Boosting productivity can help you achieve all the above in a more efficient way and, importantly, help you work towards reducing stress and promote wellbeing.
If you’re new to entrepreneurship, you’re probably overwhelmed with all the things you have to do. Sound familiar?
You’ll be looking to optimize your processes to save yourself time; gather your thoughts, notes, and documents at the same place; facilitate the communication between your team members and create accountability; keep your interface clean and think about your strategy. The list goes on.
We gathered a list of 10 productivity tools any new entrepreneur should know and, if you tweak them well, you work towards creating your own system.
Let’s dive in!
1.Connect tools very conveniently with Zapier
Zapier needs no introduction. With all the apps that exist, you need a plumber to connect them all. Zapier does just that: it automates tedious tasks entrepreneurs do between apps to rocket your productivity. For example, let’s say you have a Google form that collects information in a Spreadsheet and you want to fuel your Hubspot CRM automatically? Don’t do the task twice, use a zap. It’ll do that automatically.
It also works with sending notifications to slack, creating cards in Trello from your Gmail…it’s a must-have when it comes to productivity and performance.
2. Clean your interface automatically with Tabby, an AI-powered tab manager
Tabby is Bridge for Billions’ team crush of October. It made #4 product of the week on Product Hunt in September, and, we have to say, it’s become one of our favourite work hacks.
What is it? A tab manager made for busy people like entrepreneurs. It uses artificial intelligence to detect the relevance of any tab on your browser view, and then it will remove your unnecessary tabs automatically and discretely. And, you can always restore a tab with just 1 click. Unlike other tab managers on the market, this one is really made for entrepreneurs on two grounds.
Firstly, most productivity systems require you to open many tabs (CRM tabs, WordPress management tabs, Gsuite Apps tabs, Social Media tabs, Zapiers, Trello boards…) that ultimately result in more tab clicking. As an entrepreneur, your time is too precious to click and tidy your browser all day long.
Secondly, Tabby works in the background of your computer all day long. No complex setup required, it’s designed to make your life easier (and more organized!).
3. Take notes and share with Evernote
Learning is a huge part of the entrepreneurial life. As a new entrepreneur, you’ve got to learn productively without falling into information overload.
Either way, Evernote helps you keep track of your learnings and meetings in a single app. This tool allows you to save any article or content for later thanks to their desktop chrome extension. This makes it a great complementary product to the Gsuite.
Bonus? You can also use it offline.
4.Map your road to success with Trello
It’s hard to try Trello and not become a fan. Trello is a suite of boards with cards to help you organize you tasks and priorities which you can leverage as an individual or team on any project. Being productive usually means identifying priorities quickly, so this visual tool is a must.
It’s really useful for onboarding new team members, representing the product roadmap or simply keeping track of your own to-do list.
Hint: Trello has built-in automation tools that makes it super convenient to use. And, as mentioned Trello is also part of Zapier’s directory of apps.
5.Automate processes with Phantombuster
Phantombuster is pretty similar to Zapier except it focuses on web scraping. As a new entrepreneur, you’ve got to find your first leads and enrich the current contacts you have. Phantombuster’s here to hep with that.
Their website includes some interesting use cases for entrepreneurs automating their business presence online (auto-follow, auto-like, auto-response, etc), or data extraction and enrichment from LinkedIn.
They also have a range of tutorials on how to use the app to save precious time!
6. Make your productivity soar with Blinkist
Entrepreneurship is a constant learning process. It’s the back and forth between your own knowledge and external resources you read or hear from the best. Blinkist allows you to listen to business books and access key takeaways anywhere, anytime. It’s a curated list of content that you will cherish as an entrepreneur.
7. Manage notes with Google keep
Most entrepreneurs start their journey with G-Suite, the collaborative tool suite of Google. Google Keep is a new product that allows you to make to-do lists, convert lists into google doc, collaborate on certain tasks, and keep your crazy ideas organized and accessible in one-click. The best of all? The mobile app that comes really handy when you’re on the move and need to right down something.
No more saved drafts in Gmail!
8. Chat with Slack
Some people don’t like Google Hangout, and prefer Slack. Slack is an integrated business-first communication platform and has become synonymous with productivity.
The onboarding process is smooth and the experience is great: talk to coworkers individually, open private channels for group projects, create public channels to share information faster with your team.
One good thing? Slack has lots of integrations with third-party tools that increase its value twofold. Let’s say you use a Woocommerce plugin on your WordPress website account to track your sales. You can now connect Woocommerce to your slack channel “sales” and toggle on the notification each time you make a sale! No more dashboard refreshing, just a little notification that pops up each time you close a deal, and everyone stays motivated. How about that?
9. Productivity made Beautiful with Airtable
Last but not least, you might think Google Spreadsheet is too rigid. Perhaps you want beautiful designs to express your thoughts in a cell format. Then, consider Airtable.
If you write content marketing for example, this software will allow you to keep a close eye on your deadlines and to add multiple documents to your sheet (attachment, single select, checkbox, images, etc.)
10. Notion for storage
Just like some people use Slack instead of Google Hangout, you might prefer Notion over Google Drive. Notion is an augmented storage space for all your documentation, databases and processes. It helps keep knowledge clean and accessible for everyone in the team, and it allows you to update content on both desktop and mobile.
A final note on Productivity
There are so many tools out there to boost productivity. Our favourites are Trello, Tabby, Zapier and Slack but we’re always on the hunt for new ways to stay productive. Let us know your top tools in the comments section below.
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If you didn’t know, we’re on a mission to democratize access to entrepreneurship education. We support early-stage entrepreneurs in developing the businesses our society needs through our 3 month, online program, The Leap.
If, like these founders, you want to develop your project with us and join the purpose-driven movement, click here.
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