11 Tools I Cannot Live Without That Make My Business Life Simpler

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As a blogger and marketing coach, I do a boatload of writing. For me, finding inspiration is harder than the actual writing. When I get stuck in front of my Mac, staring at the screen and can’t squeeze another word out of my clogged brain, I rely on my uni-ball pen for salvation.

I thought it would be useful for you, and fun for me, to share the tools, resources, and services that make my business life manageable. And also, my favorite podcasts at the moment.

I hope you find at least one or two ideas to help your life as a wonder woman running a business, impacting the world, as you’re finding and serving clients.

Disclaimer: I have some affiliate links included in this post and only for items I pay for myself and love.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

1. For finding inspiration, uni-ball Signo pens save the day

When I get stuck for words, content ideas, or how to explain a strategy grabbing my beloved uni-ball pens, I escape from my desk, and no matter what paper I pick up—a scrap from the recycle pile, a beautiful journal with silky paper, or a ratty, used composition notebook—my trusty uni-ball helps the words flow again.

Uni-ball dispenses it’s lovely, non-clogging, non-smeary, non-smudgy gel ink no matter what else is going on. It helps me restart my creative juices. Here’s the official uni-ball website, I buy mine on Amazon or at Costco.

How many utilitarian products in our lives are so reliable, pleasant, and enjoyable?

2. Shouldn’t you save time with social media scheduling tools? 

It’s true, there are scads of excellent social media sharing apps. If you’re not currently using a social media scheduling app to save time, you should check them out. While you do want to spend time interacting live with your audience on social media, leveraging social media scheduling apps for some daily/weekly posts is a life-saver.

Keep in mind, the entire goal of using social media to grow your business is to make connections with your dream audience. An awesome way to make initial connections is for potential clients to discover your content. Scheduling apps make it easy to pre-schedule posts that link back to your website.

I’ve tried more social media schedulers than I can count. This is my current favorite:

• MissingLettr.com This app’s best feature is how it sets up longer campaigns for sharing content like blog posts. You can spend a few minutes setting it up and MissingLettr automatically posts snippets from your blog for a timeframe you choose: 2 weeks, 3 months, or longer. I love it because I can ‘set it and forget it’ for some of my blog posts.

3. Stencil, an easy for me to use, image-creation App

Recently, I discovered this incredibly fabulous app Stencil and am now a super-fan and love it.

Stencil, surprisingly, helps me with finding inspiration because it’s so darn fast to create memes. I can pop in a new thought, or quote, in just a few minutes. And for a non-designer like me, that’s amazing.

Since I haven’t a design bone in my body, my virtual assistant sets up the initial designs. Later, it’s easy-peasy for me to change the message and post to social media. That way, I can re-use the designs.

Here’s one of my social memes I revised after my graphic design assistant created the first one:

4. Saving time and capturing inspiration by doing this

Saying goodbye to a Windows PC and moving to a Mac about 10 years ago was a lifesaver for me. One of my fave features of Mac is dictation. The best news, you don’t need to buy another separate dictation  program (app). You can dictate on Mac Mail, Mac Pages, and Word for Mac. Here’s the dropdown, if you use Word, just go to:

: : Edit

:: Start Dictation

:: Then you start talking

Sometimes it doesn’t understand your words, and you’ll need to edit carefully. All that said, it’s my best method for getting a rough draft out of my head—or from a scribbled draft and saved into a document on my Mac.

Pro tip: When you’re dictating and your husband walks into your office to ask you a question, you must stop the dictation. Or you’ll have an odd sentence like, “Where’d you put the puppy’s leash?” inside your blog post. 

5. Must-have journals for finding inspiration

I wasn’t an early adopter of journals from Moleskine, because I thought they were a bit pricey. Then my husband found the 6-packs at Costco of the 7 ½-inch by 10-inch version. Now I’m a happy camper because I can keep a couple handy to grab for conferences or a new project.

You likely love Moleskin journals for the same reasons:

• It’s tough to find the same paper quality, you can write on both sides of the sheets without ink running.
• Notes you took 3 years ago, are preserved perfectly. No fading.
• Easily packable for conferences.
• Plus, the slim design’s easy to store on bookshelves, I could go on and on.

