as an authentic brand Builder it's really
important that we're not only showing up authentically online but also in our lives and
one of the ways that I do that while running a business is that I am a fierce protector of
my time now I am in no rush to grow a business that compromises how I show up in my day-to-day
life and one of the ways that I've been able to do that is to work smarter and not harder and so
to today I want to share with you a few of the systems and softwares that I use th
at allow me
to do this this is the authentic brand builders podcast with Michelle Knight welcome back to the
authentic brand builders podcast authentic brand Builder I'm so excited that you are here I am back
after taking a week off following the launch of Storytelling Made Simple I am so excited for
this new program and leading these amazing entrepreneurs through this six week program if
you missed your chance to join storytelling Made Simple don't worry we're going to be sharing
details
in just a few months so that you can get your hands on this juicy course while I
was taking some time off I was thinking more and more about how I show up in my business and
one of the things that I've been super dedicated to is definitely using systems and software that
not only saved me money in my business but also saved me a ton of time as I've talked about many
times on the podcast I produce a lot of content and every single week I am creating a podcast
a YouTube video a Blog I email m
y list one two sometimes three times a week I'm posting on social
media YouTube shorts Pinterest it's a lot there's a lot of places and while one of the secrets to
that is definitely my repurposing workflow which I will share a link to that inside of the show notes
for today's episode as well as over on the YouTube channel Channel if you are watching on YouTube but
there's also all of these different softwares that I use and I know as an entrepreneur there's so
many different systems and pr
ograms that you can invest your hard-earned money into and I wanted
to share what I'm using in case you're looking for some suggestions on how to streamline your
workflow and your productivity in your business I am not interested in spending hours upon hours
upon hours doing a ton of work and like I said before I also don't want to Outsource something
that I could very easily use software and our good friends artificial intelligence to get me the
results that I need for a much lower investm
ent so if you're a solopreneur this episode is totally
for you the first software that I have to share with you that you've probably heard me talk
about many many times is clickup I am an avid clickup user now I've tried a lot of productivity
tools for my business business there are a lot of options out there some that I've tried in the
past are Trello assana and monday.com they're all amazing in their own right but I really clicked
haha with clickup it worked really well for my brain it ha
d a lot of options and I think that's
really the key here when it comes to choosing a productivity task management software you need
something that works for you and that has always been clickup for me so I'm I always suggest that
my clients just start with something that kind of gets them you know in the process of organizing
their workflow organizing their content organizing their tasks and then if something better comes
along it's okay but for me I've been using clickup for a few years n
ow and every single thing that we
do and create is inside of clickup this saves me so much time because a big part of my business is
definitely rinse and repeat rinse and repeat and when I can create these workflows I can create
these project trackers and then use them again and again it saves us so much time so a few of the
things that we're using clickup for are definitely General task management any task that we need to
do at Brandmerry goes into clickup if it's not in clickup it doesn't
exist that's kind of a joke
that we have if it's not in clickup it definitely doesn't happen so every single thing from daily
tasks that I do to monthly tasks weekly tasks that myself or Delena does those are repeated
tasks any small projects go in there as well and we do organize them in various ways in terms of
our lists and different things like that if you want a full kind of like overview of clickup and
how we're using it definitely let me know in the comments or send me a DM on Insta
gram because I
would be interested in sharing that with you if it's of interest to you as well another thing that
we do is the content workflow so we have an A List dedicated to our weekly marketing workflow and
I've shared this a lot this is the secret in my mind to showing up consistently this is the system
that allows you to create consistent content using the art of repurposing so we have templates inside
of clickup that anytime a Content idea gets in there and gets scheduled the templa
te autofills
and it has all the information that we need blog title keywords podcast title episode link to the
show notes YouTube description all of the spots are in there for us to fill in the details it
also has a checklist so we make sure we don't miss anything scheduling the episode creating the
Pinterest images putting it on the blog and so it's just this very thorough kind of rinse and
repeat system that we follow every single week and we make sure that everything gets checked off
an
d gets done so that is something we store inside of clickup as well another thing that we have is
is a giant database of all the long form content that I've created so any podcast YouTube video or
blog is stored inside of clickup and so if I ever want to repurpose my content I can go in there
I can type in the search the specific subject of the content that I'm looking to create and I can
get a list of any content I've already created centered around that this is so powerful when
it comes t
o repurposing but especially if you are using Pinterest in your marketing because as
things trend on the platform I don't always want to create a new blog about that so I will go back
into my archives and we will just create new pins to that content it makes finding stuff so much
easier so we have a giant blog database in there we have a ton of different types of databases but
those are two of the really big ones that we use quite often and then also are launch trackers so
