Behind the GAVL: Tools of the Trade

As the time of year when the weather turns cold and we begin to share the many things we’re thankful for rolls around, it’s time for another edition of our Behind the GAVL series. This one’s all about our favorite technology tools (including programs, apps, and web-based tools) we’re most thankful for and utilize on an everyday basis to help us do our best work.

Ready for a peek behind the GAVL?

Let’s see what our team members had to say about their favorite tools of the trade:

Ryan Raplee
Co-Founder & CEO

“I basically live in Outlook and Slack! I’m also a frequent flyer of Semrush, Ahrefs, Photoshop, Premier, Dropbox, and WordPress, to name a few!”

Catherine Rodman
Sales Development Representative

“I mainly use Zoom, Slack, Outlook, Dropbox, Monday.com, and Teamwork. I also always have Spotify running in the background! Sierra Ferrell, Orville Peck, Bella White and the like are with me through each work day.”

Lucas Hardgrave
Lead Content Writer

“Slack, Outlook, Word, WordPress, Semrush, Teamwork, Dropbox, Photoshop, Zoom, and Spotify are the basic lifeblood of my day-to-day. For keeping track of all types of writing projects, I’m also a huge fan of Trello. There’s something very addictive about the little boxes.”

Justin Lutz
Social Media Manager

“Some of my favorite programs I like to use for work, and personal use for art and music, are Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Canva, Semrush, Grammarly, LMMS, and Adobe products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition.”

Caitlin Lane
SEO Manager

“My workday is proudly sponsored by Spotify. Not really, but if I’m working, music is always going in the background. My top tools and programs for getting into the nitty gritty of SEO include Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, and Google Search Console, among others. I also make use of schema markup generators and validators, and regularly pop into Photoshop. And for the day-to-day you’ll always find me in Slack, Teamwork, Excel, and Outlook. ”

Luke Potadle
WordPress Developer

“My go-to tools for work are Visual Studio Code for coding, Adobe XD for designing websites, and WordPress for building and managing sites. I also use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator from time to time for editing photos and creating icons. While I work, I’m usually listening to either music or an audiobook—it really depends on my mood and the task at hand!”

Rhonda Jeffers
Editor

“Throughout my workday, I regularly use Teamwork to keep track of projects and deadlines. I also use Dropbox, Zoom, and Slack to collaborate with my colleagues. For example, I often post a Friday “Polly” to get my co-workers’ opinions about different fun topics as we all eagerly await for the weekend to begin. I also regularly utilize Grammarly when performing secondary readthroughs of content to check for any lingering run-ons, missing commas, and other issues. It’s also not uncommon for me to use Loom to create short videos or a snipping tool like Lightwave when training others, and also a whole host of different Google Suite products, like Google Sheets, to keep information organized.”

Perry Perkins
Content Writer

“I live on Grammarly (pro), Dropbox, Slack, Outlook, Word, and (of late) Internet Marketing Ninjas.”

Theresa Carlson
Content Writer

“My whole life is organized in Dropbox. Every article, photo, and document has been placed in perfectly curated files. If something ever happens to that app, I will be lost.”

Rick Bitzelberger
Content Writer

“I’m all about Grammarly. I’m used to running documents through the Word spell check, but it doesn’t go nearly as deep at Grammarly. Grammarly also has a good plagiarism and AI check that adds even more ways to improve a piece. It is also great satisfaction to raise the initial low score on Grammarly to 100%!”

Ryan Smythe
Content Writer

“CapitalizeMyTitle(dot)com is by far my most-used bit of tech. It makes my life so much easier when I’m trying to either figure out which words are/aren’t actually supposed to be capitalized or when I’m copy/pasting something and the capitalization formatting is busted. I also absolutely love Canva when I’m doing design work. I was a long-time Photoshop lover, but I’ve increasingly found myself relying on Canva instead.”

Sebastian
Mischief Manager

*Gnaw gnaw squeak squeak squeaka squeak gnaw* (loosely translates to: “New toy demolished in 3… 2… 1… READY FOR MORE!”)