Score Lifetime Deals on AppSumo to Save Marketing Costs

Jen McFarland [00:00:06]:

Hello, and welcome to the Women Conquer business show. I'm Jen McFarland, joined by Shelley Carney. We're your go to small business marketing show covering breaking marketing news that affects you, cool apps we found, and a how to deep dive into a marketing topic with a side of motivation and inspiration. Well, I'll talk a little about our own entrepreneurial journeys as well. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hey. Welcome to Women conquer business. I'm Jen McFarland.

Shelley Carney [00:00:40]:

And I'm Shelley Carney.

Jen McFarland [00:00:42]:

I'm stalling a bit because if having a live show, when you start talking to the person you're doing a show with and then you realize as the intro is running that you don't have your show flow up, sometimes you need to dance a little.

Shelley Carney [00:00:57]:

Okay, let's see. Let's talk about Santa. Santa.

Jen McFarland [00:01:02]:

Santa. And a pineapple. I wish I was there. Now, it is a balmy 15 degrees here, but today we are going to talk about using AppSumo to save marketing costs. I still remember I think I'm going to talk about that a little. I still remember when I discovered AppSumo, when I first started my business and thinking, this is the coolest thing that I've ever seen. And there are a lot of tools that I still have in my daily, weekly workflow that I got from AppSumo. So what is AppSumo? AppSumo is a website that offers discounted software, tools, and services for businesses. It's a good way for companies to save money on marketing costs by taking advantage of discounted prices on a whole variety of products and services. They now have courses there, too, including the one that I sell. Some examples of what you might find on AppSumo include email marketing software, social media management tools, project management tools, and online courses. Join us today because we're going to talk about some of our favorite AppSumo tools and how you can compare the different options to see which ones are the most relevant and cost effective for your business. Wow, that sounds like a good show. I think I'm just going to listen to it. No, wait, you're running the show, Missy. All right, so if you like the Women Conquer Business show, if you like watching it or listening to it, please subscribe to the show. It helps us, and then it means that we have a chance to hear what it is you would like to hear from us. So you can also email us and reach out to us. So please subscribe to the show. We're here every week, and I am going to hand it off to Shelley because I'm curious about the New Mexico day trips.

Shelley Carney [00:02:42]:

All right, so Toby and I have been playing around with shorts and figuring out how to make them and how to get them up on YouTube. And yesterday we worked on it together because I said, I can take the video off of YouTube and I can play with it, and then I can make it into a portrait and everything and they're doing pretty good. Let me just share my screen. So, as you can see, these are the shorts for New Mexico day trips. So we put one up yesterday and it's a little different because when we go on a day trip, we put one camera in the car facing us, and one camera on the front of the vehicle facing out, so you see the road. So we take the two pieces so it's us talking in the car. And then you also see what we see out the front window. And I think this is new and different for people because we put it up last night around, I don't know, 09:00 930. And it got 624 views, which to us is like a big deal.

Jen McFarland [00:03:43]:

This is a new channel that you just put together. Exactly.

Shelley Carney [00:03:46]:

We only have 63 subscribers and we got a new one after putting this up. So it works. It's really cool. Yeah, cool.

Jen McFarland [00:03:54]:

Everybody loves short videos.

Shelley Carney [00:03:56]:

Yeah, as long as something's happening, because I put videos up. The shorts of you and me talking, or me and Toby talking, and they don't get anywhere near this response, but where there's things happening, we're going down the road. People like that, so they tune in for it.

Jen McFarland [00:04:12]:

Great. Congratulations. That's so cool. And shorts are awesome. It's cool. Alanti and I are working on what I can do to start telling stories and talking and using shorts more effectively. Yeah, what I want to talk about that I've been working on. So on Tuesday, we released a bonus episode of Women Cocker Business. My friend Liz Zurk and I did the word Words of the Year and it came out two days ago. And we talk about metaverse and gaslighting. It's audio only. And Liz and I, she was on some early episodes, like in 2018, 2019, and it was just good to see my friend and have fun. And then we're talking about our own project. We're working on that. So that's very exciting. Yeah, that's what's going on with me. Are you ready for some breaking news?

Shelley Carney [00:05:09]:

I hope I got this right. I didn't double check my sounds buttons.

