Small Business Tools – Recommendations from Allie and Michelle

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons.
Underrepresented in Tech is a free database, built with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.

Michelle Frechette:
Allie.

Allie Nimmons:
Hi, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Frechette:
I’m good. How are you?

Allie Nimmons:
I’m great. We’re just looking at our little Barbie pictures that I’ve made for us, and I’m just, I’m so amused and tickled by them. They’re so fun.

Michelle Frechette:
I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world.

Allie Nimmons:
Not that I’m not ever not in a good mood to record with you, but it put me in an extra good mood,

Michelle Frechette:
An even better mood. That’s right. Me too. I love it. And you were like, “Did you see it? I tagged you.” I’m like, “I was in the bathroom. I didn’t see anything.”

Allie Nimmons:
Which honestly, I do some of my best twittering in the bathroom.

Michelle Frechette:
I was going to say, I did take my phone in there this time, so I guess I didn’t see it. I was in a hurry because I had to get back and record with you. It was not a leisurely bathroom visit, let’s just say that.

Allie Nimmons:
Well, today I had an idea. We actually have a pretty positive, we have a non-complaining topic today. We have a topic that we don’t have to get on our soap boxes for. Super positive and fun topic.

Michelle Frechette:
We were the professional podcasters that we say we are. I used air quotes on that, we would have sound effects that you would hear that record scratch, that needle scratch across the record. What did you say?

Allie Nimmons:
Exactly.

Michelle Frechette:
You’re not complaining.

Allie Nimmons:
What? Allie and Michelle not complaining?
But I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the things that I did, and the way that I thought, and the tools that I used at the beginning of my career, when I first started using WordPress, when I didn’t really know what to use all of the time, when I didn’t have really the money to invest in myself and say, “Okay, I’m going to pay for the premium version of this tool because it’s worth it.” I would want to, but I just didn’t have the money.
I think that a lot of folks who are first starting, either in tech, or in WordPress or whatever, it’s so useful to be able to find free or very low cost tools, to not only help you build the things that you’re trying to build, but just to run your business. Just to do the administrative stuff that you need to do and all of that kind of stuff.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
So I thought we could share some of those things. I literally have a old, old blog post. I think I wrote it in 2018 or something called, The Nine Business Tools I Can’t Live Without. So, I might update that to an updated version but for now I’m going to reference that ’cause it’s helpful.
But yeah, I thought we could share some tool recommendations, so people can build their own little business stack with some free or low cost tech tools.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, I think that’s great.
I started freelancing back in 2013-2014, so I have to reach kind of far back and some of those tools might not be around anymore.
But for me, I’ll start, and I will say that social media, the free tools that you get with social media. Now I understand we have our complaints about social. We definitely have our complaints about Twitter lately, but leveraging social media absolutely up to my game. And learning how to use the right voice to convey who I am, but in a professional way, because we all know I don’t always act that way, it was something that really helped me connect.
So for customers in the early days when I was freelancing, building websites, leveraging Facebook was huge for me because I was able to meet local people there that weren’t in the tech community, but needed somebody who was in the tech community to help represent them.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, I completely agree. When I first started building websites for people, I used particularly Facebook groups, so much. Those were some where I got some of my very first clients that were not friends, family or recommendations from friends and family. I would look for solopreneur groups, women in business groups and things like that. And I made websites for CPAs and lawyers and other freelancers, other creatives, because they did their own stuff as freelancers and they needed websites.
And then that I was able to build a referral stream through there. But interacting in those groups was like, it taught me a lot just in general, but it was also huge for finding people to hire me, for sure.

Michelle Frechette:
Can I add a little tip to that, os that people used to ask me, “Well, what’s your niche? What kind of websites do you build?” And I’d say, “Small business.” “Yeah, but what’s your niche? Are you building for libraries or pet stores?” “Small business,” because I don’t have to know. As a web designer, you don’t have to know somebody’s business in and out to build their website.
And bonus, I learned so much about the world by putting the content in that they supplied and double checking and that kind of thing, so I know way more about all those different kinds of businesses than I ever would have before.

