I have tried a lot of systems, apps, and tools in my time as a practice owner. Some have promised me productivity bliss, but most ended up as clutter on my phone. So in this episode, I'm sharing the five tools that genuinely work for me. These are the ones that suit how my brain works, that help me connect with my team, stay organised, and actually get things done.

Here's what I covered in this episode:

• Why I finally stopped trying to make phone-only apps work for me
• The key questions I ask before adopting any new tool
• My favourite walkie-talkie-style app that helps me connect with my team and clients (without the email overload) - https://www.voxer.com/
• A visual, structure-loving-but-not-rigid person's app for daily planning - https://www.tiimoapp.com/
• The clinic communication tool that took us out of email chaos and into calm - https://connecteam.com/
• A project manager that helps me brain dump and plan big things - https://clickup.com/
• My old faithful for storing and finding all the things (even if you're a dump-and-dasher) - https://drive.google.com/drive/

Takeaways:

• The right tools are the ones that reduce mental load, not add to it
• You don’t need the fanciest system, just one that works with your brain, your energy, and your current stage of business
• If a tool feels like homework, it's not the right one for you
• Ask yourself: Does this live where I already work? Will it make things easier or harder? Do I really have the capacity to build a new habit right now?
• Remember to check out the Busy Blind Spot Quiz to get insight on how you're currently approaching work https://theconnectionco.com.au/resources/

Thanks for listening! I hope this episode helps you feel a little more confident choosing the right supports for your workday. If you’ve found a tool that fits you perfectly, I’d genuinely love to hear about it.

And if you’re looking for more support and connection in your practice journey, come join us at The Connection Co! We are here to make things easier for you. https://theconnectionco.com.au/membership/

Foreign welcome to my Good Allied Health Practice, the podcast for allied health business owners who are looking to bring smart and heart together on their journey.

On the podcast, I'll cover things about being vulnerable and brave, pivoting failures, good wins, things that work, things that don't work.

And I'll talk with other practice owners who are doing good in their journeys.

I'm Amy Geach, practice owner and mum, and I'm here because I believe in you.

So let's go forward on this journey together.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast.

Today I'm going to talk to you about some tools that I use in my business day to day, that really work for me.

They are not the ones that promise to change your life overnight, not the ones that look shiny on Instagram.

I've been caught out with those before.

But these are the ones that genuinely fit in with my brain and my workday and help me to operate more efficiently.

So I wanted to share them with you today.

Here's a note of warning, though.

They might not suit you, so I really want you, when you're listening along, to think, would this suit me and the way I like to work?

And that's how you really have to approach a lot of tools, because the options out there are ridiculously endless.

There is an app for pretty much any anything.

In fact, there's hundreds of apps for pretty much everything.

So it can take a lot of time to get the right rhythm for yourself.

And you often feel like you've wasted time trying an app that really, you know, just made your life more frustrating.

So I'm going to talk through five today, five things that I really love using.

First of all, I want to say this.

For a very long time, I kept trying to make phone apps fit into my life.

You know, the kind of thing like people might rave about the latest productivity app, and they'll say, this app will change everything and it'll give you this much time back in the day.

And so I download it and set it up and color code it and then quite promptly forget to ever look at it again.

And here's what I eventually realized.

Apps on a phone don't work for me.

The only time I will get an app now is if it has a desktop version.

And the desktop version works well.

I don't like typing on tiny screens.

I forget to open them.

And honestly, they become a bit more of a guilt trip and a hassle than a helper.

So I've learned to ask myself key questions before adopting any kind of tool.

Will this make my life easier or will it become another thing I have to manage?

Is it easy to set up and do I have the time to build this habit right now?

And also doesn't have a desktop component.

That's super important.

So let's look at some of the things that fit into my world and I'll share them with you and maybe some of them might fit into your world as well.

So the first one is Voxer and this is a phone app.

I know I just said I don't do apps.

This one is my exception.

It does also have a desktop component, so I can use it on my desktop during the day.

But it's a walkie talkie style app.

When you send a voice message to someone, they can listen and then send one back to you.

And it's so much easier, I find, to just say what I mean rather than to sit down and try and type it in an email.