Jen McFarland [00:05:20]:

Let's talk about breaking news. So in this segment we're going to talk about have the robots taken over? The answer is no. And there is something exciting on the AI writing front and it's called Chat GPT. We will put a link to Chat GPT in the show notes. It's pretty cool. You make it, it's free right now and it's being tested and it's just a really cool way to you can ask it questions and it'll generate blog posts for you. It'll generate a welcome series, it'll generate all kinds of things. Now, all of these things, like any writing tool for AI I use lately, I have for years to edit it'll, automate editing out video clips. And then I go in with my and it'll give me draft social media clips, and then I go in and rewrite them so that they sound more like me. AI really helps speed things up. And Chat GPT is really advanced. It's super cool. You just type in any sort of question. I'll type in right about finding apps on AppSumo, and what it'll do is it's going to generate a bunch of information about that and it'll explain what AppSumo is. It'll explain how to go and download apps. And if you're watching us right now, you can see that it's just doing a whole writing thing for us. If you're listening, it's just scrolling across the screen and just drafting a post. That AppSumo is an online platform that offers deals. You can go to Appsumo.com to sign up for a free account. On the home page, you'll see app deals, you can go to the search bar. It's like very detailed sequence on how to get apps from AppSumo. So, as you can see, it's very useful. Many AI writing tools have been garbledygook when it comes out. This is next generation. Is it perfect? No. In fact, there have been stories all over like NPR and all kinds of places saying, yeah, it's cool, but it's not going to make you an A plus student. I think that there are home concerns in academia. There's certainly concerns among people who are in writing. I think writers are very upset about this. For me, I'm a writer and this is not how I write. It's an outline at best, and then you can take it and make it. The concern, of course, is that people are going to take this, copy it, paste it onto their blog. This is also something that we've talked about a few times that Google is fighting against that. So I would say if you want to use a tool like Chat GPT, or some of the older tools like Jasper Writer, Pepper, Type, all of these AI writing tools, the robots haven't taken over yet. You still have to edit it. You still have to have your own voice. I'll be honest. Like, yes. This is a running list of how to use AppSumo. Not nearly as interesting as anything that you could tell your readers or your listeners, depending on how you do it. However, if you're a writer that doesn't like the blank page, this can really help you out. This can help you get started, get things down on paper, and then you can make it more interesting and make it more fruitful and better for your people. And I think, how do you feel about it? How do you do with the blank page?

Shelley Carney [00:08:58]:

Depends on how much I know about it and depends on how comfortable I am. For instance, I didn't have a description for this week, and all I had was the title. So I typed the title into Chat GPT and then it gave me a description and then I had to weed out a lot of repetitive stuff. And then what was left is what is our description for this week's show? Yeah, it works.

Jen McFarland [00:09:20]:

It works great.

Shelley Carney [00:09:21]:

Yeah.

Jen McFarland [00:09:21]:

A little quicker.

Shelley Carney [00:09:22]:

Yeah. You just want to watch it because it does get repetitive. It'll say things in a different way, but it really is the same thing that you just saw in the last paragraph. So you have to really read through it and weed out the repetition.

Jen McFarland [00:09:37]:

Yeah. And that's just the way that AI works and those repetitions and that kind of thing, that's what Google is going to be looking for.

Shelley Carney [00:09:46]:

Yes.

Jen McFarland [00:09:47]:

You want to be careful about that. Yeah. So if you like all of this type of thing, like breaking news, and then we're going to break off into the presentation, I just want to encourage you to download my marketing self assessment. This will help you look at your marketing to make sure you've got everything lined up and it's working well. So that before you go into adding more marketing tools, like we're going to talk about today or in the past, we've talked about everything from Evergreen Webinars to writing more persuasive copy. You want to make sure that your marketing is set up and aligned. I encourage you to go to Womenconkerbiz.com to get the marketing selfassessment that's at Womencockerbiz.com Self. That's a new link that we've used in the past, but that will take you there and you'll get the marketing self assessment. I went through that checklist over the weekend and made sure everything was accurate, made a few changes. So it's an updated checklist even as of this weekend.

Shelley Carney [00:10:44]:

I'm going to have to do that right now. Okay, I'll wait till after the show.

Jen McFarland [00:10:47]:

Can't do it right now. It can't be like before the show when we just forgot we had a show. I think we better get on.

Shelley Carney [00:10:56]:

All right, I'll wait till after. But I'm excited.

Jen McFarland [00:11:01]:

Are you ready for some training?

