What Your CPA Wants You to Know
A podcast for entrepreneurs! We are a husband and wife team running our CPA firm together. We know just how difficult it can be to take your business dream to a reality. Our mission for this podcast is to guide, empower, and educate entrepreneurs in an easy-to-understand way! We want business owners to have the information that they need when they need it, AND without the hefty accounting invoices from a CPA! Follow along for practical advice, tips, and tricks from a CPA who knows what it is like to run a business, and strategies to keep your business thriving from an MBA! We will also show you how to run a business while keeping your family and sanity intact along the way!
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What Your CPA Wants You to Know
78. The Ultimate Tool for Entrepreneurs: Stan Store the All-In-One Tool
How did managing your online business become such a technical headache? Discover a game-changing solution that’s transforming the way creators, influencers, and business owners operate. In this episode we discuss the benefits of Stan Store—a robust platform that rolls the functionalities of Shopify, Flodesk, and other essential apps into one seamless, easy-to-use tool.
Inspired by a podcast featuring Stan Store's founder, we dive into the vision and motivation behind this groundbreaking software. Learn why Stan Store is becoming indispensable for those who want to enhance their digital presence without the usual tech stress. Whether you're struggling to juggle multiple apps or looking to streamline your business processes, this episode will be helpful! Tune in to find out why Stan Store is the must-have tool for today’s digital entrepreneurs.
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I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out the behind the scenes of Shopify and Squarespace and all of those things and I was getting very overwhelmed with my job as the technology person in our business. And this I was like how did I not know that this was an option?
Speaker 2:Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.
Speaker 1:Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've created this podcast to help guide you through it all and make you feel like you have a CPA in your back pocket.
Speaker 2:I'm Carson Sands.
Speaker 1:And I'm Taryn Sands.
Speaker 2:I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping people start and grow their businesses.
Speaker 1:And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and entrepreneurship. Taxes suck and we want to make sure you don't pay more than your fair share.
Speaker 2:We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to know.
Speaker 1:In a fun and easy to understand way.
Speaker 2:Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Hello, hello everyone, it is just me on the podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about a tool that we've started using in our business and I've been using personally on my own Instagram page, just started using it this year, absolutely loving it. It has been a game changer, and that is called a stand store. So that's what this episode is going to be about today.
Speaker 1:I was actually listening to a podcast the other day and it had the founder of stand store on the podcast and it had the founder of Stan Store on the podcast and I was really blown away by what he had to say about the software he made for business owners, for creators, and why he did what he did. It was very interesting and made me really realize that that's why I was loving the software so much and it was so helpful to me as a business owner and as a content creator. So if you've not heard of this, like me, I was living under a rock. I had never heard of a Stan store before. A Stan store is an online platform designed to help creators, business owners, influencers anyone selling anything like that manage and monetize their digital presence. So it acts as a solution for selling products, booking your services and engaging with your audience and building your email list all of those things in one place. So a stand store is meant to be an all in one tool for business owners or creators. What have you? It's supposed to be a tool that can basically do everything that business owners are looking to do. If you're like me and you're constantly trying to figure out exactly what you should be doing or what should be next on your radar, you might have a long list of things that has to be done.
Speaker 1:I know I, a while back, started focusing on building our email list and we also have a digital product. So I was like, well, we need to start doing some lead magnets and all of these things for sales and, if you're a service based business, lots of things for building your email list, getting information to clients, pushing sales all of those things that now are just a part of doing business. And we were using a lot of different things for that. We were actually using Shopify Shopify, and we were also using Flowdesk. We were also using another app within Shopify. So all of these different things. Basically, you know you have your website and we had our site, that we had our podcast and our digital products on and all of these things. We were even using those link in your bio that had the links to all the different things that we would want anyone to see on our social media page and it was just becoming a lot, and that's actually when I heard this Stan Store episode. So it's been a couple of months.
Speaker 1:We have started using Stan Store in our business. I talked a little bit about that a couple episodes ago as one of the tools that we have been using and it has been a game changer. So it basically puts everything all in one place, which is why I like it. But it's also so easy and user friendly, which, when I was listening to that episode, the owner and creator was just saying how he wanted it to be very user friendly so business owners like me, who may not be the most tech savvy, can use it easily get products on there, figure out the emailing, all of that, and it is so easy. So I'm.
Speaker 1:That's what a stand store is. It's supposed to be an all-in-one product for business owners, creators, anyone like that. But what exactly does it do? I keep saying it does a lot of stuff, but it combines multiple tools so that you don't have to have separate websites and e-commerce websites and all of those things. Like I said, it also has payment processing in there. So within just a matter of minutes, I was able to set up a Stripe account where it can charge someone to book a meeting or for a specific service or for a product, like we have digital products, so it has that in there.
Speaker 1:You can do appointment scheduling. It has calendar integration. It has digital content sales. You can sell a product, like we do a new business guide. We also have a personal finance guide, so those are things that we're selling that are digital product. That's so easy to get those on there.