Allie Nimmons:
Totally. Yeah. I was the exact same way. Didn’t stick to any one type of business because of the way that I found those clients, I ended up having really entirely my client base were women who worked for themselves, or maybe had one or two employees, but super small businesses or companies of one woman usually and that kind of became my niche.
I feel like a lot of times you don’t go out with the intention of having a niche. It finds you. Right? The niche chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.

Michelle Frechette:
I’m not a Potter head, but even I got that.

Allie Nimmons:
Nice. What’s your next one?

Michelle Frechette:
So my next one is networking groups. So I joined a couple of paid for networking groups. I didn’t do, I can’t remember what that one is, that’s something, something international or whatever. But BI, I think it’s called.
Anyway, I joined a local networking group that was just getting started and the whole idea, and if you don’t know one, start one, because if you know people, you can always do that. But the idea was that we had 20 people and each one represented a category of business, which nobody else could then join the group for. So there was a power washer in the group, for example, and there couldn’t be two power washers in the group. So, I ended up working on his social media and although he already had a website, it was a WordPress website, so I could help him keep it updated and so he hired me to do those kinds of things.
There was a realtor in the group, and I built three realty websites while I was there working for her. So, there was so many different. A baker and I built so many websites for people, or helped maintain websites for people who were in that group, and I was the only person in the group who was a web designer/marketing, digital marketing. And so if they had a need or if they had a referral, it had to come to me. It couldn’t go to somebody else within the group.
Of course, you could always refer to people outside of the group. There’s no law or anything but the whole idea is in order to stay in the group, people have to be giving referrals. They have to be referring business to other people, not necessarily always to you, but if you know somebody that needs power washing, you’d refer to power wash. Or if you need somebody who’s selling a house, you’d refer to that to the realtor. That kind of thing.
But I got so much work out of that. Not only from the group, but then from the referrals, from the people in the group to people with without, and then from those people to other people. And so it really worked well to create this network of clientele for me.

Allie Nimmons:
That’s awesome. I’d never heard of a group like that before.

Michelle Frechette:
And chambers of commerce was a great way to start that too. Chambers of commerce, they don’t limit. So, there could be more than one power washer and a chamber of commerce, but also get involved in attending those meetings, shows that you have an interest in helping the other people within the chamber.

Allie Nimmons:
And in your local community as well. When I started, I wasn’t particularly focused on people in my direct community. I was willing to work with people all over, but if what you do, or just who you are, you want to focus on the local community, a chamber of commerce would be perfect for that because they’re local.

Michelle Frechette:
Yep. Exactly. It is BI. The one I was thinking of. It’s like $500 a year or something to join BI, which is Business International or BI. Something like that. Anyway. Nope, that’s not the right one. Nevermind. I take it all back. I’ll find it and I’ll share it out afterwards.

Allie Nimmons:
Yes.

Michelle Frechette:
But finding groups like that are important because they help you get connected to other people, especially if you’re freelancing, which most of us are the early days, so you’re spending a awful amount of time alone and so this actually helps you make those people connections too, which are so important.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, definitely.

Michelle Frechette:
What’s your next one?

Allie Nimmons:
Okay, so like I said, I have nine, but some of them are kind of outdated. The first one on the list is one that I still use, which is Trello, which I believe Trello has some paid plans, but it is free to use the grand majority of the features that they offer. And I always liked Trello best because it was super visual and it was very simple. You kind of know what you’re looking at right away, which I prefer over something like Asana, which is great for really complex projects. We have a lot of moving pieces, but I used Trello for all of my website projects because I could send it to a client and they could see the different phases of the project as columns and then the different individual task.
It’s very linear. It helps me to communicate.

Michelle Frechette:
It’s very laid out.

