't have to worry about Making sure it's clean and you can see what you're doing. It's just it fits the It fits what it needs very well. 

Kacie: I think you probably have some people sold on getting a reMarkable.

John: Get it. Hey, and tell them that I really recommended it. So maybe I can get a cut. Yeah 

Kacie: So that's one thing I guess number one that we're getting into is figuring out some sort of digital notebook Whether it be a reMarkable, whether it be a Samsung, whether it be an iPad That has just made life for me so much easier as far as, you know, taking notes, moving your notes around, organizing your notes, saving time, and having it all in one place.

That's the biggest thing, is it's all in one place. And one of the apps that I use is GoodNotes. Within the iPad and it's cool because it syncs with my computer too and it's, you can create like folders of your notes and all the, all the things. So there's different apps that you can get to, I'm sure in Samsung and in the iPad that can help make your life 

easier.

John: Yeah, for sure. Um, Google has. Keep I think it's called keep or something like that. Um, similar concept. Yeah, that's another thing. That's another thing about those tablets like the iPads and the Samsung is you need a app to take good notes and to kind of like organize your stuff. You don't need that on them.

Remarkable. It's 

Kacie: all native. Yeah, that is nice. Yeah. So let's move on. So a digital notebook would be the first recommendation that we make for technology. I would say Close behind that, or if not even with that, is an accounting program that syncs with your bank, that does all of your transactions, that does your reports.

We've talked about this several times in podcasts. And some great, obviously the most popular one is QuickBooks. 

John: They have a chokehold on the On that industry for sure. Yeah. 

Kacie: So what are positives and negatives of QuickBooks? 

John: Uh, it, the cost is a negative, right? Um, it's one of the most expensive ones out there.

Um, I would say another negative is it's not the most user friendly. It's very complex, very complex. And, but it's like that because it can handle everything. I think that's one of the good things about QuickBooks is it doesn't matter the industry you're in. Um, QuickBooks has. Something to help you manage your business, manage your financials.

They're the first of the game. So, um, they're they've Had the opportunity to study Every industry very well and see what the needs are out there and create their System to kind of meet that 

Kacie: and they've been out for a long time, which is another advantage that they have 

John: Yeah, so they have you know, when you're first to the what do you call it first to market?

Mm hmm. You have the first to market advantage and you know, they've had it but it's it's Luke. They're losing some 

Kacie: steam Yeah, because there's a lot of other options that are getting out. What are good ones? What are some of the good ones? 

John: You have, uh, Wave. Wave is a good one. It's very cost effective, um, zero.

I think the biggest competitor right now to QuickBooks is Zero. Zero. 

Kacie: Yeah. I use Wave. I really like Wave. Wave to me is way more simple than 

John: QuickBooks. It's one of the most user friendly ones out there, too. Yeah. Like it, and they make it very easy to use. 

Kacie: And you can also do payroll and other things through Wave.

Yeah. 

John: Yeah, I was gonna say, um, if you're like, uh, You're thinking about getting into business. You're an entrepreneur, right? You're starting out. You don't have like a whole lot of experience in your financials and stuff like that. Um, go with something other than QuickBooks so that you can get, um, you know, the feel, you can get an understanding.

But if you get, if your business becomes very complex. Then you want to make sure you give you're in the right system, right? 

Kacie: You need something that can do more Yeah, yeah 

John: and and zero and QuickBooks. Mm hmm. They can handle complexity 

Kacie: So what's what zero tell us a little bit about that. 

John: So zero is it's like a Hybrid in between Wave and 

Kacie: QuickBooks.

So the next step up. Next step up. So beginners is Wave, waveapps. com I think is what that is. Yeah. The next one is Xero and then the more advanced is QuickBooks. Yeah. 

John: And it's Xero with an X. Okay. Not a Z. Oh. So if you type in Xero. com you're not gonna, with a Z you're not gonna. X E R O. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

It's X E R O. But it's very user friendly as well. Zero is great for online businesses. So if you do like e commerce, um, things like that, you handle inventory and, and that's nice. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Zero is 

Kacie: great for that. Okay, cool. So that's the second one. So digital notebook. Great accounting system.

