My Favorite Teacher Business Tools

Kirsten 0:00

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. This episode is all about my favorite teacher business tools, I'm gonna give you a roundup of five of my favorite business tools. In no particular order that I want to share with you that I think are really great resources to use in your teacher business. It doesn't matter what issue you're in. So let's go ahead and get into it.

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact inside and outside of the classroom. I'm Kiersten, a full time classroom teacher and part time business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small, to in each week, as I give you my best advice on classroom teaching, and starting and growing a teacher business. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

All right. As you know, there is so much that goes behind the scenes in a business. And I am really excited to share with you a round up of five of my favorite teacher business tools that I love to use in my business. Again, this is in no particular order. And there of course are way more than five resources and tools that I use. But I would go on forever and ever. And I just want to make it really short and sweet for this podcast. So I'm just gonna focus on five of those tools.

Tool number one is Asana. This is a project management tool. It's very similar to air table. But I have personally more experience with Asana so I can give you highlights of how it works. You can create a variety of tasks. And you can segment those tasks based on certain categories. For instance, my categories that I have are content creation, design services, social media, product creation, course launch, and email marketing. Within those projects, which are color coded, of course, I have certain tasks that I add on. And I always like to bucket them in different sections. So with I have my content creation, I have different sections on my content creation board, you can organize it in different ways you can do it in a list type way a board similar to Trello timeline. But what I have is my four different platforms when I go to content creation, like my podcast, or blogs. And in those little sections, I list out specific tasks that I need to complete in those sections. And it's really easy to create a task, duplicate that task for similar feature tasks. And also in those major tasks, you can list in subtasks and add links to your Google Drive, all kinds of stuff. It has been really helpful for me to have everything out in a calendar style. So I even though have different sections and buckets, I can see that it's color coded so I can see like for instance, today as I'm recording this episode, there are two tasks that are you know, marking that I need to do. And there are two tasks that are content creation because they're color coded in That way, it is really cool to play around with I don't even have the full capacity of it. Because I'm just using a free version. I just use it in the way that works for me. I also think it's cool that if you download the app and set your email notifications on for Asana, it'll give you daily reminders of the tasks that you have to complete. So that's always helpful for me, and I love ticking the box, there's a cute little unicorn. Anytime you check the box, if you complete a task, you can add deadlines, you can add any type of notes. And if you have a team, you can add collaborators or people onto your teams or projects and you can assign them specific roles. So it's a really cool project management tool, I highly recommend you take a look into it.

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My third resource that I love to use for my teacher business is free pick. Free pick is basically a one stop shop for icons, and stickers that look amazing for products. And for product listings. And for any type of thing you need for graphics, you can go to flat icon.com And the author that I specifically uses free pick. The reason why I really liked the icons is because it is not super cutesy for K through two, my niche is grades three through five on Teachers Pay Teachers and so I want to make sure my icons are cute, but not too cutesy. And these are the perfect happy medium, you can pretty much search for anything on flat icon and get a ton of results. So if you're looking for a icon for celebrations, so they'll give you tons of different celebrations and icons you can choose from in black and white and an outline with color or color without an outline. There's just so many different options. And personally this is what I use in my branding just to kind of make it stand out but they've got icons, they've got stickers that definitely commit match your branding, if you ever take a look at it and see what's out there but For me personally free pick is amazing. I purchased the premium version, which gives me the ability to use these icons without attribution, I don't have to say that these icons are from free pick or anything like that. But there is a free version you can use, and it will let you use the icons, you just have to make sure you credit the author, which is something you're usually doing anyway, when you are creating your credits page for your TPT resources. So that's not really a big deal. It's just the fact that you could use them anywhere, not just in your TPT resources, and you have the ability to download much more than you would on the free version. So the premium version is not too much per month. So I just really like using it. And I like having it there so that I can use it in my Teachers Pay teacher's resources. All right.

The fourth teacher business tool that I absolutely love to use is called Kajabi. You may or may not have heard of it before, or you may or may not have used it if you have purchased a course or membership, chances are that course or membership is hosted by Kajabi. Kajabi is basically an all in one platform for business owners who are just starting out or are scaling. It doesn't matter where you are in your business journey. It basically houses your website, you can use your domain that you might have purchased, you can utilize as many landing pages as you want. Make as many sales pages as you want. You can house your TPT resources on your website, you can create courses, you can create podcast memberships, and they also have email marketing as well. So there's so many different parts to Kajabi that you can use. And the best part about it is all in one monthly payment. It's super easy to get started. And they've got tons of support. And they have an awesome Facebook group that if you are not sure what to do, you can go ask the Facebook group and there will be plenty of people helping you. I have never had any major trouble with Kajabi. I will say it is a learning curve when you're like creating your website, or you're trying to figure out some a certain amount of things of what to do and integrate your landing page with some email. But I found that you can find the answer either on the Kajabi website or in the Facebook group. So it's super easy to find. The cool thing about it is just like you would for WordPress, you have templates that people have created. They've created sales page templates, Lead Magnet templates, they've created website templates. So it's really easy to get some support if you're not the best designer on your website. And of course Kajabi has their own templates and Reddit as well. So if you have a TPT store and you're looking to kind of expand a little bit more with a website, or maybe you want a blog, or you want to start developing a course or thinking about where you could host a membership, I definitely recommend Kajabi as your all in one, one stop shop for all of that I do have an affiliate link that I'm going to link in the show notes. And it's basically a 30 day free trial where you can try it out, see what it's like see if it's for you. And then ultimately if it is for you, you can go into picking one of the plan options that best fits your budget.

The last tool that I love to use in my business is loom. You may have heard of loom but it is a free screen and video recorder. You can create videos and screenshot different parts of your laptop if you want to share a video with others. I use it to screenshot and record my store audits and product audits for clients. So it is very easy to use. They have free versions and they have paid versions the free version you have a limit of five minutes per video. And there are some other limiting factors but it's still definitely great when you want to maybe send a video message to a client or a video message to another team member. It's really useful whenever you are recording or screenshotting anything in your business. I really like how you can if you want show your face in the quarter it's a little circular area at the back add on, you can show your face while you're screen recording so you can show your face and you can show whatever you are, whether it's a slideshow or some type of screen, you can show that simultaneously. And you can even add comments at certain parts of the video. So it'll pop up when somebody plays the video at certain times, so that's really cool as well. When you finish with a video, you can share links, and you'll get notifications if somebody has viewed your video. So it's a really great way to communicate with others or just share your screen and share information with teammates or clients or maybe your audience. If you have a Facebook group, I have really enjoyed using glue.

So with all of those business tools, Asana, ConvertKit, free pick Kajabi, and loom. My creative action tip for you is to try out one of these teacher business tools. All of these tools that I have shared with you have a free version or some type of free child that you can use. And I especially recommend Kajabi. If you're looking for something all in one, with website, landing pages, email marketing course or membership platform, it is so worth it, I'll add my link to a 30 day free trial of Kajabi. So if you're interested in what it's about, you can take a look at that. Because if you're looking to expand outside of TPT, and you want to start a blog, or a podcast or an email list or a course, this is an amazing starting point. It's always nice to have everything housed in one place. And there's a ton of support that you get. So I am a big proponent of Kajabi, as well as the other business tools that I've shared here. All right, well, that is the end of this episode. I hope you have a great rest of your day. And I will see you again soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.