Apps That Can Make Life Easier for Business Owners

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There is a saying that that goes something like this,  all of us business owners need to learn to spend more time ON our business and less time working IN the business. I am paraphrasing here, but I think you get the point. When someone builds a business from the ground up, letting go of things is difficult. We hire people and then we don’t release the hold on those positions. The result is burnout and disgruntled employees. The Better way to do things. Move yourself from a doer to a leader. Inform, inspire, and let go.

 

Take some time to really think about some of the things you do every day which could be handled to someone else, and release those. Use your energy to steer the ship, find new, creative ways to market your business and to develop the inhouse talent that will take you to the next level. Outsource the parts of the business that are not full-time positions, and find software and hardware that can streamline your processes.

 

Inc magazine recently published a list of Apps that could help business owners better manage their business, I picked three that appealed to me:

“Asana

Instead of having to schedule tedious progress meetings each week — or each day–to ask for updates from your teams, it would be much easier if you simply kept all that information in one place for a quick reference. That’s where an app like Asana comes in: to help you keep your business as organized as possible.

This platform is an all-in-one task organizer that can be used by multiple people all at once. It can be used to schedule tasks, add to-do lists, hold conversations about specific items, upload attachments–anything you could possibly need to keep your business organized in one place.

It’s one of the easiest ways to track your team’s progress towards specific goals and check in to make sure that they have everything they need to keep moving forward.

 

Evernote

This app is mostly used for storage of documents, pictures, and other things as well as organizing them. Evernote is convenient for businesses as everything on it is synced across any linked device–which makes it ideal for securely sharing data in a business.

The app also has a highly advanced search feature which can search for keywords across everything it stores–from files to pictures, it can bring up anything in its memory that contains those words. This means that even if you don’t keep your files organized enough to find what you need, you won’t be stuck searching through them for hours looking for the right thing. This saves time, and helps keep everything flowing smoothly.

 

MailChimp

Designed to make email marketing as painless as possible, MailChimp is an automated advertising and marketing service utilized by many businesses in the world. Its targeted marketing service makes it easy for entrepreneurs to reach their customers in direct and strategic ways.

Linking their sites or services to MailChimp directly allows them to more easily promote your business. They use an automated tool to track your customers’ shopping and email behaviors, so that they can better advertise to your consumers in the future. They also integrate other forms of advertising into their service–Facebook ads, for example–to ensure that you are reaching your target audience.

According to Jason Baril, attorney and co-founder of Ogle, Elrod & Baril PLLC, organization is one of the most important things to keep a business running smoothly. He says, “I recommend finding the right organizational tool that fits your business so that you don’t have to spend as much time on it. There are tons of websites and apps out there, designed to keep people organized – and for the busy entrepreneur, it can be a lifesaver.”

There are plenty of apps and websites out there, designed to help busy entrepreneurs and businesses running smoothly and efficiently. Find the right one, and you’ll find you have more time to work on your business, and less on administration.”

 

Having one centralized location where everyone can collaborate on projects is a big time saver. Any time we can avoid long, drawn out meetings, we use the tools that will help us. Ever note is a great device for that. You can store projects and shar photos.  Mail chimp is another tool which is great for automating your customer contact. As you update your blog, you can have MailChimp poll the site for new posts. You can have it send out an email weekly, monthly, bi monthly.

 

Tools that help your business, not take more time from you working ON your business are what will help you to succeed and grow.

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