Make sure that no matter what accounting system you get, it gives you reports that you need. It automatically connects to your bank account. I work with um, somebody that I've been trying to get him to do this forever. He still keeps all of his transactions in a spreadsheet. And the amount of time that he takes doing all of that, and he has a great system.

You know, it's like set up to automatically generate reports and do things like that. I mean, a spreadsheet can be pretty advanced too. Yeah. But I'm like, man, if you only knew how simple it was, you just get something else. 

John: Yeah, it's so plug and play too, you know, and it's geared on automation. And I think that the good thing that we're talking about technology is because as a business owner, you want to think about what can you automate in your business to make your life easier, right?

You want to focus on. Growing your business bring it in sales, you know the thing that really makes an impact on your on your bottom line We should have led with that. We should have yes, we can do the you know, how did we do the the intro? Yeah, we'll make this the intro But it's a you know, if you focus on the mundane stuff the stuff that's repetitive, you know That's what you really want technology to take off your Plate so that you can focus on the heavy stuff, right?

So that's a main reason why we're talking about this 

Kacie: and the tedious stuff if technology can take care of it and probably honestly do It better than you can and faster than you can and why are you still spending your time doing those 

John: things for real? If you can take Um, 20 minutes a day back, right?

That's how many, how many, how many minutes in a week is that a hundred? If you do five days a week, that's a, that's over two hours, right? That's my bookkeeping background, but that's what can you do with that time? Yeah, that would be great. Spend time with your family, you know, like you can actually do something with that time and that's the goal.

Get your time 

Kacie: back. Yeah. Okay. So digital notebook, great accounting system. The next one on my list would be. a system to keep track of all of your information, all of your tasks, all of your anything that you're doing internally within your business. We've talked several times in podcasts about the importance of creating systems and making sure that you're writing that down so that you're not having to recreate.

Anytime you train somebody to make a hot dog, if you have a hot dog stand or anytime you bring on a new client, you know, you have to have This is step one, and this is step two, and this is step three. And it takes a lot of time to get all of that together. But once you get it together, then it makes your business better because you don't have to recreate the system every single time.

You don't have to think you can bring others to be able to delegate those tasks. And then you can also. Figure out what's working and what's not working if you're doing it the same time. Yeah. Or the same way every time. 

John: So, is that like a workflow system? I would say, yeah. That's what you 

Kacie: use Trello for, right?

Yeah, that's what we use Trello for. Our team, we get the paid version of Trello. There's different. Plans that you can get and we definitely do the paid version. Totally worth it. We do so many things. Trello integrates also with our website with um, constant contact, which is going to be another one that we're going to talk about is getting emails.

Yeah. Um, so it, it integrates with all of these things and you can, um, assign people to tasks. You can create due dates, you can create checklists within those. And it's just, we wouldn't be able to operate. Without that, especially our team only meets in person once a week for the most part. And so this gives us the ability to still work together and be on the same page without having to be together all the 

John: time.

What if you don't have a team? Is Trello still good for that? Oh, yeah, 

Kacie: definitely. Like keeping yourself on track? Yes, because if you're doing certain things every day, You still need to create those, you know, those tasks, those, those processes of what you're doing because eventually, hopefully you want to have a team.

You want to be able to delegate things. And also it, you know, you can create yourself checklist. So if there's things that you do consistently every week, you know, you need to, you know, do your accounting. You need to, um, answer emails. You need to like, you can use Trello to keep yourself on task for all of those things.

I love that. 

John: Um, sometimes I get lost in my calendar. Yeah. Because I live off my calendar. Um, if it's not on my calendar, I ain't doing it. Right? But sometimes I miss some things. So having a better system, like a Trello, Um, I think it's a great idea because it allows you to, like you said, create your processes.

