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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2515 The Essential Tools You Need To Start Your Online Business
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Ever feel overwhelmed by the endless array of tools and resources available when starting an online business? Not sure which ones are truly essential and which you can skip? You're not alone. Starting your entrepreneurial journey can be exciting but also a bit daunting, especially when it comes to picking the right tools to support your vision.
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Hey, welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm, and in today's lesson, you will learn the essential tools you need to start your Starting an online business can be overwhelming. I get it. You're not sure which tools you need, let alone the ones you don't. I'm going to simplify things for you. I want to make this easy for you so that you know exactly what to spend your money on and what things you actually don't need. Just to get started. Remember, this is about starting your business. As your business starts to get traction and as you grow, you'll need other tools. But right now, this is how you're going to first get started to start making some money and start growing your business. Let's dive in. Now, before we begin, we made this even easier for you. If you want to download a checklist for today's episode, you could Download it over at 100mba.net worksheets. It's a beautiful checklist that you can just download and tick off. Yes, I got this tool. No, I still need to get that one. Did you know you only need to spend around $100 a month on tools to start your online business? According to our research and all the tools that we've used in the past when we were starting out, this is not going to cost you a lot. It's not going to break the bank. Only $100 per month. Even less if you use some of the free tools. So don't worry, this is not going to cost you more than a meal out every single month. Okay, I admit that's an expensive meal, but you get the point. When Nicole and I started the $100 MBA, we were bootstrapping. We needed to be smart about our money. That we spent and the tools we chose. Now, I was being kind. Yes, we bootstrapped our businesses and we self funded our own business, but we're also poor. We didn't have any money. We lived in a studio apartment in New York City. We were, you know, basically scrambling to pay rent every single month. But we eventually got out of that situation by starting a business, choosing the right tools that were not very cost effective and not expensive. And we focused on making sure we make the most out of these tools. One of the things I'm going to talk about today is you want to get the most out of every tool so that you're not spending more money on other tools. So let's break down the essential tools you'll need in each category to make your life easier and you can start your business immediately. So let's start with tool number one, and that's website building. We start with website building because your website is where your business gets money. Okay? This is where people go to exchange with you. They're gonna get value in exchange, they're gonna give you money, right? So they need to go to an interface to do this. This is like your storefront in the physical world. So this is worth spending money on. Okay? This is worth actually doing right now. There are a lot of website building tools out there and I highly recommend starting your website on WordPress. WordPress is an open source software. Don't worry, this is not complicated. It's very simple and it's open source, meaning that this is something that you're not gonna have to pay for to use. You're only gonna pay for the hosting. To host your site on servers. Don't worry. I know this sounds like technical mumbo jumbo, but it's very, very simple. The way this works is that you install WordPress on a server, you need a server with a web host, okay? So you're gonna be paying the web host for having allowing your website to run 247 and then anybody can visit your website at any time. Now when it comes to WordPress, there are two options I recommend when it comes to web hosting. Hosting your website. The first one is a little bit more expensive than the other. And that's WP Engine. We've been using WP Engine since pretty much the beginning of the hundred dollar mba. We love WP Engine because they are incredibly reliable. Their uptime is incredible, meaning that your site doesn't go down at any given time, which means you can't do business. It's also wonderful because their customer support is incredible. It's one of those customer supports where you tell them you have a problem and they don't tell you how to fix it, they just fix it. I love that. The other hosting we recommend is SiteGround. SiteGround is like WP Engine, great customer support, but it's less expensive. Now, I should say that anything we recommend today, this is not some sort of sales pitch. We're not getting some sort of kickback by me telling you this. They're not our sponsors or anything like that. I'm only just mentioning brands or businesses or where to go to do this to make your life easier, just so you know where to go, where to sign up so that you can get started. Okay? So don't think that like, you know, WP is like paying for this podcast or something like that. They were a sponsor back in the day, but it's okay. You could choose what you like, what you feel is most comfortable. But we want to give you a recommendation so you can take action. WP Engine starts around $30 a month and SiteGround is about $7 a month, very affordable. Now, the exception to this rule in terms of how to host your website, and again, if you go to WP Engine or SiteGround and as soon as you sign up, you go to customer support and say, hey, I want a WordPress site. Can you help me? You know, create a WordPress site? They will do it for you, don't worry, they'll walk you through all the steps, nice and simple. And then with WordPress, you can learn how to create your website, drag and drop, using a theme. Now, the only exception to this that I recommend that is not WordPress is if you have an E commerce