Ready Set Coach Podcast

Systems and Tools That Have Transformed Our Business

• Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith • Season 2 • Episode 86

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This week’s episode focuses on what tools Em and Lex use in the Ready Set Coach community and what works and doesn’t. Em and Lex share their favorite types of business tools, including apps, software, extensions, programs, and more. They discuss what works well in each one and what they use within their businesses and workflows. 


Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • Types of apps and systems Em and Lex use for the Ready Set Coach Community
  • What they like about apps, software and systems
  • What elements worked and what didn’t 
  • Different solutions for specific systems they’ve both experimented with
  • What systems they use for purchases of services 
  • Types of plug-ins and tools that work best for payments 
  • Ways they try to connect their community members and platforms that work for the type of community they want to have
  • Tips on looking at what types of paid subscriptions of services would work best for your business
  • And more!


Listener Links: 



Lexie Smith  

The host you press.


Emily Merrell  

I Lexie Smith Surpriser. Here, we're here. Oh


Lexie Smith  

my gosh, LinkedIn new see on time. It's


Emily Merrell  

been like five minutes, three minutes. 45 seconds.


Lexie Smith  

This is like what our eighth call of the day? I don't know, I was just so I was just on a call with a former grad of ours. And she's like, do you happen? I'll tell you about it in a second. But she was like, Do you have more time? And like, I don't I don't know. I've had a lot of calls today. I'm like, oh, yeah, my next calls Emily. Of course, I have time. Just kidding. We had like an hour break. I'm kidding. It was a joke. But let me let me brag on this grad for a second and say how much I love these full circle moments. So there's been a few times where Emily and I have needed to hire a service. And if and when there's a past client of ours that we can hire, they're going to be our first stop. We truly do believe in that. Like we've gotten this insider seat into their business and gotten to know them as humans. So long winded story leading up to say, Ashton was at her two year appointment last Friday. And my doctor was like, You need a sleep consultant. Here's a card for one locally. And I was like sleep consultant, if I'm going to hire a sleep consultant, I'm gonna go to Jillian of snooze baby CO. So Julian was a grad of ReadySet. Coach when it was a program. And she is an absolutely phenomenal sleep consultant. And I just had my discovery call with her.


Emily Merrell  

What Okay, first off, I just want to hear what you're like aha moment your child is two years old. What were your what were your pain points that led you to going? Oh, my God, I need help.


Lexie Smith  

One, it's been something that we've no, I think this is a great conversation. This could be a whole podcast in itself, but I'll keep it keep it short and sweet. So my husband and I have known our child's sleeping patterns are an issue for a long time. Okay, so let me just start there. We already knew we had the problem. lately. With her birthday approaching, which felt like a milestone, it's kind of been heightened less, I've been noticing the compounding effects for for how much lack of sleep I've been getting like my eyes are incredibly puffy. I'm seeing my skin. There's there's things manifesting physically, again, that I've been kind of ignoring, but like every day in the mirror, it's like little harder and harder to ignore. And then when a doctor finally brought it up, when I had someone else other than me, basically tell me, you need to address this now or the longer you wait, it's going to be harder, a doctor that I trusted, then then it was like, Okay, let's begin this process. So now I went I just did a call with her. I'm bought in now I need to present to my Well, I'm part of a marriage where we are co purchasers here. And he doesn't know who Julian is like


Emily Merrell  

fib. Do you want to sleep again? Do you want me to be nice to you? Well, I just gave you your fifth year anniversary present?


Lexie Smith  

Yeah, well, actually, it's such a good conversation to have to, to scroll to the squirrel. Which services you know, and what type of decisions a spouse is involved in. And for us for parenting, we're very, you know, we live together, we're married, this is a co purchase decision, and I need him to be bought in. In order for this to work,


Emily Merrell  

I feel like he also needs to be participating in the program. Like he needs to be learning this the sleep procedures and he needs to be an active student. He's not like a passive student who you're going to send him the replay to, he needs to be part of the journey. And I'd say Similarly, when we had a doula that was something, I was like, I want support, I don't want you to be the only one there. And this is important to me. Let's interview some people. And


