The Essential Toolkit: The Indispensable Tools I Use To Run My Business
Running a business in today’s environment means staying organized, flexible, and always ready to tackle what’s coming next. As a founder and CEO, I’ve tried countless tools and platforms to find the ones that meet my business needs and are intuitive, mobile-friendly, and easy for our team to use.
My criteria for choosing business tools:
Ease of use: The learning curve should be minimal. I need to get myself and my team on board quickly.
Mobile accessibility: I run the business from everywhere, so iPhone apps are a must for updates on the fly.
Integration capabilities: The more seamlessly it works with other tools, the better.
Scalability: As my business grows, I need tools that can keep up without skipping a beat.
Cost-effective: I want my business to be as lean as possible, so the cost has to be realistic.
With these criteria in mind, here are 10 tools I can’t live without for HRuprise:
Email: Superhuman
Email is the lifeblood of communication, but it can also be a massive time sink. Superhuman has been an absolute game-changer for me. Its speed and efficiency have helped me maintain inbox zero for over a year (something that seemed impossible before). The difference it makes in my day-to-day productivity is downright palpable.
Virtual Engagement: Zoom
Zoom is indispensable for meetings and webinars, providing a reliable and user-friendly platform for virtual engagement. I love the webinar registration feature that captures participant emails and sends follow-up emails for our online events. I find it to be infinitely more reliable than Google Meet.
Project Management: Asana
For keeping our projects and tasks in clear, organized lanes, Asana is our go-to. It’s instrumental in managing complex projects and ensuring that no task is overlooked.
Internal Communications & Social Media Videos: Loom
Loom has transformed our internal and external communication, offering an easy way to create and share videos. I use it to record my videos for sharing on social media. We also use it to screenshare when we’re troubleshooting internal processes. It’s amazing.
Database Management: Airtable
Airtable is our database powerhouse, and it supports everything from managing our coaches database, to tracking content, to overseeing our marketing plans. It is incredibly robust and surprisingly user-friendly, which makes it a core tool for our operations.
Scheduling: Calendly
I cannot overstate how much Calendly has streamlined my scheduling. It eliminates the back-and-forth chaos (one of my biggest pet peeves), making it a breeze to book meetings and consultations. One of my favorite hacks is to include times in a meeting that are open for me. When the email recipient chooses one of the options that works for their schedule, a calendar invite is created for us both automatically.
Community Building: Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks powers our HR Navigator community, providing a dynamic platform for our members to connect, share, and learn. It’s a vital tool for building and nurturing our professional community, enhancing the value we offer to HR professionals, small business owners, and startup founders.
Collaboration: Google Workspace
Google Workspace is our foundation for file sharing and collaboration. With its suite of tools like Docs, Sheets, and Drive, we can easily create, share, and collaborate on documents in real time, ensuring our team stays connected and productive.
Interactive Tools: Typeform
Typeform is my best tool for creating interactive quizzes and tools, including the HR Audit tool within HR Navigator. Its user-friendly and beautifully designed interface allows me to design engaging, professional-looking forms that enhance my audience’s experience and allow me to gather valuable insights.
Website: Squarespace
SquareSpace is our go-to for crafting HRuprise’s online presence, offering user-friendly design tools and customizable templates that make it possible for me to do all the web design and changes.
And last but not least …
Receiving Payments: Stripe
Stripe makes accepting payments really easy, providing secure and reliable processing of ACH transfers and credit card payments. I use it for everything from our consulting services to HR Navigator subscriptions.
I’m sure that I will think of even more after I hit “publish” on this post.
These tools are more than just software; they’re the gears that keep HRuprise running smoothly. Each tool plays a critical role in our operations, enabling me to focus on ensuring we’re providing top-notch service to our clients. In the fast-evolving landscape of business technology, having the right tools can make all the difference in staying ahead and continuing to grow.