business. And in this case, I recommend Shopify. Shopify is a great tool. It's been around for a very long time. They're very reliable and they're very affordable. They're only $29 a month and they're just like the king of E commerce. I would just go with Shopify if you have an E commerce store. So you have a website. And now the first thing you want to do with your website is obviously talk about your business, show what you do. But you also want to collect email addresses, right? I'm sure you've seen this before. You put your name and email in a form and you get something in exchange, like you're a part of the newsletter or you get some sort of freebie or something like that, right? So this is called an opt in, Right? So how do you do this? Well, you want to have a database, a place where you can collect the email addresses and then send out newsletters, send out promotions to people. Okay? And that tool is called an email marketing tool. So the email marketing tools that we recommend are ConvertKit and Mailchimp. We've been using ConvertKit for five, six years now. We absolutely love it. I know the founder, Nathan Barry myself. He's a good friend of mine, old friend of mine. We kind of got started in our entrepreneurial career together and he's built an incredible, incredible tool. It's quite affordable. They have a free plan, but their plans start about 29amonth. If you want to go paid with a few more features and then it scales up by the number of contacts you have. But you can get started for free. Mailchimp is also a good alternative, is also free to get started. But mailchimp is now starting to go towards e commerce. So if you're not an e commerce brand or business, probably ConvertKit's a better option. So what do email marketing tools do? Well, they allow you to collect emails, put it in. Put it in the database, right. It allows you to comply by the laws of, you know, GDPR and all these other things that go on in the Internet to make sure that you're protecting people's privacy in their email. It also allows you to send down newsletters like I mentioned, like weekly newsletters. It allows you to send out campaigns so you can say, hey, we have a sale. Here's the coupon for our offer. It also allows you to do automation. So since somebody joins your email list, you can send automatic emails to onboard them. So there's a lot of things you need. This email marketing is very important when you're starting out. Number three, essential. You need to be able to collect money, right? You need a payment processor. Okay. You need a way for somebody to put their name, their credit card number and be able to be charged. And then you need that money to get transferred to your bank account. I recommend using Stripe. We've been using Stripe for, I think over a decade now. Stripe is very powerful and it can do a lot of great things for your business now and in the future. It scales very well and it's actually very good and cost effective when it comes to the transaction. Fee is about 2.9% per transaction plus $0.30 per transaction, and that's as of today. But the point here is that Stripe is really a solid tool and I have found it to be much easier to use than PayPal, for example. But PayPal is an option if you're familiar with PayPal, you can use your business kind of plan and start collecting money that way. But Stripe has become so robust and so easy to use. Now it's not just for developers. I highly recommend Stripe. So what does Stripe do? Well, basically, Stripe allows you to have a buy button. You can create a buy button or a checkout experience and then embed it in your website so that people can buy your products or services. Stripe processes their credit card, they take their fee and then they put it into your Stripe account. Put the money in the Stripe account, and then in a few days, Stripe sends your money to your bank account. That's how you get paid in the online world. Tool number four, project management. Now we use Basecamp. We love. Basecamp is one of the easiest tools to use. It's very, very cost effective. It's about $99 and it's unlimited users for $99 a month. Pretty cool. But if you want a free alternative, Trello is also a good option. It's free. They have a paid version, but the free version pretty much does everything. Now why do you need a project management tool? Well, you need to manage your work as an entrepreneur. You need to set up tasks and deadlines. And, you know, even if you're just working by yourself as a solopreneur, you need to create the systems for yourself so that you can be efficient. One of the things I learned when I first went from teaching in my 9 to 5 job as a full time entreprene is, wow. My employer used to do so much for me, right? I used to show up to work, they told me what to do, how to do it, where to do it, everything right. They gave me my deadlines. I didn't have to really do any strategy. I just implemented, right? As an entrepreneur, you gotta do the strategy. You gotta set your own deadlines, you gotta tell yourself what to do, right? And you need to do it in a way that's organized and that nothing falls between the cracks. And project management tools help you do that, right? As simple as just to do lists tracking the progress of a project. Project either just with yourself or other team members, or with a agency or a freelancer that's working with you. So I like project management. Keeps things organized. You're gonna need it. And you can get started for free with Trello or you can go with Basecamp. $99 a month. Now, these tools will do just enough for you when you're getting started. You might want to graduate to another tool later on. I'M not even going to mention the names of these tools so you don't go down the rabbit hole. But the point is that they're going to do other things you might need to do. But right now you need something simple so you can get started. Tool number five is a webinar software. Now you might be thinking, Omar, why do I need a webinar software to get started my business? Well, one of the things that a lot of people neglect, and we mentioned this in a past episode, is sales, right? They think that if I just market my business, if I do social media, even if I run ads, my product is going