My Favorite Business Tools
A lot of people think being a creative and running a business don’t run hand in hand. As a creative business owner, I strongly disagree. Creativity thrives with restriction; when boundaries are in place your creativity has the ability to flourish and expand.
My favorite way to create structure in my business is on the administrative side. If I can build seamless processes in onboarding and managing my projects, I can build more freedom in my time to foster the creative side. Here are a few tools I invested in that make my life so much easier.
Honeybook
I absolutely spend most of my time using this software. Honeybook is a client management software where I can - you guessed it - manage all my clients. I can track the progress of all my projects and inquiries as well as send contracts, invoices, and proposals. There are hundreds of templates for contracts, invoices, proposals, and brochures and you can create your templates for emails and contact forms. Being able to build my own templates makes all my processes consistent across the board so I don’t have to think twice about it.
It’s certainly not necessary if you’re just getting started, but when you start to have more clients and want to take your business more seriously it’s a great investment. Being able to send proposals where your clients can seamlessly sign contracts and pay invoices with credit card makes you look professional and easy to communicate with, which will have your clients coming back.
I have a 25% off for one year discount for you! I am an affiliate, but I only recommend things I truly love and use on the regular.
Flodesk
This is what I use for all my email newsletters. It is a bit of an investment, but I’m a sucker for a good interface and Flodesk really hits the mark. I love their templates for emails and being able to organize my email subscribers in one place is really helpful.
You can create email workflows that will automatically send to your subscribers when they opt in. This lets you not worry about your new fans getting all the right information at the right time.
Again - here’s your discount, 50% off!
Quickbooks
Here’s another tool that isn’t absolutely necessary, but for me it takes so much off my plate it’s worth every penny. I use Quickbooks for all of my bookkeeping and income tracking. It connects with my account so all my expenses and income automatically get entered and then I can go through each item and categorize it for tax write offs. I can also track my mileage - there’s an option to enter trips or track your travel through their mobile app. It takes all the guesswork out of what’s a write off and how to document it.
I use the self-employed version which gives me the option to pay my taxes quarterly directly through Quickbooks. It’ll estimate my taxes for me and then come the end of the year I can take everything to my accountant, making it much less of financial burden when it comes time to pay our taxes.
One last discount for ya - 50% off your first 6 months
Notability
Finally have a free app for you! I have used Notability since grad school and it continues to be my favorite note taking, document organizing, take anywhere with you system. It’s a mobile app, but since I do a lot of work on my iPad as well, it works really seamlessly for taking notes.
I have a document where I track all my thoughts, ideas, and brain dumps. I also use it to take notes on all my client calls so I can review it and keep it for their file. It also allows me to download worksheets from courses and workshops I’ve taken and organize them all in one place so I’m not searching through folders and folders of things on my hard drive.
It’s free to download and being able to access everything on my iPad and phone makes it easy to find things wherever I am.
Canva
The last tool I’ll recommend here! Canva is so versatile and has helped keep my branding really consistent. I’ve used it to create Instagram stories or blog post cover photos. It also has thousands of templates for workbooks, posters, brochures, proposals, you name it they’ve got it. It’s no replacement for a graphic designer by any means, but It’s a great tool to use when you’re starting out and a graphic designer isn’t in the budget yet. You can create brand color palettes and fonts to keep things consistent and there are endless ways to use the templates and have your business looking professional.
I use the premium version so I have access to premium templates and a few of the tools like background remover and document resizing. These come in handy when creating templates for my signs so I can get the spacing right before I letter them by hand.
When you’re starting a creative business, you want to save in every area you can in order to increase your profit. But eventually, you’ll need to spend money to make money. Investing in these tools have made my working life so much easier so I can confidently take on more projects and in turn increase my income. But everyone’s different and has different priorities - figure what’s best for you and what will make your life easier. Your creative self will thank you!
