Other Resources and Tools

Software tools and business training to help your studio succeed

Nothing makes it onto this page unless we love it and use it in our own studio, but I should mention that some of these links are affiliate links and we do get some commission if you purchase through them. In most cases you’ll also get a discount, an extended free trial or some other bonus too. There are also links on here (e.g., Zapier) that don’t give you or us anything more than a recommendation to a great product.

Software

These are the tools we use and love in our own studio:

Tave

A CRM we’ve used for years. It’s crazy powerful. This link will double your free trial period.

Square Payment Processing

We use Square to collect online and in-person payments. The fees are comparitively low, the app is easy to use and payments clear quickly. Use this link and we both get free processing on $1000 of transactions.

Integromat Automation Tool

Our new favourite automation tool! It’s like Zapier but a bit cheaper, more powerful, but with less apps available. Click here to check it out

Smart Albums

The fastest way we’ve found to design an album, and to modify it easily with your clients

LastPass

Lastpass remembers all of your passwords (securely) so you don’t have to. Log into LastPass and it logs into everything else for you. Here’s a link (No discount on this one, sorry, but it’s only $2/month).

Zapier

We LOVE Zapier. Link up all of your cloud-based apps and get them working together to automate your studio

Artlist

Licensed music for slideshows and marketing videos (including the songs you hear in our course). $199/yr for unlimited use. (Use this link to get 2 free months when you sign up).

ProSelect

The old saying goes “you sell what you show”, and ProSelect is the best way I’ve found to quickly mock up wall designs for clients.

Acuity Scheduling

In the course, I focus on CanUMeet as a scheduling tool, because it’s a great free option. If you’re looking for a more advanced scheduling tool, the best one I’ve found is Acuity. Click here to check it out.

Podcasts

Here’s what we’ve been listening to lately:

PhotoBizX with Andrew Hellmich

Business and marketing tips from successful studio owners. This link will get you a 30-day trial of the premium PhotoBizX membership for just $1

The Business of Photography

Interviews and advice from two photographers who’ve run successful studios and created the Sprout Studio CRM

Story Brand

Donald Miller teaches his Story Brand concept and interviews business leaders about their brands

Marketing School

Neil Patel and Eric Siu teach digital marketing in bite-sized episodes every day

Web Stuff

Aside from this site, our studio has three brands. That’s a lot of websites to build and manage, and after lots of headaches, confusing support calls, random viruses, lost backups and more support calls, we think we’ve found a bit of a “dream team” of suppliers. I know you’re busy, so these people will save you dealing with some of those same problems we had.

Step 1: Get a domain

At the time of writing this, we own 42 domains, and we’ve used CrazyDomains for all of them. The price is good, the site is fairly intuitive and honestly, I’ve never quite worked out what more we need than that! Here’s a link

Step 2: Get a sexy WordPress theme

All of our sites have been built with the Divi theme on WordPress, and about 90% of each site has been created without writing any code. Elegant Themes are constantly updating and enhancing it, and they’ve got lots of helpful videos to show you what it can do, so check them out and I’ll stop rambling 🙂 Try it for free here. 

Step 3: Get a helper

Dan is a life saver. He’s fast, incredibly knowledgable and is the first person I call when I break something on my website :).