Lexie Smith  

what I really appreciated about Jillian is she prefaced the call and like in an email and then again, at top of call saying she doesn't want me to feel any pressure to make any decision right now. In fact, I shouldn't I really should take the time to think about it with my partner and I respected that because yes, this is first off, this is a big decision. And when it's talking about your child, again, in a situation like mine, where there's two parents who are equal participants, that's not a decision that if you know, it wasn't Julian, and it was let's say Susie, making me feel any sort of way to give her an answer. Now, it would have been a huge turnoff for me and like a quick deal breaker 1,000%


Emily Merrell  

Which please reference our buying styles ref. Buying styles and sales episode to learn more about what works for people and what doesn't. But let's set actually reminds me about when you have a problem and you're in your business and you're doing things manually. So you're struggling with, like sleep, you know, you're struggling with putting your kid down, or you're struggling with keeping her down, and you're Googling you're trying to put together and, and banded together solutions. Well, that's kind of like systems and introducing systems into your business, maybe just


Lexie Smith  

the transition person. Now, did you just fully assume that role on this show?


Emily Merrell  

helped me out? I'm kind of I'm stumbling on my transition. But no, I do


Lexie Smith  

think it's tools like what tools we have available to us to solve problems,


Emily Merrell  

because some of them are free. Like there's so many free tools available. And then there reaches a point where you need to invest in a tool that can help streamline and systematize and smooth over your systems.


Lexie Smith  

So good. And actually, by the way, Jillian's like the a plus star student, because as she's walking me through the sales calls, like yes, you nailed that part. Yes, sir. Nailed that part. And one of the things we brought up and she acknowledged is I told her like, I have if there's like a free blog on this topic, there's a free download. I've read it. I have done what I can on the free universe sort of thing. The free universe universe, I made a thing trademark for free mom. Yeah, interesting freemium. And she acknowledged that and she's like, knowing that you're someone who's consumed a lot, like let me address like some potential questions that I already feel like you might, you know, or frustrations you might have. You've tried so many things, why will this work? And she really leaned into that objection anyways, go to say the value the value of letting tools help your life. So today, we're gonna talk about what tech and tools we're using in our Business Ready, Set coach community right now, what's more good, and honestly, what's not working too


Emily Merrell  

are things that we would like to reinvent and if you have solutions, please, please, please let us know. Okay, let's I'm going to talk about top of show and this is one of my favorite, like mind blowing apps. What I figured out this app, and there is a freemium version of it and freemium means like you can get this for free, and then you reach a certain number of things, then they start charging you money for it. So the first app that I want to talk about is Zapier. And when I heard about Zapier, I probably heard about it, like when I started my business a few months in as I was banned dating things together in a really, really, really, really clunky way. Zapier is like a translation device between apps. It basically is an API store, which I like to think of it as a rainbow bridge that makes sense of one app to the next app. And so when an email is sent to this person, then they get a onboarding thing in our circle, community or so on and so forth. So like all these things can happen. And I think Zapier is one of the coolest apps. I also think it is one of the frickin hardest apps. What do you think RX?


Lexie Smith  

Thoughts? I think that was a brilliant overview. I actually introduced Zapier to an agency client recently and I was like, it basically makes your systems talk to each other. So like a use case of that, let's say someone purchases something in stripe, we can set up a zap or an automation where they automatically get added to our email newsletter. Okay, so that's an example like Stripe is now talking to MailChimp thanks to Zapier um what is what I don't like about it in their mom is I don't like their newest interface I'm really lean into AI when I found it simpler before. However maybe this is like maybe the millennial or like the older person in me coming out like anytime an app like really changes its user base and like Stop Why do you do that? Go back


Emily Merrell  

like your phone, do your My phone just everything changed recently. They like forced me to do an upgrade. And I don't know how to drive it anymore.


Lexie Smith  

I hate it. I hate it. I just I would prefer and then eventually I appreciate it. But right now Zapier, I don't appreciate their AI universal or interface. I always go back to like, go back to old one. So Zapier is a gift Zapier. Also Zapier, let me let me rephrase this, Zapier did nothing wrong. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. No,


Emily Merrell  

I think I think there's a learning curve of Zapier like it's really frustrating when a developers like Bing Bang Boom, I just set up 17 zaps where you're like that took me seven hours and I haven't had water and I I'm still not sure if that's right.


