An Entrepreneur’s Tools: Part 1

Sep 2

The Entrepreneur’s Tools Series

My entrepreneurial world lives in a backpack. And I love that. I am 100% mobile, minimal, and unburdened by cabinets and paper. Having said that, however, I do have a home office which also acts as a personal museum of artifacts from my 35 years in the design business. It’s a comforting place, and has a nice chair, but I can work just as easily in a coffee shop or babysitting a friend’s cats. My backpack is my tool box.

So let’s start with that. I’m one of those people who watch bag and backpack videos. I’ve purchased so many backpacks online through Kickstarter and Indegogo and I love the one I have now. My backpack is waterproof, burglar proof, folds open with all sorts of pockets - it’s awesome.

The rest of my tools, except for one which I’ll mention towards the end, are digital. I own a MacBook Pro laptop, a large format iPad, a small format iPad, and a cell phone. They all make a tidy stack that fills my heart with joy.

I’m an artist, a cartoonist, a writer, a designer, and a web developer. I read a lot. I scrapbook. I follow the news. I do Tarot card readings. I am a hobbyist astrologer. I manage 4 popular blogs and am about to launch a new one. And I do all of this - all of it - on my devices. So much fun.

Entrepreneurs, over time, develop a box of tools and in this series, we’ve invited a few entrepreneurs to tell us about their favourites. And I get to start!

WHO, WHAT, WHEN, AND HOW - PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The first tool a new entrepreneur will need is a Project Manager. There are many on the market, some have been around for over a decade and some are quite new. At Goodwin Studios, I used BaseCamp for years and I highly recommend it for solopreneurs and small teams although they’re a lot more pricey now than they used to be. As a growing team, we have recently moved to Click-up, and we love it. Others that were recommended are Asana and Monday. But you’re gonna need something for sure.

EMAIL AND SO MUCH MORE - GOOGLE

We use Google Workspace for our company email systems - I love how google email allows you to keep a running task list on the right. And how you can tag emails, archive them, then find them all later if you just search for that tag. We are also able to ‘send’ emails to a ClickUp task list which is wonderful.

Google also offers storage, spreadsheets, google docs - pretty much everything you need to run a business! And it’s all online, accessible from everywhere and totally sharable.

STORE YOUR STUFF - DROP BOX

I personally have three Dropbox accounts. Our company uses a Dropbox Pro account to back up everything. I know Drop Box has recently branched out with Todo lists and other functions - you might even be able to use it as a kind of Project Manager. I’m not sure. We just use it for storage - at the end of every project everything gets archived on Dropbox.

TALK WITH YOUR PEEPS - SLACK

What would we do without Slack? We’ve used Skype, Facebook, Google chat, chat functions in Basecamp, but SLACK has turned out to be the best of the best. It’s organized, easy to add people, has a great app - and most people who work online are familiar with Slack. As well, Slack integrates with a lot of other tools - so it’s quite versatile.

My biggest complaint with Slack is the lack of a To Do List function. I think they could add that in and maybe they will. Until then, we’ve invented a few workarounds.

Udpate: 2023
This year we decided to switch from Slack to Discord. Slack was becoming very expensive, and Discord is actually free. As well, more of our customer base was familiar with Discord than Slack. And we can invite as many people as we want into our Discord so come on down!

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS

We post periodically on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and although we used to have Hootsuite we didn’t use it much. I like the personal touch of actually going into a specific account, posting the item, and then hanging out for a while. My business partner Sky is used Tailwind to organize Instagram for a short while but it didn’t satisfy.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

All entrepreneurs will ultimately need tools to help with finances. To start, I highly recommend Paypal. You can write up an invoice with your logo and details, and keep track of your income totally through Paypal. I love that people can pay me in whatever currency they want, and that they can pay me with their credit cards or with their Paypal. People don’t need a PayPal account to pay a PayPal invoice. Our PayPal connects to our bank so we can transfer the money over whenever we need to. It takes 3 business days, sometimes even fewer.

