Online Tools I Use and Others I Know Will Make Your Health Business Run Smoother

When you start out in a brick and mortar business, you budget for an office, utilities, phone, a receptionist, office furniture…because you just know it’s the cost of doing business.

For some reason, it seems like many newbies who starts an online business don’t budget for business expenses and then complain when they need to spend money to operate the business because they just didn’t expect it.  It’s expensive to invest in a business.

You have online expenses, they’re just different from a store, office, or restaurant.

Advertising can be a lot cheaper, but you still have to do it.  If no one knows you’re there – you won’t have a business.

You’ll have online software expenses …those are some of the things I’m going to go over today.  Look at the software as taking the place of office machines, people, and systems, even an office space.  Online software can add a new level of safety, professionalism, and convenience.

The nice thing, some software companies have layered pricing, so you can grow into their higher priced offerings as you need them.

What I Use

When you first start out in business…you look for everything you can to make work easier and less time consuming and more integrated.

That’s why I’m going to give you a list of all the things that I use…after years of accumulating information and trying out and discarding different tools.

Not all of these tools are for everyone, check it out though.  I’ll tell you what it is, what it does, how I use it, the honest truth about it, and who should use it.

There is some software I recommend that I don’t use because it doesn’t apply to my business model.  I will tell you that too, and why I chose that company to recommend.

There are some businesses I’m not going to recommend here, but I won’t list them.  If you ever have any questions before you sign your life away with a company, ask me, I’ll be frank with you.

Infusionsoft by Keap

Marketing / Customer Records Management / E-Commerce / Sales

It took me a while to appreciate it, like 3 years.  I am a devoted fan now.  I’ve done more than my share of shopping around and there just isn’t ANYTHING out there that integrates as much, reports as thoroughly, or offers as many features.

Its shortfall is customer service and  e-commerce.  The e-commerce is a little primitive, but at the same time, allows me what some other “like products” don’t, that is to use my own merchant account.  Its strong point is CRM and marketing.  It’s worth its weight in gold for that. I’ve stayed with them in spite of their customer service for years, because even though it’s not great, I haven’t had to use it that often.  I’ve been in business long enough to know that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

I first thought it was expensive – but it’s a workhorse.  After spending some time comparing, it’s more than reasonable.  Most of the other companies have better looking prices, but when you get to my size, it goes off their price brackets, so I’ve ended up with a pretty sweet deal on the price.

The people who work on it are overpaid for sure…but if you get it going and treat it right…it’s worth that too.  That was one of my biggest problems was having the trained specialists work on it.  I’d fire them after they made a huge mistake or handed me down to a new employee that didn’t do well, then the next person was just as bad or worse, but they always, always blamed the guy who had my account before them.

Just make sure you have the e-commerce audited regularly.  My team can now work on it themselves, and it runs pretty smooth and makes me money instead of costing. For this reason, I consider Infusionsoft an investment that’s paid for itself.  Click here to learn more

NOTE:  I’m not an affiliate for Infusionsoft.  Their affiliate system required it to be almost a full time job….and that’s not my business, so I share this out of the goodness of my heart.

Access Ally

Membership Software

Interacts nicely with Infusionsoft for a nice and seamless integration.  It’s only malfunctioned a few times.  Access Ally has some nice features like an add on for the affiliate program and progress meter on the sequential release courses.  We had a “trained expert” put in one program for $1800.00  Our team could do it quicker and cleaner and without the mistakes for around $350.00, so be careful there.  Learn more.

 I’m an affiliate for this one, but have never benefited from commissions. I don’t recommend it for every health coach, only if you’re 100% invested in your business and intend it to be an investment.  It’s an investment and we’ve seen a nice return.  It’s heavy investment in the upkeep, imagine $1800 for each of our programs to load!

Starter-Membership

Separate Starter-Site with the Membership Plugin and THCG Programs built in.

This is our product that we load right on to your server.  If you’re techy, it’s a snap and offers unlimited programs, sequential release, emails, and we’ll even load your programs on at the start for a reasonable price.  If you’re not techy, I don’t recommend that you try to do it without a technical assistant.  This is the most reasonably priced of all the options for membership.

After you receive your Starter-Membership® all you need to do:

• Set up merchant account in Woo-Commerce
• Link your sales page to woo commerce product page
• Fill in the blanks in your main membership page
• Customize however you like

* Works with your existing website (or Starter-Site)

It’s that easy!

Learn More

Healthie

Practice Management and Program Delivery

It’s been almost two years since we made a special arrangement with Healthie to provide our clients with a special deal, and load our programs into their practice management platform for free.  This is the ultimate in easy.  There’s nothing to customize, nothing to do but to link your sales page to Healthie, plus you get a ton of benefits in addition.

• Scheduling
• Telehealth/Virtual Care
• Billing/Payments 
• Charting/EHR
• E-Paperwork
• Client Messaging
• Client Logging
• Client Education (our programs loaded right into the platform for you)

We have made a special arrangement for you to benefit with special pricing, loaded programs, and great service.

LastPass

Password Manager

– Keeps all passwords hidden, safe, and secure.  It also keeps thousands of passwords at my fingertips and allows me to create secure passwords that I don’t have to remember to be able to use efficiently.  Learn more.

