This is it.
Looking for my go-to tools and resources?
Before we get into these, let me start by saying I think you can create a super successful business with simple tech.
Stick with simplicity to start and only add tech when you truly NEED it (not just because you see someone else talking about it!). The secret to success isn’t a piece of technology - it’s your brand, how you help people, and the way you message your offers.
You don’t need fancy platforms or every bell and whistle out there to hit 6-figures/year.
I promise.
After being in online business for well over a decade and helping thousands of entrepreneurs build their course businesses, I’ve used A LOT of tech.
Online Course Platforms
When you buy Thrivecart with its incredible one-time lifetime fee, you get access to their amazing platform for checkout and sales pages, but also their Learn platform. Learn is a platform for hosting all of your courses and digital products - no limits! I’ve got a whole page dedicated to Thrivecart, including my affiliate bonuses I’d love to gift you, here.
If you want a platform for hyper-customization, then I don’t know of a better one than Teachery. You can customize the look and feel of your course on Teachery to create an exceptionally custom experience for your students. Plus, the founders Jason and Caroline Zook are two super rad entrepreneurs. Unmatched customer support.
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Payment Processing
Thrivecart is the go-to checkout platform for online entrepreneurs for good reason: their pages convert well, it’s easy to connect with Stripe, Paypal, Klarma, and more, there are no additional transaction fees, and you only have to pay for it once and you get lifetime access. I switched in 2019 and never looked back. Fun fact? The conversion rate of my checkout pages 5X’d when I switched to Thrivecart. If you purchase through my affiliate link, I’ll hand you my template kit, which includes over 5 of my own pages ready for you to 1-click install into your own account.
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Website and Landing Pages
Use Showit for your website and landing pages. Buy a template from Northfolk or Tonic and DIY the install yourself. You’ll be glad you did. It’s a gorgeous platform and so much easier to use than Wordpress (believe me, I say this after using Wordpress for 10 years!).
Grab any URLs you need through Namecheap. It's, well, cheap.
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Go Custom! Uplevel your look by using Rebel and Rise to take your Showit site and pages to the next level. Tell Katie Gemma sent you ;)
If you want a secondary platform dedicated just to creating suuuuper easy landing pages that are completely plug-and-play, Leadpages is it. I started using them years ago and can’t seem to give them up. I can create a webinar registration page, replay page, event page, and more in a matter of minutes. Not necessary if you have Showit or another website builder, but a nice to have.
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Email Marketing
Whether you want to send a weekly newsletter or are ready to build complex funnels, Converkit is the email platform for online creators. They’ve got a free plan you can get started with, and another cool perk is that you might even get featured by other Convertkit members. Talk about a win. “But Gemma, don’t you use ActiveCampaign?” I moved from Convertkit to ActiveCampaign years ago for my email marketing, back when Convertkit didn’t have a certain feature I was looking for (they now have that feature, fyi). If I didn’t have a zillion funnels, tags, and other complexities now built into my email, I would move back to Converkit in a heartbeat.
Want to create a quiz to help grow your email list? Look no further than Interact. Easy to setup, integrates with all the email service providers, and great analytics.
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Timers
A free tool you can use to create timers to embed in your emails, landing pages, and more.
This is the software you need once you are ready to create evergreen email funnels. It uniquely tracks each lead so that your offers or special promotions will end at the right time for each subscriber.
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Make More Sales
The game-changer of Instagram accounts everywhere. If you want to automate your DMs, create mini-funnels to help grow your list and makes sales off social, and increase engagement of your content, ManyChat is what you’re looking for. I have built numerous little mini funnels inside their platform and have seen my sales and engagement take off. 10/10 recommend.
Alright, I love this one. Once your business has really taken off, you will probably start looking at small ways you can optimize the conversion rates of your landing pages and sales pages. Provesource to the rescue! It’s that thing that pops up in the corner on pages that says something like “Someone from Australia just bought ____!”. Social proof works and this little tool has increased the conversion rate of all the pages in my business.
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We all know how important testimonials and case studies are when we are selling our products and services. After years of keeping mine as screenshots in my google drive (works fine until you have hundreds of testimonials and organization is a hot mess!), I discovered Senja. This tool not only helps you organize your testimonials, but it’s got amazing features for collecting feedback from past clients/students and displaying them. I’m obsessed with it.