Other than Paypal, we use QuickBooks Online to manage our books. But early on, most entrepeneurs won’t needs such a robust platform.

If you’re a new businessperson, I highly recommend you start with some kind of bookkeeping system right from the beginning. It can be as simple as Cash In (income) and Cash Out (expenses). Perhaps a Google Spreadsheet would work to start. Go to Revenue Canada and download their Statement of Business or Professional Activities form, check out Part 4 <https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2125/t2125-19e.pdf> - and set your spreadsheet up to match it. Then you’re good to go.

BE CREATIVE - DESIGN TOOLS

We use the Adobe Creative Suite - cloud-based design software including Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. You can purchase one subscription and run it on two devices. So go ahead and share the expense with a friend!

On my iPad, I draw with an Apple Pencil and ProCreate - an amazing app. I can draw, sketch, manipulate - the tools are fantastic. Check out ProCreate on YouTube - lots of videos and tutorials.

And for scrapbooking, I use ProjectLife - you’ll be able to learn a lot more about Project Life soon when my daughter Jewel and I launch our new enterprise - The Creative Scrapper

We also use Canva for all our social media design and more. Love it!

MYSTIC MATTERS

For Astrology I love iPhemeris - It has an infinite Ephemeris, allows you to set up natal charts, instant transit charts, sky now, and pretty much everything you need to crate astrological maps. And you can export the charts to email or other sharing destinations. The app doesn’t interpret at all. But as a tool, it’s amazing.

For Tarot I use TarotPacHD by Tobytek 2018. I’ve used lots of different Tarot apps - they all work. But I just like this one for some reason. The look and feel is nice. The interpretations are minimal, they could add to that a bit I think.

WRITE EVERY DAY

I’m a poet and writer of short stories. I do the writing in Google Docs, but I download good copies and save them in a personal Dropbox. I also use an app called StoryTracker - to keep track of what I have, when it was written, and where it has been submitted, published or rejected. This little app is the best I’ve found so far. Story Tracker v3.5 2009-2020 Andrew Nicolle.

THE PLANNER

In my 35 years as an entrepreneur I have used, and loved, oh so many different kinds of planners. Big ones, little ones, paper and electronic. My planner is always at my left side, and always well used. My planner knows all my secrets, my logins, my accounts, my family birthdays, my upcoming bill payments.

In 2019 I went completely digital - and used GoodNotes on my 9 inch iPad. It’s amazing. And there’s something about having all notes from all clients and jobs in one place. But I wasn’t able to adjust. I just don’t work well with a digital planner. Something about the feel maybe. I’m very tactile. And I use stickers (the Happy Planner) and washi tape and different coloured pens.

So for 2020 I went back to a paper planner - book sized. And I love this one: The Eule Planner - The Analog Business Planner for Digital Entrepreneurs <https://euleplanner.com/>. I would totally get it again this year, but it’s expensive. And I’m stubborn. My business partner Sky is getting it again, she also loves it. But I’m going to try a planner I’ve ordered through Kickstarter. So we will see!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST - THE PASSWORD MANAGER

We use Last Pass - and it’s fantastic. All our passwords are in there. It’s very secure. It also allows Notes where we keep client logins and contact information. You can even upload files if you want - contracts, logos, etc. LastPass connects to all our devices. It will manage your logins, or even create logins for you if you need them. When I go to a website that wants a login from me, LastPass will suggest one, usually the right one, and enter it automatically.

In closing, let’s have a word about passwords. First, you need a different password for every login. Yes, in our case that adds up to hundreds of different passwords. But it’s essential. The recent hack into Revenue Canada is a great lesson to heed.

Do not use the same password for insecure sites as you use for your bank or your CRA accounts. Because the insecure sites can get hacked and then the hacker can log into the secure sites. At the very least, you need a unique password for each of your bank, your paypal, your email, and your CRA accounts. Then you can have another password for all the lesser uses.