Spending time doing what you enjoy and have passion for is so important in your small business business. Running a small business as a solopreneur can often feel like a lot of admin so I wanted to share my best business tools if you are craving some minimalism and simplicity in your business.
These are the best small business tools that save me time, make those annoying tasks a little easier and help me to focus on the things that I enjoy doing (like creating beautiful brands like these) and are going to help grow my business in the right direction.
the best business tools for small business & solopreneur minimalism
1. Loom: record video talkthroughs, present ideas without the back and forth video chats
I’m a big, big fan of Loom and have been using it to present my design projects to clients for a few years. It means we don’t need to always schedule in a Zoom chat, but you still feel like you are connected and presenting with passion. I also ask my business clients to provide feedback using Loom if they prefer. It’s the best solopreneur business tool for chatting through and sharing a screen.
You can also use it to record your courses and present with a small video of you in the corner. It’s saved me so much time and made my solopreneur schedule freer as I don’t need to be always doing live feedback calls.
I’ve used it to record talk-throughs for my Brand Builder course as shown below, to give my audience behind the scenes glimpses of what’s included. It feels personal and is also really easy to use, just download click and record then share with a personalised link.
USE BUSINESS TOOLS TO EMPOWER YOUR solpreneur WORKING DAY.
2. Calendly. You can set up Calendly to sync with your calendar and choose slots and options for people to schedule in calls or meetings with you. It automatically switches timezones for your clients abroad and you can limit the number of appointments daily. This saves so much ‘to and fro’ on email trying to work out a good time for a meeting! I also have a link on my website so people can immediately book in a Free chat without having to email. I’m all about keeping things as simple as possible and Calendly is perfect for this!
3. Canva: for any non-designers Canva makes designing your branded graphics super simple. You can quickly create templates for posters, flyers, instagram posts, email headers, blog headers and more and save your own Brand colours. It’s really important to have a consistent brand look as a solopreneur to start with before creating your Canva posts. If you need some help with this then you can take a look at my Design Day service and Canva Brand Kits.
4. MailerLite: my favourite email newsletter tool. Simple, easy to use and non-techy!
Email newsletters is my preferred way of connecting as a solopreneur as it feels like I’m writing a letter to the people who are on my mailing list. (You can sign up for my email list here) I switched from MailChimp to MailerLite recently and I haven’t looked back! It’s so much easier to use, features drag and drop editing and you can create different forms and email sequences depending on what people sign up for. As an example I have certain people taking my 5 Day Improve Your Brand Email Course, when they sign up I can then send them the course straight to their inbox.
It feels much more intuitive and easy to navigate than MailChimp and it’s free for your first 1,000 subscribers. You can take a look at MailerLite here.
5. Thinkific: Intuitive and premium looking online course program
After some time you may decide to use your knowledge to create an online course so that you can extend from one-on-one or products and help other solopreneurs learn and grow. There are A LOT of course platforms out there, I tried quite a few before deciding to use Thinkific for my brand builder course and workshops. I found it much easier to use and as a designer the style of the course and pages looked a lot more premium than some of the other online course platforms. It made putting a course together feel effortless and intuitive!
I also love the support, and emails you can send to your learners.
Find out more about Thinkific here.
6. Insight Timer: I’m a big believer in running a ‘Conscious Business’ as a solopreneur and how growing as a person helps to grow your business. When I’m feeling a little frazzled, un-motivated and overwhelmed then there are so many free guided meditations I can turn to that take as little as 10 minutes to complete. Then I can get back to a good mindset and feel much more centred. Extra things like meditation and yoga really inform my business and you can read about the power of developing intuition in business here:
The power of intuition in business
SPEND MORE TIME CREATING AND LESS TIME ON ADMIN WITH SELF-EMPLOYMENT solpreneur BUSINESS TOOLS.
Keep me posted if you do try out any of these tools and find them beneficial and feel free to share with anyone who may find them useful too.
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Creative Wilderness is an ethical, sustainable branding design studio based in the UK empowering natural small businesses around the world to grow and thrive.