The saying goes “A workman is only as good as his tools”, if this saying is true does that same philosophy still apply today? Why are so many people refusing to accept technology to make them more productive, organized, and efficient? My explanation for this common resistance to advancing technology is fear, it what tops most potentially successful entrepreneurs from accomplishing success in their new business. Fear has no place in your business and will only cause you to make illogical decision. These few resources I have discovered and applied to my daily business have made drastic improvements to not just my career but my personal life as well.
1.Evernote
In no particular order, these are all equally amazing!I use this not once, not twice, but dozens of times a daily for my business and personal life. Evernote is a powerful iphone, ipad, android, and web browser application that allows you to literally remember everything by creating multiple types of notes, photos, audio, simple, and detailed notes for the more in depth flashes of genius. For example say you just got out of an important business meeting with some new potential customers, why carry that business card in your wallet for the next months when you can snap a photo of the business card you received with your cell phone and set a reminder to follow up with this person in your designated time period with the reminder tool. Evernote’s cloud inspired system allows you to access any of your notes from any web device in the world. You can keep your notes organized by creating different notebooks for different types of notes such as personal, work, and team. Premium users are also able to share their notes instantly with other Evernote users by creating a shared notebook and adding your team members to that notebook.
2.Skitch
Powered by Evernote this powerful application allows you to take screenshots and add annotations, notes, and even sketches to it. Getting your point across has never been easier, from drawing circles, squares, arrows, and symbols in areas that needs attention. You can create shareable images of a website design change or a highlight a correction on a ad piece for your team, this tool truly makes it so simple to do. It will increase your productivity and turnaround times, ultimately increasing your margins.
3.Google Voice
Every Business Owners Secret Weapon, the amazing developers at Google have created a free tool that gives you a local phone number that rings directly to your cell phone is trackable, customizable, and unbelievable convenient. For over 4 years I have been using google voice for all my print, online, and social media marketing. Once you pick your free number you will have the option to screen incoming calls with a prompt or just during voicemails. Voice also allows you to display the google number you pick on your caller ID, instead of the person who is calling’s number so you can identity how to answer the call. For example if you see your google number show up you know to answer in a professional manner and stating your company name and your name. You can also add additional users to have the calls forwarded too, with custom scheduling you can pick and choose who’s phone will ring and when, you can also playback voicemails, record calls, and create conference calls with Google’s powerful “Voice” platform. All these tools in one place is down right unheard of and completely free, that’s right nada, zilch, nothing! So go download the app today and sign up online with your google account.
4.CamScanner
More than you could ever ask for, CamScanner is a web tool that will practically eliminate your need for a scanner at your home or office . Your camera and this app is all you need, once you take the photo with the CamScanner app it will automatically and to the best of it’s ability find all 4 edges of your documents wether it’s one page or a 100 pages, crop them, and then adjust the perspective. It will also give your documents the “scanned” look that you get from your office scanner and you can even make adjustment until you are satisfied with how it looks. You can then title your single or multi page document, convert it to a .pdf and then share it via email, fax, or dropbox. This is must have app for anyone in business for yourself or not, download it for free on the Apple App Store or Android market. You will not be disappointed I promise!
5.Freshbooks
Simple and affordable this has been lifeline for creating my passive and non passive income. Freshbooks cloud accounting is a tool designed for freelancers, consultant, photographers, web and graphic designers. You can create estimates, recurring and one time invoice, professionally and quickly. Freshbooks gives you the power to track your time and automatically import all of your expenses directly from your bank account. Collecting payment has never been easier with Paypal and tons of other payment processing companies. Freshbooks also integrates with other great programs like Basecamp, Salesforce, and Mailchimp, you can even install a late payments feature allowing you apply penalties for past due payments from difficult customers. There is also a support feature allowing you to create trouble tickets for order issues and create internal notes that can be shared with your team. It has turned many tedious processes such as accounting, invoicing, estimating, time tracking, and payment processing into a neat and organized dashboard with exportable reports. If you are using quickbooks and love it then great maybe freshbooks is not for you, but if you are not a quickbooks user and you find their system seems to intimidating for you then give Freshbooks a try. They offer a 30 day free trial so you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
If you find one, or all of these app help please make you more productive, efficient or successful then please send us your feedback, whether it be negative or positive we would love to hear back from you.
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