to sell itself. No, that's not how it works. Okay? Sales is its own function. Need a way to sell your product so you have a bunch of leads, you have a bunch of emails. You need to invite them to a an event or something where you can sell to them, whether it's in a one on one meeting, a call, or a one to many meeting, like a webinar. So I recommend a webinar software to allow you to facilitate that sales process where you can show your products and services, you can demo your products and services, you can showcase what you have and then make an offer to your audience. Now if you do both one on one, like maybe you do a consulting call or you do sales, one on one or coaching, I would recommend doing a meeting software like Zoom. Zoom also can double as a webinar software and that starts about $15 a month. But if you're going to be doing a larger event with hundreds of people, Webinar Ninja is a tool that I created with my co founder. Ten years ago we got acquired by Proprofs. It's not my business anymore, but I still stand by. I love that product. It's incredible. You may want to check it out. Webinar Ninja starts at $29 a month. Whatever you choose for your webinars or your live events, the most important thing is that you use, okay? And what I like to do is schedule in my schedule when I'm going to do a live demo or when I'm going to do my live calls or sales calls or life coaching to show people what I have to offer. Okay? This is your sales exercise so that when you show them and provide value, you can say, hey, if you like what you saw today and you want more or you want help implementing what I just taught, then you're going to love my program. And that's how you sell your product, your service, your whatever. Number six, content creation. Okay? You're going to need to be able to create images, videos, any kind of graphics to showcase your business, whether it's on your website, whether it's on your offer pages, whether it's in your emails, whether it's on social media, on Instagram. And one of the easiest tools to use for that is Canva. Canva is one of my favorite tools ever. They have a free plan that, that pretty much does everything. It's incredible. It's also an incredible Australian company, a great story behind it if you ever want to dig into their story. It's an incredible, incredible tool that disrupted the market. Another tool, if you love the Adobe products is Adobe Spark. I believe it's called Adobe Spark. It goes for about $10 a month. Honestly, if you love Adobe products, it's a good one. It's like basically Photoshop Light but. But if you don't or you don't care which one to go with, I recommend Canva. Even their paid version is really inexpensive and it's really powerful and it does incredible stuff. So Canva is a great tool for you to create graphics, images, even videos, banners, social media, kind of things that you need to showcase your business.
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Tool number seven is analytics. Google Analytics is what I recommend because it's absolutely free and it's easy to. Basically what Google Analytics does is it adds a little bit of code to your website and allows you to track all the Things that are happening on your website. Things like how many people are visiting your website every single month, every single day actually, or in the moment right now, how long they're staying there, where they're coming from, you know, what sources of traffic are they coming from, what countries are they coming from, what time of day, all kinds of stuff like that. The analytics matter because you need to start tracking what is working and what's not. You know, what are your most popular pages on your website? Right. Maybe you need to make those up in front, you know, of the website so it's easy to access which blog posts are the ones that are really getting searched for and getting a lot of traffic. Google Analytics is going to help you with that. Google Analytics is absolutely free and it's a little bit of a pain to install, you know, if you don't know your way around a code. But you're in luck. You signed up for either WP Engine or SiteGround with great customer support. You can literally say, hey, I need to install Google Analytics on my website. And they'll walk you through it, they'll ask you, you know, you can give the code from here, give me the code, and they might even install it for you. So super simple with customer support. By the way, anytime you have any questions about how to do anything on your website, contact support with your host. That's their job. It's like your own tech team tool number eight, customer support. Now, a lot of people jump the gun and they want to get customer support software like Intercom, which can get pricey very quickly. I know our bill for intercom was like $2,000 every single month with Webinar Ninja at some point. So you don't need that bill when you're getting started. In the beginning, you don't have any customers or you have very few customers. So you can handle customer support via email. So we're going to do two in one things. Two things in one. Actually right now, you know, we're going to do two actions in one tool and that is signing up for Google's G Suite email. Right? It's called G Suite Business Email. It's really, really inexpensive. I believe it's like $5 a month or so. $6 a month is what it is. They just bump the prices. And this allows you to have an email with your domain name. Now if you don't have a domain name yet, like the address of your website, like 100- MBA-NET, then you're going to need to get one from your web host again. Go back to WP Engine or you can go to SiteGround and they can help you with that and you can get your, your domain name. Now what G Suite is going to do, what they're going to allow you to create an email with that domain. So your email is like Omar100 MBA net rather than Omar Zenhome12-3456, wink whatever. No, that is not professional. If I get an email from somebody's Gmail and I don't know them personally, I don't really feel like I can trust them because it's not a credible thing, it's not coming from a secure domain. So you want to make sure that you have an email with your domain. Now what's this going to do is that you're going