Tools & Resources

Our recommended tools and resources to help you grow your business!

Online Microsoft Courses

Excel at Work is a New Zealand-based provider of online training courses for various Microsoft 365 applications, including Excel and Word. We offer a range of options, including live online classes and self-paced courses.

In addition to our training courses, we also offer a free blog where you can find lots of helpful information and tips on using Microsoft 365 applications. Our blog is regularly updated with new content, providing you with the latest information and best practices for working with these tools.

Founded in 1998, Excel at Work has grown and evolved over the years. We understand the importance of supporting individuals and organisations in their growth and development. That's why we've created a comprehensive resource to assist with improving skills, productivity and business growth. Whether you're looking to expand your business or learn more about the ins and outs of running an online operation, our resource is here to guide you every step of the way.

Disclosure: Where possible, we register as affiliates for the products and services we use & recommend. Many of the links we share on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click these links and make a purchase we may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. You can check out our full affiliate disclosure here.

Excel at Work Resources

Microsoft 365 Subscription

Are you looking to improve your productivity and collaboration within your business? Microsoft 365 is the perfect solution. With Microsoft 365, you can create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations with ease using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Communicate and collaborate with your team in real-time using Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint. Securely store and share files with OneDrive and SharePoint and access your files and apps from anywhere, on any device, with cloud-based storage. It is designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes and it is easy to customise and scale to fit your specific requirements.


Marketing & Automation

Active Campaign

Active Campaign is an advanced email marketing solution. It offers a wider range of features such as automation, CRM, and sales automation. With Active Campaign, you can automate your email campaigns in great detail, manage your customer relationships, and track your sales pipeline all in one platform. Additionally, it provides a range of integrations with other popular tools and platforms, making it a versatile solution for businesses of all sizes. The capabilities of Active Campaign make it a better choice for businesses looking for a more comprehensive and feature-rich solution.

capsule crm

Are you tired of juggling multiple tools and apps to manage your customer relationships? Capsule CRM is here to make your life easier! It's an all-in-one customer relationship management system that keeps all your customer info in one spot. With features like contact management, task management, and sales pipeline tracking, you can easily keep track of leads, close deals and manage your sales pipeline. Plus, its reporting and analytics tools give you great insights into your customer data so you can make smart decisions and boost your sales. It's a no-brainer if you're looking to streamline your CRM efforts!


Hosting & Themes

Site ground

SiteGround is a web hosting company that offers a variety of services for individuals and businesses. We use SiteGround to host our website. They provide a range of additional services such as domain registration, and security options. SiteGround offers excellent customer support, a user-friendly control panel, and fast server speeds. SiteGround has a strong focus on security and performance, and they offer a number of features to ensure that your website is safe and runs smoothly which is a must for any online business!

Thrive Themes

Building a website can be a daunting task, but with Thrive Themes Suite, it's made simple and easy. Thrive Suite is a comprehensive plugin that allows us to customise our WordPress website with ease. It eliminates the need for costly web designers and multiple plugins, providing everything we need to create a professional-looking website, from themes to page builders to email pop-ups. Its all-in-one capabilities have been a game-changer for us, saving us both time and money in the long run.


Courses

Kajabi

Kajabi is a powerful platform designed for hosting and selling online courses. We host our online courses through Kajabi and couldn't be happier with their service. Kajabi has so many helpful features including the ability to create course landing pages, memberships, and communities. It's easy integration with email marketing services, built-in analytics and reporting, and the ability to create and sell multiple courses. It makes selling online simple and enjoyable.


Thrive Cart

Thrive Cart is a comprehensive and user-friendly shopping cart that we use to sell our online products with. It offers a wide range of features such as customisable checkout pages, one-click upsells and order bumps, and comprehensive analytics and reporting. The platform is easy to use, and it comes with a variety of templates and integrations with major platforms and services like Kajabi. Thrive Cart helps us increase conversions and sales, streamline our checkout process, and make the most of our e-commerce efforts.


Thumbnails & Design

Canva

We rely heavily on Canva as a design tool. This user-friendly software requires no prior design experience, making it easy for anyone to edit images, videos, and create graphics. The tool offers a vast collection of free templates to choose from for social media posts, emails or flyers. The investment in a premium account has proven to be invaluable to our business, as it provides access to thousands of high-quality stock images and graphics. With Canva, we are able to create professional-looking designs with ease, saving us time and resources.

Snagit

We strive to provide helpful and informative content on our blog, and one of the ways we achieve this is by sharing step-by-step tutorials. To capture these tutorials, we use SNAGIT® a powerful tool that allows us to quickly take screenshots and add various enhancements such as text, callouts, shapes and more to the images. This keeps our editing time to a minimum and allows us to produce high-quality tutorial content. SNAGIT® is a great tool for creating visually appealing and easy-to-follow tutorials.


