Introduction
One of the best ways to simplify your work as an online course creator is by utilizing a variety of tools to automate tasks and streamline your workflow. In this discussion, we will cover essential business tools specifically designed for online course creators, particularly those managing communities or providing coaching services. We’ll explore the tools that are most beneficial for both small and large business owners, focusing on which ones are ideal to start with and how they can evolve as your business grows.
In this lesson, we’re learning all about the tools that you should use to run your day to day training business. We’re going to learn what do we mean by tools? Why use them? How to choose them? Then we’ll go over an example where we’ll talk about tools that typical online creative teachers use. Finally, we’ll wrap up and summarize our most important tips.
😥Challenges course creators can face when they don’t use business tools:
- They will have a significant amount of manual work to handle.
- They will not leverage automated processes
- They may struggle to manage team members as the business expands.
- Managing projects could become overwhelming.
- They might lack a streamlined system for easy payment processing.
What Is It?
First, what do we mean by tools? These are web or mobile applications that help your business solve specific problems or achieve certain goals. We’re referring to tools like web apps and mobile apps that you and your team use regularly—whether weekly, monthly, or yearly.
These are collaborative tools that enable you and your team to work together efficiently, helping you achieve your goals and consistently deliver high-quality, repeatable results.
Why Use It?
Sure, you could simply use a Word document, Google Spreadsheet, Google Form, or Excel file to manually manage tasks—building checklists, identifying fields, and going back and forth with your data.
However, specialized tools are designed to excel at specific tasks. As your budget permits, you’ll gradually start integrating these core tools into your business, enabling you to accomplish more. These tools are tailored to your needs and know exactly what fields and functions you require.
Whether it’s for video editing, media management, or social media uploads, these tools are specifically designed for those tasks. So yes, while you can manually manage everything with checklists and notes, using specialized tools over time will significantly enhance your efficiency and capabilities as a small business owner with a training business.
How-to Guide
Let’s dive into the how-to guide. First, what are the various tools you might need for the different departments or functions within your training business?
Finance, Accounting, HR
First, you’ll likely need a set of financial, accounting, and human resource tools. These tools will assist with bookkeeping, processing payments, and managing payroll for your team and contractors.
Some of these might be just websites like Upwork or Fiverr, but some of these could be actual apps like QuickBooks or Gusto. In general, these tools will help you.
Project Management
Another key area is project management. How do you manage your team? How do you oversee operations, develop new courses, create communities, and manage events like webinars? How do you maintain these communities and courses? In terms of daily tasks and one-off events, big projects, and new product or service launches, how do you ensure everything runs smoothly?
Having a solid set of project management tools will greatly help you coordinate, set and break down goals, communicate effectively, and stay on track to get things done.
Design
In some cases, you can manage tasks with a spreadsheet or a Word document, but design tools are specifically built for these purposes. Of course, there are different levels of tools available.
There’s free open source. For instance, I’m a big fan of Inkscape. Then of course you can get the full Adobe suite and everything in between. It depends on your needs, and in some cases, your contractors might require these tools. Either way, it’s important to be aware of the design tools your team needs to get the job done efficiently.
Marketing & Sales
There’s a wide range of tools you’ll use to create awareness, generate leads, and nurture your audience—whether through social media or your website. On the sales side, once people show interest in your products or services, you’ll need tools to collect payments.
If you’re a coach, you’ll want to create invoices and possibly schedule appointments. For high-end products, your customers might want to check in with you. So, you’ll need a variety of tools to support both your marketing and sales efforts.
Operations
This is all about running your business. It involves your team maintaining courses, managing communities for your creative customers, coaching, scheduling appointments, and handling incoming requests—everything that keeps the business operating smoothly.
As your business grows and you take on more clients and customers, you’ll need a variety of operational tools to handle the increased workload effectively.
Information Technology
If you were a large company, you would have an IT department ensuring that your computers and systems are functioning properly. As a small business creator or trainer, you also need a set of IT tools, including backup solutions and password management tools.
You might also require a platform for uploading and downloading files, such as Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace. It’s essential to take a moment to consider the key tools you’ll need to be successful as your business grows.
Education & Training
Finally, the primary focus here is education and training. There’s a set of tools you’ll need to operate your business effectively so that you can offer classes, host webinars, and provide coaching services using platforms like Zoom and others. It’s crucial to ensure you have the right tools for all these various services. As your needs expand, you’ll gradually level up your tools to accommodate your growth.
Benefits of Online Tools:
Now, let’s go over some of the benefits of these online tools.
Most Have Free or Starter Tiers
Most of these tools offer a free or starter tier, so you can begin with a trial version. Some trials may require credit card information and will automatically switch to a paid plan after a few days, while others are genuinely free.
