The Best Software and Systems for Coaches

Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith dive into the world of tech and discuss a variety of market options for the best software and systems available for coaches on the market today.  From CRM and Project Management softwares to Communication and Email Marketing Platforms, learn how to select the best systems for your coaching business. 

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• Non-business-related apps that are fun to try
• What are Em and Lex’s favorite CRMs and Project Management Tools for Coaches
• Their favorite communication tools for coaches
• Their favorite client onboarding systems and tools for coaches 
• Their favorite (and least favorite) email marketing softwares for coaches
• Other tools softwares and systems for coaches that Em & Lex find helpful 
• How to identify what software and systems are best for your coaching practice
• Homework on three steps to start the system selection process in an efficient manner 

Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram

Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachprogram.com

Snag 5 Numbers to Know to Launch a Coaching Business here.

Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.

Transcript

 The Best Software and Systems for Coaches

Speakers: 

Lexie Smith, Emily Merrell

Lexie Smith 

Hi. We're gonna get techie today, guys. So buckle in.

Emily Merrell 

We're like IT support basically. So what are your favorite? I'm really curious, what are your favorite like personal apps and systems you use in your personal life? Before we dive

Lexie Smith 

really opening unlocking my iPhone, so and looking at my apps? For okay, this is super random. If you are a wine drinker, if you've ever actually Emily, have you heard of Rabel winery? Okay, I'm a I think, I guess, I don't know if it's only in California, but it's a California wine. And if you're in California look for it. You I'm sure you can buy it online. They have really artistic labels. They also have an app where when you hover over the label, like you take the app, you put it in front of the wine bottle, it makes the label come to life in like a cinematic movie. And I think it's I think it's so cool. And I geek out. So that is like the first app and looking at it's called the The Robert wine co app.

Emily Merrell 

That is that is not a helpful app, don't

Lexie Smith 

know what's a good party party trick. Like bring a bottle of wine over to a friend and I'll say watch this. And it always gets oohs and ahhs. But also I have the Canva app, I have a Smart Home app that I control my AC on flow was a big one for me when I was trying to conceive and then throughout pregnancy, f L. O. M. i A lot of these are business related. I'm trying to see if there's any other fun ones I can call out that are non business related. While I'm looking, what about you? Um,

Emily Merrell 

I would say Simply Safe app, I have one called Life 360. It's where you can stalk your partner and like see how fast they're driving in the car. I've heard that sound wonderful. And like your stopping was not good enough. I have all the normal ones like Rent the Runway OpenTable GrubHub. Oh, Libby. Okay. Libby, this is a great one, I don't think you have this one. And I think I keep shaming you to, to get it. So if you are a Kindle or iPad reader. And so that's why I don't have it. That's why Yeah, and you want to not continue spending a gajillion dollars on Amazon, you can use Libby, which, which pairs with your local library. And you can download books through your local library, which is awesome. So I'm actually based in San Francisco, and I can have the San Francisco Library. And if I know I'm not based in San Francisco, my app is based in San Francisco. And then you can also get another Denver one as well. So those are some of my favorite apps. For myself, and like looking all over. The one

Lexie Smith 

I'll give a shout out to my favorite like Photo Filter Filter, meaning like color filters app, I use Tezza te ZZ a just has really cool color combinations for photos. I do pay for it. I don't know if there's a free version, but I like it enough to pay for it every single month. So

Emily Merrell 

many apps I need to delete that.

Lexie Smith 

What's the one like lasting?

Emily Merrell 

Yes, lasting? Yeah, it's an app. Basically, like matches you with your partner. And it's it's like therapy in your pocket. So you can you'll be prompted to answer questions that they asked you and then it matches it up with your your partner's answers. And you're able to discuss further. Oh, and later is another one that I use. I guess it's more business one, but pre scheduling all of my photos on later. So I don't have to be going to bed and been like, Oh no, I didn't post a photo today. It's all bad.