Keyword Tools

Keywords everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a useful tool that we use in our business to help us research and optimise our website's content for search engines. It is a browser extension that provides valuable insights about keywords such as search volume, CPC, and competition data. This helps us to understand what keywords our target audience is searching for and how we can better optimise our content to rank higher in search results. Additionally, the tool allows us to easily identify new keywords that we may have not considered before and track their performance over time. Using Keywords Everywhere helps us to create more effective and targeted content for our website, which in turn drives more traffic and generates more leads.

Tubebuddy

TubeBuddy is a tool that we use to optimise and grow our YouTube channel. It provides a wide range of features such as video optimisation suggestions, keyword research and analytics and tracking. It helps us to identify and target the right audience, track our performance, and optimise our video titles, descriptions and tags for better visibility in search results. It is a powerful tool that helps us to grow our YouTube channel by providing us with the necessary tools to optimise and analyse our videos and channel.

SEMRUSH

SEMrush is a digital marketing tool that we use to improve our online visibility and performance. It allows us to track and analyse our website's search engine performance, as well as our competitors. SEMrush offers a range of features such as keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor research. It offers tools such as site audit, position tracking and content marketing to help us improve our online performance and visibility.


Video Editing

Camtasia

CAMTASIA® is screen recording and video editing software that we use in our business to create high-quality video tutorials. The software allows us to record our computer screen and webcam, edit the footage, and add effects, animations, and callouts to enhance the final video. It also includes a library of pre-built assets like icons, music tracks, and motion graphics that allow us to add professional touches to our videos. Camtasia is easy-to-use software that requires no prior video editing experience.


Rev

Rev is a transcription and captioning service that we use in our business to transcribe and caption audio and video content. It helps us to make our content more accessible and searchable for our audience. The service is easy to use, you just need to upload your audio or video file and they will transcribe it for you. Rev's transcriptions are accurate and they have a fast turnaround time. Additionally, they offer captioning services which help us to make our videos accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and also make our videos more searchable on platforms like YouTube.


Other Tools

Notion

Notion is a powerful productivity and organisation tool that we use in our business to streamline our workflow and manage our tasks and projects. It offers a range of features such as customisable templates, advanced task management and more. It allows us to create custom templates to organise our projects and tasks, it has a built-in calendar, database and many views that allows us to track and manage our workflow in an efficient way. It allows us to share and work on tasks and projects with our team members. Notion is a flexible and customisable tool that helps us stay organised, keep track of our tasks and projects, and increase our productivity.

Dashlane

Dashlane is a password manager tool that we use to keep our passwords and sensitive information secure. It allows us to store and generate passwords for all of our online accounts, and automatically fill in login credentials with a single click. Dashlane also includes a feature that allows us to share login credentials with team members, while keeping them secure with end-to-end encryption.





Trello

Trello is a flexible and user-friendly project management tool that we use for organising and tracking tasks in our business. It allows us to create boards, lists, and cards to represent our projects, tasks, and ideas in a visual way. It also allows us to assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and add comments and attachments to keep everyone on the same page. Trello is a valuable tool for our business as it helps us to stay organised, keep track of our tasks and projects. With its flexibility and easy-to-use interface, Trello is a helpful tool for any business looking to streamline their workflow.



WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a caching plugin that we use to speed up our website. It improves the loading speed of our website, reducing the size of the files that are loaded, and optimising the code of our website. WP Rocket also includes features such as lazy loading images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and browser caching. These features help to improve the user experience and increase the speed of our website, which is important for our business as it helps to reduce bounce rate, increase user engagement, and improve our search engine rankings. 

Backblaze

Backblaze is an online backup service that we use in our business to ensure the safety and security of our data. It automatically backs up all of our files, including documents, photos, and videos, to the cloud. Backblaze keeps multiple versions of each file, so we can easily restore previous versions if needed. The service provides a simple and easy-to-use interface, allowing us to access our data from anywhere and at any time. It provides peace of mind knowing that our data is safe, secure, and easily accessible in case of any emergency, natural disaster, or technical problem.


Zoom

Zoom is a video conferencing tool that we use for some live coaching sessions. With Zoom, we can share our screen, record sessions, and use breakout rooms for group work. Zoom offers a high level of security, with end-to-end encryption and password protection to ensure the safety and privacy of our sessions. It's an important tool for our business as it allows us to conduct live coaching sessions remotely.





Are you interested in starting your own online business?

Building a business from the ground up can be daunting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. Imagine having the freedom to work from anywhere, set your own schedule, and create something that brings you joy and purpose.


We created Making Living Lovely, to help people like you turn their passion into a successful online business. We understand that it's not just about making a living, it's about making a living lovely. We'll provide you with the tools and resources you need to make your dream a reality. Don't let fear hold you back. Take the first step and let us guide you on your journey to building an online business that you love.

Excel at Work Tools

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