In today’s episode, we talk about 17Hats and why it’s the solution for us.
We also discuss some of the latest blog posts from the Elegant Themes team related to Divi, Design Packs and Quality of Life.
Learn more about 17Hats!
Keegan 0:00
What’s up everybody? Welcome to the Divi addicts podcast where we’re bringing you the latest news from Divi as well as tips and tricks to take your WordPress website to the next level. What’s up Divi addicts? Welcome to episode number 41 of the Divi addicts podcast.
Keegan 0:26
We’re super pumped to be back for this episode where today we are talking about why we manage our business using 17 Hats that you may or may not have ever heard of 17 hats but it is pretty popular in the photography and the web freelance space. It’s a very good all in one platform. It’s a it’s a CMS. It’s project management. It’s bookkeeping, although very basic, but it has integrations into into QuickBooks. It’s got a lot of different features. And it allows you to manage your your workflows and lifecycle the projects and clients. It’s a really awesome platform. And we’re going to talk about why specifically we use 17 Hats to manage our business today. But with that, we’ve also wanted to talk about a sponsorship that we have using 17 hats. They’re taking care of this episode today. And they’re helping support the growth of the Divi addicts podcast.
Keegan 1:29
So if you’re looking for an all in one solution to manage your business to keep things organized, moving along, automated emails, quotes, invoices, bookkeeping, that whole package, all in one platform 17 hats has worked really amazing for us. And it’s helped really organize the chaos that is running your own freelance business. So we’re gonna leave a link in the show notes. That is an affiliate link. But it’s going to help you save a little bit of dough, and get started with 17 hats if you’re looking for that. So check the show notes, click on that link and learn a whole lot more about 17 hats and what they have to offer for your business to control the chaos.
Keegan 2:19
Alright, so we teased a little bit about it in the intro. 17 Hats, you know, we’ve been using 17 hats for a couple of years now. And admittedly, we didn’t go all in on the platform. We tried to find other invoicing solutions, we tried to find other project management tools like Asana, and Trello. And a few different things. But, you know, a beautiful thing happened whenever we decided to go all in on 17 Hats, things got a lot more organized, our workflows became more streamlined our invoices, you know, they got paid on time, because we were sending them out on time. 17 has just been it’s been phenomenal for us. And you know, it wasn’t originally designed to manage a freelance web design business. But it works really well if you tailor it to do the business that we need. So what I’ve done is that we’ve gone and we’ve built these different capture forms for different services that we offer, whether it’s your website hosting, whether it is website development, or you know WordPress hosting, or maintenance plans, any of that stuff, you know, we have created a capture form for that. And then we’ve also done a generic capture form for contacts.
Keegan 3:31
So what that does is, anytime someone submits a form on Keegan Lanier Media.com website, it creates a new lead inside of 17 hats, which you know, has the name the email address of someone, and then we work a nurture campaign around that. So it’s kind of email marketing drip campaigns built in with the CMS built in with Project Management all in one. Now I know what you’re thinking. And trust me, I thought that thought about this too, whenever we were first getting into it is that, you know, it sounded too good to be true. Could it possibly do all of these things and be a true all in one solution? Let’s be let’s be honest with you. It does do all of those things. And there are some things that it does better than other parts of it. Some of the the opportunities for 17 hats to improve, maybe on some of the layout, maybe some of the user interface, although it’s laid out well, it does feel a little bit dated when you compare it to some of the other dashboards.
Keegan 4:33
The other shortcoming is that is that the BookKeeping is not super detailed, although it does check all the basic boxes, you can produce a p&l for the whole year if you categorize your expenses correctly. It links into square it links into PayPal, it links into your your credit cards or your bank accounts. It can do all of those things and run basic bookkeeping and you can even set Custom categories, you know, for income or for expenses, you can do all of those things. But you’re not going to be you know, doing bank RECs and check runs and any of those kind of crazy things. It’s not that type of accounting software, I would definitely recommend fresh books or QuickBooks if you need that level. But if it’s very basic, and you’re, you’re no, you’re a one person shop 17 Hats is an unbelievable, great start. Plus, it allows you to pay for one service and kind of accomplish all those things.
Keegan 5:30
The other huge thing it’s allowed us to do is build out workflows. And the way they handle workflows, is that anything that you can do in the system, whether it’s sending a quote, sending an invoice, a contract, questionnaires, any of those things, those can be automated, you know, so if you have a membership that has a flat rate, you can automatically generate questionnaire, which leads to an invoice which leads to contract that can be signed. And you can split those invoices on a payment schedule, you can set the final due date based on a project date, you can do a lot of different things inside of here. But just like any other great, you know, either CMS or project management tool, it does take some setup and some work to get it right. But when you do get it right, it can amazingly change the way you do business.
Keegan 6:22
So we love 17 Hats for that. And it’s really worked well for our Divi freelance business. I think it’s been a game changer. And we really want to to help you, you know, if you want to check out 17 Hats, check the show notes below, there will be a link bring you directly to 17 hats. It won’t cost you anything extra. It’ll just really help us it’ll support the podcast here and our business so that we can focus on doing more of these and bringing you more to Divi news. And we’re just super, we’re super excited about 17 hats has continued to grow. And they’ve they’ve added new products, new functionality into the products over the last six or eight months and they’ve been on a development spree. So we’re very excited for the commitment we made to 17 hats and you know, if you want to ask us any questions, or you have questions about the product, specifically, feel free. Go to Keegan Lanier Media comm check on our social links and connect with us there or send us a message inside the Contact Us page. Whatever works the best for you, you can just feel free to reach out to us and we’d be happy to answer any questions and talk at length about 17 hats and how it’s really impacted our business. So that’s you know, that’s the 17 hats portion of this. We’ve also got a little bit coming up on Divi news. So stay tuned.