anytime we are se
lling a product whether it's new or something we've created in the past we create
a launch database this launch database includes all of the behind the scenes work that we need
to do all of the social media things that we're going to be doing if we're going to be running
ads if we're going to be creating a new shopping cart all the emails that I write and this is all
stored for every launch inside of clickup this is so amazing because if we launch that product again
all we have to do is dup
licate that existing list make any modifications that we need but all the
general information is in there this is so great if I want to reuse an email that did well in the
past or we know we need to update our terms and conditions we already have them linked in there
we could easily find them you don't understand how much time is actually saved by having these types
of databases you're spending a lot of time looking for things even though it might only feel like
a couple minutes I promise y
ou if you actually timed yourself it's probably like 5 to 10 minutes
I feel like sometimes I go looking for something and I get distracted so easily so clickup has
been the way that I can work really really smart in repurposing my content and organizing all the
tasks in my business this rinse and repeat cycle and it saves me so much time and energy all right
the second tool that I use is called descript now I've talked about this a lot with my clients so
I wanted to talk about it here on th
e podcast as well dript does a lot of things and what I'm
primarily using it for in my business is actually transcripts and turning those transcripts into
blog posts I felt like I tapped into just like a gold mine when I discovered this AI tool that
they have because for about six months we had been transcribing our podcast episodes so in
the past we would just transcribe the episodes word for word but I didn't really like how that
looked on the the pod on the blog post it didn't feel organ
ized to me so we scratched that and
I started handwriting show notes it didn't take that long but it was taking me sometimes 20 to 25
minutes just to write show notes for the episode then we started looking at our Pinterest data
and noticed that a lot of our recent pens were getting a ton of traffic and I started to think to
myself okay if someone is on Pinterest and they're really interested in this topic and then they
go over to the blog thinking it's going to be a blog post not necessari
ly a podcast and there's
not enough juicy information there for them I'm probably losing a lot of people so I wanted to
change my strategy around to support anyone who was coming to my website enter descript so dript
has this amazing tool where you can either record directly in their Studio or you can just upload an
audio which is what we do so I upload the audio in descript I ask it to transcribe the audio episode
which takes honestly like 2 minutes 3 minutes max then I go into their aweso
me AI tools and I ask
it to take the information below and create a blog post now I've tested a lot of AI tools one of them
being chat PT which I do use for a lot of things I have not had the insane accuracy that I experience
with descript I don't want them changing my words right I created this podcast episode this is is
my language this is how I speak this is how I want the blog post formatted and all these other
tools would tweak it I didn't want that descript honors it I actually had on
e of my clients send
me a message the other day and said holy moly you just saved us so much time by telling us about
this tool so now I'm telling you about this tool descript does cost $15 a month but in my opinion
it's absolutely worth it if you're creating any podcast episodes or YouTube videos you can pop
those in there and transcribe those as well and you can have it do a lot of different things
the two things that I have it do are create a blog post where it basically gives me headers
and
then takes the transcript and writes some really enticing copy underneath or it can also write a
YouTube description for you and it'll even give you the timestamps of your YouTube video so you're
welcome I just saved you so much time it takes me about 15 minutes to transcribe get the show notes
pop them into a Google doc clean it up a bit add an intro I do write my own intro CU I like to add
a little bit of Storytelling of course and link up anything that I need and then Delena puts it
on to
the blog so it's taking me a little less than the time it was taking me to write my show notes and
I'm giving my audience more information I'm giving someone who's coming to the blog exactly what
they're looking for and then if they're ready and want to take the next step we embed the podcast
episode or they can watch it over on YouTube so descript y all and like I said there's a lot of
things that it does so you can definitely explore it I think it's a great investment for a long ti
me
I was using descript to actually create short form videos and I am really interested to see how they
start to integrate AI into this process but for now I'm using a different tool to repurpose
my videos and that tool is our third tool and it's called Opus clip Pro I've talked about this
before but I got to give it its second you know moment because it is so amazing how much time this
saves little story I don't like listening to my own content it's like once it leaves my body once
it lea
ves my mouth I don't really want to hear it again so it's for all your ears so I was really
struggling to have to watch a YouTube video and go through and have to find the key moments and it
was just taking a lot of time like even though I knew I was repurposing these videos that you watch
on my YouTube channel into content that would obviously perform on other platforms it was still
taking me a lot of time I stumbled upon Opus clip Pro after testing a lot of different tools and I'm
serious
ly in love with this platform so the idea is that you can buy a Year's worth of credits and
they're all based on hours credit hours and you can take a YouTube video or a link to a Google
drive or I think you can do Vimeo there's a lot of different options there so once our video gets
posted on YouTube every week I go pop the link in there I tell it specifically what I'm looking for
