Boosting Productivity: My Top 6 Apps to Keep you on Track
What you don’t know about me, is that I can be easily distracted & have difficulty focusing. This led to me not always being the most organized. When I became a full- time business owner (and one, nonetheless that helps organize others), I realized pretty early on that I needed to have a solid back- end structure to run my business as smoothly as possible.
I also make sure to recommend certain apps to potential clients or clients of mine when I see they could benefit from using one! Sometimes, a few automations and organization tools is all a business owner needs to save time in the beginning. I’ll be sure to relay this in discovery calls if I think that it would be a better place for them to start instead of investing in a Virtual Assistant.
Here are my top six favourite apps that I use on a daily basis to help my business run as smooth as possible behind the scenes.
HoneyBook
HoneyBook is a client flow management platform that provides a variety of tools for small businesses. My entire booking process, from inquiry, to questionnaire, to sending proposals and invoices are all done right here in HoneyBook. Building out HoneyBook is a fairly simple and easy process, but can be time consuming and ever- changing (if you’re like me, and never quite happy with designs of your files). I often get compliments from potential clients about the seamless workflow on HoneyBook. My favourite part, is that you can automate aspects of your workflow which saves so much time!
I decided on HoneyBook as I wanted a simple to use platform that handled the entire booking process from start to finish.
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Asana
Asana is a task management software that I use daily for myself and my clients. Personally, I like to make my daily client to- do lists in Asana to help me stay organized and track along the way. My clients also use Asana to assign me tasks.- I love that I can track progress along the way or ask them questions directly within the task. I also use Asana to delegate tasks to my sub- contractor. Asana, or any task management software is a great way to track progress and tasks!
I decided to use an app like Asana when I experienced growth in my business and was working with multiple clients on a daily basis.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace houses many of my daily apps such as: Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Meet. Gmail of course, is my main emailing platform and I love that I can create other emails within my domain email! Google Drive is my favourite way to collaborate with clients as I create a private shared drive between all of my clients in the onboarding phase. Here, we share important files during the duration of our contract. When I schedule discovery calls or catch- up calls with my clients, Of course, Google Calendar is used to record all my daily events, is easy to share among platforms and the perfect way to see what’s going on in a week. I use Google Meet because of their free 1 hour time limit. You really can’t go wrong with using Google Workspace to help you keep organized!
Slack
Slack is a messaging app that I use with the majority of my clients. It allows for quicker communication than email and great for collaboration if you have a small size team. I love that you can create channels to have separate spaces to chat with your team (for example: client work, general, marketing). I use Slack on a daily basis to chat with my clients and love that it has the capabilities to integrate with other apps.
Toggl
Toggl is another app I use daily to track the time on client tasks. I pull weekly reports from Toggl to share with my clients the tasks I completed and hours used for that week. It’s really a great way to ensure I’m on track to reaching the selected retainer package for each client.
I decided to go with Toggl as the free version is more than enough to help keep me organized with tracking several client hours.
Flodesk
My most recent investment into an app, is the email marketing platform Flodesk. I was first introduced to Flodesk as many of my clients use it to create beautiful email templates and workflows. I created my first freebie: Your Guide to Planning a Successful Retreat in Notion, but needed to automate the email sequences after people download. Flodesk was the perfect solution to me and after setting up the opt- in forms and workflows, I can sit back and relax as the platform does the work for me.
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Final Takeaways
Since there are many business tools out there, it may feel overwhelming to pick one that’s best for your business. It may take a bit of trial and error at first, but you’ll find the ones that work best for you and keep the back- end running seamlessly.
Setting up these tools from the beginning will truly set your business up for success as I quickly learned!
