There is a particular kind of optimism that comes with signing up for a new business tool. You watch the demonstration, look at the list of features, and think, "This is it! This tool is finally going to organise everything for me."
Fast forward a few hours, and you have 17 tabs open, you're halfway through a tutorial, and a simple task has turned into a massive implementation project!
The truth is, no software will magically run your business. A tool only saves you time when it solves a specific, recurring problem, fits naturally into the way you work, and is actually used consistently.
In this episode of the Talk podcast, I’m sharing the three core tools that carry a massive load in our business: ClickUp, MeetEdgar, and Acuity Scheduling (or Squarespace Scheduling). Together, they lower our administrative load, reduce decision fatigue, and save us hours of mental space every single week.
ClickUp: Where Our Work Lives
One of the biggest time-wasters in business isn't doing the work, but trying to remember what needs to happen, searching for lost documents, and figuring out what comes next. ClickUp gives our projects a central home where tasks, comments, files, and deadlines live together.
- Stop Relying on Memory: Trying to keep track of client emails, meeting notes, and task details in your head takes up immense mental bandwidth. ClickUp captures everything so you don't have to rely on memory to keep projects moving.
- Templates for Repeated Processes: Producing a single podcast episode involves planning, recording, editing, uploading, writing show notes, creating graphics, and promoting. Rather than recreating the wheel every time, we use a ClickUp template that lays out every step in the right order and assigns roles to the team.
- Remove the Mental Load: We use templates for onboarding, client projects, workshops, and marketing campaigns. It doesn't do the work for us, but it removes the decision fatigue and stops us from missing steps.
MeetEdgar: Giving Content a Longer Life
Content takes time to create. You might spend hours writing a blog, recording a podcast, or crafting a thoughtful social post, only for it to disappear down the feed where most of your audience never sees it.
- A Categorised Library: MeetEdgar allows us to build an organised library of content divided by topic and format. It continuously schedules and shares our best evergreen posts over time.
- Repurposing with Intention: In my book, The Marketing Tree Method, I teach the importance of content trees. One podcast episode can become a blog article, several social posts, quote graphics, email newsletters, and discussion prompts. MeetEdgar gives all those sub-assets a place to live and keep working for us.
- Resurfacing Your Gold: Reusing content doesn't mean repeating the exact same words forever. It means taking the central idea and evolving the opening, changing the graphic, or tweaking the format so your archive of gold content continues helping people.
Acuity Scheduling: Eliminating "Email Tennis"
Before online schedulers, arranging a simple meeting could take an astonishing number of back-and-forth emails. Playing "calendar tennis" often took more time than the actual meeting itself!
- Frictionless Booking: Acuity (or Squarespace Scheduling) removes the back-and-forth by letting people see your available times and select what works best for them.
- Intake Questions for Preparation: When someone books a strategy session, we ask what they want to focus on and what they’ve already tried. Instead of wasting the first 15 minutes figuring out why they are there, we dive straight into real strategy.
- Protecting Calendar Boundaries: Convenience for the client doesn't mean opening every blank space in your week. Acuity allows you to limit daily bookings, set meeting-specific days, block out buffer times between calls, and prevent last-minute appointments. It protects your deep focus time while giving the client a smooth booking experience.
Key Takeaway
Don't sign up for all three tools at once! Look at your working week and identify where you are repeating instructions, losing information, or wasting time on manual back-and-forth communication. Set up the simplest version of a system that solves that specific friction point. A simple system you actually use will save you hours every single week.
My Practical Challenge For You
Choose one repeated administrative task to make lighter this week:
- Turn one recurring process into a simple ClickUp template.
- Take five useful pieces of existing content and add them to your MeetEdgar library.
- Create one Acuity booking link for the meeting you organise most often.
Enjoyed this episode? I’d love to know which of these three tools you are going to implement or refine first! Let me know in the comments. Remember, in business, sharing is caring. If this episode helped you simplify your systems, please pass it along to another business owner who is ready to save time.
Highlights
- 00:00 Tool Hype Reality
- 01:07 Three Tools Overview
- 02:13 ClickUp Workflow Hub
- 03:23 ClickUp Templates Setup
- 05:18 MeetEdgar Reuse Content
- 06:20 Repurposing Content Library
- 07:47 Acuity Scheduling Boundaries
- 09:25 Protect Your Calendar
- 11:07 Choose Problems First
- 11:53 Weekly Challenge Wrap Up
My Resources to Support Your Journey
Explore my curated list of essential software, tools, and systems designed to help your business run smoothly.
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Sponsored Content: Some of the links included in this post may be affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you sign up through them at no additional cost to you. Please note that we only ever recommend and share tools that we personally use, trust, and rely on within our own business every day.