Keegan 7:43
Alright, so we’re back here in Divi addicts. And there’s something that we’ve gotten away from just a bit. And it has a lot to do with the cadence change for Elegant Themes blog. You know, before in the early days of the podcast, especially the first 20 or 25 episodes, what we were doing was running the the podcast in tandem with new elegant theme blog posts. And most of those were about feature releases, which they were coming fast and furious before we got WordPress 5.0. And the other part was the feature previews, you know, it was it was their preview into what was coming with Elegant Themes.
Keegan 8:22
Most of the features that they previewed we’ve been able to cover once they were finally released. But there’s still one that’s lingering out there that we haven’t seen in its full form. And I have a feeling that’s why Elegant Themes has been a little quiet lately. You know, they launched the WordPress, Gutenberg compatibility with with WordPress 5.0. And they’ve been a bit quiet lately on features and updates for Divi at least the really big in your face ones. But the blog is still active. So we want to make a return in a segment of Divi addicts Podcast, where we talk about what’s late and great from the blog itself.
Keegan 9:06
And we’re going to cover the last few days. I think that the Divi design initiative that we covered in some of the early episodes is still it’s still super active. And it’s still a very big part of the blog, where if you go to it right now on February 25, they posted a free bakery pack layout or bakery layout pack. And you know, their design is still awesome. It’s still on, they’re still on top of their game. But the other part of what they’re doing is that they’re doing some very cool things with those layout packs. So we have the layout pack that is in play and is let’s see, layout pack. It’s this really cool. Fixed icon navigation, so that what they did is that they went in and use the risk management layout pack and they created a fixed icon navigation That hovers and hugs to the left of the screen, which I think is really cool that Elegant Themes is taking a free product. And then they’re putting out content on top of it to take that layout pack, even to the next level. Super cool. Very awesome stuff. And these fixed icon navigations, could be extremely cool and extremely useful on mobile. They also did one where it’s the bottom attached or bottom fixed buttons, that can look almost like a mobile app. I think that’s really awesome, too. And it takes the Divi navigation, and more importantly, it takes the user experience to the next level.
Keegan 10:36
One of the other posts that they put in to the blog is how to optimize your life with daily routines and rituals. You know, I think we’re probably all in if you’re sitting there, I know, you’re probably shaking your head, yeah, that we’re guilty of shiny red ball syndrome. You know, we chase what is what is, I guess more pressing than what’s more important. And I think, you know, everybody in today’s society is guilty of this at some point, because of how many things come at us in a day, you know, our attention is in high demand.
Keegan 11:09
And we’re trying to do everything we can to keep the attention on what we need it to be on the important things in life, right. And it’s not always a success, at least I can speak for myself, it’s not always successful. So anytime someone shares, life routines, daily routines, rituals, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s morning routines, whether it’s before you go down to bed, kind of routines or nighttime, different routines, you know, it’s always try and reach, I always try and read through these and and listen to them, if it’s an a podcast, so that I can pick up, you know, maybe a little nugget or two things that really will benefit my life and help me live my best life. as cliche as it is to say that maybe an overuse thing, but I want to live a great life. And I think that we all do. And it’s a matter of finding the the routines and the things that are important to us that can bring value to our day, and help us structure that a little bit better. And that’s what Elegant Themes is done in their blog, you know, they put together this, this really cool article that is absolutely worth reading. It’s posted on February 26, done by John Hughes, and it’s in their business section. So you can you can definitely search do that for how to optimize your life with daily routines and rituals. And read through that, you know, I think it’s going to bring some value to you.
Keegan 12:31
So we’re huge fans, if you don’t already know that of the Elegant Themes blog. So there’s tons and tons and tons of value here. And we’re going to make sure that the essence of where we started is still in this podcast. So we’ll have content in two segments here, we’re gonna do the intro. And then we’ll talk about kind of business topics. But then we’ll always come back to this Elegant Themes blog and tell you what is the latest and greatest coming from Elegant Themes, whether it’s a feature post, a new layout pack, or something to optimize your life, you know, it could be a ton of different things we’ll share with with you those things as well. So if you’ve gotten used to that, and you’ve seen that we’ve gotten away from it just a little bit, just know that we’re adjusting here, and we’re trying to get back on, on to that routine of what started this. And what I think made is great to begin with. And I hope you think the same thing.
Keegan 13:25
So if you have any topics that you’d love for us to cover, or have any suggestions to make the podcast great. We are always open to it, please feel free to go to Keegan Lanier media.com. Connect with us. Let us know your thoughts on the podcast. Let us know what we can cover to help bring value to you. And that would be absolutely appreciated. And we’ll continue to bring you amazing episodes of Divi addicts each and every week. So thanks again for being here. Thanks for continuing to come back week after week. We cannot really tell you how much we appreciate it because we’re just couldn’t do it justice. We do appreciate you more than you know. We’re happy to have you here. And we’re happy to have you back each and every week.
Keegan 14:06
The one thing we will ask is that if you or anybody you know can get value from this, please feel free to share it. And if it brings extra value to your day. Hop over to Divi Addicts.com and there’s an option to support the podcast through a sponsorship. And what that means is that you get the choice of whether or not you want to drop 99 cents $5 $10 whatever it is that you want to do on a monthly basis to help support us continuing to grow the podcast, making the audio quality, quality better, and even help produce the tandem YouTube video tutorials that we’re going to start and continue putting out that go in tandem with the Divi addicts podcast. So again, this is this has been a long one much longer than what we’ve seen in the last few but we do appreciate you sticking it out to the end. We thank you so much for Your attention and your time and we will see you next week in a new episode of Divi addicts, have a great week.