0:05
22nd of June Podcast Episode 45, and today I’m going to discuss a design app that 30 million people across the globe are using and the article describe, we’ll come on to that in a moment, is part of a series that I’m going to do for you about side hustle and small business tools that you need.

0:26
So if there is a particular task that you’re looking at within either your side hustle ie small business she starts at whatever. If there’s a particular task that you’re struggling with getting torch, and I’ll do an episode or I might do an episode about what tools I think can help you in that aspect, because a lot of midlife is now realising that by earning money in different ways, it frees them up from that old rat race that I keep talking about. So first of all my little intro. I’ve got a secret announcement which I can’t tell you I’m sworn to secrecy on it, but it’s really given me validation on my writing, and I’m really pleased about it, so it was just a simple little email that I just thought was an acknowledgement and it wasn’t, and I’m really thrilled by that. So don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and take a few risks, and just see what happens, because you never know how things are gonna turn out. And I got back my top writer status as I’m not sure where they went, but I’ve got those back on medium so that again was validation on my writing, and it’s just a message isn’t it when you get a validation that you’re on the right track and somebody else is appreciating your work. And I love that when you’re doing something that you love for other people to appreciate it really is a big pat on the back so pleased about that. And I’m continuing with my ghost writing, I want to project at the moment that’s like a four chapter series that’s really enjoyed nice great proper challenge is making my brain bows, but that’s never a bad thing, we should always use our brains the same as our bodies. And I’m also considering at the moment looking at marketing through a virtual assistant. So if you know anybody out there who does marketing on a modest level, I’m not looking at a 10 figure budget here. And so if you know anybody who works as a virtual assistant, especially in Facebook Facebook groups, and potentially other social media I’m not really sure yet, but especially Facebook because I’m backing off from Facebook a little bit. So I would like somebody to step into that gap for me so if you know anybody tell them to reach out. And another thing that happened this week which I’ve posted about in my Facebook group, is that I had an emergency in the family, and one of the blessings of being entrepreneur who works on wine works at home works for myself is that I could just drop everything literally a text message came in, I could just drop everything and go and sought out things from my family and help my family, and most of my why, why I do this business is for my family, so to be able to just up and go, and not have to grovel to a boss or ring up or stress about, am I going to have to take this off my holiday leave I’m not going to let anybody down at work, am I going to have to really sort of push to get the day off, am I gonna have it refused. I’ve been through all those situations in the past and it’s awful when you work in a corporate organisation who expects you to put 110% into the company and not appreciate the value of your family. So it was a real relief and a reminder as to why I do this work, that for that freedom, and for that knowledge that I can look after my family and they come first. So back to the topic, the design app that 30 million users are loving and if you haven’t guessed already, it’s called Canva. And if you don’t work online or you’re not sort of professional in your approach to social media, you might think, Oh, well I’ve heard of it but a bit vague, or you might not have even heard of it, you’ll have heard of Microsoft and Photoshop and things like that. But Canva is actually competing with them on a level playing field now. And it is a brilliant, brilliant app and I don’t sell things to, if I don’t think the worst. I have got an affiliate code which I’ll come on to in a bit. But Canva is truly amazing. It’s one of the apps that if it goes a lot of people will be stoked because there’s a free version, you don’t have to pay for the premium version but to be honest I recommend it because it’s not expensive and is so worth it. I use Canva literally every day on my phone on my iPad and on my computer, it’s got apps everywhere that are really easy to use. And I’m sure that when you’ve looked at other people’s social media, you’ll notice the Canva things without even realising that they’re there. And it’s an app that does so much stuff I’ve just been reading upon the owner Actually, she’s Melanie Perkins and she was, she is now the second richest woman in Australia, and she’s even had the government invest in her company to make sure that it stays on Australian soil so that shows the power of that organisation.

5:26
What I love about it is that not only is a woman at the top of the company but she invented it just in a back bedroom or moms, and it’s now a billion dollar company is competing like I say with Microsoft. So you never know what your small idea will turn into if you’ve got ambitions that way. She probably didn’t have ambitions that size, but obviously it’s gone with the flow. And what is fantastic about it as well. And I’ll come on to what he actually does but it changes, and it grows and it shifts, and that is the key to success. Now that we’ve seen so many new reports of new, you know the boomer companies that have all gone bust and companies that have failed and all the doom and gloom which is banned from our Facebook Group By the way, so if you come in and join my Facebook group and don’t reminisce we don’t look back all the time about oh Wasn’t it great when and oh do you remember this because I’m a firm believer in, we live for today and it is an amazing, amazing time that we live in and we’ve got so much privilege and so much opportunity, and so much opportunity to tell others

6:34
that, That’s fantastic. And we should never forget that and how privileged we are, but the companies that are surviving now, are those that morph and shift and pivot and pivot is one of those key words, isn’t it that we hear bandied about all over the place,

