Headline: 6 Tools Entrepreneurs Should Be Using

When starting your own business, it can be exciting to watch your dreams come to fruition. On the other hand, the amount of work can feel overwhelming! When you’ve poured time and effort into bringing your vision to life, you may find that the resulting responsibilities can quickly add up. Luckily, many tools can help grow your business and organize your massive list of tasks. Don’t know where to start? Here are six tools that can benefit entrepreneurs with businesses of all sizes.

1. WordPress - The first step to building your business into something extraordinary is getting the word out. For many business owners, the obvious first step to making yourself known is developing your online presence. A website can be the perfect way to tell your story, showcase your product or service, and interact with your customers. Using an open-source CMS such as Wordpress or Joomla! to build your website gives you the ability to use templates and plug-ins to create your space while still offering the ability to customize features to fit your brand. Unless you’re a coding wizard, we generally recommended you outsource the building of your website. Plus, using WordPress or Joomla! gives you the power to log in and edit text as needed.

2. Slack - Slack is a quick and easy way to maintain communication with your team, no matter the size. You can organize conversations by groups and projects, allowing everyone to remain on the same page without having to navigate cluttered email threads with five different people. With apps for your iPhone, Android, Mac, or PC, Slack allows you to stay in the loop or reach your team no matter where you go.

3. Canva - You can become an overnight graphic design pro (or at least appear to be one) by designing your graphics with Canva. This is a free online tool which provides loads of free templates and designs with the option for additional paid features. There are templates to make it simple for you to design an ad, graphic, proposal, and more. If hiring a graphic designer isn’t quite in your budget at the moment, try out Canva for graphic design made easy.

4. Doodle - This is one of our favorites! Coordinating schedules can be difficult for anyone, but especially when your work day doesn’t always adhere to the typical 9-5. Doodle is a platform that allows everyone to enter the date and time that works best for their schedule and compiles the results to show the most convenient time. You’ll love it so much for work that you may find yourself using it to organize outings with friends. Cut down on the back and forth that comes with scheduling meetings and just send them a quick Doodle invite.

5. Asana - With Asana, you can create organized to-do lists for yourself and your team. There are many project management tools, but this one is free and simple. Asana allows you to place tasks on different to-do lists and assign them to members of your team. You can also track which of these to-do lists are in progress and which are completed while tracking your team member’s accomplishments along the way.

6. Freshbooks - If you are a one-person shop or a startup, you might not be paying a bookkeeper just yet. Freshbooks is one of the most popular web-based tools to send invoices and track estimates, payments, and more. You can also track receipts and expenses with it. While not as robust as true accounting software, it’s an easy way for small and new entrepreneurs to track the money.

Don’t let disorganization and miscommunication stand in the way of your business goals. If you need assistance with your inbound marketing or web design needs, contact us today.