Lexie Smith 

I have the app. It's going to end up because I forgot about this and I just saw it. There's an app. I use it for my wedding, but I guarantee this is going to trigger some people. Oh no. This I feel like was probably invented for like the cheaters of the world. It looks like I'll show you no one can see but it looks like your calculator. Uh huh. It works like a calculator. But if you type in a pin, it unlocks a secret vault on your phone for photos. So I put all my wedding dress photos in it. But it literally like you open it and you can go like five plus five equals 10. You can store like screenshots and things. It's a secret space, too. So, like, now everyone's gonna go to and grab their partner's phone and like, the calculator is really the calculator or if it's a secret

Emily Merrell 

way, that's very cool. My so my husband used to work at Words with Friends. And he said that a lot of people would have affairs Three Words with Friends. Really, yeah, they would use the chat functionality and chat back and forth. And I was like, and also a lot of relationships would start on Words with Friends. And he had to design a few proposal boards and whatnot. But like, it wasn't a fair app.

Lexie Smith 

Wow. Okay. So speaking of getting your affairs in order, relationship affairs, with business, you want to get your business affairs in orders and and the thing that helps do that are tools and systems so today, we're going to be going into some of our favorite tools and systems some we've also tried and just other ones for you guys to look at as you streamline your business affairs.

Emily Merrell 

Wow. Well done. Slow clapping you in my brain right now. Okay, so let's talk about project management. Next, what's your favorite tool for project management?

Lexie Smith 

I have a couple I'll share this one because I know you're gonna share a different one. I really, really like the tool streak. Okay, if you are a Gmail user, so everyone except for Emily Merrill, is kidding emoji.

Emily Merrell 

I just don't like it in Gmail, I

Lexie Smith 

think Gmail sucks. There is my husband has outlook as well. But if you're in maybe there's a streak for Outlook, I just don't know it. I'm teen Gmail.

Emily Merrell 

I'm in Gmail, I just put it in Apple Mail. So it looks like

Lexie Smith 

your grandma. Yes. So, um, streak is free. I'm still on the free functionality. There is a paid iteration of it. But it's an extension that connects directly into your inbox. So literally, Google streak, Gmail extension. And it allows you to it's basically a CRM that lives in your Gmail, so you can create pipelines on it. You can see if people have seen your emails, you can create Saved Templates, a lot of other CRM, which customer relationship management system is what that stands for. Outside of the app, it just it lives in there. So for me, it's been really, really helpful and not having to just bounce back and forth. That's one of my favorites.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah, that sounds awesome. That sounds great. What's one of yours? Um, I really like Trello, I was late to the game with Trello very resistant, I probably downloaded it every year for six years before I realized that I liked it. And I think it's wonderful for managing both myself and also managing my team. And being able to organize like where things live, where passwords live, where structures and documentation of like how to do things live. Everything has a home in Trello. And it's free, which I really love. Yeah, we

Lexie Smith 

use Trello at ReadySet. Coach, we do a lot of things in Trello. From planning or social media, to we have a Trello board for all our marketing efforts. We have a Trello board for our upcoming cohort, which when you're listening to this will be in our cohort. So really great tool, one of its competitors that is commonly looked at is Asana. I've tried both I do prefer Trello personally, but you know if you're looking those would be two kind of apples to Apple ones you might compare.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah, definitely a fan favorite. Other apps that we use for communication that I love is is slack. And again, I was late to the party and slack. But holy hell like Slack changes the way that we we communicate. Can you imagine if all of the communication we had was just an email?

Lexie Smith 

No. Oh, I So fun fact. When before entrepreneurship, I'm going to work for a telecommunications company attempted to migrate my entire company on Slack and it failed because everyone was so team teams. No, they were not Microsoft Teams. They just communicated through like Gmail chat.

Emily Merrell 

Oh yeah. Which I think they took away oh,

Lexie Smith 

I don't even know what you call it but it was a big flop so when I like no one everyone was resistant and obviously at a telecom there's a lot of IT people there. So there was a lot of opinions. First thing I did when I started my own business was made the decision that every single program I run will be on Slack and I was super happy. So it's it's the cool thing about Slack is you can operate it in your browser window but you can also download download it as an app to your desktop in your phone. And it reminds me of back when we had I'd like AOL.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah. Yeah. Aim. Yeah, aim. And you can, I mean, Lexie and I only we make it our mission are trying to make it our mission to only communicate and gifts. Moving forward, see if we can get work done just to get so it adds a little pep to your step.

