148 - Maximizing Online Tech for Art Instruction

Book a call with me --> http://callwithjaime.com Remember, not all software is created equal and that's okay. The important thing is to learn how to maximize the effectiveness of software tools we do select and to fully integrate them with one another. After you finish listening, give your software a litmus test: - check and see how many of the features you are actually using - how integrated it is with the other tools you are using If you left it for someday -- today is your lucky day, you can tackle getting those last elements flushed out and linked up today, right? There are some big named tools out there that tout that they can do everything and are truly an all in one solution. They may do one or two things really well but be mediocre for other things that you actually need in your business. Instead of putting all your tech into these massive tools, instead find and implement the best right tool for the task at hand. Do we really need one tool to host our videos and do video transcription and pull the audio from our videos to put into a podcast feed? Probably not. Let's use the best tool to host our videos, be selective about building transcripts and use the best tool we can for that (sometimes the best tool is to hire a real human to do it from the get go instead of having a machine do it and then have a person review/edit!) and when it comes to the podcast feed -- well, if our videos are that good, we'll find the best podcast feed service to use! We can often take these mammoth tools and break them apart into the components that we are going to use -- and that's really the point. Even if it seems overwhelming to use a lot of pieces of software, when we're able to jump into a software tool with a single objective, it is far easier to get in and out and back to serving our students. For example -- it's super easy to say I'm going into ConvertKit to send an email to my list. No distraction by something that needs to get done in another part of the software! Look at your software and ask: what am I using it for? what else can it do for me? The more that the good pieces of software can do for you, the more you can leverage them and that they will make your overall business run smoother. Which means you'll have more time for your own creativity and being there for your students, which is truly the goal, right? One of the biggest fears that artists and musicians have with online technology is getting the disparate tools to talk to one another. Many of our tools will have built in straightforward integrations with other mainstream tools. Equally so, it's not necessary that every piece of software talks with every other piece of software, only the ones that need to talk to one another get setup. Your payment processor, for example, needs to communicate with your content deliver, but it doesn't need to be connected with your task management tool. A good way to tell if a connection should be created is to look at the tasks that are done manually daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually and see if they can be automated by integrating the software tools. That's a quick way to get the right tools talking to each other. The bottom line is -- get your software working to the fullest extent so that you can trust them and rely on them. This will give you more head space and more heart space for your art and your students. Share this podcast episode with a friend using the sharing tool inside your podcast app. Connect with me on Instagram or Facebook.