And it works really well for me because I work remotely from a lot of my team members, well, all of my team members, because I work from home, quite a number of hours from my clinics.

And so it's a really nice way for me to be able to still have that normal human banter and connection with people and nice quick way to deliver messages or ask for some help with some tasks.

So I use it with my team members, but I also use it with my mentoring clients.

I might have an idea that I want to share with them or they might have a question they want to ask and I can give a quick answer back via voice message rather than feeling like I've got a type a long response.

The thing I love about Voxer is it's really quick, but it's human.

It's human and I can just be myself and it saves me that extra mental load of emailing.

And often, like, where do I start this email and how do I get everything written down that I want to say?

Because Voxer means you can just say it how you would normally say it.

What I love about it is I can leave a message while I'm walking, I can while I'm cooking dinner or while I'm sitting in the car waiting to pick my son up from school, which is often where I do a lot of my Voxer messages.

It's like an extrovert version of email.

It's very conversational, it's fast and it's very flexible.

So that is probably one of my top apps that I use.

The second app I like is called Teemo.

And yes, I know it's Another app, this one has been designed specifically for people with ADHD and whilst I don't have adhd, I find it really helpful.

It's visual and I'm a visual person.

It connects to my calendar.

Super helpful.

It sends me my day laid out clearly.

I can add in my to dos and I can drag and drop the to do's as to whether they're priority or not priority.

It has a widget on my phone which means I don't have to open anything.

It's just there, there on the screen when I, when I look at my phone, front and center.

Really helpful and it's like having a gentle coach saying, amy, remember that thing you said you were going to do?

I love that.

It's really, really good.

I find for anyone who likes structure.

I like structure during the day, but I hate rigidity.

Like don't tell me what to do, but I need a system to follow.

So if you're like me, it can be helpful.

You can drag, drop, reorder, snooze things.

It's a really good kind reminding app that I love and has a desktop component to it which works really nicely and they sync really well together.

So when my computer turns on every morning, I've set it so that Temo app comes up straight away, which is really great.

Okay, my next one is one that I use in my clinics and it is definitely a time saver and has pulled majority of my team email communication off email and out of my email inbox and into this app which I love.

So I know everything is kind of contained in the one spot because it's a hub for internal stuff, staff communication.

There's a chat feature, but there's also a feature where you can do announcements and updates to the team, which is really good.

People aren't then having to sift through emails and try and find what, what, you know, a message that you might have sent out, you know, a couple of days ago.

But it also is a place where you can nicely store your policies and procedures.

You can have lots of forms.

So we have a form for people to order their uniform, we have a form for client feedback, we have a form if people want to put in for professional, professional development, leave, et cetera.

Like there's lots of forms that you can design and create yourself.

It's got checklists, you can have tasks in there.

So you use it like a task management system where you can put the task in and assign it to someone.

You can add subtasks in and you can even run courses through Here.

So we have some onboarding modules that we run and when we take on people that are new to hand therapy, we have some training modules that we run.

So it's a game changer.

And it's really easy to use.

It's really easy to use.

It does also have some other inbuilt things into it, like you can use it to set up a roster for your team and then they can say when they're clocked on and clocked off.

We don't use it for that part, but that is there.

If you did want to use that.

It's completely free if you have under 10 staff, which is really brilliant for a lot of small clinics in allied health.

I have over 10 staff, so I do pay, but you can choose the kind of areas that you pay for.

It's a little bit customizable, which is really good.

What I like as well is you can turn off notifications for part timers or if people go away on holiday, you can temporarily turn off notifications and then turn them back on again.

And I like this because, you know, we're understanding now a lot more about fair works, right to disconnect guidelines and it avoids, you know, kind of that sneaky notifications popping up in, you know, on somebody's phone when they've clocked off for the day.

So I really like that.

It just means that, you know, work is not bleeding into personal time as much, which is really good.

I love it because it keeps everybody connected and informed and supported without the endless back and forth in email or where's that document or who's got the latest form, everybody knows what's on there is up to date, which is really great.

The next one, to be honest, took me a while to love.

It's not a jump in and instantly get it type of tool, but once you do, it's like having 10 systems in one.