Allie Nimmons:
Where we are in the process and I would always, in this blog post that I have, I had created a website for a nutritionist. And she was a nutritionist, kind of lifestyle blogger, so she was very into beautiful looking food and bright colors and stuff. So her Trello board, I put in the background picture a picture of beautiful little healthy desserts with fruits and stuff and I would always do that with every client. I feel like with Trello, I was able to keep things very simple, so that I didn’t overwhelm the client with all of this stuff, but I was also able to very much brand it and personalize it to them and kind of go a couple of extra steps to make them feel special and make them excited to actually look at this thing with me and interact with it.
Which, yeah, I love Trello and I love that it’s easy to… I actually was able to hack. I was able to get the premium version of Trello for many years because I would start a Trello board for a client, invite them to Trello. They would sign up and I would get, I think for every person you sign up, you get a free month or something.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, cool.

Allie Nimmons:
I don’t know if that’s still a thing that they do, but for the longest time, I just had a free premium version of Trello because every client I brought in gave me, earned me back that money, which was super cool. I had a referral code, which I don’t even know if I still have. I should look into that.

Michelle Frechette:
You should definitely look into that.

Allie Nimmons:
Trello is a pretty great one.

Michelle Frechette:
Definitely.

Allie Nimmons:
I would use Toggl a lot. Which T-O-G-G-L. Not E. No E at the end. And it is a time tracking software.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, I’ve heard of that.

Allie Nimmons:
Which I think is super important if you are a freelancer and when you’re first starting out, I hate tracking my time, but I think that it’s really important, so that you can really begin to know and understand how long it takes you to do stuff. So that way when-

Michelle Frechette:
Helps plan for scope.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, helps you plan for scope. When a client needs to get something done within a particular timeline, you can be super realistic about exactly how long that will take you. You don’t have to guess or estimate. Even if you’re not charging by the hour, you want to know how long things are going to take you. And you can save and organize and categorize every time you input time, so that you can see, okay, today this project got this much of my time and this project got that much of my time. And you can filter down and say, “Okay, well the design phase of this project took that much time and the development phase of this project took that much time,” and it lets you get really granular for basically nothing.
I believe they still have… They still have a free plan. Do they even have paid plans? It’s a really great site. It’s a really great tool. It’s way better than just tracking it with your clock app on your phone or something like that. It’s super powerful. I want to see.

Michelle Frechette:
Google. So, I’m going to add Google. So yes, Google Sheets. I used to pay for Microsoft products. That’s before I was on a Mac for sure, but even after I switched from PC to Mac, I was still paying for the version that worked for me, kind of thing. I think there was a way to do it.
Anyway, I paid for that for a long time and I was paying, I don’t know, a hundred, $200 a year, and it’s probably more now. But Google absolutely made it, not only able to have documents, have spreadsheets and not pay for that, because you can get that with your limited, for a limited amount of space, but still an email and all of that. But it also allowed me to collaborate with people, whereas I couldn’t do that with a Microsoft document that was sitting on my laptop.
So, I could share it with a client. I could share it. You and I, when we first started underrepresented@tech.com, we were sharing spreadsheets and things like that, and we still do have a shared Google Drive that we share things together on that we need to track like sponsorships and things like that.
But Google is such an amazing free tool, and you may get frustrated with Google sometimes, and you may wonder why you’re not ranked on the first page and all of those kinds of things, or your clients may, but just the fact that they have all of these tools that can readily be used, for free, is just, it really is a gift.