I would say even if I'm like a, a sole person with no team. Get the free version just so I can use it for myself. Free version does a lot. Yeah, and then it helps me create everything I need so that when we're bringing on teams We can then, hey, here's what we, here's the way it goes. Automatically, we understand how Trello works.

We can share that information. It makes it easier in just bringing your team up to speed too. Yes, 

Kacie: it can, you can do attachments on it too, which is nice. So like, we have a Board on our Trello that has all of our contracts and things like that. So the idea for our Trello is it's one place. It's one place.

If our team needs passwords for things, if they need printables, you know, that we have available, if they need, you know, uh, scripts. So. Social media scripts. When we get messages coming in, we have canned responses that anybody from our team can kind of pull and customize so that we all sound very similar.

It doesn't sound like a different person or different company answering every time. Um, so even for yourself, if you're just by yourself, instead of having to, you know, a lot of times we get the same messages that come in instead of having to start from scratch and answer that message. You just it. Create a canned response in Trello.

You copy it and paste it and there you go. Nice. So there's a lot of things that you can use it for another tool that people use For similar things as monday. com That's a really popular one. Mm hmm Um people love monday. com and I think those are probably two of the most popular ones that I can think of There's a lot more out there.

So many so many programs. 

John: Yeah, you know what and and uh That's when you mentioned it earlier when we started, when we first started talking that it can get overwhelming, right? Trying to find the program that's right for you. Um, I would say test take like Do your research and do like the top three and then just mess around with it Do like the free trial in the top three mess around with on your on your on your off time and the one that resonates With you is the one you go with.

Mm hmm That just brings you into the ecosystem. And then you can say, well, you know what? Now my business has converted, got a little bit more complex. I kind of need a program that can handle that. And then you can, you know, you build your way up to the, to actually create the right system that works for you.

Yeah, 

Kacie: it definitely takes time. And it's, I think that's another reason why a lot of people don't do it is because it takes time on the front end to get, to do the research, to try this new thing, to learn how it works. And they're like, well, why would I spend time doing that if I could just get the task done right now?

But it's, it definitely. especially if the program that you're using, um, you know, holds you accountable, creates some sort of accountability. Like sales is another great way. You could even use Trello for your sales tracking, which is another type of thing that you need. Pipeline, a pipeline. Yep. So like you can create a card with a business on it and then say, Hey, Here's the checklist.

Here's the people that need to be tagged in the certain things. This is what needs to happen. And it'll give you reminders at certain times. That's cool. Yes. So I think, um, even though it does take all, it takes time to set all that stuff up, it can help hold you accountable. It can save you time in the backend.

Um, especially if you're using it. You know, for a wide variety of tasks, 

John: building something good is going to take time always. It's not going to come easy. I think we said that before. Nothing good comes easy, right? So you got to take the time in the front end to build it because the goal, right? If I'm correct me if I'm wrong.

But you eventually want to work on your business, not in your business. Right. Right? So creating the right foundation will allow you to take a step out of your business, and it still runs without you being there. So nice. You can take a trip one day, you know, why not? Take 

Kacie: an early Friday. For real. 

John: Wish I could do that today.

Kacie: Yes. So accounting system, it is for them, for whatever day you are, you need to tape, be able to automate these things. So you could take a half day. Um, so a notebook and accounting system, some system to keep track of all of your information, your task lists, your to do's. Um, uh, if you have a team, you need a communication system, whether that be what's app or slack or, um, there's so many communication systems now.

Um, we won't get too far into that, but that is something that you need for sure. Um, and then. A way to track your sales, your sales process, and that could be Trello or monday. com or whatever you use. But, um, some popular ones for that would be Salesforce and Sightly. There's a lot of programs that are specifically made.

Pipe Drive is another one. Pipe Drive. And then, um, and again, we're, we're, we don't want to take you too long, so we're going to kind of zip up through these next ones. Um, but keeping track of customers. CRM. Mm hmm. That's another program you need to have. I think that's huge. That is 

John: huge. If you're not reaching out to the people that have done business with you, then you're missing out on sales.

