Transcript:

Hello and Happy New Year! Welcome to Yoga Brain video. I’m Meg Brackett, I’m the Founder and Creative Guide, and I’ve created these videos as a way to share information with you in a format that’s hopefully more digestible and easy to understand. So much of marketing and design is visual, so I’m hoping that this format will be really helpful.

Alright, let’s get started.

So, the first thing I wanna share with you this year is “4 Simple Tools to Snag in 2021.” And if you are feeling like you know, 2020 is still happening for you and you wanna just stay in bed, and you are over all of the 2021 new year's things; Please honor where you are. I spend a lot of time there, and it’s really important to rest when you need to with your business and just honor that cycle of creating and honor that cycle of rest.

So if you’re not into it, turn it off don’t worry, this will be here when you’re ready.

Canva.com

OK, so these are some tools that I use that are either free or they are paid subscriptions so I’ll talk through what that means with each of them but will get started with Canva. OK, so Canva is a graphic design tool, and this video here is just showing you some of the templates that they have. It’s super easy to use; there’s a free version and then a paid subscription. I think it’s $15 a month.

You can see I recorded this more towards Christmas, but getting now towards other designs, there’s tons of templates you can use and create for Instagram, Facebook. If you need a business card if you need a postcard any sort of graphic design needs you can really make happen in Canva. This is just showing all the options, there’s tons and tons of options, really limitless here.

I will say that I did work with a graphic designer, and I still work with a graphic designer for some of my bigger projects. I think it’s really key to have a branding kit nailed down before you get into Canva. That way you know your colors, your font, what kind of look and feel you’re going for. But once you have that ready, it’s nice to say… to take that information and to put that into your Canva templates. That way everything is going to look and feel like you wanted to and you’ll just create nice brand recognition for your company. OK so that’t Canva.

Bulletjournal.com

And then next is Bullet Journal. So I’ve been using Bullet Journal for four or five years now and it is a very simple notebook. It sounds really simple and it is really simple. But most of the pages you see here are kind of this grid style where you can create whatever template you want in each page. So I design mine weekly and then I leave space for the next couple of meetings or just brainstorming notes or whatever. So I’ve got my week at a glance and then I have my notes and then next week at a glance and then yada yada.

I find that so much of what everybody does but especially my job is on a computer or on a phone a lot. And this just really helps center me and helps me feel like when I am writing my ideas are actually out in the world and not so much internal. As much as I love digital things, I do have a strong attachment to writing my to-do lists, writing my notes, and writing my ideas. I find it really helps me think I lot better. If you are looking for a great simple, option Bullet Journal is amazing. You can get really fancy with it and if you get on Pinterest, there’s all sorts of crazy ideas and designs and if you want to do that, go for it. Mine is super simple, it’s always been really simple. And they’re easy to save so I’ve got all of my ideas saved in my Bullet Journals.

Grammarly.com

Alright, next up is Grammarly. So writing is not my strong suit but I like to write. And Grammarly is a great tool is that it’s like you. I’m just showing you here or you can paste your copy onto Grammarly.com. Or as you are writing your blog post, if you download the Grammarly attachment it’s just gonna show you all sorts of ideas that you can use for your writing. So I’m clicking here to adjust tools. You can set that your goals for whatever you’re trying to convey and change your tone. All sorts of different things here.

So once you click done, you’ll see each underline is a different color. And it helps you understand what Grammarly is helping you finesse. So anything that’s blue, that’s what I try to use a lot, is really writing a lot clearer and emphasizing you know, my point. So Grammarly is really helpful with that. Also for spelling errors or commas that kind of stuff. I do use Grammarly for everything that I write online. I don’t have the mobile attachment. It made my texting really slow but I feel like it’s a really great tool if you are doing a lot of online writing. I do pay for the annual subscription and I think it was 100 bucks for the whole year. It’s also great if you don’t work with outside proofreaders. Copy can just get so redundant if you’re doing… if you’re reading the same stuff over and over your brain is just going to miss certain things. So I find that Grammarly is really helpful when it’s just me working on my writing.

Screen Time

So last but not least is my favorite tool and it is free and that is Screen Time. So on your phone, if you have an iPhone it records how much you are on your screen. Number one, it’s helpful to know how much time you are spending on your phone. Number two you can customize to schedule downtime. That means certain apps will be blocked unless you use a password. But certain apps will be blocked during specific times of day. I try to give myself a 12-hour screen-free experience each day. And I also try to stay off social media on Sundays.

So you’ll see that here, but you can customize it depending on what you find that you’re using your phone for too often. Maybe play games, and you’re wanting to spend time doing something else. You can edit all of that here. There’s all sorts of apps that you can manage and block and just arrange your time a little better. And then going back out you’ve got an ability if you… OK so these are the apps that are always allowed and I allow certain things like hatch sleep is my son’s night light. So I always want to be able to adjust that for him after 9:00 sometimes. I listen to podcasts before bed and meditations so those are on here. Sometimes I’m driving before 9 AM so I want my maps to not cut off at every 15 minutes. This is just showing that you can put privacy restrictions and content restrictions if you have kids using your phone.

But I have such a love-hate relationship with Screen Time. I so badly want to be really disciplined with my phone and so sometimes I am. And then sometimes I am just putting my password in and going over my limits. The week of the election was insane, I was on my phone the whole time. There are going to be ebbs and flows with this too. But if it is something that you wanna do there’s no reason not to try again. But just know that it definitely goes up and down with how much I like screen time.

Alright, that’s it. Thank you so much for watching if you made it all the way through. Please shoot me an email with any questions at Meg Brackett at theyogabrain.com and also if you have any suggestions for things you’d like to see more of. Or just any ideas that you have in terms of marketing your wellness company. OK thank you have a great day.