Shelley Carney [00:11:05]:

Let's talk about guess what? The first time I ever heard about AppSumo was the day I met Jen McFarland. She told me all about it, and I was like, what?

Jen McFarland [00:11:20]:

This exists?

Shelley Carney [00:11:22]:

I must see this.

Jen McFarland [00:11:24]:

So what was your impression when you first went there and you realized there are all of these tools there?

Shelley Carney [00:11:31]:

Why did I not know this sooner? That's what I thought.

Jen McFarland [00:11:38]:

Yeah. So I believe it was my friend Tanner Campbell. He's really a thought leader in podcasting and a handful of other places where we were talking. He was my podcast editor when I first started this show, and he was talking about AppSumo, how he found I think it was like a client portal for his WordPress website on AppSumo. And I'm like, what's AppSumo? And I was like, Holy canoli. This was amazing. There's just so much stuff there. And I think if you're a Bootstrapper, if you don't have a lot of money for those, because what we forget is that all of these apps, they add up. You think it's just $20 a month, and then you're like $240 a year. They add up.

Shelley Carney [00:12:27]:

You never stop paying for them. When they're subscriptions, you're always paying.

Jen McFarland [00:12:31]:

Yeah. And so the advantage of AppSumo, there's a few things. One, because it adds up for me, too. It's a way that you can download a lifetime deal access. A lot of them are SaaS, actually. So you can log into a website and have a lifetime deal, meaning you pay one time, $29 or back in the day when I first started doing it, I think I got Missing Letter for $19. But what you're getting is sometimes the tools aren't perfect, but there's a lot of things about it that are crazy. But if you're trying to save on some of your marketing costs and we'll talk about the types of things that you might want to look for on AppSumo, and then some things that you might want to avoid on AppSumo. But what is it that when you went there and you were like and your brain exploded, what else struck you about a place like AppSumo?

Shelley Carney [00:13:27]:

Number one was that I could start to replace subscriptions with things that we owned instead of renting we could own. And that is a big deal to me. That monthly fee is, I don't want to pay for this forever. I just want to pay for it once and be able to use it and why can't I do that? And then AppSumo said, you can. And I was like, I love you. The other thing is, once you get on their email list, they're constantly sending you these cool things and you got to go in there and look at it and think about it because, wow, you could just buy everything. But not everything is appropriate for every business. Some things are more important than others. For instance, when we bought one called Melon, melon is for live streaming. We don't use it because we love StreamYard so much. We'd never leave now. And StreamYard is a subscription, but it is the best product out there for live streaming. And we're never going to leave. We have Melon now that I don't know, we thought we might switch over and we didn't.

Jen McFarland [00:14:31]:

But you gave it to your daughter, right? Isn't that what you did?

Shelley Carney [00:14:33]:

Yeah, we're going to give it to her when she wants, when she does it.

Jen McFarland [00:14:37]:

I leaned out for a second because I was looking at how many deals I bought because I have a product up on AppSumo. I can see it. I've bought 110.

Shelley Carney [00:14:46]:

Wow.

Jen McFarland [00:14:48]:

Some of which I don't use, obviously, but some of which I do. And I will say that before I listed a product on AppSumo, so you have to be on there to respond to questions and all kinds of things. I ignore the emails that come from AppSumo because I know I'm going to buy stuff, but being on there, then it's like, I succumb to the temptation of software. So when you get on here, there's a couple of things I wanted to show about it. So it is appsumo.com and what they have. There's actually a couple of different types of products that they offer on here, like at a very high level. And I think that if you're new to AppSumo, you're like, holy cow, look at all these deals. And when they're not on forever, if you find something and you really think that it's going to fit your business, then you need to hop on and get it. Because they expire sometimes they're only on there for they'll have deals over the holidays that are like 72 hours and you have to jump on it or they're gone and they bring back some of their favorites. But what I wanted to point out on here, and you can see it where some of their deals are, AppSumo Select. And when we're talking about software and then some of their deals are not, they don't have a little banner on them that say AppSumo Select. And you can tell also when you click into an app, if there's a YouTube video created by AppSumo, then it's AppSumo Select. And what that means is those apps have gone through a rigorous process where AppSumo has reviewed it, made sure that it work. They do that with the other products, but these are more vetted than the other products on here. I have bought both, but I think it's important to know that some of these aren't. So there's one on here right now called Work Hero. It doesn't have the banner on it, but it has a lot of really great reviews. And AppSumo people are ruthless with their reviews. If they like it, that's awesome. And if they don't, they're very honest about what is and isn't there. So I would say if you're new to AppSumo, make sure that you look for that AppSumo Select, because then at least it's gone through another level of review. The other thing about it that I learned the hard way early on, I had a tool that I used all the time that I loved. And it was like, I can't remember what it was called now because it was so long ago, but it was this really cool tool that I used every day that would make Google Docs and everything make sense. Like it would sort through them and do everything. And the company went out of business. And sometimes they don't warn you for very far in advance. So if you're investing in AppSumo and you're using it all the time, make sure that it's something that's not mission critical, especially if you're not super techy, because some of these tools, they do go out of business. What they're doing on here is they're trying to raise capital so that they can do more development on their product. And sometimes you'll see that products come back again and again. And it's a little concerning because it probably means they're not getting that monthly recurring revenue that subscriptions need. You can't build a business giving people lifetime access if you have infrastructure and all kinds of things you have to take care of. So you're like an early investor in a product that may or may not be here for several years. And so that's one of the reasons why I tell people, and I want to know what you think, Shelley, because again, I've had products go away. I tell people, don't use AppSumo products for something that's like mission critical. Like, I wouldn't use it for my business website, for example, because they have website things that come up all the time. I might use it for SEO, I might use it for something that supports the website, but I'm not going to use it for a website. Interesting, really important. How do you feel about that?

