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Five Tools Every Business Owner Needs

Adam Ingle

Post Summary

If you're a business owner or creator, I'm sure you pondered the thought of what tools you could be using to maximise your productivity and time. A simple google search will provide you with countless sponsored posts and ads promoting products that can quickly become overwhelming. This is why I have curated this quick list of the top five tools that I personally use every day for my business. I'm not endorsed by any of the following brands; what you read is my own personal experience and thoughts of using the products listed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Here are 5 Tools that will help you and your business right now!

Notion is a top five tool for new business owners

Notion

Notion is by far one of my favourite tools I use and still use to this day. It's similar to Evernote but on steroids, and to make things even better, it's completely free for a single user!

With notable clients like, Pixar, Nike, IBM, Slack and Spotify. Notion market themselves as the "All-in-one workspace", and to be fair, they're not wrong. It's the one tool on this list that has had the single largest impact on my workflow and how I operate.

I use it in every aspect of my business from blog articles, idea generation, project management, excel sheets, journalling and budget planning! In fact, the draft of this article was written, edited and proofed all from my notion workspace.

Grammarly is a top five tool for new business owners

Grammarly

Grammarly is a cloud-based writing assistant that reviews your spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity and delivery mistakes. In addition, it allows you to set goals and receive writing suggestions based on these goals and your audience. It also offers a handy web browser plugin that runs in the background to ensure your grammar is up to scratch straight from your browser.

For example, you can set your audience level to a general audience, knowledgeable or expert on the subject matter. In addition, you can choose the formality of your text and the domain, which essentially allows certain slang words and sets loose or strict punctuation rules based on your preference. Finally, Grammarly also allows you to choose the text's tone if you want to sound confident, analytical or keep things neutral. Grammarly uses artificial intelligence to achieve all of this by searching for an appropriate replacement for the mistake it locates.

As for pricing, there is a free version of Grammarly that will offer basic level corrections and suggestions, such as removing unwanted commas. However, if you want the full capability of Grammarly, the paid version is definitely worth the monthly investment.

Canva is a top five tool for new business owners

Canva

Personally, I don't use Canva for my own work, but I do help clients get set up and work on the platform from time to time. It's a great tool and vital, in my opinion, if you don't have a designer to do your creative work for you.

Launched in 2013, Canva is an online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere. In a nutshell, it allows everyone with a mouse and keyboard to become a self acclaimed designer.

Since its inception Canva has provided the tools that have allowed creators and business owners to export over five billion designs in over one hundred and ninety countries.

If you're just getting your business started and need to improve your marketing campaigns and social images without spending the money on professional software then Canva is something you should consider using for your business.

However, I would still recommend hiring a designer if you're in a position to do so. Read more on the reasons why.

Things 3 is a top five tool for new business owners

Things 3

Everybody needs a great to-do list to set and accomplish tasks each day. Things 3 is my favourite of all of the apps I have downloaded and tried. Currently, Things 3 is only supported for Mac OS and IOS, so, unfortunately, you can't use this one if you're a Windows user.

Things 3 has won many awards for its simple and easy to use UI design. It allows you to plan your day, manage your projects, and make real progress toward your goals. Things paired with Notion mentioned above make a powerhouse duo.

What separates Things 3 apart from other to-do list apps is the number of features it offers while keeping it simple, such as:

  • Reminders — set a time, and Things will remind you.
  • Repeaters — automatically repeat to-dos on a schedule you set.
  • This Evening — a special place for your evening plans.
  • Calendar integration — (My favourite feature)see your events and to-dos together.
  • Tags — categorise your to-dos and quickly filter lists.
  • Quick Find — instantly find to-dos or switch between lists.
  • Share extension — create to-dos with content from other apps.
  • Widgets — see your lists on the home screen.
  • Mail to Things — (My second favourite feature) forward an email to Things; now it's a to-do.

It is the best to-do list and productivity app I have used to date. The only downside that I have found in Things 3 is that it isn't a once-off payment for use across all your devices. Instead, you have to pay for each device you want to use things on. For me, I use it on my iPhone and Macbook.

Convertkit is a top five tool for new business owners

ConvertKit

The one tool in every new business owners arsenal should be an email marketing platform. My platform of choice for several reasons is ConvertKit. First, ConvertKit helps creators and business owners like you take their projects from ideas to reality. Second, they make it extremely easy to build an audience and grow your business, and last, you can do it all for free.

Convert kit allows you to create beautiful landing pages and email sign-up forms with many integrations to help you grow your audience as quickly and efficiently as possible. In addition, the automation and segmentation features make it easy for ensuring your subscribers are allocated a place in your mailing list to receive tailored content they're interested in. For a complete list of features, you can check out their site here.

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