Aya Paper Pt 2
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Female Founder World.
This is part two with Siobhan. She's the founder of Aya Paper Co. and definitely go back and listen to part one that dropped earlier this week if you haven't listened to it yet, because what she's building is very cool and you're going to want the context. But this, in this episode, we're jumping into some of those really tactical kind of resource recommendations and stuff that's been just helping as she's been building the business.
Siobhan, you gave us some awesome recommendations in the last episode about how you like, you Managing a freelance and contractor and part time team. What else has been helping you as you've been building the business? Yes, so the most recent tool that I've been using is called Motion. Yep. Yes, so Motion AI scheduler has been amazing.
I've always heard people talk about time blocking as a great way to manage when you're doing lots of different things, which I wear a lot of different hats. I'm a mom, I'm an educator part time. So being able to manage the business with all of those things, I need a clear schedule. And I was getting very overwhelmed with all of the [00:01:00] different things I had to balance and trying to just make the decisions around when to do what.
So motion is great because you put the tasks in, you say what the priority is, and then And how long it's going to take, and it automatically schedules it in for you. So that's been amazing at helping me just manage my time. Have you done any, like, as you've been building the business, have you kind of, um, done anything formal, like taking any courses or, like, read any books that have helped or has it been really just, like, immersing yourself in the business and figuring it out that way?
In the beginning, it was a lot of immersing myself in the business and figuring it out. But I would say in the past year, I've gotten more serious about formal training because I think that, you know, there's only but so much you can do. And if I want to do it faster, informal training will help me do that.
So one of the things that I did was I took a Google digital marketing course on Coursera. And that was amazing because I don't have digital marketing background, but I was doing a lot of things, you know, just intuitively around being [00:02:00] authentic and organic and just trying different things. But taking that course helped me to understand some of the science and the vocabulary and just like the actual, uh, research behind why certain things work and what decisions to make.
So I would definitely recommend the digital marketing course because it's free. You just pay for your Coursera subscription. So that was really helpful for me in figuring out how to create a really comprehensive and effective. digital marketing strategy. Amazing. Okay, great. Any podcasts, people that you follow, anything like that, that's kind of been helping you learn as you're building?
So Morgan Dubon, I really like, she has a podcast called The Journey. She's the founder of Blavity and Afrotech. She has a lot of really great, um, advice about growing a business, about scaling. So I appreciate all of that. her, following her. I'm part of her online community and also listen to the podcast.
Amazing. Cool. All right. Anything else that you wanted to recommend before we end the show? I mean, there's so much great stuff. There, yeah, there's so [00:03:00] many different tools.
[00:04:00]
The one thing, also, I know that most people are using it, but if you are not already using ChatGPT, just lean into it. It saves me so much time.
What do you use it for? A little bit of everything. I use ChatGBT for help to help me with research, to do it more quickly. So for example, I was looking for a new CRM, uh, for the business and I went on ChatGBT and said, you know, I think that prompts, getting really great prompts has been the difference maker and how effective it is for me.
So telling ChatGBT, Hey, I have a greeting card and gift company. I'm looking to manage all of my [00:05:00] contacts for different retailers. I want to figure out a way Organize their contacts, but also track conversations, and it needs to integrate with Shopify. Do some research on the top five options, and compare the pros and cons, as well as what the ease of use is.
And that would give me a whole table with all of those things, and then I can make a decision in five minutes, instead of doing all of that research every day. myself. What did you go with? What CRM are you using? I am using Oversea actually. Okay. So that was one that, um, I plugged in. So I was doing the research and then.
So this is for like wholesale accounts. Yes. So Oversea was one that I actually, added in myself when I was doing that prompt, I said, you know, I'm interested in Streak. I also saw Oversee as another platform specifically for wholesale. And once I looked at the pros and cons, Oversee was the one that came out.
And I actually found out about Oversee from Female Founder World. Oh, amazing. Good. I was gonna say, we've definitely recommended Oversee in the past because, um, it's really cool. [00:06:00] There's not a lot of platforms like that for wholesale. Yeah, I hadn't heard about it before. It was written on Contact information in there as well.
Yes! It's, it's so amazing. It's pretty new, I think. It is, it is new. So I saw it on one of your posts and I was like, I've never heard of this. What is it? So I don't know, I was looking for a CRM. I put that into the mix to help me do some more research and they won. So if you are doing wholesale and looking to grow and you don't really want to have a full team, Oversea is amazing because it definitely makes me feel more empowered to run our wholesale channel, um, pretty independently, of course, like having some support.
But. I feel a lot more confident in doing it in a lean with a lean team. Amazing. Do you have any like Shopify apps that you're using email marketing? What tools? Yes. Email marketing. I use Klaviyo. They're great. Um, for Shopify, for Shopify, I have so many apps. I add new ones. all the time. One of the ones that I do like the most is, um, [00:07:00] Smile.
Smile is like a loyalty program so you can create, you can do like some influencer affiliate marketing, you can do loyalty points. So I really like that because it integrates right in. They are really good recommendations. Really tactical. We love that. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing what's working and what you're doing and your story about how you're building.
Congrats. It's very cool to see what you're doing. Thank you so much. I hope that all of the recommendations, things are useful. And if anyone has more questions, I am one of those founders. I really love to pay it forward because so many people have helped me. So if you need more recommendations or trying to figure something out, my DMs are open.
Oh, I love that. Can we do a group coaching call with the community maybe? Yes, that would be amazing. I'd love that. Okay, cool. We'll put a link in the show notes where you guys can sign up for that. If you're in the, in the free group chat in the community, we'll host it there and we'll do a little call.
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