Do More With Less: Our Favorite Productivity Tools
In need of some quality productivity tools? If there's one resource all entrepreneurs seem to lack, it's time. There never seems to be enough hours in a day. This is especially true for busy mompreneurs who are not only running a business, but raising a family, (and still trying to find time for themselves). The good news is that just a few adjustments can free up hours every week (sometimes every day!). How great would it be to spend that salvaged time doing something you love instead of repeating the same mundane tasks day in and day out? Pretty great.
Here are some of our favorite productivity hacks to help you make the most out of your busy day.
Streamline Your Finances
For most of us, keeping track of business finances isn't something we look forward to. No matter how small your empire is, when it comes to taxes and financial management, there's a lot to consider. And all of it is supremely important. Tangling with Uncle Sam at tax time is not a position you ever want to find yourself in. In the event you're ever audited, it is so helpful to know you've got everything in one simple, well-organized place to hand over. Loosely managed finances can take months upon months to gather and present to the IRS. It's highly stressful and extremely time consuming. Here are some resources to help you keep it all together: One of our favorite productivity tools is Quickbooks for Small Business to help manage our finances around here. It helps categorize everything and even provides me with an end of year summary and ready-made Schedule C to take the pressure off of tax time. It also saves me money because I no longer have to pay an accountant for that part of my filing. You can save 50% off using our unique partner link, but only for a short time. If Quickbooks isn't your style, consider FreshBooks is another tool you can use to handle your business finances. It's great for invoicing. You'll be able to save time by automating the vast majority of your invoicing. It also helps with expenses, projects, payment, and reporting. Searching for receipts is a thing of the past. And thank goodness. Shoeboxed is an online expense storage station. It helps you keep everything in order by allowing you to scan and organize all of your receipts (and business cards) in one convenient place online. No more digging through file cabinets, purses, or folders to find that elusive proof of purchase or sale. They can also help create expense reports, track mileage, and more.
Create Systems
Systems Rock founder and systems guru Natasha Vorompiova is a productivity wizard. We use her free worksheets all the time to keep things streamlined. You can grab your collection of free forms, right here.
Get Help
You'd be surprised how much time can be wasted trying to figure out everything for yourself. Productivity tools to the rescue again! If you're in need of a quick ebook cover photo, graphic, Photoshop magic, or some other sort of website tweaking, Fiverr is a great place to get it done on the cheap. Hundreds of professionals are willing to offer what I like to call 'drive by' assistance. That is, provide quick fixes to help you check something off your task list. Eventually you'll get to a place where you find that your time is most profitably spent working in your business. That's when you know it's time to pay someone else for a few hours so you can get things done as efficiently as possible. Care.com is a trustworthy way to find personal help around the house, both with cleaning or childcare services. Because as we know all too well, your obligations at home don't stop just because you're busy working. Hire a VA. For busy mompreneurs with more ideas and tasks than time, virtual assistants can be a Godsend. And they're not just for the gurus. You're probably ready to hire a VA when you're overwhelmed, tired of doing mundane, repetitive tasks, or feel your time could be more profitably spent elsewhere. We share some expert tips right here, including a free tracker to help you decide how to best utilize your newfound helper.
Schedule Social Media
Another great way to stay ahead of the game is to schedule your social media posts. I'm a big believer that engaging is an important aspect of social media, but you can't be present all the time. There are plenty of occasions in between your live posting where you'll be able to schedule some things ahead of time. Try Sprout Social, HootSuite, Tailwind. I use any or all of these tools on a regular basis to help plan ahead and stay consistently on a posting schedule. Board Booster is another hardworking productivity tool. It focuses only on Pinterest, and helps not only with scheduling, but with looping. The results are undeniable.
Some other productivity tools we use and love are:
Chrometa is your very own, personal time keeper. When you're doing what you love, it can be easy to get carried away in a conversation. If you're a coach or consultant, this automatic time keeping tool is a great way to take control of the time you spend chatting with clients. It captures your time for you as you work on your PC, Mac, iPhone, and Android. You don't have to ever start or stop timers; it's all done for you. Every email you write, every minute you work gets recorded and "automatically" put on your timesheet. Being able to see the amount of time you spend with a client not only helps you bill with confidence, it helps you assess how much time to budget for similar projects in the future. More than 'just' an email service provider, Mailerlite is a new personal favorite business tool of mine. It allows you to segment lists, schedule out dripped content, or 'sequences' to welcome new subscribers, and build (and schedule) broadcast messages. We've had great luck, especially since pairing it with a free MailMunch account. Since we started sprinkling Mailerlite's customizable embedded forms throughout our site, and doubling up with the ribbon from MailMunch, we've had a noticeable jump in subscribers. If you use GMail, you can also check out GMass. This powerful mass emailing service integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Google apps and Google Drive. It has the ability to send emails as either a brand new email or as a reply to a previous thread, and offers up to 8 automatic follow-ups that you can set and forget. It breaks daily sending limits, avoids spam filters, and allows for unlimited personalization in mass email campaigns. Recently, they added a feature where you can get your emails proofread by an English expert to correct common spelling and punctuation mistakes, and give suggestions on how to improve your email’s grammatical, and contextual strength. It truly is an amazing piece of technology that can save you a lot of time, energy, and stress. Carbonite is an online storage hub. For one annual fee, I have outsourced the task of constantly downloading my history to an external hard drive to Carbonite's online storage system. And I am so glad I did. It's saved me on several occasions. The most pivotal was recently when my laptop accidentally collided with a glass of water and fizzled out. I thought I had lost everything (including photos, saved documents, my history, and my client work) but in no time flat, I was able to download everything onto my new computer and restore it completely, just as though nothing ever happened. It constantly saves as you're working, too, so even if your computer crashes mid-sentence, it'll restore your document right where you left off. I've relied on Carbonite for more than five years and wouldn't dream of living without it.
Buying Time
While not all of these tools will work with your unique business model, it's certainly worth investigating those that might. Time is precious. Free up as much of it as you can. Just think about all the things you could so with those extra hours!
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