I've found that ClickUp is a real game-changer for my business. It's like my personal assistant, helping me keep track of everything I need to do. With ClickUp, I can easily create to-do lists, set reminders, and even set goals to keep my business on track. The best part about ClickUp is its ability to help me manage projects. I can organize tasks, assign them to team members, and track their progress all in one place. It's super helpful when we have big projects with many moving parts. Another feature I love is its integration with other tools I use. Whether it's my email, calendar, or file storage, I can link them all to ClickUp, which makes my workflow much smoother. In short, ClickUp keeps me organized and saves me a lot of time. For me, it's an essential tool for running my business.
For the past five years, we have relied on Basecamp as our go-to platform for all our team projects. Its scheduling feature has been instrumental in assigning tasks within a project, whether to an individual or myself. I can effortlessly sync my Basecamp schedule with my personal calendar on my phone helping keep projects on schedule and keeping productivity high. One of the biggest benefits of using Basecamp is the accountability it provides, especially when collaborating with external consultants or freelancers. By setting deadlines within Basecamp, both parties are promptly notified if a deadline is not met. This feature has significantly reduced the issues we previously encountered with outside vendors failing to complete projects on time. Thanks to Basecamp, we have been able to maintain and enhance our productivity levels efficiently.
As a tech leader and a small business owner, the tool I find invaluable in managing my day-to-day operations is Trello. Trello is an easy-to-use, flexible, and visual tool that organizes your projects into boards, lists, and cards. In one glance, it tells you what's being worked on, who's working on it, and where something is in a process. The beauty of Trello is its versatility and simplicity. It can be used for project management, task tracking, ideation sessions, and much more. Each card represents a task, and you can add due dates, checklists, attachments, and custom labels to make them as detailed or as simple as you want. Furthermore, these cards can be moved across lists (which I often designate as stages of a process) to show progress. In our small business operations, we use Trello for everything from tracking development sprints and managing content calendars to planning team events. It’s incredibly intuitive and requires very little time to get up to speed.
As a solo business owner, one productivity tool that I find incredibly useful is ChatGPT. This AI assistant has completely changed my workflow in the last several months! It helps me write content, find new creative ideas, analyze and summarize information, draft emails, do research super fast, and so much more. ChatGPT is now my virtual sidekick that's available 24/7 and I can hardly imagine how I worked before it came into the picture. It's an amazing cutting-edge tool that saves me a ton of time every day and lets me grow my business much faster than I ever could by myself.
I strongly suggest that small business owners subscribe to "LivePlan" (https://www.liveplan.com/) software. It will easily create your business plan. You will be asked a series of questions. The tool will organize it properly and in the correct format. This is a reasonably priced tool. It will save you from having to hire an outsider to create your business plan on your behalf. It is intuitive and easy to follow. It will make you look like the pro you are. You can modify and add additional business goals as your business and team grows. The tool even creates presentations for you to pitch your business to potential clients/customers. I guarantee you will love this application. I share it with my clients who want to learn business organization.
Todoist: Staying on top of tasks and effectively managing productivity is quite challenging as a small business owner. To make this hectic task easy, luckily there are a number of productivity tools that can help small business owners. In that list Todoist is one of the best and user-friendly tool. It is basically a task management system that is specifically created to help small business owners and entrepreneurs to keep track of their projects, deadlines and tasks. It is helpful for users in organising to do list, projects and notes etc. This platform is also helpful for assessing tasks to other people and managing various things actively.
I lean on "Google Calendar" as my primary productivity tool. Sounds basic, right? But let me share how I've customized it to my needs. When you're juggling multiple clients with different fitness goals and schedules, organization is key. Google Calendar allows me to plan and track each client's workout routine, their progress, and our appointments, color-coding them for easy reference. For instance, I once had a client who could only squeeze in workouts at 5 AM. Rather than groan about the ungodly hour, I marked these sessions with a sunrise color and treated them as my "rise and grind" opportunities. This visual cue not only helped me mentally prepare but also motivated me to show up at my best for my client. Moreover, with the added feature of reminders, I can ensure no session is missed or double-booked. And trust me, this saved me from more than a few embarrassing situations! Evander Nelson NASM | CPT | Personal Trainer https://evandernelson.com/
I honestly am not 100% sure what I used to do before Calendly, so I can very definitely say that this is one of the best productivity boosting tools for a small business. There are two features that I particularly find useful and would highly recommend. First and foremost - you can set up events from your calendar and mark times when you're busy and then if someone wants to set up a meeting with you, they can without having to submit a request via email or go back and forth on times. The second bit is where it gets significantly better than Outlook - you can set up a series of global buffers. I personally set up 10 minute buffers between meetings as a global setting - just time to reflect on the last meeting, grab a cup of tea and a quick stretch - which helps me stay in good shape all day.
QuickBooks was a game-changer in amping up my productivity. Bookkeeping is a very time-consuming and painstaking aspect of owning a business, but QuickBooks helped make it simple and straightforward. Its intuitive features streamline my payroll, invoicing, and expense-tracking tasks. Automating my bookkeeping needs with QuickBooks freed up so many valuable hours on my workday that I could instead allot to scale my business. Thanks to this tool, tax season is now manageable and no longer a stress-ridden time.