how long do I want my Clips I'm usually doing 30 to 60 seconds so that I can use them on every
platform so You
Tube shorts 60 seconds or less Pinterest Instagram eventually I'll be back on
Tik Tok I'm building up a reserve for that you can also have choose what you want the style to look
like you can create your own style with your own font and your own colors for captions or you can
choose one that they have you can there's a lot of different options here that's honestly the only
two things that I select and then I hit generate after about 10 minutes I get an email it says my
Clips are ready I go i
nto Opus clip and I have about 18 to 20 30 to 60 second clips of my video
footage captioned spliced and super great if you check out any of my shorts on YouTube or you've
seen something on Pinterest or you see any of my reals on Instagram that are like this those are
all created through Opus clip Pro so what I love about this is It's usually really great content
already but if I feel like I need to go in there and make some small adjustments all I have to do
is click on the video look at th
e transcript cut out what I want it magically makes it happen
and then I can download my content I mean if you're creating any form of video content this is
an amazing tool for you and I've recently started using it for my live videos as well so basically
anytime I'm on camera like this we are generating five to eight clips that we can use I definitely
don't use all 18 to 20 that they give me I'm some of them are Hit or Miss I'll be honest but the
fact that from every long form video I get
I can get five to eight short form videos that then can
go out to three to four different platforms that is time well spent in my book so Opus clip Pro AI
generated Clips highly highly recommend that you check it out you can do a free trial and then if
you want you can sign up for really what I believe is a pretty affordable uh year-long package I
think at the time I did it was like $130 for the whole entire year which is pretty great all
right the next tool I'm going to share with you is n
ot new I hope that you're all already using
it but I wanted to share how I'm using it in my business canva okay if you're not using canva let
this be the public service announcement that you needed to get on canva canva was designed for us
my friend it was designed for the solo preneur that is doing all of the things and doesn't want
to waste any time and for the solopreneur who's not really great at designing things and needs
a little bit of inspro that's me once I've got a template I can
totally make it my own but getting
started is always really hard for me so I've been using canva since 2016 I think my first freebie
that I created was actually 10 ways to use canva okay that's how long I've been using it but I use
it for graphic design of course anything that we design is inside of canva but recently I've really
been using it to organize my content and repurpose so I'll give you an example I've tried a lot of
different ways to organize social media content Instagram specif
ically I really like to have a
plan but I've struggled with some of the tools that I've used in the past not that they're not
amazing but I need a visual and I like to have everything in one spot so what I've started Ed
doing is creating a grid just like Instagram and showing what I'm going to do on each of the days
and then I actually just create the content right there so when I go to post my content native
because I am not scheduling my social media content I'm still posting it native al
l I have
to do is go into canva see what's up for that day find it in the exact same document download it
and post it it has made my life so much easier and has allowed me to really show up consistently
this year on social media which is something that I have struggled with in the past so I have
found that it's just really nice visually for me I love having all of my things in there I can go in
there I can create a month's worth of quotes I can create a month's worth of carousels I can go a
head
and say well I'm going to use a personal photo I have almost all of my photos linked in canva so
I can just drag that over I even know what photo I'm going to be using and I'm not investing in
another software it's just right there if I were to schedule I would most likely use Creator Studio
because it is native to Facebook and Instagram and that's something I used in the past but for now
I enjoy just logging on doing my little scrolly scroll comments and posting my stuff you know it
works for me but if you need to use a scheduler I like either the Creator Studio from meta or
plany is a really really great one that I've used in the past but again I'm not using auler
all right we'll talk about auler next and what I'm using it for but I think this is a hidden gym
with canva the other thing that I love is it helps me repurpose so I'm creating these carousels
for Instagram and then with a couple clicks I can resize those for Pinterest where they
work really really well or T
ik Tock they work really well and Tik Tok as well so again it just
goes back to like how can I make my life easier how can I work smarter by repurposing my content
in this way it's all right there super obsessed it's really helped me show up consistently this
year and I think that's important because showing up consistently on social media I get it is a
struggle I totally understand all right let's talk about scheduling so this is a question I
get a lot for years I scheduled almost all of m
y content meaning that I would pre-schedule
things to post right on a Monday I would sit down I would schedule all my Instagram posts to
post throughout the week my Pinterest YouTube all those different things and they were always with
third- party platforms now this was before many of the platforms had their own native scheduler
they've come a long way in the last eight years let me tell you so I use different tools like
Tailwind like plany um to to schedule my content but I really think t
hat there's power in using the
scheduler from the platform I think the platforms want us to ultimately do that that's my personal
opinion and so if it's there and and it's $3.99 I'm going to take advantage of it so right now
when it comes to scheduling my content I schedule my Pinterest content inside of Pinterest their
scheduler is amazing and I love that I can go in there on a Monday I can schedule my content for