Lexie Smith  

I don't think Zapier is challenging to set up, but I think it's challenging thing to do is to remember all this apps you did set up. And that is where Emily and I just got caught. And I'm going to call myself out on this. We were selling our conference right now. And I had a bunch of zaps, set up to onboard people when they purchase our launch pack separate product. So the ZAP was basically to string someone purchases a product in stripe, which that was the only product in stripe we had, then add them to MailChimp to this workflow. Well, I didn't realize that zap wasn't separating products. So everyone who was buying a conference table ticket from stripe, which is a new product was also getting access to the launch pack. And yeah, it was a whole thing. We fixed it this morning. But I guess human error there right? These tools are only as strong as the human behind them. Who


Emily Merrell  

do you think do you think they can mind read at this point? You know, that's the next AI feature I'm looking for as mind reading automations but you know, beggars can't be choosers. So laksa. You mentioned in Zapier, we mentioned MailChimp, and you mentioned stripe. So all I'll touch briefly on MailChimp. And then we can, we can dig deeper into other solutions. When Lex and I first started ReadySet. Coach, we both were using our own preferred email provider newsletter provider CRM provider, I still don't know what the right word is for this email marketing, email marketing software tool, something like that just Letter Person thing. Yeah, person, the thing that sends the people the stuff. And we chose MailChimp because we were we were experimenting, like, we're like, oh, we don't want to be spending money on an email service when we have two people on our newsletter. And so at the beginning, if correct me if I'm wrong, Lex, it was free. It was free. Free, is free dollars. So we're like, oh, this is our solution. It was free. And then it wasn't free. And that is something at I think they stopped making it free because we wanted to do more automations


Lexie Smith  

Is that correct? We got more people on our list. Yeah.


Emily Merrell  

And we got more people on our list. So those were two things that made us helped us decide. Yeah, helped us it helped us decide on a system that worked for us in terms of like, the lifestyle, and it's still a price point that I don't I don't love it, but I don't hate


Lexie Smith  

it bad. It what it was of us was very short sighted. So, and I don't blame us for that. Because when we first started this business, it was kind of experimental, we didn't really know what legs it was gonna have. We didn't go into the saying, oh my gosh, this is going to, you know, become what it is today. But now the problem about being short sighted and you've been warmed, is we have so many workflows and so many campaigns and so many things built into MailChimp, it would be such a big lift to move away. Yeah, it would suck. And I don't like MailChimp. By the way, sorry, sorry, MailChimp. If you're listening to this, you cannot sponsor this podcast actually can totally totally come sponsored. We love you. You're the best. Ever clunky. It's not intuitive. We both don't like it. But why we haven't moved away is because we have too much skin in the game. Yeah.


Emily Merrell  

Unless you were an intern and you're so interested in helping us transfer it over to another provider. We haven't found the solution that works right for us in the things that we need at this moment in time. Which brings me lacks to I'm going to say QuickBooks I know I'd like you say


Lexie Smith  

we you brought up stripe yeah there for a second. Well,


Emily Merrell  

MailChimp is owned by QuickBooks. So


Lexie Smith  

fun fact really there which is owned by Intuit which my brother in law works for. I did not realize MailChimp was owned by them. Hmm.


Emily Merrell  

Yeah, that's why we hate the funkiness of both of them. Anyways, back to stripe. Okay, stripe. Stripe is, is it a really versatile tool. So if you are on Squarespace, or if you're on WordPress, there is most likely some sort of plugin available to stripe. So for those that aren't familiar with stripe, it's essentially the language from receiving your payment or it's a tool to receive your payment. And then to process your payment, take a portion of your money and then deliver it to your bank account.


Lexie Smith  

That integrate payment processor. Yeah, that's


Emily Merrell  

a nice way of saying it. Yeah.


Lexie Smith  

Well, and there are more bells and whistles like you can send voice or voice voice voices. You can set up product links. You can set up coupons, subscriptions, subscriptions to a point it's you don't have to pay to have an account again low barrier to entry, but they do what you already highlighted the way they may make their money is through transaction fees. I do think it is, what it offers that QuickBooks doesn't, which is another platform that we do have for bookkeeping and invoicing for more higher ticket items. I don't believe you can create the I'm gonna like bite my tongue on this, maybe you can but I don't think in quick book you can create forward facing product, you probably can


Emily Merrell  

Yeah, you can you have to pay for a higher tier got it. That's why I don't and we don't have the higher tier. And that's the other thing. So you think about like, when you were starting a business. And the reason we decided to have this episode recorded today or to think about it is there's often so many decisions you have to make. And there's that moment where you're like, oh, I can just then mo charge. And that's cool. And it's just without without a fee. But then that's not looking professional. And that's not really a great way for tracking. So then you start investigating other ways to receive money or to send money or to have a membership and whatnot. And so we're sharing with you, again, our learnings as we, too went through these processes for creating our business with it being created on a hypothesis.