Allie Nimmons:
The Google Drive suite is ridiculous. I use it every single day for everything. Spreadsheets. Forms. I love the Google Form Builder. It’s not the best out there but for it just being completely free to use and make as many as you want, it’s incredible. It’s how I create my slides is through Google Drive. I’m pretty sure I use every thing in that suite.
Obviously I use Google Docs a lot. Yeah, it’s really incredible. I would say that if you are first starting out, making sure that you have that Google account and you have a drive account, but also Box.
I don’t use Box, but a lot of people that I work with, clients that I have, people that I contract with, insist on. That’s what they use. So the work that I do with LinkedIn, the book that I’m helping edit right now, super secret, all of that goes through Box and that’s free. So, it’s helpful I think sometimes to say, “Okay, well I’m going to have this Google Drive account, but I’m also going to just set up a Box. I don’t have to use it, but I have it so that when somebody wants to collaborate in that way, I can be flexible and I can work with them in that way.”
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What’s the next one that I should pick? I’ll say Wave Apps. Oh yeah, definitely WordPress, right?
Wave Apps.I took a long time to find a invoicing software that I liked. I think I used PayPal for a little while to send invoices, and I didn’t like that because it made me feel, sending a PayPal invoice, there’s nothing wrong with that. I should preface by saying that there’s nothing wrong with sending a PayPal invoice. I think if you’re using, I think some people might not find that as professional an option. I’ll say it that way.
There are other things you can use that will look better to people and that function a little bit better, honestly. I mean, using PayPal for invoicing is handy because it’s connected right to your PayPal and you can take the money out that way.
But Wave Apps was the one that I found it was free when I was using it. I don’t know that they have a free option now, but if they do, actually wait. Their invoicing is still free. Their accounting tools are still free. There’s always, always going to be processing fees when you’re accepting money. You won’t find an invoicing tool that doesn’t do that, so that is where the class is going to come in. And then if you need to do any payroll tools, they have advisors that you can talk to and those cost additional fees.
But Wave Apps was really incredible for helping me to build really impressive looking invoices and automate them as well. ‘Cause when I was doing all this stuff, I did a lot of monthly maintenance for people and had them on retainer, so I could just automate it and have it go out, get that payment and not ever have to worry about it.
So yeah, I would say if you don’t use Wave Apps, find a really good solid invoicing tool that you like and that you trust. I never used something like HoneyBook where everything is all in the same thing, because that made me nervous because I was like, if I don’t like one feature, I’m still stuck with the whole account. Or, if something happens to the company, if the company goes under, all of my tools that I use are going to be unavailable to me. So I liked having my eggs in different baskets and using different tools for different things.
So I would create a proposal with Google Drive and then create an invoice with Wave Apps rather than trying to find a program that combines the two, which I think is a personal preference, but I just found it to be safer and a little bit easier to use.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, I think that’s great.

Allie Nimmons:
And then the last one I’ll say is SignNow, which was really great for getting signatures. I hate getting something that I have to sign and having to use the Adobe, all the Adobe stuff for that. It is the most annoying thing in the whole world to me and I discovered SignNow, which is $8 per user, per month, and it’s just kind of exactly what it sounds like.
You upload a document, so I could create a contract or an agreement in a Google Doc and then just upload it to SignNow and it’ll give you the fields that you need to accept. Have somebody put in a date or a name or a signature, and then you just send that to the person via email. They get an email. They click on the email. They sign the thing and the thing is done.
There’s tons of different contract signing tools out there, but SignNow was definitely my favorite and they have a free trial thing too, so if you don’t even want to pay that $8 to check it out, you can use that. Yeah, very good tool.

