Entrepreneurship is not a piece of cake. It requires a lot of effort, determination, dedication, and above all a lot of time-management skills. As an entrepreneur, you will get hundreds of emails, phone calls, messages, and meetings every single day and you yourself have to manage everything on your own. This is why entrepreneurship requires a lot of time-management skills. Being a life coach, I often get inquiries about how one can efficiently manage one’s time as an entrepreneur and get things done smoothly.
So, here let me, a life coach and business consultant in Nashville, Tennessee, Gordon Grigg, tell you that technology is going to be your best companion in this case. With the help of the latest apps, tools, and software, you can simplify your work significantly and manage the time conveniently. If you wonder what those tools and apps are, here I am telling you the most important ones.
● Sanebox
If your email box is flooded with important as well as unnecessary emails and you find it really difficult to deal with this mess, you should give it a try to Sanebox. It automatically sorts out your mail into several folders according to the importance of the mail. Plus, it also automatically scans the inbox and determines which emails are important and which are unwanted. In fact, it does not let not-so-important mail come into the inbox. The tool creates a separate folder with the name SaneLater and automatically moves the less important emails here. you can access the emails in this folder any time whenever you are free.
● Calendly
As an entrepreneur, if you find it difficult to plan the schedule of a working day (24 hours), Calendly is here to help you with that. This remarkable software will allow you to organize the appointments and meetings between your colleagues and clients. The tool will automatically sync with your Gmail calendar and find the available time slots. You are free to set the meeting duration time like 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour and the invite will be sent to all members of that particular group.
● Google Drive
Google Drive: this is probably the most popular tool in this digital world. The reason for the popularity of this wonderful tool is that it lets the users store, share, and edit their files, documents, presentations, audio files, video files, and spreadsheets. You just need to save settings once according to your preferences and the files will be automatically saved to your account from the next time. The tool, Google Drive, itself, has several other applications like Google Doc, sheets, and slides that can be used to simplify things further.
● Evernote
For an entrepreneur, it is not uncommon to keep a lot of things in mind simultaneously. No matter how strong a memory you have, you are bound to forget something. There will be something that will slip away. This is where this impressive tool, Evernote, comes into play. Just install the application on your device and whenever you have something important to remember, just open the app and jot that down here. This tool lets you create important notes in a fraction of a jiffy and the interesting thing is that this app is easily accessible. In just a second, you can access your notes.
● Zoom
When you are an entrepreneur with a team, you need to conduct conference calls every now and then. This is practically not possible without the help of software or tools. This is where Zoom marks its presence and fulfills the needs of many entrepreneurs out there. It allows you to conduct a conference call in a fraction of a moment. You can send the personalized link to the other users and they can quickly join the conference simply by clicking on that link. It is quick and effortless for you as well as the end users. The best thing about this tool is that it lets you store the data from the call like who was present and how long every individual spoke.
● Slack
Having effective and proper communication is the key in order to achieve success in any business, especially if you are an entrepreneur with a big team. If you are not able to connect and communicate properly with every member of your team, you can’t expect satisfying results in your business. Without using any third-party apps or tools it is obviously not possible. So, consider using Slack and take the communication flow of your business to a whole new level. From messaging to video calling and sharing screens to making folders project-wise, this communication tool offers everything all together in one place.
● Buzzstream
If your business requires intense marketing and campaigns, no other marketing tool can be better than Buzzstream for you. The reason being, this stellar application is made for this purpose only. So, it helps you to organize and keep the contact details of every member of your team. You can save the email thread of your team members and open it later if you want to. Not just that, the tool even allows you the flexibility to create pitch templates to boost the consistency of your business. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the tool will definitely help you grow your digital PR and see the booming link-building results.
● Momentum dashboard
As an entrepreneur, managing several tasks is not an easy task. You have hundreds of things to do in a day and if you don’t keep all your tasks in the proper way, some of them will definitely slip away from your mind. This is why it is very important for an entrepreneur to use a task-managing application like Momentum Dashboard. With the help of this tool, you can prepare a list of to-do tasks and devote all your attention to the work making your mind free. This way you will not forget any urgent work and will be able to manage all of the work efficiently. This Google Chrome app is amazingly easy to install and use.
● Zapier
As a life coach, I am telling you that entrepreneurship is incomplete without automated tasks. You obviously can’t respond to each and every single message from your users or customers and not responding to them is not good business etiquette. This is why you should take the help of automated software that does this work for you. For this, you can use Zapier, which is indisputably one of the best automation tools out there. It allows you to send an automated text to the sender every time you receive a mail, chat, or message. Other than that, Zapier also allows you one more awesome functionality that lets you connect two separate apps and use them at the same time.
● Pexels
Have you heard the proverb “a picture speaks louder than words”. The same goes for your business too. Whether you’re creating a Facebook ad, writing a brochure for your business, or simply writing an email, attaching a pic along with it will make it much more appealing and engaging. If you also feel the same and want to use any site or tool to get some royalty-free images, nothing can be better than Pexels. The software will give you a bunch of stock photos, which are absolutely free to use, obviously, for good purposes.
● Buffer
No doubt Social media is the biggest platform to promote your business and make your words reach millions of people without much effort. Even you will agree with this fact, right? If yes, you should definitely use a social media management tool that will allow you to manage all your social media handles altogether in one place saving time and extra work. If you wonder what social media management tool you should use, I will recommend Buffer that has a bunch of features to impress its users even on the free plan. With the help of this tool, you can schedule all your social media posts for at least a week beforehand.
● MailChimp
If your business is about connecting directly with your users or clients through mail, you should consider using an email service provider like MailChimp, which lets you send a single mail to all your subscribers. The interesting thing is that it has a wide range of Pre-design templates, which saves your time and allows you to connect with your users quickly. With the free plan of MailChimp, you can send mails until you have 2000 subscribers. The easy user interface and no-complex features make MailChimp the best choice for entrepreneurs.
● Trello
Another useful app that can be used by businesses of all size is Trello. Users can create task boards based on their requirements. The creation and use of these task boards can be highly flexible and customizable. One can create multiple columns for task statuses such as To Do, In Progress, Done and so many others. The tool can be used for for both personal and business purposes including digital agencies, software development firms, bulletin boards, lesson planning for educational institutions, accounting firms, gaming firms, law offices, and any other use that one can think of. In a nutshell, Trello could be considered as a highly intuitive project management tool that is a fun to use.
Conclusion
Thinking to become a successful entrepreneur without using technical tools, apps, and software is like trying to win a battle without weapons. Yes, it is that difficult or you can say it is actually impossible. I, Gordon Grigg, a business consultant and life coach in Nashville, Tennessee, is telling you from my personal experience that the latest applications and software are vital in deciding the success of an entrepreneur.