When you’re ready, you can upgrade to the next tier and continue progressing as needed, so be sure to pay attention to these tiers. There are some excellent free options available, such as Inkscape, Slack, and Notion. We’ll explore these tools in more detail shortly.
Templates with Common Fields
Another great benefit of these tools is that they come equipped with all the common fields you need for specific tasks. For instance, accounting software will include all the necessary fields for creating invoices.
If you had to manage this manually—creating PDFs or Word documents to send to customers—you’d have to brainstorm and keep up with industry trends. By using the right tools for various functions, whether for operations, payments, or marketing, you ensure you have exactly what you need.
Marketing tools, for example, will assist with scheduling, identifying the appropriate social media channels, and determining the right types of media. They often include smart rules that dictate what content goes to which channel. If you were to build these processes from scratch or try to manage them without the right tools, you’d likely make many mistakes, leading to inconsistent quality. Tools are specifically designed for these purposes and, ideally, come with the right features to streamline your work efficiently.
Can Be Used Solo or with Teams
These tools can be utilized by you as a solo business owner when you’re just starting out. You can accomplish a lot, such as recording courses, creating eBooks, and building a simple web page. Many of these tools are perfect for helping you establish the foundational elements you need to get started.
Get that fundamental foundation that you need, but as you grow you’ll need a handful of contractors. You may need a VA, designer, social media manager, a tech agency, like artsycourseexperts. As your team expands, you’ll be able to use these tools collaboratively, allowing you to share passwords and roles. This way, your teammates can perform specific functions within each tool without being the account owner.
They won’t need access to your credit card information; they can simply make a post or complete a task without altering account settings. Additionally, these tools excel at their designated functions.
Some tools have a whole toolbox of things, but in general, as you’re finding these tools, they’re going to be really awesome at that one thing. For example, a backup tool will ensure your data is backed up, upload it to a cloud service, and provide access on your phone. They may even send you a USB hard drive if needed.
They are really good at what they do, whether it’s marketing, finance or operations. These tools are specialized. They continue to know the best practices in each of the industries and that’s fantastic.
Save on Manual Low-Tech Hours
You’re going to save countless hours by using these tools instead of handling everything manually. No more alt-tabbing between different systems, copying, importing, exporting, or dealing with paperwork. These tools will help you streamline your processes and save you a significant amount of time.
Whatever your focus may be, you’ll be able to accomplish more and scale your small business effectively by leveraging the right tools.
Regularly Updated and Backed Up
Finally, these tools are updated regularly, often while you’re sleeping. There are dedicated teams behind them, and whether they’re free or require a subscription, they’re consistently improving. These tools receive ongoing updates, bug fixes, and new features to enhance your experience and functionality.
They’re also staying on top of all the vendors. As Google makes changes, your social media tools adapt accordingly. When security issues arise due to malicious activity, your IT tools are updated to include features like two-factor authentication and SSL encryption. These are just some of the fantastic benefits you gain by using the best tools for each of your departments and functions.
Example: What Tools Do Online Teachers Need?
Now, let’s look at an example. Imagine you’re teaching woodcrafting—creating amazing items with wood, whether it’s tables, custom chairs, or art pieces like wood sculptures. You’re sharing a variety of skills related to woodworking, so let’s explore what tools that online teacher would need.
We’ll also consider the different stages of their journey. What would that online course instructor require in the beginning, compared to what they might need after launching a few courses and reaching $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue?
Finance & HR
Let’s begin with finance and HR. Initially, you’ll need some form of online banking, funded by your personal account, to facilitate automatic transactions. You’ll also require a payment system, which might be integrated within your course platform or community.
As you grow, you’re going to look at those fees and figure out what’s the right payment system. Many entrepreneurs turn to Stripe , a world leader in payment processing, and we highly recommend it as an addition to your course or website.
In the early stages, you might rely on a spreadsheet for basic accounting, tracking your profit and loss statements—what’s coming in and what’s going out. However, as you transition from managing personal business taxes to hiring a CPA or a bookkeeper, it would be wise to invest in an accounting app, like QuickBooks or a more modern option such as Xero.
As your team grows, maybe in the beginning, your team is on Upwork or you’re totally by yourself. Over time, as you begin to onboard contractors, you’ll need to manage payroll and possibly fill out specific forms depending on your location. In this case, tools like Gusto can help streamline those payment processes.
Project Management
From a project management perspective, you’ll need a robust tool to manage your tasks effectively. This could involve tracking your own goals, upcoming courses, communities, or webinars you plan to host.
Some people also use a project management tool to track stuff for their clients. Maybe you’re coaching clients. So there’s a bunch of good ones like Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Basecamp, etc. Having a dedicated platform will streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.