Yes. You want to stay top of mind and that's what these systems are for. You 

Kacie: also want to have a place to take notes on them so you can go back and have personal conversations. So it's not just like you're freshly meeting that person new every time people really appreciate being remembered You know their names and the names of their kids or you know The birthday anniversary of their business or their birthday things like that.

So having a CRM system which stands for customer relationship management Yes, 

John: you want to manage that relationship with your customers? What, what is the system that you use? We use 

Kacie: Trello for that too. You use Trello hmm. Yeah, we have a board. So in Trello you can create different, they're called boards, oops, and they're like folders.

So we have a folder, like our team folder, that has, you know, passwords that the whole team needs to know, just general team stuff, and then all of our documents, the canned responses, those type of things, and then we have a whole folder of Um, for our businesses that pay us. And so that is, um, we have checklists within that for all the things that we have to do for them every month.

And then, um, we make notes in their cards too. And then we have another folder for just all the business. We work with hundreds of businesses every week and we have them categorized by each shop and play and you can. Just, you know, make a card for each business, and then you can alphabetize it, you can make notes.

My team can go in and, you know, if they drop in a business, they can make a quick note, like, I stopped in this business and said hi, and this is what happened. So anytime we go into a business, we can pull up that card. Excuse me, and see exactly what happened. I love 

John: it. What about like, uh, Communicating with your customers 

Kacie: with the customers.

Yeah. So I think that needs to be a lot. Let's finish with that one. Yeah. 

John: Is that different though? Customer communication and isn't that part of CRM? 

Kacie: It can be. We use Constant Contact. Constant Contact. Yep. We use, there's so many other ones, ConvertKit, um, MailChimp. Just, you know, mail. Those are more like newsletter.

But what, we kind of incorporate that into our communication because then we can track it. You can see if they opened it, um, you can go back and, you know, look through them. 

John: So, I like that you said that. As a business, you want to market your business, right? And communicate with your business, with the people that, your customers, um, but you also want to find out what's effective.

Like what, what are they resonating with? What are they, what are they opening? You know, what, so that kind of system helps 

Kacie: with that? It does, yeah, because if you send them an email you can see if they opened it or not. And then it helps hold them accountable too. And they call you and say, Hey, I never got that email or whatever.

You could say, yeah, we send it out at this day at this time. It says that you opened it. That's happened several times. We didn't know about this special and we're like, Oh yeah, well, we send it in an email and you opened it. 

John: You got to hold your clients accountable too. Yes. Why 

Kacie: not? We use, so that's what we use.

And then we also use our text club for communication because some businesses do, they love email. Other ones love text message. Other ones do phone calls. So in our Trello board we have, you know, under that customer what their preferred way of communication is. And so some of them do it through, that's a cool, we've podcast on text club and the importance of it, but that's awesome.

It is great. That phone number also gives them the ability to text us stuff and it all gets saved under their phone number. So we can just go to that phone number. Anybody on our team can pull up any text that we've done with the customer. 

John: I love it. That's good stuff. Really great. So that brings us to the end, right?

Yeah, 

Kacie: unless can you think of anything else? Technology wise, we're going to go into social media and video and all of that is next. We're not even going to get into that 

today. 

John: I think for the operation stuff, I think that's, we pretty much covered like the major aspects of operating a business and how you can automate the different, the different, you know, let's just say departments.

Mm hmm. So, um, you do your own research though. You know, but we threw out some good ones for you to check out so that you're not Digging the deep hole like going down the rabbit hole and exposing yourself to all these different things You know, we threw out some ones that are worth checking 

Kacie: out. Yeah for sure and there's Many more that we didn't mention today But at least hopefully this kind of got you started thinking in the right Headed in the right direction.

John: Definitely. Yeah. Awesome. I can't wait till next 

Kacie: week. Yeah. We will see you guys next week. We'll go into the technology when it comes to social media, video editing, all that stuff. Ooh, that's huge. See you then. Bye.