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CANVA

Canva is one of the best resources for designers and non-designers! If you have a paid subscription ($12/month), you can create a brand kit. In your brand kit, you can upload logos, fonts, colors and other graphics that will always be available to you. Grab a template you love, change it to fit your brand, and you’re ready to post awesome artwork!

LIGHTROOM MOBILE

Lightroom mobile is free and our favorite tool for editing photos on your phone. You can buy really inexpensive presets on Etsy or many photographers offer them too. Presets are specific settings that will give you the look you want. Aly Carroll is a photographer in Des Moines who just launched some awesome presets too. Buy them here!

You can also play with settings on your own! Light will make the biggest difference in your phone photos, so shoot with natural light and start by adjusting the exposure, contrast and colors.

SQUARESPACE

We design all of our websites on Squarespace. The platform is user-friendly, easy to customize, and offers simple, clean and beautiful designs. There are many free and paid templates to get started or send us a message if you want us to help! Start with a free trial to test it out before you invest in a monthly subscription.

MONDAY

We use Monday to collaborate as a team. Monday is not free, but is one of the best investments we could have made. It’s easy to message about projects, create tasks and workflows, and will cut down your inbox significantly!

PODCASTS

There are endless podcasts about marketing that are all free and could give you all the education you want about absolutely anything. Don’t have time to sift through reviews and find them? Here are a few of our favorites:

  • How I Built This: stories of some of the best-known companies, our go-to inspiration for following your dreams.

  • The Goal Digger: Jenna Kutcher is a fan fav and unbelievably generous with her marketing knowledge. From social media algorithms, to financial best practices, to body shamers and being a mom, she shares it all.

  • Business Made Simple with Donald Miller: Donald Miller is an incredible writer and preaches branding with stories first. He’s an inspiration and shares great ways to engage customers.

  • Don’t Keep Your Dayjob: Cathy Heller is fun to listen to and perfect for the side hustler wanting to launch their first entrepreneurial dream.

  • Happier with Gretchen Rubin: Author of the Happiness Project, Rubin focuses on habits, mindsets, and other ways to bring happiness into your life. We all started small businesses because of what made us happy, so let’s not lose that in the everyday grind!

  • Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert: If you haven’t read her book, Big Magic, stop and go buy it. We suggest calling Next Page Books in CR to support a local bookstore. In her podcast, Gilbert interviews guests about how they overcame their fears in the desire to live with joy and follow their passions. Season 1, episode 12 features Brene Brown and episode 209 features Glennon Doyle. (Magic Lessons isn’t currently releasing new episode, but their archives are worth going through!)