Your business is as good as the tools you use – I’ve compiled a list of all the tools we use to consistently reach multiple six-figures in our business every year. These systems for small business owners will help you automate, create, and monetize your work more efficiently. Design by Laney is an invitation design business, and we also teach design and business topics, so these systems are all related to art and client work as well as education. 

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of these links are affiliate links, and we will make a small commission if you use them. We are always honest and only recommend products we actively use and pay for in our business. 

Internal Small Business Systems

Trello

Trello is my brain, written down. It’s a task management platform that is where our team keeps all brainstorm ideas, project to-do lists, and communicates back and forth. We have cut out a ton of meeting time (as well as errors) using Trello. I tried a bunch of these systems before landing on Trello and the main reason was that a lot of them force you to schedule tasks on a calendar. That doesn’t really work for me and Trello made it easy to info dump without scheduling everything. 

Quickbooks

Quickbooks is a system for small business accounting. I don’t do my own accounting, but I rely on Quickbooks to keep all of my transactions in order. You can connect all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc. and it pulls everything in automatically. There’s easy reporting features, lots of support, and you can give your accountant direct access while still controlling what they can and can’t do. My accountant LOVES this. My link will get you 50% off. 

Canva

If you’re NOT planning to become a designer, chances are you still need cute graphics for marketing purposes. Enter Canva. Even as a professional designer, I love using Canva almost every day for quick graphics. It’s also cloud-based so I can work with my team on projects and share them internally or externally as needed. Canva is super user-friendly (here’s a playlist all about using Canva). You’ll love it! 

Google Drive

Personally, I’m a Dropbox hater. I don’t know what it is but I am not a fan. And I love Google Drive. We use Sheets, Docs, Slides, and of course Drive all the time for everything from formatting client address lists to writing this blog post! 

Slack

Slack is how we communicate daily as a team. We use the free plan. We also have a free Slack channel in our membership where other stationers can meet up and chat and give/get support. 

PirateShip

PirateShip is a free shipping platform that gives you discounted rates on shipping! We used to use Stamps.Com and have also used ShipStation in the past, but love PirateShip these days! 

Systems for Social Media Marketing

ManyChat

ManyChat is what we use to automate Instagram comments and DMs. Think “Comment X and I’ll send you Y”. These are SO common these days and yes, people are lazy, so they work. They increase your conversion rates a TON. We use ManyChat automations for sending links, helping with FAQs, and reminding people when they haven’t clicked a link or taken an action in a while! 

Repurpose.io

Repurpose is also a social media tool, but it’s so much more than that. Every time I post a Reel on Instagram, Repurpose automatically shares it to TikTok, Pinterest, and a Google Drive folder for me. I don’t have to even think about it. One time, I had a TikTok get 4.3 million views – my best ever – and it was something that Repurpose automatically posted on TikTok for me. I didn’t even log in to TikTok until later when it already had over 250k views! 

Tailwind

Tailwind is how we schedule pins (in addition to all of our Repurpose.io pins!). They will let you post the same pins to multiple boards and spread them out to the ideal times of day. Basically we work on this for a couple hours a quarter, and get leads and sales from Pinterest. 

Meta Ads Platform

We’re just starting to explore ads more, and enjoying some positive results! The Meta Ads Manager makes it fairly easy. We also “Boost” instagram posts from Instagram directly.

Systems for Teaching and Selling Courses

Kajabi

Kajabi is our top-used system as it does a little bit of everything. We use Kajabi for email marketing, selling courses and downloads, running our membership, and a lot of our internal data reporting. The best thing about Kajabi is that it integrates all of those things – so if someone signs up for a freebie, we have the data when we go to email them next. If they buy something, we know. If they attend a webinar, we know. Sounds creepy, but it’s really helpful for targeting and improving our results. 

Showit

Our website is hosted by Showit. We used to use Squarespace but upgraded for more customization. I’ll be honest – sometimes Showit is a tad overwhelming. If you want crazy customization, it’s great. If you want something more plug-and-play then Shopify or Squarespace will be great.

Shopify

We use Shopify to actually sell all of our downloads, and used to sell our invitations via Shopify as well before we moved all of that to Etsy. It’s a really easy to use eCommerce platform, and you can embed your items or categories onto your Showit site. We use the “Digital Downloads” (free) App to add digital downloads to our store. You can also run your full website on Shopify, and it’s a really lovely DIY platform for simple sites. 

Loom

Loom is the perfect way for us to film how-to videos both internally and externally. I will film thoughts or feedback on designs my team sends me, for instance, and I also film a lot of my courses and YouTube videos on Loom! It’s a perfect screen-share video-recording app. You can share the videos just by sharing a link, and they’ve recently added some amazing editing features such as editing by transcript, which makes recording videos so easy. 

Zoom

I love that Zoom and Loom rhyme – they are both our favorite video platforms. The main uses we have for Zoom are internal video meetings and external webinars!

CapCut

We mostly use CapCut (and also sometimes Adobe Premiere Pro) for video editing these days! The Desktop app is really good, which most people don’t know about. It’s great for editing reels but also longer-form content like YouTube videos and is extremely user-friendly.

Systems for our Invitation Business

Dubsado

Dubsado is our client management tool on the invitations side of the business. We’ve worked with over 500 clients in Dubsado in the last decade, and have explored and taught on many other popular CRMs. For designers, we recommend Dubsado as the top CRM – it’s user-friendly, extremely feature-rich, and well-priced for the amount of time and energy it’ll save you.

What does Dubsado do?

Dubsado handles all client communications, invoices + payments, contracts, forms of all sorts, and more. It can schedule appointments for you, templatize almost everything in your business, and even automate processes for you (think: sending an automatic, personalized email after a client signs a contract – without having to lift a finger). 

I have an entire course on Dubsado on YouTube for free, and you can get 30% off your first year if you use my link.

Adobe Creative Cloud

As a designer, I use Adobe Creative Cloud almost exclusively for designing wedding invitations. Specifically, I use Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. We have a free class on learning how to use Adobe Illustrator if you’re interested in becoming a stationery designer yourself. 

Etsy

We sell invitations, DIY invitation templates, and DIY downloads all on Etsy! More info about selling invitations on Etsy here. 

Corjl

Corjl is the system I use for DIY downloadable wedding invitation templates. You can design your templates, upload artwork and fonts, and then choose sharing settings. It integrates with Etsy or you can sell your templates directly on your website as well. 

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All of these systems for small business owners help our team work more efficiently and productively together. Many of them actively make us more money – and some, like Quickbooks, prevent us from losing money (or losing track of money!). While most of them are investments, they pay themselves back in time saved, mistakes avoided, or added revenue over time! Whatever systems you are setting up in your business, I hope you’ll give some of these a try!