Shelley Carney [00:19:08]:

There are some core products that are made by AppSumo such as Tidy Cow Sendfox, and I think those are great to rely upon because as long as AppSumo is around, those are going to be around and they're going to continue to make them better all the time. And you get the updates automatically, which is great.

Jen McFarland [00:19:27]:

AppSumo is not going any product. The marketing tool, Sumo, it's the same. And they have a product like King Sumo helps you. Like king Sumo is fun. I have that one. I haven't figured out how to use it for my we do too.

Shelley Carney [00:19:43]:

We're just saying we're like, how are we going to use this?

Jen McFarland [00:19:45]:

How do we do this? But what you do is it's encouraging people to share your content and then you reward them if they share all of the things and all of the ways. And I'm like, I don't have merch. I don't know what I could offer people that they would be like, I'm all about sharing, so they make all kinds of tools, sumo. And I think it's just sumo.com. Then you can go and a lot of people it's a plugin you can put on your website to really help you with marketing. Yeah. So I don't think AppSumo is going anywhere, but some of these products in here, I can guarantee you aren't going to be around.

Shelley Carney [00:20:16]:

Like, one of my favorite things, and I discovered this over the summer, is the 60 day money back guarantee. I was trying to find a good platform to put my course on that had all the things that I wanted and needed in it. And so I tried, I don't know four of them, I think, where I would put stuff in and I would try it out and I would think about it and then something else would come along and I go, oh, this one's got this and that one didn't have that, so I'm going to switch over. So I kept switching over and because you have that 60 day money back guarantee. They just give you the refund. But in Credits, in Sumo Credits, and then you can just buy something else on their platform with those credits. So you're always perfecting the tool that you're using. You're saying, okay, this tool isn't quite what I wanted, but I see this other tool. Let me try that. And it's doing the same thing, but it's got these extra features that I need. So I was able to narrow it down to Bonza to put my course on. And I love owning it because then I can put my courses on there and not worry about having to pay monthly. If I'm giving away free courses, it wouldn't behoove me to have to pay.

Jen McFarland [00:21:30]:

Monthly for a platform. Yeah. And I think that I'll be honest, the 60 day return policy is something that I started adopting more after you started talking about it. I should do that because there are some things that I've just never used that I never returned.

Shelley Carney [00:21:46]:

And they give you just like 30 days to redeem your code and to start using the product. So I recommend if you get something on AppSumo, start using it right away. See if it's going to work for you, find out the ins and outs of it, and then if it's not for you, go ahead and get the refund and you can get it in Credits. And then when something else better comes along, you can use your credits on it. You can get your money back, if that's what you want, or you could get it in Credits. It's your choice.

Jen McFarland [00:22:14]:

Yeah, I can't remember what I bought. I bought something and I was like, this is just not going to work. And I ended up with and it was something so you can buy. Let me pull that up. I was going to pull up the Facebook group that I recommend for researching.