As a small business owner, I feel like half of my day is spent in my email inbox. Whether it's keeping customers moving forward, tracking payments from vendors or engaging new partners, there are many different threads that I need to be following at a given time. I've been using Streak, a Gmail-based CRM, for 5 years and it has ensured that I efficiently stay on top of each of those conversations. In Streak, I can have different pipelines - for customers, partners, vendors - and create custom stages for each pipeline. I can also set follow up dates for each conversation ensuring that I don't lose track of any conversations or forget to follow up
Hi there, My name is Nikola Baldikov. I’m a digital marketing and SEO expert and the founder of InBound Blogging. I provide actionable advice on how to improve website visibility and earn income from blogging. I believe I can answer your question. In a single, simple platform, Brosix gives us all the tools we need to boost our team's productivity. Managing our own internal team network improves security. We can easily stay connected and work effectively by instant messaging, file transfers, audio chats, and video calls. Screen Sharing and Remote Desktop make it simple to demonstrate new techniques and procedures directly on the computers of our trainees. What's more, the Co-browsing Feature of Brosix lets us browse websites with our coworkers. We can work together on specific projects or tasks without the need of sharing links or URLs. Our employees work entirely from home, so this is a particularly useful option for us. Thanks!
As a life coach, I've been using Zapier as a versatile productivity tool. First, it integrates with my calendar and automatically sends reminders for my coaching sessions to clients. This saves me from the manual task of tracking and sending reminders. Second, when I publish a new blog post, Zapier can share it across my social media platforms, multiplying my outreach without additional effort. Lastly when a new client completes the signup process on the website, it triggers an automated workflow by sending personalized emails. The automation done allows me to focus more that I love to do and less on administrative chores.
I personally use Asana and I've looped in my design team as well. The process we use is simple. We set up different projects like design, marketing, etc. using the Kanban-style project interface. We'll add multiple columns like up next, idea backlog, in progress, awaiting review, and complete. For any task, we'll use Google Docs to scope it out and then add it to up next. The item at the top of the list in 'up next' is the next thing that needs to be done. If it's important, we'll use (priority) at the front of the title. As long as you've scoped the task properly, there are few calls/meetings/discussions needed for the task to get done. When they're finished, they move it to 'in review' and I come in and do a final quality check. If it passes, it's moved to done/complete. If it fails, it's moved back to in progress. Personally, I create a weekly to-do list and daily to-do lists within Asana to stay on top of the important things.
We use Bigin CRM from Zoho as it is specifically designed for smaller companies. Many of the CRM services on the market are designed for larger businesses and as a result have features not needed for small business and are more complicated. Bigin allows me to track potential cases and email from the system. Generally it just keeps me more organised and therefore more productive. I've tested many CRM systems and this is the only one that felt right to me.
I use Toggl Track to track how long I spend on various projects and parts of my job. You can set up projects for different areas, like admin, meeting, or various ongoing projects. I also like that you can track billable hours to see how much time you are spending on work that is actually bringing money in. It helps me to ensure that I don't spend too much fo the day focused on busywork because I review my time at the end of each day. This allows me to see the most time intensive projects and help me work out what I need to prioritize or delegate to better manage my time. I encourage everyone on my team to do the same exercise to better understand how they are spending their most precious currency.
As a small business owner, one productivity tool that has revolutionized my workflow is Notion. Notion's Kanban-style boards are perfect for setting up and tracking project progress, whether working solo or collaborating with internal and external teams. Its user-friendly interface allows for the swift creation of pages, making it easy to structure and manage complex projects with relevant context. What really sets Notion apart, though, is its suitability for client-facing work. It has become my go-to platform for showcasing project processes, providing regular updates to clients, and serving as a comprehensive record of completed work. This not only enhances transparency but also serves as tangible proof of the value delivered to clients. With Notion as my productivity ally, I am able to streamline project management, save time, and complete tasks faster than with alternative tools like Asana or Trello (which I use as well but for simpler projects and to do management).
As a small business owner, I use the task management and collaboration platform, Asana. Asana allows me to easily create tasks and projects for my team and track their progress. It also includes tools such as templates to streamline project creation and automated reminders to keep everyone on track. With its simple, intuitive design, I am able to quickly find the information I need and stay on top of all the tasks at hand. Asana has been a great tool for managing my business projects and helping me stay organized and productive.
You may use the Evernote note-taking app to scribble down reminders, compose memos, save files, draw sketches, create to-do lists, and more. Rich notes can also be created using checklists, tables, colors, and other organizational techniques. Evernote is essentially a system of digital notebooks that you may personalize and arrange whatever you see fit. You can search within Evernote to find anything instantly, and everything you write is synchronized throughout the desktop and mobile apps. I believe it's ideal for writers who have a large number of writing-related duties and require an orderly, searchable system for saving papers and notes.
As a business that has to engage with both clients and employees virtually, Notion has been a life saver! Not only is the site easy enough to use that anyone can get a hang of it, but it also allows for customization. I can build a special dashboard for my employees with all internal tools they need: team information, user guides, etc, that they can refer to and update as they work. At the same time, I have another dashboard for clients as well, through which they can communicate with the team, subscribe, etc. All they need is one link!
As a small business owner, incorporating a reliable password management tool into your operations is essential. It is critical in facilitating secure access to many online platforms, applications, and accounts, eliminating the need to memorize numerous intricate passwords. This tool is a productivity booster by offering a centralized platform to store, create, and autofill passwords securely. By harnessing the power of a password management tool, small business owners can fortify their security measures, reduce the potential for data breaches, and reclaim precious time that password management tasks would otherwise consume. It's a simple yet effective solution for safeguarding digital assets and optimizing efficiency. It also reduces the risk of human error in setting and remembering strong passwords and automatically generates unique, hard-to-crack passwords for every site and service. Users can access their accounts quickly and securely with a single secure login.