NOTE:  I’m not an affiliate for LastPass  

More…

Zoom

Multi- Use/ Chat – Meeting – Webinar – Digital Phone

– You will never convince me to change away from this service.  It is pretty much problem free.  We have a few oddball happenings…it’s usually because of not restarting a computer after one of their upgrades.  I will always remember the troubles…like Amy Porterfield’s visit to our Mentoring Monday – when everyone could hear her but me.  That happened a few times, normally it’s an issue with updates that can be solved by regularly restarting your computer.  That’s the worst that has happened though.  We do 1-3 webinars a week, so it’s important it’s reliable.  Click to learn more.

WordPress – WordPress releases you to make changes…puts your blog on your website and is easy enough that you can make daily changes to your site without paying a web developer to do it for you.

DIVI – Oh my gosh.  I saw this theme and it won my heart.  It is an Elegant Theme and it is the one I chose immediately when it was released.  Why?  It layers.  It has something that is called “page builder”.  It’s a drag and drop webpage tool.  A regular person can create outstanding looking web pages all by themselves.  I created Starter-Sites® and replaced the theme on my website with it.  The look is incredible.  It has “rules” – the rules help to balance and make the pages look very clean.  Design elements are automatically built in.  It now has a visual builder that makes it even easier.

Site Ground – Hosting Company.  I’ve used Network Solutions, Bluehost, web developer’s specialized servers, and Site Ground is exceptional.  The customer service is THE BEST, it stays up, and it does backups and free secure server upgrades.  Learn More

Starter-Sites – Our $97 Website that’s set up on DIVI with design, marketing guidance, step by step instruction, landing pages, health histories, and a lot more.  Learn More

Ring Central – It’s funny – all these IT people I’m involved with…and I dreamed of Ring Central.  I asked and asked and asked and asked.  No one knew of a digital telephone service that could be used online.  Then one day….I saw a Facebook ad for it.  It’s what I was looking for.  I was ready to toss all my telephones and plug a headset into my computer.  They talked me into getting a desk phone.  I did….just in case I lost internet service for a bit and needed my phone.  I’ve had Ring Central for a year and a half and only used my desk phone 3 times.  With Ring Central, I pay the same amount for 9 telephones as I used to pay for 2.  That’s right…I’m not exaggerating.  PLUS – I have free conference calling with recording, video and screen share for up to 25 people – for everyone on my team.  They all have “softphones” on their computers.  They can get calls in, they can call out…and we even can fax.  It is the answer to any online companies needs.  The only really silly thing is that you can buy webinar service for your phone…but you can’t just pay for one phone – they require you to pay for it for every phone you own.  So if you do webinars and have 1 phone – it is $50 a month.  If you have only one phone that does webinars and you have 9 phones – it is $450 a month.  They need to fix that.

GLIP  Team Chat software that is invaluable.  I can talk to Amanda in Wisconsin in one second.  We can all get on a screen share with one click, and we can transfer documents back and forth with drag-and-drop.

DropBox – today my laptop wouldn’t start up.  In the olden days, I would have panicked.  All my files would have been lost if my computer crashed and if they couldn’t salvage it.  I didn’t have to worry about it because I save everything I do onto Dropbox…and it’s stored on the internet – not on my computer.  In addition to that, my assistant can put ALL her work directly into my files – and I can even access them from my I-phone.  Technology is amazing.

ZenDesk now HELP SCOUT– As your business grows – so do your tools.  ZenDesk was brought in when my first DSD builder flaked out.  We had this giant bucket of “nuts and bolts” dropped into our laps and – our customer service needs went up about x50 in one day.  ZenDesk creates tickets and allows everyone to work on them together.  It is THE best invention in customer support ever.  We moved to HelpScout for improved customer service for our company.

Basecamp

Project management software.  We use it to set expectations for projects.  Specifically branding, website building, program building, course communication.  There are a lot of uses and we’ve increased our dependence on it over time.

Quickbooks

Online is a little goofier than the desktop.  I recommend the desktop version.  I’ve talked to a lot of accountants and they agree and it’s just as easy to transfer from the desktop.

AppointmentCore

It works with Infusionsoft and Google calendar to keep my life easier.  It also interfaces with GoToMeeting to easily send out meeting links.

Adobe Suite and Microsoft 365

I use this for my team and myself.  I think in Adobe Illustrator, that’s how comfortable I am with it.  We use Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat Professional in our business.  We should be using the 3D and video software too, but we use the easier Camtasia.

Microsoft 365 is used daily.  PowerPoint is so versatile that you could use it for art if you don’t have a good art software.  We use PowerPoint for our programs and they can be used for workshops, webinars, videos, and modules.  We even use them for workbooks and convert them to PDFs.  Word and Excel are used daily as well.

Camtasia

Camtasia is an easy and intuitive video editing software.

MindMeister

MindMeister is perfect for someone like me who is visual and thinks things out better when it’s in front of them.  I can do some planning, plotting, and reasoning on there.  That’s where I have my organizational plans and it’s how I mapped out all the different ways that health coaches and doctors could work together.

What are some of your favorite tools?  Share in the comments below!