Shelley Carney [00:22:29]:

Tools, but they got really good sales copy on their sales page, and they make these little videos about the product. So they get you really hyped up and excited about it. And then you get you're like, oh, wait, this isn't going to work for me. So that's why they give you that 60 day money back.

Jen McFarland [00:22:45]:

Yeah. And that's the other thing about this. The other thing you can use AppSumo for, which is terrific, is looking at good landing pages and copy really great for this, where you can see how people are selling something and you can look at it. So one of the things so this is one that I've told myself I can't have. This is an example of an absolute select. It's like a mind mapping tool. It's one of those things that I absolutely adore and then I never use. So I see resisting. So what you can also do if you look at these is you can also stack. So when I said that I spent $200 on something. It was something that I thought I was really going to need like a lot of. So sometimes you can just get a one time and the only offer is like $69. In this case, they're saying for $69 you can get this. 138, you can get this. 207, you can get this. And it's just more features. And so you want to make sure that you look at this and decide what it is that you need and then act accordingly. But it can be overwhelming and you can search for just about anything on here and have it. I have gotten some really cool SEO tools on here that just help with some research. I'm a big fan of Writer Zen, and that's a tool that can help you write blog posts that are SEO researched and I've used, we use that for Epiphany courses when we first launched and we still get a ton of traffic to those blog posts that we use that on. And so there's a lot of really great things on here. But again, for me, my course platform isn't something from AppSumo because I just get nervous about maybe going away. So that's why I say, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. But I did use Sendfox for a while. I've moved off of Send Fox because my business has changed and I need something more robust. But if you're looking for something for email marketing, this is one that would work. You're still using that one, right? Yes, but you can find anything. Like, I had Luna for a while that's like you can send out cold emails to leads that way.

Shelley Carney [00:24:52]:

I was looking at that one today. You'll have to tell me more about that.

Jen McFarland [00:24:55]:

I'll have to tell you about that one? Why I refunded it. So that's why you have to test them. Because you'll try it and you'll be like, this isn't really useful for this reason or that reason. So that's what's on platform, right? And you can find just about anything. As you can see here, you can shop by category and it's like operations, marketing, sales, media, tools, finance, development, and it that's where you'd find like all the website tools. You can get WordPress plugins, like all kinds of things here, and customer experience. So they have all of that. They also have courses and learning. This is where you'll find the ultimate podcast planning checklist, which is my product price of $3. Well, for a short time, I'm almost done with it. Hurry up, it's going to go up. And you can get courses and learning. And that's like business, strategy, development, marketing. I got a really great YouTube course through here and it really helped me figure that out. But you can learn about things like Google Ads, all different kinds of things, and just grab a course and instead of it being really expensive, you can get it for much less.

Shelley Carney [00:26:03]:

I paid a dollar for a course. Yeah, but now it's $100. Look it's how to make $1,000 a month. I got it for a dollar because they were having a special. And I'm like, yeah, I guess I'll spend a dollar. And then I put it in the cart. And I didn't have my card with me or anything, so I just put it off and put it off. And they sent me the emails. There's something in your cart and it's going to expire. And I'm like, oh, all right, I'll get it. It's only one dollars, so I got it. And then they raised it up to 100.

Jen McFarland [00:26:29]:

And I'm like.

Shelley Carney [00:26:34]:

A good thing I got it.

Jen McFarland [00:26:35]:

You could also get templates. When Alanti and I switched over to Asana, I bought Asana templates through here. Interesting. It's cool. I didn't even know you could do that. So you can do things through here using tools that you already have. There's a ton of Canva templates in here. Then if you're not a big designer, it's done for you. That's nice. You just put in your information, finance, all kinds of things. Again, for things like this, it's cheap. This is like a planner and ebook. There's just all kinds of things that you can find. Coaches and course creators, canva template bundle. Then you don't have to. You just plug and play. And that's what you're looking for. As an entrepreneur, you don't have a lot of time. I know that I don't. I'm always looking for a shortcut. And then they have some creative images, the creative resources. I am always on the hunt. I just bought it. It came through recently. Deposit Photos comes through here, and it is like the greatest photo thing ever. And I always buy it. I share it with people and it's up again. Because you can get graphics if you do presentations a lot or you do blog posts and things like that.

Shelley Carney [00:27:40]:

And it's not the same old pixels pictures that everybody uses, that everybody uses.