6:50
but the companies that refuse to go online, have gone, you know, they’re not going to survive, because as a customer, I’m sure you’re the same. You want to be able to just log on and shop, you don’t want to have to back in through the grounds or canoe or drive or whatever. So, it’s important that the online world is there and what I like with Canva is they’ve not just sort of built a company and thought, we built it now. It’s great. The constantly innovating constantly keeping up with requirements with developments with progress listening to customers, adding services that they think comply, but it’s all related back to their original design ethos and around imaging, and it’s not like we have a store in England in UK called wh Smiths and they’ve been struggling for years, and they always. They started out as a stationers so if you wanted a notepad or a pencil. That was the place you went and then they started doing video, we all know how to video, DVDs, we know how to that games, you know, everything’s sort of been and gone and Smith sort of tried to capture everything and didn’t specialise and they lost their identity, they don’t really know what they are if you go into Smith store now. It’s trying to get back to books and stationery but people aren’t buying books as much or you know there, again, it’s all going online, and if that shop fails, they’ll probably blame COVID or whatever but it’s been years since that shop has lost its identity. And that’s the thing with Canva is that it is pivoted it’s changed it’s developed but it’s stuck with its original principle that people know, if you want something to do with a design an image, you go to Canva. So, I’m not selling it to you. I’m just telling you that this is a really good app that will genuinely help you. And just a few other things he does social media images, if you want, you know, when you see, quotes, images, templates, they do all of those every different social media that’s obvious because he’s a designer, but he does images. So if you need social media images Canva is usually place to go if you’re a writer, and you need a book cover. You can go in and design your own book covers, and what is fantastic on this as well is that you can collaborate with a team with colleagues, with friends. Recently when I was designing a book cover of my own. And if you can afford to pay an artist to do your own book cover that is fantastic because you’re supporting another artist, but sometimes you just want cheap and cheerful get my book out onto the next one. And the book cover, I was really struggling with the background, and an online friend who lives on the other side of the world said they’d offered to help. I opened it up for collaboration, they just went in and you can see the collaborations in life time, which is brilliant. So that is something that if you are working with other people, maybe a VA or just a friend across the planet. You know you can go in there and collaborate. You can also now post direct to social media, which is fantastic. I use Pinterest, which is a search engine, it’s not social media. But I want to post all my images onto Pinterest to get more publicity. And what I used to have to do was go in design the image download it to my computer. Log into Pinterest, upload the design copy the comments across, and now I go straight from the designed image, which I can design, just to talk you through my process quickly. I design a blog post, incumbent in my brand colours, which is stored in Canva, so I don’t have to search around for colour codes and things are all stored in there. I then resize it from the blog post size into a Pinterest size. It does it automatically but then you have to just tweak it a little bit to make it fit. Make your images fit where you choose them to fit, but then instead of having to download that image I just live in Canva, share to Pinterest. Copy the URL, and comments. And it’s done. And my Pinterest account is massively grown in the past few weeks, purely, I think, because I’m posting so much more because you don’t get distracted, it’s quick, it’s easy. You can do two or three different images to Pinterest within just a few minutes. So that is a brilliant way to help your presence on social media so I definitely recommend that looking at.

11:34
If you do any sort of merchandise T shirts mugs job law, and definitely camera you’ll probably be using it anyway. You get free photographs, Sofia book covers for your social media, there’s a huge, huge album of free to use images see Doctor go and pay another photo supplier online. And there’s a scheduler now as well, which is yet another invention where they’ve obviously listened. They’ve obviously seen what competition what other apps are needed alongside Canva and decided to bring it in house, so you can actually schedule all your posts through Canva. How fantastic is that because usually pay a fortune for all these different scheduling apps that you have to copy your images across, because it’s all in one place, it just saves you so much time and you can collaborate as a team so your team can all see what Cindy schedule. It’s brilliant. I really, you know, I’m no I’m trying to do like a saleswoman here answer but I honestly believe it really can help you in your business by proceed and collaborate, you can put your brand ID, your logo or things like that in there, and you can create your own templates you can use their templates even for video now. How cool is that that you can just create a video in Canva and post it to social media. And if you think you know there’s no way I could learn all that. It is the easiest to use app I’ve ever used. And they do loads of tutorials in house as well so there’s absolutely nothing stopping you doing it so I finished my sales pitch with Canva. I genuinely wanted to do this post because I can’t sing his praises enough really. And I am an affiliate to them but I only affiliate with companies that are alike and that I use and recommend. And if you want to go to Canva and have a look around. If you use my code, and you do sign up ultimately I’ll get some commission. But it’s not all, but I’m not doing it for that reason, but my affiliate code is partner.com But, you’ve got the usual twiddly bits at the beginning of the internet, but partner.com slash midlife podcast. So if you put that code in like I say partner.com slash midlife podcast. Have a look around, see what you think. I’d love some feedback. And actually my call to action this week is relating to that so come on through in a moment. But recommendation, I always do one down, and this week I’m going to be CI K soon as I’ve been selling everything this week. Then, I want you to go on by my rewrites of ashes and let me know what you think, even if you’ve written, or read rather the book before. I would like you to go back in and see whether you think he’s changed, and how you think about it and do me a review, we’ll need some reviews, and well really fairy rose is a book I absolutely love. I wrote it so with a writing partner, a very young writing partner because we wanted to see people with brown skin in books as well. And it’s a very important project so ashes, is my mystery thriller, and well really fairy Rose is my children’s book so I would like to go and buy those for whoever. And then my call to action is, why not go into Canva, through my link. Create a cover image, post it on social media and tag me, I’m on nearly all social media now you know by now, I’ll put all the links in the show notes. But, tag me on there and I will add it to my story, or promote it for you. So free promo from me, to my crowd, and about 35,000 reach on my social media so I’m getting your word out to all those people so that can’t be bad for nothing connect. So, have a brilliant day, go and check out camber I really hope it helps, and if there is like a say a task that you need that you’re struggling with, let me know and if I can’t help you. I will research it and find you an app that will do the job for you. All right, Thanks a lot. Enjoy your day. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Christie Adams

Books and Midlife Adventures

Episode #045 The Design App 30 Million Users Love

PODCAST SERVICE

Listen and Subscribe On Your Podcast Service

Links mentioned in the show

TAG ME on social media!

If You Prefer To Read Your Content