You’re going to need a place to move these files around. Sometimes the project management tools have a file share or you attach some files to tasks, but you don’t want it all over email. You’re going to need either Google Drive or Dropbox, or somewhere where everybody knows that that’s where the files go and that’s where you have your media kit, colors, pictures, work for the week, etc.
Then you’re going to need communication tools like Slack, Discord or Team. Tools like Slack offer a wealth of features for free, making it an excellent choice for communication. You can create threads to keep discussions organized, upload files for easy sharing, and even add a touch of fun with emojis.
The same thing applies with Zoom and I also love Loom. So Zoom is great for meetings, and recording meetings that you could send back to your teammates or you can review what just was discussed with a coaching client by looking at the zoom recording. I also love Loom. Loom is a cool tool where you could screen record or record yourself and send it out.
So it’s great. It’s like, if you want to just do a quick five or ten minute recording, Loom it and then send them a link. By using Loom, you can eliminate unnecessary meetings that might not be needed. Instead of scheduling a lengthy discussion, you can share a direct message or a brief video explaining concepts in a more engaging way than a few written words.
So yeah, Loom could be pretty cool if you haven’t heard of it.
Design
The next step is design. I’m helping creative teachers, but this could apply to your own business or the specific work you do. In this case, we’re talking about wood crafting. You’ll want to record videos of yourself creating the tools and crafting different wooden items. Regardless, you’ll probably also need to create some images for your services page, your coaching content, your blog, and your social media. These tools might be used by you or by your contractors, and even if you don’t directly use them, it’s important to be aware of the various levels of tools available.
If you’re a small business, you might find that Canva is sufficient for occasionally creating images without having to deal with royalty-free sources. You can handle everything directly in Canva. As you grow, you may want to explore different sources for your music, images, and stock footage.
In some cases, when you’re not focused on fine-tuning pixels, you might just need to rearrange larger blocks. That’s where SVG programs come in handy. Adobe Illustrator is the go-to, but I also like to use Inkscape, which is a great free program available on Windows and Mac. It offers layers and allows you to manipulate different text elements to compose layouts without needing to dive into heavy image editing or processing that you would typically do in Photoshop or other similar tools.
Within design, consider your video toolbox. Are you going to use your Apple iPhone for recording basic videos? Will you try CapCut, or opt for Premiere, Final Cut, or another desktop tool? If video editing isn’t your forte, you could spend an entire weekend struggling with it until you bring in a helper.
There are also advanced tools to consider. I like Descript because it allows me to upload a video, transcribe all the text, and edit it based on the text. This means I can easily delete a whole sentence if needed. Many modern AI tools can perform some really impressive tricks for video editing.
If you require specific audio capabilities, you can find free tools for that as well. Sometimes video editing tools come with basic audio features to adjust decibel levels and similar settings, but if you need something more specialized, you can always find dedicated audio tools without needing to pay.
Now, of course, if you’re teaching audio, you’ll want to invest in professional tracks and MIDI tools, along with all that fun stuff!
Marketing & Sales
Next up is the bread-and-butter marketing and sales. You’re going to need some email management to get started. You’ll be collecting leads, and popular options include ConvertKit or Mailchimp, where you can send out newsletters. You can set up a sequence so that when you release a blog article, it automatically gets emailed to all your subscribers.
Then there’s social media management. Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or SocialBee let you schedule your social media posts. They help you build your content and monitor all the different updates, so you don’t have to check 15 different channels to see what activity is happening.
I like a new tool that I discovered called Metricool. It’s very affordable and offers a free plan that accesses a lot of channels. It makes it incredibly simple to schedule a post. You can include text, an image, or a video, and just schedule it, and it works like magic.
You could share a picture that’s a tip, a quote, a full-on lesson, or a repost. It could be a great video or a link to one of your courses with a quick ad or pitch. The social media tool will then automatically repost it.
On the sales side, you might need some sort of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Maybe this woodworking teacher has a few VIP students that they help directly. Every once in a while, people reach out. You might manage that list using a tool like HubSpot or Pipedrive.
These tools track all your leads—whether they’ve just heard about you or are ready to buy or repurchase after going through your process. If you’re a solo shop, you might not have a CRM yet, or you might just use the free version of HubSpot or even a simple spreadsheet for this function.
Once your list becomes long and complicated enough, it’s time to upgrade to a dedicated tool. Coaches should definitely leverage Calendly or TidyCal. These tools make it easy for people to schedule time with you for a meeting.
It could be a paid session; with Calendly, you can say, “Hey, in order to book this time, you need to pay 50 bucks or 100 dollars,” whatever you decide. Calendly is especially great for training coaches. So this woodcrafting teacher could say, “Hey, you know, you could buy the course, but if you need one-on-one lessons on how to use that Dremel tool or whatever, you could use Calendly to reach out and schedule that time with me.”