Lexie Smith 

Some things to know with slack to speaking of gifts is integrates with a ton of apps like the giffy app, and it can connect to just about almost any other system you're using. At this point, it can connect to your Google Calendar. There's hundreds, probably 1000s of apps so we're big team slack. Other though, communication platforms similar to slack that other coaches use. I know base camp is one that I have been onboarding on Voxer is one boxer is different because it's it's voice communication, but again, that is a tool that some coaches do use what else?

Emily Merrell 

I mean, a lot of people use the Instagram DMS to I know for coaches that they'll like do a lot of chatting with voice notes through IG DMS, which personally feels really hard to manage. I like the fact that we have channels in Slack and everything lives in one space and it's on my desktop. I think it's on my desktop. It just feels so much better.

Lexie Smith 

Yep. So we're Team slack. They do not sponsor this.

Emily Merrell 

Not yet. Not yet. Okay, let's talk about websites. So we have built websites on both WordPress Squarespace show it are all of these things Wix personally, because I'm a grandma as as young Lexie likes to point out. I prefer Squarespace because I feel like even the grandma ease. Grandma ease the grandmas of the world can navigate Squarespace that I have my website on WordPress, and I effing hate it personally.

Lexie Smith 

Okay, here's the breakdown. So we have ReadySet coach on Squarespace because I know Emily liked it. And to be honest, like we when we first started ready to coach didn't need a complicated website. It's great. It's user friendly, so is Wix. I would say Wix and Squarespace are pretty. I actually prefer Wix to Squarespace. But WordPress, if you are like the website, your website is a big part of your business, I would highly, highly encourage you to look at WordPress, it's way better for SEO. There's a lot more developers can do a lot more with it. But if you are going to be managing your website and you are not a tech person, then go to a platform like Squarespace. So if you're in the coaching industry, and literally you just need a website for your coaching business, and you want to keep it simple, then yeah, I'd say Squarespace or Wix are very simple.

Emily Merrell 

And that's how I started my business. I started my business on Squarespace. It wasn't till they had more additional six degrees society six degrees to say my six degrees society business on Squarespace, and when it had more additional functionalities needed. That's when I switched over to WordPress, and I'm very grateful and I have great SEO, but it is definitely more. It's like driving stick shift for me. It's just very comfortable with it.

Lexie Smith 

Okay, let's talk about I'll call the category of like onboarding system. So systems like sending contracts, invoicing, all those when you get an A coaching client, right? You send them a contract, and you send them an invoice. Those are two things initially. So let's talk through some of the options on the market there.

Emily Merrell 

So some options that we've used HelloSign which is really, really great for

Lexie Smith 

is it Hello, yes, hello, sign as you get I think, as of right now, three contracts a month.

Emily Merrell 

Yes, it's a little manual and having to upload them or how you upload them. But it's awesome. And it's a great way to feel like a lot more professional than sending a PDF and having them send the PDF right back to you. So hello, signs are good free tool. Other tools I've used for contracts have been honey book. I'm kind of like about honey book. I liked it for a while but I felt like I wasn't utilizing the full functionality of what it was. But I know some people like a photographer who has like these beautiful proposals they're sending out it's a perfect solution for them.

Lexie Smith 

Well and honey book the big like Pro for honey book is it's an all in one system. So there's a lot like you can invoice you can schedule, you can have some CRM in it. So it is a good cross platform solution. If you're looking to have like a single tool I'm I feel like if I remember correctly, they take out a little bit of a larger fee.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah, I think it's like 2.5 or something like that. Action fees. And so the other ways to invoice that we like our stripe, we've used one called Paithan which is new does take they both they will take a little bit of a percentage but that's to be expected with most credit Get Current processing platforms.