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AI
While there are other great options out there, I keep coming back to ChatGPT as my AI tool of choice. Once you know how to give it good prompts, the results and what it can do for you is pretty damn incredible. This tool pays for itself daily, saving me tons time by writing things for me, doing analysis, helping to take my ideas and turn them into content, and so much more. Grab the Pro version for better output (it’s worth it for only $20/mo).
If you create workbooks or SOPs in your business, this is a super handy tool. You can record a video of you doing something on the computer, and then Guidde takes that and turns it into a play-by-play workbook.
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Fresh start
Business Admin
I truly don’t think you can beat Google for the back-end of your business. We use it for all team email inboxes, files, organization, everything. A lot of my course content even lives as Google Docs and Spreadsheets - they are easy to share and update.
If you start taking on lots of calls in your business, then it will become essential to get a tool like Calendly to help people book a time with you. It takes away all the back-and-forth of scheduling a call and lets them do it within the confines of your working hours. Perfect if you do a lot of interviews or client calls!
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While there are other tools on the market, we haven’t found anything that we like more than Quickbooks for all bookkeeping needs. And the fact that pretty much every bookkeeper and accountant out there use and like this software is a plus.
Ahh, the glue that holds businesses together across the world. This software is basically magic. You can automate almost everything by using Zapier “flows” and integrating all the different pieces of software you use in your business. We have so many zaps built in our business, it’s incredible. It has removed a huge amount of manual work and saved countless hours. If I could marry a piece of software, it would be Zapier.
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Webinars + Live Events
The obvious choice, right? Everyone uses Zoom, it’s affordable, easy, and has all the features you could want.
Once you start hosting events with large numbers of participants, then you’ll probably want to move away from Zoom and grab WebinarJam. It’s what I use for events where we have hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people registered and I need something reliable. If I’m only doing one or two of these types of big presentations per year, I’ll often just buy for one month and then cancel.
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Video
Whether you need a video service to start recording slide deck presentations, face-to-camera videos, or tech walkthrough videos, Loom is the go-to option in my opinion. It’s super budget friendly, easy to use, hosts all the videos for you, and can be easily transcribed, time-stamped, and more. Use this for your course videos, client videos, videos to share with your team, anything!
I splurged on a Blue Yeti microphone early on in my podcasting days and I’m so glad I did. It has stood the test of time for being a great microphone with high quality sound.
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Podcasting
This is a really cool tool for podcasting (and grabbing video versions of your podcast, too!). You can edit, remove filler words, get easy transcripts, and just speed up the whole podcast production process. Whether you’re doing your podcast as a one-person show, or using a VA to give you a hand, this is the perfect tool to save time and get your show out there.
This is what we have used since the beginning with my podcast. Easy and affordable, we’ve had no reason to switch to anything else!
GROWTH STAGE
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Instead of using the webcam on my laptop, I grabbed this one off Amazon and have been really pleased with the video quality. This is especially useful if you are doing a lot of face-on-camera videos for your course or social media.
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I splurged on a Blue Yeti microphone early on in my podcasting days and I’m so glad I did. It has stood the test of time for being a great microphone with high quality sound.
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Graphics
It’s the go-to tool for online business owners for a reason. Easy to use and beautiful templates mean you can create social media graphics, slide decks, digital downloads, and so much more. Start with the free version, but we recommend Pro so you can get that extra level of functionality and access to all the graphic elements and stock photos.
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Once you are ready to take your brand up a notch, use Haute Stock for stock photography and videography (great for b-roll!). I’ve been a subscriber for over 5 years and absolutely love their work.
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Random Extras
This one is a bit random, but are you ever looking to get a screenshot of a webpage but can’t because you need the browser to scroll down to get the full view? That’s where this handy extension comes in. You can screenshot the full webpage and it will create a PNG and PDF version for you. You can use it for free, but I have the premium version (it’s only $1 a month!!) so I can crop and edit my screenshot images before downloading. I can’t even begin to tell you how often I use this little tool!
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When you are running an event online (say a workshop or webinar) and want to give a link for people to add it to their own calendars, you can use this free tool! No need to pay for extra software and it’ll add to any calendar type (google, outlook, apple, etc).
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Service Providers
Here are a few of my trusted friends who offer great services for online entrepreneurs. Reach out and tell them Gemma sent you. ;)
Copywriter
Copywriter
Copywriter
Copy templates
Showit support
bookkeeping for canadians
social media management
meta ads
misc admin Tasks + small jobs
Data Tracking
Social Media