the entire week and I don't have to worry about it or touch it it's fantasti
c and uh I can do it
on my desktop which is even better then Instagram we already kind of talked about that I'm usually
using canva to map out my schedule but then I'm posting it in real time the other platform that
I use is YouTube now YouTube videos obviously we schedule those native to the platform but when it
comes to YouTube shorts I have found an awesome workaround that I love a lot of my clients have
really struggled with scheduling their YouTube shorts if they do it on a desktop it
doesn't post
as a short and a lot of us don't have all of this stuff on our phone we haven't you know we don't
want to download a a bunch of shorts onto our phone and take up our phone storage space and
then have to upload them as a whole thing so I have been using metro cool for a while now and I
really love it the best part it's free it gives you analytics and it's really fantastic their
whole platform is really amazing you can actually schedule Tik toks you can schedule Instagram you
ca
n schedule Facebook you can do Pinterest there are so many different options in there that you
can definitely check out if you are looking for a scheduler because that's what you need and I
totally get if that's what you need but I am just using it for YouTube shorts right now yesterday
I scheduled a week worth of YouTube shorts and it took me less than 30 minutes why cuz I've got
a database in clickup full of all of my videos that were created in Opus clip that are now linked
and all I hav
e to do is go download them and then upload them into met cool given it a name click
on the scheduler bada bing bada boom we're done it is amazing that when you use systems like this
and software like this how much easier it is for you to show up which is is my goal I want to show
you how to build a business that doesn't take away your precious time doing the other things that you
need to do or want to do in your life all right and the last tool that I want to share with you is
my email mar
keting tool so this is a question that I get it every single week what am I using to send
emails to my email list y'all know how much I love emailing my list how much I respect my newsletter
how much I really just enjoy the process of having and creating this community and showing up for
them and the engagement and the responses like I just love I love me some email marketing I've been
using convertkit now for 7even years years and I it is the platform that I highly highly highly
recommend
convertkit grows with you and over the years I've actually seen a lot of entrepreneurs
Jumping Ship like I'm talking big name entrepreneurs with 30,000 100,000 plus subscribers
moving over to convertkit which used to be what mostly just small business owners and solopreneurs
were talking about but the reality is that it is so efficient and it's organized so well and it
just makes your life so much easier and again I've been using it for a really long time so convertkit
allows me to send bro
adcasts weekly broadcast to my email list it allows me to tag anyone that
has purchased my products or my services and send emails specifically to them it allows me to
completely automate the client onboarding process it allows me to to completely automate my funnels
and my freebies so if you go to my website and you download a freebie you take my Brand Story quiz
special shout out to the Brand Story quiz you take that on my website all of those emails that you're
getting are automated and
this is essential every single entrepreneur business owner brand whatever
you call yourself no matter what you sell needs to be building an email list and the more that you
can automate that the better off you're going to now again like I said in the beginning the thing
I love about convert kit is it grows with you so I have not met an entrepreneur that's outgrown
the platform and I think that's really powerful because I don't have all day to move an email
list over to a new platform or to
recreate a bunch of stuff I want to stick with the one that
I've been using and I want it to work for me so convert kit is the the tool that we use all the
time and it just makes life so much easier again we're talking about working smarter not harder
and it's really nice that you can have tags and you know what people have purchased from you and
you have this awesome data and you can send emails and grow your email list all in one spot and I
really really love it so if you want to check ou
t convert kid or any of these other tools I'm
going to link them in the show notes you can go to Brandmerry.com/blog where you can find today's
episode you can also go over to the YouTube channel go to brandmerry.com/youtube if you're
not already watching it right now and scroll down to the description and we're going to link
all of them in there as well so these are six of my faves that really help me just run my business
efficiently as someone who doesn't have a giant team who still creat
es a buttload of content and
is showing up consistently to grow her business which I know it's something you're doing or have
Ambitions to do so I hope that you're able to check out some of these tools as we wrap up today
episode and we're talking about email marketing I want to let you know that I am hosting a upcoming
workshop on April 2nd I'm going to be talking about email copyrighting I'm going to teach you my
secret softs my secret weapons to writing copy for your email campaigns whet
her it's your funnels or
general broadcast trust building types of emails or selling how do you sell via email I'm going to
give you all the nitty-gritty details you need to write really great copy this has been one of the
things that I've been hearing from a lot of people in the community that they just really struggle
to write emails and I get it I was there too so I'm really excited to lead you inside of this
Workshop you can head to Brandmerry.com/copy and you can get information on get
ting tickets today
again it's brandmerry.com/copy and you can get your tickets to join me for this live Workshop get
access to any of the bonus bonuses and the Replay for life all right I'll be back with another
episode next week thanks for joining me check out these tools send me a DM if you try them out and
I'd love to connect with you over on Instagram bye
Comments