We have been around the block once or twice online and have tried our hand in many platforms, hosting services, and domain providers, but when it came time to rebrand we were stuck. We pondered for months over who or what we should choose, but once we finally made the decision we never looked back! Squarespace is by far the easiest platform to use, with the cleanest interface. Choosing them is hands down the best decision we’ve made for our business and blog.

Emylee here. Words like “systems”, “audits”, “workflows”, “processes” and “checklists” - they can either make the extreme Type A person rejoice and ask for more or they can make the whimsical creative clam up and cringe.

Here at Think Creative Collective, part of “thinking creative” is to put on the business hat every once in awhile so we can check in with our growth and sustainability. And that’s exactly what a systems audit does for you.

We all wish we could snap our fingers and have that list of to-dos magically turn into a list of things we’ve accomplished. Sometimes we are so knee deep in the muck of it all that it’s super hard to clearly see the next steps that need to be taken. In the same way you might go through your house and separate items into 3 piles – Keep, Donate and Trash – I believe tasks in your business should be divided up as well, helping you to tackle them in the most productive way possible. 

Everyone wants to get tailored content. But how can you do that when you just have a huge list of names? How are you supposed to make sure Taylor gets emails about building his brand and that Monisha gets emails about creating systems to streamline her business?

It’s time for you to up your email marketing game and collect more information on your subscribers.

What Do You Really Need to Know?

Owning and operating your own business generally means that you end up wearing lots of hats. You’re not only the director of pushing out and creating all the content, but the one who markets it, organizes getting paid, communicates with clients, and so much more. It can get really overwhelming, but if you put systems in place you can save time, earn more, and work less. Organization and systems will help you focus on what you love, and also let you take care of the necessities. We’ve gathered our top 15 productivity tools *(HINT: 8 of them are free!) and today we’re letting you in on how we use them and how they could be big influencers in your business too.

The day I discovered Kiwi for Gmail was the day I realized there really was actually a better way. If you are anything like me, you are constantly switching between different Gmail accounts, trying to figure out where you saved your last Google doc and just wishing that, for the love of all things bacon flavored, it would stop logging you out when you didn’t ask it to. Kiwi for Gmail is a simple application that allows people to utilize Gmail + the G-Suite right on their desktop… sweet, seriously.

Today I want to teach you how to use link triggers in ConvertKit to make things crazy easy for already-existing subscribers. Obviously there are 1.493723 billion things you could use a link trigger for so this is just an example.

Let’s say you’re hosting a webinar and you want to send an email to your list telling them about it and asking them to sign up but because they’re already on your list (aka, already given you their email address, name, etc) they could really skip the whole sign up page thing.

So, this ain’t your first Trello rodeo.

You have Abagail and Emylee’s boards. Your business is insanely organized. You spend your days doing the things and moving the cards to the right, to the right.

Like Beyonce on opposite day.

Anyway, you spend most of your day in Trello and love it that way. But is that really a good thing?

I mean, I get it.

The app is a-mah-zing for planning and organizing, and that stuff is so important. But you need to focus on the doing, not just the planning and organizing, so maybe you need to find another way to get that stuff done.

Looking back on our investments over time, we actually purchased Leadpages long before we even started paying for an email service provider. For some that may seem goofy, but for us it was strategic. With the power of Leadpages we have been able to grow our list by thousands and it didn’t take any technical knowledge to make it happen.

Before I jump into how to set up my favorite aspect of Leadpages, let me first tell you about the different options available to you right out of the box.