As an entrepreneur, you’ve got a million and one things to think about at any given moment. From marketing your business to closing sales, managing expenses and administrative tasks, delivering for your customers, and beyond.
That’s why you need all the help you can get to stay organized.
Luckily, there are a ton of incredible tools available to make your life easier and more productive. And we’ve rounded up our favorites for each type of core function you perform as an entrepreneur.
Here are 9 essential tools to help entrepreneurs stay organized.
- Trello for Project Management: Trello is a well-known collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. It gives you quick and easy at-a-glance insight into exactly what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and the status of each particular project. For entrepreneurs who have employees or who manage contractors, this tool is incredibly helpful in keeping track of what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.
- Google Drive for File Sharing: Looking for a way to store, edit, and share your files? Google Drive is a great option. This cloud-based storage solution allows you to save files online and access them anywhere, from any smartphone, tablet, or computer. From PowerPoint presentation to Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and images and photos, you can store literally anything here. And, best of all, multiple people can work collaboratively in files simultaneously. This means that, for example, if you have a Google Doc you’re working on with a team, you can give everyone access, make edits at the same time, and track changes, all in one place.
- Slack for Real-Time Communication: Sometimes an email is overkill. For a lot of business communication, an instant messaging platform is much more practical. And in those scenarios, we recommend Slack. With this channel-based messaging platform, you can communicate with colleagues and clients easily and efficiently.
- Zoom for Video Meetings: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused video conferencing to skyrocket. If you aren’t already doing video meetings, there’s a good chance you’ll need to soon. And when that time comes, odds are that you’ll need to do it using Zoom. One of the most popular video conferencing solutions out there, Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others, either by video or audio-only or both, all while conducting live chats, and it lets you record those sessions to view later.
- Boomerang for Email Management: If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll love Boomerang for Gmail. The ultimate email productivity tool, Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date; write a message now, send it whenever, even if you’re not online; track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders; know whether your email got read with cross-platform read receipts; and even eliminate distractions by pausing your inbox.
- Brain.fm for Focus: Looking for new ways to dial in your focus? How about music? Believe it or not, Brain.fm takes a science-first approach to create music that sounds different, and affects your brain differently, than any other music. The goal of the app is to help you focus and relax, in turn getting more done.
- Todoist for Your To-Do List: Effectively managing your to-do list is critical as an entrepreneur. But DIY solutions aren’t always conducive to staying organized. We love Todoist because it balances power with simplicity, and it works on pretty much every platform imaginable. You can quickly add and manage tasks, assign them to relevant projects, and set due dates. It’s flexible enough to adapt to most workflows but not so complicated that it’s overwhelming.
- Calendly for Booking and Managing Calls: Do you spend a ton of time on calls? If so, you can use Calendly to drastically reduce the amount of time wasted finding meeting times and penciling calls into your calendar. Instead, this app allows you to eliminate the back-and-forth by setting your availability and having people pencil in times with you. It also allows them to specify the purpose of the call so you know what you’re heading into ahead of time. You can also proactively send your availability to people when booking calls or integrate the app right into your website.
- Virtual Office Services for Administrative Tasks: For many entrepreneurs, having administrative support staff isn’t an option. If you’re in this position, you could benefit big from virtual office services. This can include everything from mail management to call answering, forwarding, and voicemail services. That way you can focus less on administrative tasks and more on managing your business. For more information on this, you might want to check out our blog article on the topic.
You know the old saying: “time is money.” And, as an entrepreneur, staying organized means saving time. With these nine tools, you can stay easily stay organized, work more efficiently, and get more done.
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