Our Top 5 Tools For Working Smarter Not Harder
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We have big plans to go from freelance to CEO in 2021 so one of the things we’re focusing on is our business systems.
In this week’s post, we’re sharing our top 5 online business tools for working smarter, not harder so that you can join us on our CEO embodiment journey.
1. Clickup
After auditing our business systems, we realized that we were using way too many tools in our online business. Some we paid for and barely used.
Why? Because too many tools in your business = zero adoption.
Clickup has completely changed the game for us in terms of our business systems.
Instead of using separate tools for creating documents, tracking our time, setting up our tasks, and organizing our projects, we can do this all in this one awesome project management platform.
Think Asana, but a million times better.
Clickup allows you to organize your online business in “Spaces.” Some spaces that you may create within Clickup are:
Marketing
Admin
Project Management
Clients
Then, within those spaces, you can organize further by creating lists or folders.
Within your Marketing space, for example, you could create folders or lists such as:
Content Calendar
Market Research
Email List Campaigns
Spaces, lists, and folders are just scratching the surface with Clickup’s features.
By keeping most of your online business operations in one place, you’ll gain back time and create more efficiency in your online business.
You can get started with Clickup for free and upgrade at any time here!
2. Airtable
Do you enjoy the organization aspect of spreadsheets, but HATE how boring they look? We do too.
Once we discovered Airtable and its easy-to-use, visually appealing way of helping you manage and track every project you’re working on, we haven’t looked back.
Airtable is a database tool that allows you to customize your workflow, collaborate with your team members and clients, and manage any project.
Here at Unruly, we use Airtable to plan our blog, social media, newsletter content, and lead magnet ideas.
We can easily see the status of a task, who’s responsible for completing the next step, and provide any important information that can help our team members complete their task.
You can also use Airtable as a database for your content. If you ever need to refer back to a post that you created or newsletter that you sent, you can easily locate it within your base.
We promise you’ll stop dreading spreadsheets when you start using Airtable.
3. Slack
Out of every team and client communication tool out there, Slack is truly the best.
Every collaborative project in your online business requires a lot of going back and forth with your team members. Slack helps you centralize that communication.
Our favorite part about Slack is the ability to organize conversations into Slack channels. Instead of having everyone talking to everyone at the same time, you can have separate chats for separate projects and departments.
Here are some example Slack channels for your team that you could set up:
[PROJECT NAME] Team (e.g. Course Launch Team)
[DEPARTMENT] Team (e.g. Marketing Team)
General chat
Likewise, you can use Slack to communicate and have touchpoints with your clients.
If you ever need to go back to a message from some time ago, you can also search your chat using keywords.
In short, Slack makes building relationships with your clients and team members a breeze. You can check out all of Slack’s features and pricing plans here.
4. Later
Say ADIOS to manually posting on social media with Later.
If you already batch your social media captions (which we highly recommend you do!), Later helps you automate the posting part of your workflow.
You know how tedious it can be to find the best posting time, locate the picture you want to post in your camera roll, copy and paste the caption, and find hashtags. You can do this all in one place using Later!
This heaven-sent social media marketing platform lets you:
Plan out your curated IG feed
Auto publish your social media posts
Find relevant hashtags for your posts
Save hashtag groups
Schedule IG stories
Schedule your first comment
Review your advanced analytics
Later helps you stay consistent, gain back time in your online business, and easily outsource your social media to a VA or Social Media Manager!
Check out Later’s pricing plans here.
5. HoneyBook
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed because you didn’t know how you could get all of your client management tools in one place, allow us to recommend HoneyBook.
HoneyBook is an all-in-one client management system that helps you automate and manage your client workflows by facilitating the sending of your pricing guides, proposals, contracts, scheduler, invoices, to-do’s and so much more!
It’s the Clickup for client management.
Instead of having to use Gmail for communication, Calendly for call scheduling, Hellosign for sending contracts, and Wave for invoicing, you can simplify your business with HoneyBook.
With this tool, you can create a seamless and consistent experience for your clients effortlessly.
Try Honeybook free for 7 days or get 50% off your monthly or annual when you sign up here!
recap…
Whether you’re new to online business or need to revamp your business systems, these tools will help you run your business like a well-oiled machine.
What’s an essential tool that you use in your biz and swear by? Share it with us in the comments below! We love learning about tools that can help us be more efficient.