Lexie Smith 

Let's see QuickBooks. QuickBooks is actually what we're migrating to right now I'm on Fresh Books for the PR bar, we're on stripe for Ready, Set coach. I'm migrating both the PR and we are migrating. Ready Set coach to QuickBooks right now. That's our accounting software. But FreshBooks and QuickBooks are two other ones you can look into stripe is great for it's free QuickBooks and FreshBooks or not. So if you are like brand new, and you're looking for ways to get to be really cost efficient right now, then stripe is a great option, I would say.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah, I think that is. That's a great suggestion.

Lexie Smith 

The other contract I just want to point out because it's the one we use is we use Adobe sign for our contracts. Yeah. So all of our contracts go out through Adobe sign simply because I have that software, I use it a lot for my business, and we can, um, it's part of the Creative Cloud Suite for Adobe. So that's just another another option as well. And you're way better at visuals than me. So why don't you kick this off? Okay,

Emily Merrell 

so guys, close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now imagine that you're living on an island sipping spicy margaritas in between coaching calls effortlessly signing 10k months?

Lexie Smith 

Well, doesn't that sound like every other Facebook and Instagram ad you've seen from coaches? The reality for most new coaches, you find yourself spending countless hours searching for your ideal clients doing all the free trainings and working tirelessly as you attempt to differentiate yourself in a saturated market way to be

Emily Merrell 

a buzzkill lacks, but yes, that's way more accurate. However, what if? What if what what is the magic formula to building a profitable and sustainable coaching business? Didn't have to be so complicated? What if attaining your version of a dream life didn't have to remain on your faraway someday list? What if someone took the time to sift through all the crap that's out there and finally created a program built specifically and only for well intentioned and qualified coaches and coaches to be just like you? Hey, we did that. That's what I'm getting at

Lexie Smith 

LAX. It's time for you guys to meet me. Annise business baby ready site coach.

Emily Merrell 

It's a turnkey program built by coaches for coaches that focuses on teaching coaches how to build a profitable business that supports their

Lexie Smith 

lifestyle. Learn more at ReadySet. Coach program.com.

Emily Merrell 

Now enrolling should we talk about creating graphics and that you don't have to be a designer to create graphics anymore.

Lexie Smith 

So once upon a time, you had to know how to use the Adobe Photoshop or Creative Cloud Suite, I still have it, I still paid for it, I probably should clip it because 99.999% of the time, I am on Canva.

Emily Merrell 

And I love Canva because I'm 100 years old, and I can drive Canva. And what's cool about Canva I feel like every single year it has been evolving. So we create our presentations in Canva. They have amazing templates for presentations. If you had seen a presentation I had created in 2015, you would actually like laugh in my face lacks compared to what we have been able to create with Canva and the ease in which they make it that to presentations. We do Instagram posts. We do Facebook banners, we do reels in Canva like there's so many things.

Lexie Smith 

It's all the things and speaking of pretty things let's also talk guys were like rapid firing system. So if you need to pause, go get a notebook and restart this by all means, but I know one that is highly debated is email software and I have gone through Holy Cow so many different email marketing software's I would say probably the most popular in the coaching industry right now is flow desk and that's because it's

Emily Merrell 

pretty, pretty cool. I have my

Lexie Smith 

issues with it, but I know a lot of people really really love it.

Emily Merrell 

Okay, so here's the thing, and when she's talking about email, she's talking about like email marketing newsletters, not like Gmail or Outlook or anything like that just for clarification purposes, which they are different. So the way you send a newsletter is different than the way you send an email. And so I have started I started my career on MailChimp and MailChimp was awesome. It is awesome because it's free up until a certain point, it does have limitations with the free one. It's also a little clunkier and a little bit more challenging to get to a format that you like to send out. I actually hired someone to create a MailChimp is a template for me, so it'd be easier moving forward. From there, I moved to Active Campaign which was more sophisticated, much more expensive. Also, MailChimp definitely got more expensive when I got more newsletter subscribers, so I was paying like $150 a month Lex, I don't know if you knew this. And so then moving to Active Campaign, it was, I had to scrub half of my list to actually afford active campaigns, but there was incredible flows that came with it. And that was when I was working with a marketing agency that was very insistent that that was the platform that I used. And then fast forward, I now use Flow desk, what I love about flow desk is that they're not going to penalize you for getting more subscribers. So what I mean by that is like, I can have 50,000 subscribers, and it's still gonna stay at the price that I'm paying, which I got locked in early on. So it's $19 a month. And they have beautiful templates, because I'm old, it

