Software essentials for an online course business

Entrepreneur Tina Tower shares her software automation suggestions for growing and scaling your online course business.

The technology now available to us as business owners enables the sort of exponential growth that some years ago just wasn’t possible without a large team of people.

I was saying to my right hand woman the other day “What you do now, ten years ago took eight separate people to do”, such is the power of technology, systems and automation. It’s beautiful and once you’ve learnt how to optimise it, really does enable you to do so much more with less people. Processes that used to be manual can now be done with automation or with the click of a button. That means an easier life for you without having the human resource issues of a larger team, and more profit in your pocket.

I have no desire to be busy, but I have every desire to get massive results and this is where my love of software and automations come in. Now, with so many incredible software and automation solutions available, I have seen some business owners get carried away and go so nuts with the app-stacking that it ends up with more complexity than doing everything manually.

The idea of utilising software is to make your life easier so I like to keep things simple. Some of my essentials for an online course business are:

Kajabi

Kajabi is the software that your whole website sits on that contains all of your front end website, your course materials and everything in between. It can automate:

• Pipeline Marketing
• Sales & marketing funnels
• Checkout
• Customer Onboarding
• Email marketing

Stripe + Xero

There’s so much time to be saved with a smooth checkout, payment and invoicing process so that you don’t have to be spending your precious time on book keeping that the software can do for you.

Google Workspace

I love a great google site to hold all of your systems and processes. Anything that you do more than once in your business should be documented. Your future self will thank you if you have one central place to keep everything that’s buzzing around in your brain. It also means that when you hire staff, you can give them the training and guidance so easily for what doing a good job looks like so easily.

Monday

Task management software allows you to keep track of all of the moving pieces in your business and significantly reduce overwhelm by having everything organised. That way, you just need to focus on your next most important thing and not constantly worried that you’re forgetting something important. Monday helps you with:

• Project management
• Task management
• Client management
• Automatic integrations like sending emails when an action is taken and moving pieces through processes.

 Social media

Love it or hate it (or perhaps a bit of both), social media is vital in running a business and if you really want to supercharge your reach, live video will do that! Use software like Streamyard to do one live but streamed to multiple platforms and channels like your Facebook page, Facebook group, LinkedIn and YouTube all from the one live video. Such a beautiful time saver and optimises your reach!

Calendar Management

We all have appointments and busy schedules but it’s bonkers to go back and forth trying to find a time that works for both… hello Calendly! You set your availability, your zoom room link and time limit and buffers between appointments and clients can choose the time that suits them best. It integrates directly with your own Calendar software so you’ll never be double booked.

Don’t let software and lack of tech knowledge hold you back, it’s all designed to be so user intuitive and make your life easier so that you can focus on the big things like creating more in your business and servicing your clients to the highest standard. Use it to grow and you’ll be amazed at how much you’re capable of.

Tina Tower is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who has founded, grown, and sold several businesses and franchises. Tina has helped hundreds of people package their expertise into an online course and launch it to the world. Through her program, ‘Her Empire Builder’, she is on a mission to help 100 women build a $1 million a year business by 2025 and her new book, ‘Million Dollar Micro Business’ can show you how to package your expertise into an online course. Find out more at milliondollarmicrobusiness.com