Lexie Smith  

So we have stripe and QuickBooks, which is you know, a little counterintuitive, but here we are. I hate QuickBooks. I really do. I really hate it. Our bookkeeper likes it. So that's why we're still on it. I'm on it for invoicing for the PR bar and growth mode as well. But yeah, anyways, I digress. Okay, let's let's move on to something a little bit sexier. But let's talk about something I think we did. Right. So we talked about a lot of like short sighted things. I think it was a year ago.


Emily Merrell  

So just get okay. Okay, I see where you're going.


Lexie Smith  

You see what I'm doing. About a year ago, I decided personally to invest in upgrading upgrading my project management tool for my PR companies, I decided to also have because my Podcast Producer for the PR bar does podcast producing for RSC, I had the person I hired to help me with this system migration because I did hire someone because it was a huge lift out processes and workflows for RSC. So for the podcast, production of Ready Set coach, everything is managed in clique up, and it is a very well oiled machine.


Emily Merrell  

It is and guys I came to click up crying and kicking and screaming and resisting backs are the earliest short of our conversation where change is not easy. And it's not something that we're quickly like, Oh, we're in we love it. And Lex and I both have our slow moving kind of feelings on things. So yeah, I do like click up. And I think it's a really cool tool. And it there is a free version available too. So it's my understanding,


Lexie Smith  

I don't know, cuz I don't know, because I just when I went over to it, I was already on paid.


Emily Merrell  

I have a free version for STS that I created after so inspired by your evolution, although I have to say a project management tool that I really want to start digging into and I haven't given myself the time to really focus on it is a notion you're


Lexie Smith  

going there. And now a lot of clients who use them i a lot right now, isn't it but it's this could be i just i It's not something I'm migrating to personally. Well, you are


Emily Merrell  

run on clickup. So I get it, but I also pay for the I don't pay for Trello. And there's so many things that I'm now like, Oh, I think I'd be curious about a new way to look at things but then you have a paywall there. Yeah.


Lexie Smith  

So project management tool.


Emily Merrell  

is yes, you have to have something pay for it. Don't pay for it, but do it. Yes. I'm going to squirrel for a second. I've been teaching my son how to say so hot right now. And it's adorable.


Lexie Smith  

Where did that come from? That you're looking at me and I look so hot right now who you


Emily Merrell  

look so hot right now not like he's kept calling people and saying so hot right now. But like, oh Trello or notion so hot right now. Oh,


Lexie Smith  

so I got it. Like it's so hot right now. I need a video. We all need a video. It's good. And there's your next real idea.


Emily Merrell  

Yeah. And then he goes, Oh my goodness.


Lexie Smith  

Oh my goodness. Hey, speaking of reels, there are a few tools we use for social. The first one you've probably heard of. It's not all that faint like not all that new and sexy later.com We do use for scheduling. But today I want to focus on a little bit more because people might not have heard of them. The first one is cap cut. And funny enough Emily and I use different iterations so when she she uses cap cut If you use it in your browser, I don't recognize that at all. Cap cut has a desktop app as well. There is a free version. And it's a really great editing tool for videos and reels. Yeah,


Emily Merrell  

I hate editing reels y'all. But cap kit makes it pretty painless to do it. Lexie is actually like a producer and kept


Lexie Smith  

still takes me hours, hours,


Emily Merrell  

hours. Why anyone who like we need to create like a coaching real challenge or something that's a whole something to hold us accountable. And by us me accountable, because I'll be like, I'm into it so hot right now. And then I'll be like, Oh, my goodness, I hate this. Oh, so


Lexie Smith  

hot right now. What's the other tool? You get to bring this one up? Because you're the one who introduced me to it? Oh,


Emily Merrell  

Opus clip. And this is an interesting one because, well, fun fact. Alexei was an actress back in the day, you know, she was Oliver and Oliver Twist. Very avant gardes between gender grade


Lexie Smith  

one age in the newspaper, local Portland


Emily Merrell  

star.