Speaker 1:You can also do memberships and subscriptions, so if you have a monthly membership or a monthly subscription service, like that, it will do all of that for you collect the money, organize all of that. It also tracks performance and analytics all of those things that business owners usually look at. It has marketing tools for email marketing, so you can collect emails, promote your products and services to your email list and you can also build out an email funnel in that, which is also something that I have been working on for the last couple of years, because we never really used our email list, so it has all of those things. It has tools that you can use for running discounts and promotions, special offers. You can also bundle products on there very easily Sometimes, and, let's say, shopify. That was a little bit difficult to do, so I would hesitate to do like a seller bundling because it was so hard, but in StanSource it's very easy. You also have the ability to have your customers leave reviews and feedback and get that kind of. You also have the ability to let your customers or clients leave reviews and gather feedback, which is very important, especially if you have a social media account and you're trying to share things like that. That is really great and that's also in this all in one thing.
Speaker 1:Now you can take a look at our stand store, which is on our Instagram account, and you can see when you pull it up. It is just so clean and visually appealing the first time I ever saw one. This girl had a couple of digital products. It was just extremely easy to purchase. If I wanted to purchase her digital product, it was just like one click, we've got Apple Pay. Someone could buy that within a matter of seconds. So I loved how easy it was, and I just wasn't sure if it would make an impact on the number of sales we would have, versus something like a pretty website and Shopify and all of these things that we previously thought we needed for our business. And I can definitely say, after using it for a couple of months, that sales are much better when using Stan store, and I'm not doing anything else different as far as marketing or anything. I think it is just the simplicity of the checkout. I am also using this on my personal Instagram page. I have a page for lifestyle content and I have digital content on there, and I just started using Stan's store and it has been incredibly easy and useful for that page as well. So we do have two StanSource now because we love them so much and we're able to build email lists for both of those things.
Speaker 1:A couple of things that I love about StanSource is that it is easy to use. Like I said, I promise you if I can use it, you can use it. The cost we were getting nickel and dimed by all of these other services that we were using. So something for your emails, something for your payment, something for this, something for your website, all of these things, all of your different things that you have to have when you're doing all of these different things like we do podcasts, digital sales, appointments, all of that and, with StanStore, just one low monthly fee. They have a $29.99 one and a $99 one, so both of those were less, extremely less than what we were paying just all those separate things for. So I love how cost effective it is when you get all of these tools on one platform.
Speaker 1:When you get all of these tools on one platform, I also think in this day and age, you don't absolutely need to have a website for Stan store. If you go to the homepage, you can design it however you want. So on my personal Instagram Stan store homepage, I have a couple of sections, so digital products are in one. I have one where you can join my email list, and I also have sections where I have, where I also have a section where it will send you to my Amazon storefront, because all of those links used to be in my bio, but it just wasn't as easy to find. So you can make it however you want. It does all of the same things that a fancy website would, but I just feel like it's so much cleaner and easier to use, and people are a little overwhelmed with fancy websites with a lot of text and a lot of things to read. People just don't spend that much time on a website anymore. However, they do want to be able to find your contact information and any relevant links that you have. You can go straight to our podcast from there. All of the things that you would have on a website are on your homepage of your stand store and you can customize that however you want.
Speaker 1:It is really so easy to change those around. I do it all the time. Based on what is going on in the business that week, I move it to the top of the stand store, and the last thing I just love about it is it saves me time. It automates a lot of the things that I have to do as a business owner and it frees up my time for me to do other things. I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out the behind the scenes of Shopify and Squarespace and all of those things, and I was getting very overwhelmed with my job as the technology person in our business and this I was like how did I not know that this was an option? So I really recommend this to any new business owner getting started. It is such a simple way to get an online presence up and going, as opposed to a website, and it is so easy to do all of the things. So you're not having to do any coding to try to set up a place where clients can book an appointment and all of that. It is just already set up. You can get this set up in just an hour. You could have everything up and going. So I always recommend this to our clients.
Speaker 1:So if you are listening to this podcast and you think, oh, I could really benefit from using something like that, sandstore actually does offer a two-week free trial so that you can see if you like this, and that's exactly how I started. I just set it up with a free trial that day. I was just so impressed with it. I figured that would be something I would use for a long time, and then, after weeks of using it, I decided to change all of our business stuff to Stan Store. So now we are off Shopify, we are off all of those other things that I was talking about and we're just using Stan's Store. So if you want to take a look at one definitely jump on our Instagram page or on my personal Instagram page.
Speaker 1:I will put those links in and if you want to try it, there is going to be a link in the show notes for you to sign up for that two-week trial, just to see if you like it. You don't have to put your credit card or anything in there like that. You can just try it and see if you like it. So I love those that you can just sign up for without putting your card in there. They don't trick you into getting some sort of membership that you aren't sure that you actually want. So I encourage you to check out StanStore or refer it to a friend.
Speaker 1:This is in no way sponsored or anything by StanStore. It's just a tool that I love and I cannot stop talking about. So I just wanted to make sure that we put it on the podcast so that any of you entrepreneurs out there could try it and use it too. If you've been listening for a while and you have not left us a review on the podcast, we would really, really appreciate that. Reviews are how we keep this podcast going, and it's so simple to do it takes just a second or two. So if you would do that, we would really appreciate it. And until next time, thank you so much for listening to what your CPA Wants you To Know. Podcast Wants you To Know podcast.
Speaker 2:This podcast is intended to provide accounting and tax information for educational purposes only. All tax situations are unique and should be handled with the assistance of a tax professional.