And that is ClickUp.

You can brainstorm ideas, you can write documents, you can make a to do list, you can track projects, you can manage content calendars, you can customize your own dashboard.

And the things that ClickUp can do are phenomenal, phenomenal.

But as I said, you can jump in and start using the to do list quite easily.

And you can customize the columns you can put in.

So that's probably the first place to start if you're going to use it.

I use it for business planning, mapping out projects, brain dumping, all that half formed ideas that often live in my head.

It's a really quite a creative and structured space at the same time.

So it's got lots of flexibility in how you want to set it up and how it looks to you and its functionality.

But it's quite structured at the same time, which for me is a good dream combo.

The biggest challenge for me is because it can do so much, it can quickly turn into quite a big thing for you to go in and look at because it's got so many bits and sometimes I go in and think, where did I keep that bit?

So if you're like that, it has a really good find feature.

You can type in what you think you're looking for and it will bring it up for you and find it for you.

So yeah, it's a.

It's a good game changer.

I really like ClickUp.

Okay, my last one, my final one, and my old faithful Google Drive for document storage.

It is the cleanest, simplest way to store and find things.

I believe, even if you are a dump and dash kind of person, just get it in there and organize it later.

The search function will save you so much time.

And because I'm a visual person, I like to see the actual visual of the document as I'm searching so that I find that super helpful because I can identify a document of mine by what it looks like much easier than what I've called it.

So I find that really, really helpful.

You don't need any kind of fancy folders or color coded systems.

You can just chuck it in there and you'll find it when you need it.

It's really reliable.

The searchable feature on it is phenomenal and it definitely keeps me sane.

If I try and search for something on my computer or OneDrive or I've tried to use Microsoft Teams before, you know, it's clunky to find stuff for me, for me.

So I do like Google Drive for that reason.

Okay, so how do you choose the right tools for yourself?

Here's the real truth.

The right tools are the ones that help you think and work better, not the ones somebody else swears by.

So the ones I talk about, they might not suit you, right?

Be very careful about, you know, all the ones promoted on social media.

When you are choosing a tool, ask yourself, does it match how I like to work?

I don't keep trying to pigeon yourself into a way of working.

If that doesn't suit you, does it live where I already spend time?

Can I use it easily or will it require constant motivation and does it reduce mental load or add to it?

And if you're not sure about the way you like to work or how you might be showing up in your work at the moment.

You can definitely take our busy blind spot quiz.

It's over on our website.

And it will help you identify what stage you are at at the moment with how you're approaching your work and your tasks.

Because I definitely believe that there are blind spots that hold us back from being able to get through all of our tasks that we want to get through.

And so I've called these a busy blind spots and I've done a quiz on it and it will tell you which one you are, which kind of one you fall into.

And I think we always have a busy blind spot.

And then we might have a secondary one that can show up and they can change over.

We might start with one busy blind spot and then that might, you know, change into another one, you know, maybe six months later.

So it might be worthwhile doing the quiz if you haven't done it before or if you have done it, but maybe it was six months ago, maybe redo it and just see where you sit at now.

And understanding how you're working at the moment might be able to help you work out what you need to support you coming out of that busy blind spot.

Of course, don't get caught down the rabbit hole of shiny new things, which I know is really hard because I do it all the time too.

Try not to get too stuck in a tool or trying all the things to find out what's going to make your business run by itself or the ones that are going to, you know, promise that you'll only ever have to work three hours a day or whatever it might be.

You don't need the fancier system, you just need the one that works for your brain, your stage of business and your energy level at the moment and how you are approaching work right now.

So my final thoughts are your tools should be like helpers and not feel like homework or chores.

And if you find yourself saying I really should use that app more, then it's probably not the right one because the best systems are often the ones you barely notice because they quietly make life easier in the background.

So.

So try and find your rhythm, not necessarily the perfect app.

And yeah, if you come up with any goodies, I'd love to hear about them.

Let me know.

In the meantime, good luck and always here for you if you need anything.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for being here.

I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a friend that would find this helpful, please, please go ahead and share it with them too.

You can learn more about me and how to be part of my Allied Health Connection community over@theconnectionco.com.