As a small business owner, we all wear many hats. Sometimes so many hats that we end up feeling like a character in a Dr Sueus book trying to balance them all up on top of our head! We know we should use apps to help our business productivity but often get overwhelmed with the sheer choice of the 10 different ones to choose from to solve just one problem. Today, I am going to help solve that problem by giving you 9 Apps I can’t live without and you can’t either by the end: PROBLEM: I always forget to keep track of my miles so I am always trying to go back and map it out.
SOLUTION: As a small business owner, we all wear many hats. Sometimes so many hats that we end up feeling like a character in a Dr Seuss book trying to balance them all up on top of our head! We know we should use apps to help our business productivity but often get overwhelmed with the sheer choice of the 10 different ones to choose from to solve just one problem. Today, I am going to help solve that problem by giving you 9 Apps I can’t live without and you can’t either by the end:
The MileIQ app is so incredible that you can never say that you forgot ever again. This app runs in the background of your phone and keeps track of everywhere you drive. Then, when you have a moment you swipe left for business, right for personal and it puts all your trips, miles, dates exported to a nice spreadsheet. You can even calculate medical miles if needed. Last, if you find yourself driving the same place time and time again, you can train it to know, Location A, and anytime you drive there, it will automatically categorize it. It is only $5.99 a month. I am willing to bet that small investment will save you LOTS of time!
PROBLEM: I can’t keep track of all the people and tasks that I have assigned to my team to help keep my business running smoothly and communication flowing.
SOLUTION: Trullo lets you collaborate through boards, lists, cards, that you can color code and organize the way SOLUTION: Trullo lets you collaborate through boards, lists, cards, that you can color code and organize the way you want. You can add your team members to the board (designers, virtual assistants, graphic artists, copywriters, etc) and tackle projects without them getting lost in the email shuffle. You can even check them off or take them off your board when you are done. Cost: FREE.
The next section does’t need an introduction. It is Google. More and more small business owners are turning their backbone over to google to help them manage their company's processes. Let’s take a look:
PROBLEM: I am always running out of space on my computer or phone because I have too many pictures or videos.
SOLUTION: Google Photos - Offers anyone free storage backup and automatic organization for all your photos. Literally, you can search by location, person, or even off the wall things like, ‘long hair’ and all your pictures relating to your search will come up. Best of all, it is in the cloud, so go ahead and don’t get the largest memory on your next computer or smartphone :)
PROBLEM: The document that I need is stuck on my home computer and I can’t access it while I’m at a client meeting. Or I don’t want to spend for Microsoft Word on your computer. Or I am running out of memory on my computer for all your files. Or I am tired of sending the same doc/spreadsheet back and forth looking for the latest version. (That is a lot of problems, huh?)
SOLUTION: Let Google Drive be your desktop! Again, it is in the cloud so you can access from anywhere. You can open Docs, Spreadsheets, Slides and even make Forms for people to fill out. The most impressive part to Drive is you can share folders of documents with people and get real time updates. You can actually see someone typing if you are looking at the document when they are typing! It is almost as if you are (virtually) next to each other! No more emailing back and forth the “latest version” of a spreadsheet! Check it out!