Operations
Now, from an operations point of view, you could use tools like Notion to keep all your procedures and templates organized. This is for your team to understand how to handle specific processes in your company. Notion is fantastic for this; you can also use it for databases, custom lists, or information about your team and your favorite tools.
For example, this woodcrafting course builder might have their own Notion cheat sheet with their favorite vendors and the best tools to use for each task, or where to find coupons. If you want to go beyond Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware, where can you find coupons for specialty hardware you might need for woodcrafting? All of that information could be stored in a Notion document internally. Then, as needed, you can utilize that content in your blogs or videos.
Other popular tools include Trainual, which allows you to create homemade training videos. You might also consider tools that focus specifically on training and procedures for your team, especially as you grow beyond five teammates.
There are other tools like Zendesk that help you manage customer questions. If you’re offering a service to the community and people have inquiries about billing or similar issues, you could use a tool to handle those different requests—and hopefully, they won’t be refund requests!
Finally, one of my most powerful tools is Zapier. Zapier allows you to set up all sorts of cool automations. For instance, you might say, “Hey, when a person joins my team, send them a welcome video,” or “Hey, when a new customer signs up for my course, automatically add them to my Mailchimp sequence.” These are incredibly powerful tools that let you accomplish a lot with a small team.
Information Technology (IT)
Let’s talk about information technology tools—IT tools, information system tools. You’re going to need a domain registrar like GoDaddy to register your domains. In some cases, your hosting provider, like Bluehost or Cloudways, may also offer domain registration.
As a business owner, it’s essential to have your go-to tools for registering domains. This includes your main domain, whether it’s .com, .org, or whatever extension you choose. You’ll also need a Google Workspace or a similar service for your company emails.
Of course, you’re going to need email for your business. This means setting up individual email addresses, aliases, forwarding, or the different emails you see on websites, like info@ or affiliates@. You’ll need your workspace for emails related to your company, as well as anything related to project management.
From an IT perspective, in the beginning, you might just back up your files on a USB drive occasionally. However, as you grow, you might want to invest in tools that back up your files automatically every time you make a change. This might not just be for you but for your team as well, using cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive, which offer free backups and are quite handy.
You might also need some password-sharing tools. In the early stages, it may just be you, but as you expand, you’ll want a way to share passwords securely. This will help you share access to your Canva account with different team members. As your needs grow, your Canva account may even need to upgrade to a higher tier to accommodate multiple users.
Education
Finally, let’s go over educational tools. You’re going to need some sort of course platform, whether it’s a leader like Kajabi or something like Thinkific and Teachable. It could also be a homemade solution where you take WordPress and add LearnDash to create your courses.
Regardless, you’ll need a course system. Over time, this woodworking teacher might develop a community where they and their team assist others with specific questions about what models to use, how to shape the wood, which oils to apply, and all sorts of related topics.
Your community might come bundled as part of your coaching program. For instance, Kajabi offers courses along with community features, or you might decide, “You know what? I want a dedicated community.” In that case, I’ve been looking at Skool recently, and there are others like Mighty Networks and Circle.
If you’re a coach, there are specific training tools that can enhance your coaching practice. Again, you can leverage many of these course platforms, as they include coaching and discussion rooms. Alternatively, you can opt for dedicated coaching platforms like Upcoach or use Zoom for webinars and Calendly for scheduling. Regardless, you’ll need a set of tools as you add more products and services to your training business.
In the end, businesses like yours will be able to level up, move faster, and achieve more by using the right tools. So start thinking about these resources. Consider the ones you can use for now, try the free versions, and eventually invest in the paid versions to derive actual value as you and your team grow your creative training business.
Frequently Asked Questions on Business Tools for Online Course Creators
📌Summary – Business Tools
Don’t add complexity to your business periodically at the end of the year; just identify the tools that you’re definitely using. I like to switch to an annual plan. If you plan to keep Zoom for a while, go ahead and switch to a yearly plan—you could probably save two months’ worth of fees each year.
While I’ve mentioned a lot of tools, just pick a few key ones that run your business and that you actually use to collaborate with your teammates at each stage of your business, regardless of your different journeys.
👉Here are the top tips you need to know when picking out tools for your online training business:
- Think about all the departments in your business when picking tools
- Watch your budget and start with free tools
- Choose the right tools for you and use the best ones available
- Add your tools in stages and upgrade as your team grows
- You don’t need to use too many tools to make it work
You should be a little more smarter now. Thanks for hanging out!
Please subscribe to get more tips for creative online course teachers.
More Tips For Online Teachers
These lessons can also help you with Business Tools and Course Content:
