Entrepreneurship. Sounds glamorous, doesn't it? Working for yourself, in your PJ's, making millions a year. Living the dream, right?
Sure. Yeah, that's how it is in reality...NOT! Turns out it is way harder to be your own boss than anyone thought. Harder yet is running a team in a startup environment. When you can't afford to provide your people their own laptops how do you keep them on task?
Productivity is the hardest hurdle to leap in self-employment. But, we got you. A major part of building a business on a shoestring budget is productivity.
Here are the 7 productivity tools your office needs, yesterday.
Get More Done In Less Time: Our Top Seven Productivity Tools
Finding the best productivity software lends itself to our startup survival philosophy. Productivity prevents burnout. You can stay relentless longer. Discovering new office productivity tools is a sign of resourcefulness. Finding ones for free helps keep your strategy cheap.
At the end of the day, if nothing gets done your business won't succeed. These seven tools will help keep you on-task, clients in the know, and your team accountable.
Trello
Trello is the ultimate productivity management software. It operates on a board and card system that is flexible as all get out.
It can apply itself to any industry. You can have internal only boards. Create boards for each client. This keeps your client in the loop for all activities. Ask questions in their board to get answers faster and end the telephone game.
Another plus is the price tag. Trello is free. That's right, free. You get unlimited boards, unlimited members, all free. The free plan limits the amount of "Power Ups" you can use and the file size of attachments.
Trello stays affordable even with the upgrade. It's only $10/month per user for the business class account which gives you lots of shiny cool features.
We love Trello because the free option can work for a LONG time. You don't ever have to upgrade unless your business becomes massive.
LastPass
Of all the office efficiency tools we have come across this could be the most important. LastPass eliminates the need to remember any passwords ever again.
Once you create the master login it's the only password you'll need to remember. LastPass stores passwords, suggests secure passwords for everything you use for your business.
LastPass is free for one user. You can add up to 6 users for only $4 a month. As your business grows you can go premium or enterprise for more users. You'll then pay on a per user/per month pricing model.
Time Clock Wizard
In any list of office productivity tools, you need an easy way to track time. Time Clock Wizard offers flexibility for time tracking. It allows for simple time tracking for free. As your business needs grow and you want to track more info they have you covered. Discover more about how much time your staff needs to complete projects.
Time Clock Wizard's enterprise plan includes scheduling, time tracking, payroll reporting, and more. It's $30 per month. That's 6 grande lattes. That tiny price includes a whopping 50 users. Great deal and your accounting team will bring you offerings of adoration.
Grammarly
Does your business need writing? Of course, it does. Between emails and other memos, your staff is writing hundreds, if not thousands, of words a day. There are going to be spelling and grammar errors.
This doesn't mean those people are bad writers either. Turns out our brains a hard-wired to make mistakes. Grammarly is the robot watching out for your imperfect human brain.
Grammarly tracks your writing throughout your computer. It suggests grammar suggestions, takes down a word count, and fixes spelling errors. It does this for, you guessed it, free. Start looking more professional immediately with a simple download.
Google Suite
You cannot talk about productivity online without mentioning Google. Their suite of products is more expansive than ever.
The Google programs, or G-Suite to those in the know, are online versions of the Microsoft Office Suite. What makes this good for productivity? All documents created with them can reach anyone in your whole office with the click of a button.
Depending on their permissions, anyone can edit and track the history of changes. Collaboration made simple again. Instead of keeping track of file versions, everyone stays updated in real-time. This saves time and server bandwidth! Did we mention Google is free?
Mention
Ever wonder what's people are saying about your business? How many hours did someone spend scouring the web last week for new backlink mentions? Mention can do that for you.
Mention scans the internet for any mention of your business. Name, products, industry, any key term you want. This also includes social. Mention notifies you when any key term you've programmed pops up.
For social, this allows you to respond to customer concerns with lightning speed. Your SEO team will thank you. They will have real-time data about their backlinking efforts. Mention is less than $25/month for one user.
Strict Workflow
Do you ever find yourself aimlessly wandering around the web? Do you get distracted by Facebook or Twitter?
Strict Workflow lets you set up accountability for yourself. It locks down your most distracting websites 25 mins at a time. At the end of each 25 mins, it allows a 5 min rest break where you can access those websites.
This one does a great job of locking you out though. So, make sure you will not need them.
Productivity Saves Time AND Money
We hope these productivity tools keep you on the straight and narrow. Get your work done! Don't waste money and time staring at Facebook all day. Organize your team for more effective communication.
If you've made it this far you're savvy. We want to help you out. Wanna know how to build a $10 startup? Imagine that! We wrote a book called "The $10 Digital Media Startup". It's free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Learn more about starting your own successful business on the cheap by clicking here.
