What are your favorite tools?
Ohhhhh art supplies, how I love you so. I will take one of everything! Thank. You. Very. Much!
But, let’s face it, I have a lot of different pieces to my business: art licensing, wholesale, direct to customer sales, education and they all all require different tools.
I could never choose a favorite art supply, so these are in no particular order!
Micron pens. Love them. They are perfect for small details!
Caran D’ Ache water soluble wax pastels. Obsessed. They are so creamy and rich!
Procreate. Period. It’s the best. How did I live without it, lol?
Adobe Suite. This is a big chunk of awesome, but all the tools are great for different reasons. I use Lightroom, Photoshop and Illustrator the most.
Apple Pencil. Apple Pencil meet Procreate = true love!
Curious what I use to manage wholesale?
Google Streak- this is how I make wholesale happen in bulk. Streak still has a free option (thank goodness!) that allows you to set up personalized emails in bulk- this is hands down the number one way I grew wholesale. You can learn more about how to use it in a class I have HERE.
Trunk Inventory. Oh man, before I had an inventory system, I was manually deducting inventory with each sale from a google sheet… WHICH TOTALLY WORKED… until I was juggling multiple platforms. Now all sales funnel through here. It’s not the most robust, but it gets the job done and is still affordable. If you sign up using my link, I part of my monthly fee covered! Click here.
Airtable: I use this to organize products and also my licensing work.
Wholesale and direct-to-customer sales kinda bleed into the same zone, however, I do have a few tools I love specifically for direct to customer sales.
Squarespace. I love squarespace mostly because I can have my portfolio available for licensing and also host my shop. That’s a win win for me!
Planoly. Yup, it makes planning social media a breeze and I appreciate that.
Flodesk. Sending emails, sometimes I feel like that is my new art, lol… It’s super easy to use and is great for people getting started with an email list.
Education is a whole thing you guys, lol, never did I ever think I would find myself teaching. However, it really lights up my whole world and I am so pumped to share what has helped me.
Thrivecart. This is a platform that I host all my classes on, it is a one time fee, which really beats paying Kajabi $200 a month. Need I say more?
Vimeo. In order to use Thrivecart and upload videos you need a link to embed, vimeo gives me that!
Dropbox. I have organized everything here for what feels like 100 years, back to when I was doing graphic design work and running a snorkel biz. This is a mandatory expense for me.
As you can see there are a ton of tools that keep things moving and grooving over here! We all start at the same place, the trick is to implement the right tools when you need them.