What’s your fave go-to journal or note taking book for conferences? Or do you take your computer and type notes? Or an iPad / tablet?

6. Voice memo app for spur of the moment audio recording

Like me, my trusty iPhone 6 is aging but still love it. When I get an aha moment, I can simply click to Voice Memo app and dictate away. Sometimes, when masterminding with a trusted friend, I ask if it’s okay to record her advice. I plop my iPhone down and hit record, so I don’t miss a thing.

Once, for what turned into an unplanned, marathon brainstorming session in a local coffee shop with a client and her team, we did this:

• We passed my phone around, spoke into Voice Memo, and shared our brainstorming answers/ideas.
• After the session, I emailed the Voice Memo files to the team and they were transcribed.
• It was a valuable tool that captured tons of ideas we later put to work for creating ideal client stories and marketing content topics.

You can check out this post (below) if you’re looking for marketing content topic ideas:

7 Smart Steps: Create Content Ideal Clients Want

7. My web hosting provider, BigScoots

I recently changed to a new web hosting provider, BigScoots. When I needed a new reliable provider, BigScoots came highly recommended by two savvy folks. My contacts told me that BigScoots offers excellent support, lightning fast hosting, and will even transfer your website from the old provider.

BigScoots did not disappoint! After trying other hosting providers for different sites over the years,  I can’t recommend BigScoots highly enough.

8. When finding inspiration online, Evernote’s how I capture cool stuff

The Evernote app is quick to use to save images, links to sites, and snippets of articles, research, and blogs I’ll quote and link to later. It’s my electronic ‘scrapbook’ and filing cabinet all in one. I use the free version, though many of my friends swear by the premium version.

9. Rackspace email hosting, separate from my web hosting

When we initially began our business, no one told us that you should have an email hosting service that is entirely separate from your website hosting provider. And it worked fine for a few years, until it didn’t. So, you won’t be surprised, we learned this lesson the hard way.

When our main website went down due to too many videos from a client (long story) we lost our email too.

Our new web developer at the time asked, Why do you host your email on your web hosting provider?!

Anyway, that day we signed up with Rackspace, Small Business Email Hosting, and haven’t missed a day of email delivery since 2008.

While you may happily rely on Gmail, Rackspace is perfect for me.

10. Beats Wireless Ear Buds make my workouts educational

This high-quality set of ear buds made by Apple, was a free bonus I got when buying a new Mac last year at our local Apple store. They’re comfy to wear when I’m working out and listening to my go-to podcasts. Currently, my must-listen podcasts are:

Super Women with Rebecca Minkoff (Rebecca Minkoff is an award-winner in both the fashion and entrepreneurial spaces.

Good Girls Get Rich with Karen Yankovich

11. I love Mac Book Pro

As mentioned above, I took a bold step and left the world of Microsoft windows and bought my first Mac 10 years ago. At the time, the scariest thing was that my husband and business partner Jim Butz, was my (reluctant) IT support. So, when I decided to venture into the world of Apple computers, I was totally on my own. Fortunately, I had Apple Care support via phone and for sticky problems, the Apple Genius Bar.

A few of my clients at the time, chuckled and said, “good luck with that”.

The truth is, my learning curve was steep for about three weeks. I kept trying to do things the windows way. Thankfully, a seasoned Mac user said to me something that made my life instantly easier: he said,” the problem is you’re still thinking like a Windows user. With apple computers, there’s really only one step in most cases.”

That’s when I realized that as a frighteningly non-technical woman, I was working too hard.

I also purchased another lifesaver with my MacBook Pro, Apple care, which offers wonderful technical support.

After that, I got into the rhythm of using a Mac and I’ll never go back. In fact, I’m so into the Mac way of doing things that occasionally, if I’m in a hotel, and I need to print something using a Windows computer, I honestly need to have help!

Final thoughts

While it’s a massive understatement, starting and growing a business of your own isn’t a walk in the park. Finding inspiration is often our biggest hurdle.

We all desperately need each resource, shortcut, and tool that works for us—to make our daily tasks easy and simple. That way, you’ll spend time finding your inspiration so you can create content your dream clients crave, have focused conversations, and bring in all the ideal clients you want.

~ Cynthia 

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