Michelle Frechette:
Another thing I would add too, so I’ve done coaching in the past. I charge people money to do coaching. If you can’t afford coaching, which if you can’t afford it, I highly recommend, at least for a portion of your time growing into your business, that coaching is really helpful and ultimately saves you a lot of money and headache because you have somebody who is mentoring you.
But if you can’t afford coaching, at least find an accountability partner. So, having somebody who’s a mutual accountability partner, so nobody’s exchanging money, but you have a regular meeting. You don’t violate it unless it’s an absolute emergency. You keep that meeting ’cause it will be so easy, slippery slope if you start to say, “Well, I can’t make it this week,” because then the next week somebody can’t make it, et cetera. You have to treat it like sacred.
But having at least a 30 to 60 minute accountability meeting every other week, is enough to help keep you moving forward because somebody who’s basically in the same boat as you, has maybe experienced some of the issues you have and you’re experienced some of the issues they’re having and can give each other some advice and at the very least, be an ear and a sounding board to be able to talk through some of those issues.
So having an accountability partner, I had an accountability partner. I was a terrible accountability partner for that person because I could not hold them accountable for what they were doing. I had a book writing accountability partner when I wrote my book and they checked in with me frequently. They abandoned theirs, but they still wanted to be there for me. And as a result of having somebody who was checking in going, “How many chapters are you now? How close are you to your deadline?”
And even though my deadline moved because it was my deadline and there was nobody else that said I had to be done by a certain period, it was mission accomplished at the end. I published a book and it’s out there and I didn’t market it. I give it away for free a lot. That’s neither here nor there because I wasn’t looking to make a ton of money of it, but actually finishing it was important.
And having an accountability partner that you can hold to deadlines for that you can help problem solve and that they can give you some advice when you need it, and a shoulder to cry on when you need that too, I think is super important. But then again, when you can’t afford a business coach or afford to pay a mentor, I highly recommend that as well.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, a hundred percent. Totally agree. Those Facebook groups that I joined early on, I had one or two people that I built accountability relationships with. And yeah, it’s really hard to find someone, or to pair up with somebody where both of you are equally as invested in. You’re going to keep that back and forth ’cause it’s super easy to just drop off. The consequences are not immediate if you just kind of abandon it. But having another person, even just another person who is going through the same struggles as you, if you’re working by yourself, if you’re alone in your house all day working, if you’re frustrated with clients, just to have another person who gets it right. You don’t have to explain what you’re feeling. They just get it right. That, for your mental health, is a fantastic thing to invest time in, if not money, especially at the beginning when you don’t have a network of people already around you that you know.

Michelle Frechette:
You have to bring the value and be the value for each other though, because that’s when it becomes easy to say, “Oh, I can’t make it this week,” is when you’re not finding value in the relationship. And if that’s the case, dissolve it. Stay friends, but say, “This isn’t working for either one of us,” and find somebody else. Because having an accountability partner, or having a coach or a mentor, is as important as finding that doctor that you trust to go to.

Allie Nimmons:
Any relationship is a give and take. Yeah, absolutely.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
So cool. I think those are some good, that’s a good list.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, for sure.

Allie Nimmons:
For people to start with. I’m definitely going to update this absolutely little blog post I have and repost it.

Michelle Frechette:
And I might write one now, though I’ve never thought to do it. Share my tools. I will.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, because I would see how people talking about their development stack or their business stack, and I’m like, that’s such a cool concept. It’s a cool idea of toolbox of all the things that I use every day that help me to be successful.
And now that I do other things as opposed to building websites and developing for people. I do lots of other different sorts of stuff. I still use a lot of these tools, but I also use different tools now, so I think it’d be interesting even just personally as an introspective exercise to revamp this post and see how things have changed for me in the last few years. And I’d be super, super excited and interested to see yours, considering that you do so many different things, right?

Michelle Frechette:
Yes.

Allie Nimmons:
You don’t just podcast. You do an insane number of different things within your various roles that you play in the community, so I’d be super curious to see.

Michelle Frechette:
At the top of my list, Google Calendar. If I did not have a calendar that I could reference anywhere online, anytime, my life would be a shamble.

Allie Nimmons:
I’ve started making my friends put, if we’re going to go to the movie or something, you got to put that on the Google calendar. If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah. I’m going to write the blog post. I’m going to have the free and then I’m going to have worth investing in because for me, Zoom is worth is a worthwhile investment and your tools have to fit what your needs are. So maybe Zoom is not a worthwhile investment for you, but if you need to be able to record over an hour, then you need to have something like a Zoom account.
All right. On that, we’re going to sign off, ’cause I got someplace else to be because my calendar just told me I have two minutes.

Allie Nimmons:
Love that. Alrighty. Well, it is a pleasure, as always, and we’ll see you next week.

Michelle Frechette:
As always.

Allie Nimmons:
Bye.

Michelle Frechette:
Bye.

Allie Nimmons:
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