Lexie Smith  

I didn't watch that was important for a scrub, actually.


Emily Merrell  

Oh my god, totally remind me to tell you what I watched this weekend. Okay, anyways, Opus clip, it was a script. It's basically it's like a teleprompter. And so when I am having to script something out, I'm not as keen at remembering every single word. So it's a really cool way to put what you want in your thoughts out and write them out. It's


Lexie Smith  

not what it is. No, it's


Emily Merrell  

not. No. No.


Lexie Smith  

Are you confused? Earlier today? You use a teleprompter thing. What did you use earlier today? Oh,


Emily Merrell  

shit. That's what I was thinking is Oh,


Lexie Smith  

okay. Well, Emily looks that up. Let me tell you what Opus clip is. It auto generates reels for you. That will also introduce me to this. So like, we'll put in our full podcast that's on the 2030 minutes. And it'll people people who put the AI people will shoot out a bunch of different real iterations that they suggest are going to be the much most catchy so like, auto generates it with captions. I


Emily Merrell  

forgot. That's what that one is that one. Yeah. It's like us back and forth. Sorry, Big Boo. Big Vu. Big Vu is the teleprompter one.


Lexie Smith  

There we go. That's a teleprompter one. So Opus cut, just to clarify is something we're using right now. Or we're playing with we've played with it on and off to generate captions for an reals, reals, when it's paid. It is well there's free to a certain about certain amount, but then there's like a water logo mark thing you have to pay to get it off. We also just on the caption thing right now we use otter.ai for our podcast as well. That's another tool for transcription services. I think sorry, what's its big boo. What did you already say?


Emily Merrell  

Big Boo, big V. Au. Then that also has a watermark unless you pay for it. Or you are Lexie Smith and edited out like a like an editing ninja. But oh my gosh, so Lexie, I watched Kindergarten Cop this weekend.


Lexie Smith  

I've seen that it's set in. Not


Emily Merrell  

in Portland, but like outside of Portland Harkness. Oh, no Astoria story. That's the beach. That's the beach. Okay. I don't know if there's a real place.


Lexie Smith  

Yeah, they have I'm pretty sure they have the Shakespeare Festival festival there. This will they're just Shakespeare fest check myself. Okay, last because we're gonna wrap it up the my favorite tool that we use, we use other ones like zoom, blah, blah, blah, Slack, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I want to talk about the platform I'm obsessed with, which is where we build our community. And once that, yeah,


Emily Merrell  

and that no, I'm just getting surface tools. Now many tools, I have to say Canva. If you're like, oh, I need to know how to do something. Just go to Canva and they probably have a template for it. So before you Google the internet, go to Canva circle. So y'all we, when we created our group, we we did things pretty, pretty simple. I would say on the back end like we kept things in Google folders. And circle has really been like a level up for us. It has been an incredible leader engage with each other great way for our members to engage with the broader community. There's sub communities like within the community, I feel like I'm doing a community


Lexie Smith  

membership platform. Yes, but then I love the fact


Emily Merrell  

that we can embed our launch pack which is our group cohort program within the community too but have it locked for purchase only that only Zapier will open up when it links to stripe and yada yada yada.


Lexie Smith  

So circle so hot right now.


Emily Merrell  

So hot right now.


Lexie Smith  

So, my podcast, my homework for you guys today. is to allow yourself to look at what the paid bundle of one of your favorite systems would do for you. We often can get really short sighted and want to do everything for free at the beginning. And I think there's that's smart, too. We have to be thrifty and scrappy. And yeah, all those things. But do yourself the gift of looking at what does the pain just the next level up look like? In could that make my life somehow easier in business? Yeah,


Emily Merrell  

that's all just look at it, entertain it, entertain it and like say it didn't take away your homework. So there we go. took away the transit transition failures. And you all thank you so much for listening to today's podcast, and we will see you the next time on the tech


Lexie Smith  

coach podcast. We'll see you at the conference, which is your ticket before this. Oh my gosh. Okay. Bye


Emily Merrell  

bye now. Bye.