Jen McFarland [00:27:45]:

And it's usually way more expensive and it's high quality. It's kind of like shutterstock. But if you have a question about, oh, better put that down. If you ever, ever have a question. This is like the best Facebook group I've ever found. It's Ken Moo Lifetime Deals, and it is dedicated to AppSumo, everything, basically. And it's where people on Facebook are like sometimes they get the people, the developers to come on and answer questions about the product. They're always giving reviews. You can see here, you get to see some of the drama behind the scenes. But what I use it for is I'll go in here and you can do a search in Facebook if you're on Facebook, and you can just look up, like, I bought Airbrush AI from AppSumo recently, and look at it here. You can research these tools and you can start to see what people say. Like, here is like 500 images per month. There's. 163 Comments I can tell you that this is a good product, it's fun, I've enjoyed and you could click in here and be like what are people who've already downloaded it saying is there anything in here? I use this sometimes when I see something and I'm like how good is it? And it'll save me some time and money and get me off of there. And his group has been around for a long time. It's a pretty good group. There is drama in there sometimes, but that's just a Facebook group. That's how they work. But it is good. I've really enjoyed discovering and finding tools and it's a fun tool. I like AppSumo because I have saved a kajillion dollars. I use Missing Letter in my weekly workflow. The plan that I have, I don't think it even exists and I got it, like I said originally for $19 and then Missing Letters. Like the rare one that I still have discounts available inside where they still offer deals to AppSumo people to get us to bump up into something else, which is smart. They're getting more money from us even though without making it a subscription. So we'll do stuff. Another one that's in my weekly workflow, another social media scheduler that I really is a social bee and I was showing Shelley that that was actually what got us topic beforehand. What else do you use?

Shelley Carney [00:30:02]:

The favorite one that I've got is social websuite. I got that off of AppSumo and I think it was 49 and super helpful people got us all set up and then it's all my social media published stuff goes in and all social media posts come out and I don't have to do anything. Every once in a while it'll say there was an error putting it out on your LinkedIn, so go check that out and all you have to do is go in and click the button and it reconnects and it's fine again. And then you want to make sure that if you start something new, like a new playlist on your YouTube channel or something, you add that in to the ingestion and then every time you publish something it's automatic and I love it because it's just in the background doing all this work for me in it. Now, I have purchased from AppSumo three different social media schedulers and they all do somewhat different tasks. They have other features. One has these features and the other one has different features. So I have three of them and I don't have a problem with that. I think that if they have a little bit of overlap, but not much because they have different features. So if you need really, a robust social media scheduler and social B isn't available or whatever it is that your friend is using is no longer available, there are other things in there that are always coming out that you can try that may have similar features or something different that it offers so that you can plug and play whatever it is that you find and that works for you. One of the things that I find interesting with AppSumo is, for instance, Luna pops up and I read about it and I'm like, I never thought about Cold emailing before. I wonder if I should be doing that. It makes you think about your business more. Is there another avenue for revenue that I haven't explored yet? And here's a tool that's telling me how to do that. So it's really good at keeping you in the know of what's available, what's out there in the world.

Jen McFarland [00:32:01]:

Yeah, it keeps you thinking. And what you just described about having two apps that do different things, I don't usually recommend that for people, except if the two things that it does, you couldn't afford it if you bought the one tool that does it. And that's really the key, is sometimes you can get a scheduler that does all of the things that'd be ideal, but it costs $100 a month. And if you can't do that, then you can find something that you can piece it together and do it. Sometimes as entrepreneurs, we got to do what we got to do, and AppSumo gives us a chance to try some really cool tools, get in the know quickly, and then the fact that we can refund them if they're not a good fit for our business. For example, Luna, it was women conquer business. And it was just a bunch of dudes. They were just showing me dudes. And it was mostly companies that I would not work with. I work with men too, but my primary customers, I was looking for female founders specifically that I could reach out to. And it was like just not enough. It was not enough that I could go and follow and stuff. So you have to look for that. You have to play with these things. Most of us are so time strapped that we don't have time to do this all the time. But if you're looking around for something and you can't find it, I recommend it. Yeah, I've gotten some cool stuff. I've gotten some really cool YouTube stuff. This is not a platform. I've learned more about YouTube over the last year from Shelley. She's been like, mentoring me and teaching me about it. Just like I've been mentoring her about marketing. And we just all the things, all of the things I go and I found a course about YouTube that was like, I don't know, $20. And then I got something called Bite Play, was telling Shelley about it. That really helps with YouTube SEO, which as an SEO nerd is like totally up my alley. And so there's just all these cool things out there that are possibilities. And then you try it and you're like, no. And you take it back.

