Systems & Software We Use

Transcript

Transcript of the recorded lesson. Recorded 2023, reviewed 2026.

In this video I'm going to go over the systems and software that we currently use here at Lister Pros. Now throughout this course I have talked about different software and systems that we use. I wanted to make this video to have them all in one place. So first off I want to start with our website. When I first started Lister Pros we built our site on WordPress. For orders we used a WordPress plugin called Gravity Forms and we used this setup through 2019 and then we transitioned to our custom website. We worked on the custom website for two years before we launched it so if you go the custom

website route know that it's going to take a whole lot of hard work and effort. We decided to go the custom route because we wanted something a little more robust with better analytics and to be able to deploy whatever features that we wanted in the future. We've been able to automate many order related tasks that have helped reduce errors and have made our admins lives a lot easier. From a website hosting perspective we started out with Hostgator. We had some reliability issues with Hostgator so we switched to SiteGround and found that it was a better hosting service provider for our WordPress website. We now use Amazon Web Services to host our current website.

We decided on AWS because we are heavily reliant on our website and needed it to run fast and efficiently. From a customer relationship management tool perspective we started out using HiRISE a few years into the business. I brought on a sales manager and I told them to look into the CRM system that he wanted to use. Ultimately he chose Salesforce. Salesforce ended up being the worst system decision we ever made. It's not designed for small business. I think I paid over $30,000 over a three year period and when those three years came up I got rid of the whole thing and moved to HubSpot CRM.

Today I recommend using HubSpot CRM. The paid version is pretty expensive but the free version has a lot of features. From an accounting system perspective we started out using FreshBooks. A couple years later we seemed to outgrow FreshBooks and we moved over to QuickBooks online. We've been happy with QuickBooks online ever since. From a payment processing system perspective we have pretty much always used Stripe and have been happy with them. For team documents we used Google Drive. We found that Google Drive is very reliable. It makes it easy to collaborate with other team members to create and share documents and spreadsheets. Our calendar of choice is Google Calendars.

Even with many events on any given day it has been able to handle anything that we throw at it. For file sharing we currently use Dropbox and have since the beginning. From an email system perspective we have always used Gmail. We use free Gmail accounts for the longest time but have since switched to Google Workspace because it makes transitioning accounts when people leave a whole lot easier. We also use SendGrid for our website generated emails and Twilio for SMS. To communicate internally we use Workplace and for direct messaging we use Workchat. For those that don't need to know everything that goes on at Lister Pros we use Skype.

We also use Zoom and Peoplebox to stay connected with our team. When we started the phone system we used was Grasshopper. We have since switched to Dialpat and really like a lot of the features that it has to offer. We use T-Sheets for time tracking and Mile IQ for mileage tracking for non-fleet vehicles. For photo editing we use Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar and Pixelmator Pro. For video editing we use Final Cut Pro. For hosting our customer video projects we use Vimeo. For screen recordings I started with ScreenFlow and then I used the built-in screen recorder on Mac and now I use Ecamm Live which is designed for live streaming but I found that it is very

efficient for screen recordings and the file sizes are a lot more manageable than the built-in screen recorders on the Mac. From a marketing perspective we use MailChimp for years. We have since transitioned from MailChimp to Kajabi. Kajabi has an email campaign feature but we switched to Kajabi for other reasons. If you're looking for a system to send newsletter emails only then I would recommend using MailChimp over Kajabi. From a design perspective we use Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop and Canva. Canva is a great tool for those that may not have a design background but want to create great looking marketing pieces. Now in my opinion the biggest game changing tool for our business has been Zapier.

Zapier has endless possibilities and it has allowed us to automate a ton of tasks. We currently have over 100 active zaps in our Zapier account and this tool has been a massive time saver for us. Anyways this is just a quick overview of some of the past and present systems and software that we use and have used here at Lister Pros. If you guys have any additional questions feel free to reach out. We'll see you guys on the next one.