to be able to interact and email people with a professional email, but you can also create an alias that is linked to your email address, like omar100nba.net@support mba.net for example, and you can use that email to do your support. People can just send you emails. Say send me an email@supportourwebsite.com and they will be able to send you an email there. And it's gonna go to your inbox and then you can handle all your support via email at the start. It's a simple and effective way to provide customer support when you're starting out and you wanna make sure you save as much money as possible. If you wanna do support by chat, Facebook chat is actually a good option if you wanna do that. There's a lot of other options when it comes to chat like Krisp, that is inexpensive. I haven't used Crisp. Be honest with you. I use Intercom in the past and it's, it's quite good. But in the be, just do email support to serve your customers. Now I didn't mention signing up for social media handles like, you know, x.com and Instagram and Facebook. That's kind of a given. You can do that. You probably already have that already. So let's make sure we implement what we talked about. Let's get practical, right? The first thing I want you to do is I want you to identify your needs, right? You could download our checklist that we've provided over@100mba.net worksheets and you can download the checklist of all the things I just mentioned and you could say, hey, which of these do I already have? Check it off, which ones do I not have? And then write down when am I going to do it? Right? Hold Yourself accountable. When am I going to sign up for this service? When am I going to get started with this? Okay, I want you to look at all the recommendations I gave you, like Mailchimp versus ConvertKit. Do your own research. I only gave you two options because I don't want to overwhelm you and I don't want you to spend too much time on this because they all basically do the same thing. And I just saved you the heartache and didn't mention the things that I know don't work and are a horrible customer service or whatever that I've tried in the past. These are the ones you really should explore, but compare which one do you like better? You can even sign up for their free trial or free plan and see which tools you're comfortable using because you're going to be in these tools a lot. And then choose which one you want to use moving forward. Once you have a list of the things that you have to sign up for, sign up for them, right? Get started. Reach out to customer support with any questions that you might have. Get things installed, you know, like WordPress on WP engine. Do things that you need to do just to get the ball rolling. The next step is you want to integrate these tools, right? So remember I talked about you have a website and then you need to collect emails with a, you know, email capture form on your website with an email marketing software. So you're going to go into ConvertKit and you're going to grab their forms and embed it to your website. Not sure how to do that. Just go to, you know, Convertkit's help articles or ask your customer support and they'll help you out. You're going to need to charge for your products and services. How do you create a buy button or checkout experience or checkout page with stripe. Go into Stripe, grab that and pop it into your website. Even if you're not ready yet, just integrate it before it goes live so that you know that everything's there. Okay, the next step is going to be to test and optimize. Test each tool to make sure it meets your needs. Make sure that it's working. Even do a test sale. Buy your own product, you know, your lowest price product, or you can even use a coupon code and get it for free. But the point here is that you want to make sure it works okay. Don't worry, the money's going to get into your bank account eventually, right? But the point here is you want to test, test all these tools to make sure they're working. Make sure that when you put your name and email in the boxes, you actually get it in the database inside your email marketing software. Make sure the Google Analytics is working and it's tracking when you're on the website. So test, test, test, guys and gals. Having the right tools is essential when you're getting started because it's going to set you up for success. I try to make it very simple for you, giving you a few options for you to choose from and just eight tools you need to work on. These tools are not expensive. You can get started for free for most of them and you're not going to spend more than a hundred dollars a month. That's worth it. To get set up and get started again, you could download our worksheet for today's lesson over@100mba.net worksheets and make some progress right now, right after this episode, right after this, this tutorial that I'm giving to you right now to make things easier for you, right? Just get started, get the ball moving. And that's where I want to leave you today, right before I wrap up. Up. It's so important, it's so, so important for you to take action every day in your business. This should become a new habit for you. When you learn something, you need to implement it right away. Otherwise you're gonna fall out of habit, meaning that you're gonna start building bad habits where you just become a thinker and a talker and not a doer. You don't want to do that. Business is about getting things done. The people that get things done more efficiently than others are the ones that win. The difference between you and somebody else that you probably know personally that talks a good game is that you do a good game. You actually do the things you say you're gonna do. You watch a video and then you get things done. You're saying, oh, got it done. I watched that video, did exactly what you told me to do and I got it done right. Move on to the next video, move on to the next lesson so you can start building upon these wins. That's how you get momentum. That's how you build that business you want. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for watching. If you're watching on YouTube, I'll check you you in the next lesson. Take care.
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