Shelley Carney [00:33:57]:

I thought it was going to be something better than it is or different or that was going to fit my needs, but it's not going to. So let me go get something else. I love that you get to try to try everything in that way. It's great, but you got to make sure that you stay on top of it. And if you're going to get a refund, don't wait more than 60 days. Get it done.

Jen McFarland [00:34:18]:

That's right. Especially for what Shelley does. Shelley is always on the lookout for things that help her. Consistent content framework. And if you're really interested in producing content, like we do every week and getting out there, being on YouTube, we also have the show that's on Spotify and all of the podcast networks, you're going to want to get the consistent content framework that's available at Kmediastudio.

Shelley Carney [00:34:45]:

Framework. Framework.

Jen McFarland [00:34:48]:

Framework. That's what I did. I knew that I had typed it in there wrong. Framework. AGK Mediastudio.

Shelley Carney [00:34:54]:

Oh, yeah, you did type it in wrong. I'm like, Wait a minute, that's not right.

Jen McFarland [00:34:59]:

Agmedia Studio. I've only been talking about it for a while and I totally hosed that, but I don't know what I'm talking about.

Shelley Carney [00:35:08]:

It's in the crawl. Framework.

Jen McFarland [00:35:10]:

AG Media Studio notes.

Shelley Carney [00:35:13]:

Yeah.

Jen McFarland [00:35:14]:

Erase. Erase. Can you tell it's a little rummy over here. We've been busy. We're getting ready for the holidays, just like all of you.

Shelley Carney [00:35:27]:

Yeah, Jen's going out of town.

Jen McFarland [00:35:30]:

Hopefully there could be an ice storm starting tonight.

Shelley Carney [00:35:33]:

Oh, boy.

Jen McFarland [00:35:34]:

Like I said, it's a balmy 15.

Shelley Carney [00:35:37]:

Yeah.

Jen McFarland [00:35:38]:

Which is really cold for here.

Shelley Carney [00:35:40]:

Yeah, it is.

Jen McFarland [00:35:40]:

So are you ready for some Tweaks of the week?

Shelley Carney [00:35:45]:

Let's tweak it. Oh, that sounded dirty. Hey.

Jen McFarland [00:35:54]:

It's on you, Shelley.

Shelley Carney [00:35:56]:

I can't help it if Tweak is a weird word. Too many meanings. We talked about Chat GPT. Let's talk a little about Canva docs. Canva docs is something new that Canva has introduced. Okay, good, because I was going to do both at the same time. Then that's hard to do. So canva Docs. And it popped up when I opened up my canva this week, and I was like, oh, what is this? And it makes a beautiful doc doc. Now it'd be great for like, a quick ebook to throw together as a free download or a lead magnet type of thing. It could be something that maybe if you're going to go to a conference and you want a quick little handout, just super great designs, super easy, and it gives you blocks. Oh, put this block in, put that block in, put that block in. Great. And then it's got an AI writer. And I tried it out and it worked out really, really well. I didn't find that it was doing too much of the whole repeats. It wasn't so bad about repeating. I thought it did a really good job depending on what you type in there that you're looking for. But it will help you to flesh out your bullet points. If you have bullet points, but you can't think of what to say beyond that, stick it in there and it will flesh them out for you so that you have more to your ebook or handout making it more valuable. I thought it was awesome.

Jen McFarland [00:37:24]:

Yeah. Collaboration tools. Yeah, this looks really great. I haven't had time to check it out. I have all kinds of ebooks and things in Canva, so part of me is, do I have to redo everything? It looks awesome. I think if you're a big Canva user, if it pops up for you this week, it popped up for me and I was like, yes, please. If you are on Canva, you're going to want to do that because it just looks like it can do a lot of stuff.

Shelley Carney [00:37:52]:

It could be a presentation, it could be a proposal, it could be handout. There's so many things you could do with it.

Jen McFarland [00:37:58]:

Why not make it quicker?

Shelley Carney [00:38:00]:

Yeah. And pretty quicker.

Jen McFarland [00:38:04]:

And pretty quick.

Shelley Carney [00:38:06]:

It's pretty quick.