Lexie Smith 

is very pretty. Yes. My journey is not as full of snobbery is what I'd say. So coming from, like a really extensive marketing background, I was used to like the Cadillacs of all the different software's out there, I was on the sales forces and the hub spots and stuff that really just don't make a lot of sense for small businesses. So when I had to downgrade to a small business style, email marketing platform, I just the thing I didn't like with flow desk because I couldn't do as much with it, there wasn't a lot of analytics involved. And I'm a nerd like that. So I'm on ConvertKit right now, I still don't love it, I literally have gone through 10 different email marketing software's in the past three years, and I have gripes with every single one of them. So what we usually tell our cohort is flow desk or MailChimp, if you are unfamiliar with email marketing are great places to start. And they're very cost effective

Emily Merrell 

100% And ConvertKit. I've downloaded about 1000 times and I still can't figure it out. So if that just gives you a sense of challenge

Lexie Smith 

challenged, invite it again, disclaimer, all the disclaimers there are so many systems, we're not going over all of them. We're just going over some common ones. Now let's talk a little bit about CRM. So earlier, we talked about project management, I tend to sometimes get project management and CRM customer relationship management systems like they looped together in my brain. But there is technically a difference. A CRM would be a way really you're interacting with your clients more, and you can get a lot more robust solutions. So some really popular CRM systems. I mentioned a couple, Salesforce and HubSpot are CRMs you might hear Kajabi dubsado. What are some other ones hopper?

Emily Merrell 

coppers, another one, pipe drive, drive

Lexie Smith 

monday.com click up. Those are also some other examples of this are also kind of in the project management side. Basically, as you're hearing on this episode, there are a ton of systems out there. So here's my advice. For getting started. Write down. First and foremost, two things can you make, make to take out two notebooks or pieces of paper, piece of paper. Number one, write down all the tasks that you do in a given day. Like posting to social media, oh, I need to send a client contract. Write down the things that you need to do to operate your business. Step two is go through and highlight which can be systemized or automated in which can't like an example of what can't is writing your captions. I mean, I don't know of a system, right that can generate your voice yet. No,

Emily Merrell 

I mean, definitely their marketing agencies or whatnot, or people who you can pay to do it, but like an actual system.

Lexie Smith 

So that's step two, step three, you have to know what's important to you. Are you someone who at this point, it's cost? Is it I really just don't want to toggle between tools. Are you Alexia and you care about the nitty gritty analytics. So write down what's important to you, that will help you start to decipher and sift through all the different systems on the marketplace

Emily Merrell 

and start with one system at a time. Don't overwhelm yourself by signing up for all the systems, but commit to something so say you want to do project management. You can do a free trial of Trello which is free anyways, and I think you have to pay for Asana, but like a free trial of asana and you can compare and contrast. See what you like better and then make a decision.

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, yeah. So that's your homework. It's basically an audit. So again, real quick, high level, write down all the tasks that go into performing your visit your business, excuse me. Step two. go through and see what can be systemized or automated versus what really just as manual. And three, write down what's important to you. Is it cost is it, you know, all in one, then just pick one category to start one system that'll just help you be able to vet more efficiently.

Emily Merrell 

And once you've done that, DM us on Instagram, let us know what systems you went with. And if you have any questions about the systems, we might be able to point you in the right direction.

Lexie Smith 

We love systems if you can't tell how many out there there's way more than we said. today. Tell us your favorite tools to always down to check out check out new ones.

Emily Merrell 

Yeah, we're always learning. So with that, enjoy the rest of your day. We can't wait to hear about your homework. See you next time on the ReadySet coach podcast. If you're enjoying the ReadySet coach podcast, please leave a review wherever you are listening. For more information about Ready Set, coach, Visit Ready Set coach program.com