Business Tools I Love
and Literally Cannot Live Without

CLICKUP

Project Management/Productivity

I. am. addicted. to. ClickUp. I use it not not only organize my entire business, but my entire life. Seriously – even down to my grocery list. I use it to dump ideas, manage projects, communicate with customers, delegate to my team, and so much more.

Loom

Screen Recorder

Hands down the easiest way to screen record, create tutorials, walkthrough or explainer videos. 

WordPress

I build ALL of my websites on WordPress because it’s simply the best. It’s wicked easy for clients to manage and update themselves, fully customizable design, incredible community of developers constantly creating new plugins, and most importantly, it’s stable. 

AND bonus it was created by a UH coog! So you know it’s THE BEST. 

A few of my favorite plugins include: 

flodesk

Super easy to use email platform with beautiful templates, excellent deliverability, useful reporting and insights, and seamlessly integrates into websites for easy list building.

WHOAMYGOSH I love me some Elementor. It has transformed my web design business. I’ll be honest, I’ve build dozens of sites for clients of the years, but all I was really doing was configuring an already-made template. But with Elementor I can truly give my clients a customized solution that is not only beautiful and functional, but truly drives leads to their business. Tailoring a site to the specific needs of your business is what I love to do most and Elementor makes that SO EASY. 

I also love the following plugins to extend the functionality of Elementor:

Dubsado

This is a BEAUTIFUL and FUNCTIONAL customer relationship management (CRM) system made for creative entrepreneurs, but I feel like it could be utilized across many industries. It has completely streamlined my business to make proposals, contracts, invoicing, communication, document organization, and project tracking easier than EVER. These are time consuming tasks for any business owner, and that’s not profitable time. The forms functionality is by far my favorite feature, as it allows me to automate client onboarding, request credentials, and gather content for their project. The client portal is also so helpful, as it gives the client a place to access everything we’ve worked on, without digging through a million emails.

I am notorious for not knowing my passwords to ANYTHING. It’s a mess trying to keep up with all the logins we have to create these days and even though I try to stick to a system for password creation, every login has different requirements. Then, we’ve all been there – you go to change your password (because you forgot it) and then it says you cannot change it to a previously used password, and your sytem is gone. LastPass has virtually eliminated this problem for me. I have it installed on my computers on all browsers, my phone, and my iPad. It not only holds passwords, it automatically keeps them updates, populates fields when you need to login, lets you share them with others (with or without them actually seeing your password), and suggests secure passwords for ultimate security. They do have a free version, but I think they premium version is well worth it.

Hands-down THE BEST way to host remote meetings. The video and audio are stable, clear, and the system integrates with many other apps to create easy meetings. 

With the free account you have a limit on the call length (40 minutes), but I’ve found that’s usually more than enough. I have had a few times that we’ve gone over, but it doesn’t take long to just jump back into the room again. 

PRO-TIP: When video conferencing, always wear earbuds or a headset. 

So I have a confession. When I first heard about Canva, I chalked it up to being a “cheap” version of Photoshop. I. Was. So. Wrong. 

Canva is changing the game, my friends. Non-designers can use their extensive library of templates, photos, elements, icons, fonts, etc. with no prior design knowledge and create professional-looking share-worthy graphics in mere minutes. 

As a designer, who will never, ever give up on my trusty Adobe Creative Cloud suite, I still use Canva all the time for social graphics. With the premium version, you can resize your design automatically for any social network, without having to create a new document by hand with proper sizing and resolution and THEN reformat the layers. The program definitely has some limitations but I will continue to shout Canva’s praises from the rooftops for how robust the resources are (they have a whole design SCHOOL, too!) and how easy it is to use. 

Did I mention you can also access AND EDIT your designs on ANY DEVICE! Livin’ the dream over here, people. 

Simple. I use this as a business phone line without getting one (read: paying for one) from my cell company. It’s available on all devices (including a desktop browser), allows for texting, and voicemails. It’s wonderful, and allows me to take calls right on my computer without holding a phone. It’s the little things. 

I’m the type of person that struggles to keep my phone’s Camera Roll cleaned out. It’s full of ugly selfies, screenshots, and things I want to actually remember. Then, of course, my phone runs out of storage and it’s decision-making time. 

Enter Google Photos. This nifty little app runs in the background and scoops up all my photos and backs them up for me! You can choose to upload full resolution images (that will take up your Google Drive storage) or upload smaller, optimized photos that have no storage limit. I’ve found that for every day phone photos, the smaller ones are JUST fine for anything I’d ever need them for. We’re not making billboards over here. 

Yes, it does backup the ugly selfies, too. I do have to periodically go in and clean out the Google Photos account, but that’s no biggie.

I was a little bit of a slow adopter of cloud storage, but once I went all in, I went HARD. A few years ago when I was a high school teacher, I made the commitment to work on getting all my lessons, documents, forms, etc. backed up online. 

Once I saw how easy and quick it was to edit these docs within Google Drive using Docs and Sheets and Slides, I never looked back. Now, quite literally everything I do is housed on Google Drive. 

Okay, okay, I know. This is kind of a silly “need.” 

But I’m a big believer in professionalism. I think it’s important to “look the part” when working with clients. It is a tiny way to show that you know what you’re doing. This email signature tool makes BEAUTIFUL sigs that pop right into your emails. They even have GIF capability and dynamic options that will update with an RSS feed. Fun! 

Sidenote while we’re on the topic of email – if you have a business, do not have your email be “businessname@gmail.com!” Invest in yourself and spring for the $6/month Gsuite to be “yourname@businessname.com.”
PLEASE & THANK YOU!

The best and most flexible way to create forms, take orders, gather information, export content, etc. So incredibly useful!

Stock photos, templates, graphics, audio, video, etc

For the record, I love small coffee chains too. But it’s dangerously easy to order on my app, zip through the drive through and hop along my merry way with a drink in hand. 

My drinks of choice: 
Coffee: Unsweet Ice Coffee with Cream (No Sugar)
Tea: Unsweet Ice Green Tea with No Water (No Sugar) 

Kind of boring choices though, I know haha. I don’t like hot drinks or sweet drinks, go figure.