Jen McFarland [00:38:07]:

Do you have a Tweak of the week? Email us at hello@womencockerbiz.com so we can highlight it. We've gotten a few suggestions and we've pretty much covered them. So you've got to let us know out there what it is that you find interesting. And you can do that again, that's email us at hello@womenconferbiz.com.

Shelley Carney [00:38:27]:

Nice. I'm going to write that in the chat. Hello@womenconquerbiz.com in there. All right. Are we ready for the next thing?

Jen McFarland [00:38:40]:

Yeah.

Shelley Carney [00:38:42]:

Inspirational moments. This is from Seneca. It was in my the Daily Stoic for today. It's disgraceful for adults to have only the knowledge in their notebooks. How long will you be compelled by the claims of another? Take charge and stake your own claim. Something posterity will carry in its notebook. It's easier to quote and rely on the wise words of others. Like Seneca. It's intimidating to venture out and express your own thoughts. Your experience does have value. You have an accumulated wisdom. Share your stories. In my LinkedIn newsletter this week, I combined a little bit of different things. I talked about AI. AI is getting pretty awesome, but AI gives you overviews and generalities. It's never, ever going to come with a story like a when my son was two and he got a toy that was a wood from Toy Story doll. Hello, guitar. And you pressed the button on the back of the guitar and he would talk and he was so excited. Now you've got to imagine that this is a child. This is a child who was really sad and depressed most of his life. He's on the spectrum, but he's not obviously autistic. But he is very clingy to depressive ideas. So when he got this toy and he was so excited, my husband and I were just like and it affected us so much that I to this day remember it. That he was so happy to get this toy, this present. And that is why we need to be fully present in the moment. So that's what that taught me. Now, if I hadn't experienced that, I wouldn't be able to share that story with you. You wouldn't resonate with it. You wouldn't think about your own child or yourself on a Christmas morning. And AI can't give you that. AI. Can't provide you with experiences and stories that real people can. So share your stories. And if you need help getting your stories out into the world, that's what we do. We can help you learn to live, stream, podcast, blog, and all of the things. That's what I have for today. How do you feel about that, Jen?

Jen McFarland [00:41:06]:

I think that that's totally right. I think that it's possible at some point, AI will be able to handle more storytelling, but there's nothing that it replaces experience and vulnerability and sharing personal experiences. Nothing can take that away from you. And that's what keeps us from being a robot. It's what makes us special. I think that we have to and I will say it's hard for me. It's hard for me to tell stories in a way that maybe for other people is easy. And it's something that I'm working on, and it's something Kelly and I've worked on together, is sharing little challenges and struggles and bits of yourself. It's hard, but it is what makes us human, and it's what makes us interesting and relatable.

Shelley Carney [00:42:01]:

Yeah. And it's part of our brand. It's why people will choose us over anybody else. They hear a story that they relate to, and it could be a simple thing. And you can start off with today. I was getting my coffee, and then I put my creamer in, and I thought, well, let me taste the creamer. And by itself, it tasted like a cinnamon roll. It was perfect. Then I put it in the coffee, and it wasn't as good anymore. And I just couldn't understand why. By itself, it was great. And this is a story you can tell, and it's nothing. You're not even revealing any personal information about yourself except that you like the taste of cinnamon rolls. So this can be a story.

Jen McFarland [00:42:39]:

Yeah, sorry.

Shelley Carney [00:42:42]:

That's just an example of one of the thousands of things that happens throughout the day that you can turn into a teachable moment, a story you can share about your life, something that people can laugh about. Yeah.

Jen McFarland [00:42:56]:

One of the first things I bought from my RODECaster pro was a cover on it because I am very clumsy, and I knew that I would spill water on it and ruin it.

Shelley Carney [00:43:06]:

Did you spill water on it yet?

Jen McFarland [00:43:08]:

Not yet, but when I showed it was so funny because when I showed Liz my RODECaster pro, she's, wow, I feel like I could spill something on it. I'm like, oh, but wait, because I do that too. And I walked out with the case, and I thought she just thought that was the funniest thing ever. Yeah.

Shelley Carney [00:43:26]:

So we all have those things that we think about ourselves.

Jen McFarland [00:43:34]:

Massive coffee, explosions on my desk before there's a reason for it.

Shelley Carney [00:43:40]:

Smart.

Jen McFarland [00:43:41]:

Everybody have a wonderful holiday. Safe travel, stay warm, stay safe. Enjoy the time you have with your.

Shelley Carney [00:43:49]:

Family and Merry Christmas. Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the world. Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.