9 Set-It-and-Forget-It Tools for Inundated Entrepreneurs For entrepreneurs, in business and life, automation means true freedom.
By Nathan Resnick •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As a busy entrepreneur, you lead a hectic life. You spend countless hours in back-to-back meetings, marketing your company and managing your team. Although you never let a minute go to waste, there's still not enough time in the day.
Completing a to-do list is a timely endeavor, which is why busy entrepreneurs turn to tools and applications for help. There's a lot of software that exists to carry out daily activities for you.
Here are nine set-it-and-forget-it tools for inundated business owners are presented. The first six tools are geared toward work-related tasks, and the last three are lifestyle-based. With this comprehensive arsenal on your side, you'll be able to tackle entrepreneurship with success.
Slack
Slack is an online communication platform for businesses of all sizes. It brings your team's communication together on one platform. Overall, entrepreneurs are drawn to this option for its search capabilities. Slack enables you to quickly find the answers you need by searching through all of your team's conversations, decisions and work at one time.
Hootsuite
Social media is a quintessential part of your business. With a bit of effort, it allows you to quickly connect with customers in a cost-effective manner. That being said, social media can suck up all of your time.
Instead of pouring countless hours into this pursuit, use Hootsuite, which allows you to manage all of your social networks in one convenient place.
Asana
Do you remember how revolutionary Google Docs was when it first came out? The switch from sending documents to one person at a time to real-time, multi-user collaboration was groundbreaking. Well, Asana is taking this revolution one step further.
Its platform allows you to chronicle tasks, projects and conversations. At any given point, the platform can tell you how your projects are progressing, saving you from scheduling a meeting or sending an email to track progress.
Related: 15 Useful Tech Tools for Your Business
MailChimp
As the world's largest marketing automation platform, MailChimp is a must-have for all entrepreneurs. Its technology helps you sell products, disseminate news and share stories through email marketing.
Expensify
When you start a company, your finances are generally pretty scattered. Some entrepreneurs self-fund their companies and others receive investments. No matter how you're paying for your company's upfront costs, you should have a solid expense-tracking system in place.
Expensify can automate your entire expense-reporting process and help you stay up-to-date on your finances.
Infusionsoft
An entrepreneur's days often feel disjointed. It's hard to draw overarching conclusions from various data points. Luckily, Infusionsoft solves this issue. They offer sales and marketing software that takes input from thousands of apps to deliver comprehensive insight into your sales performance.
The software also has customer relationship management capabilities, which will help you store and use customer contact information, leads and sales opportunities.
Related: A Step-by-Step Guide To Building Your First Mobile App
Occasion Station
A business owner's life is full of annoying, work-related assignments. These to-dos are often so plaguing that it's easy to forget about other time-consuming and stressful lifestyle-related tasks business owners face, like gift-giving.
Occasion Station remembers the important occasions in your life and reminds you of them. When a notable event (like your mother's birthday) is approaching, its platform will send you an email reminder. If you choose, one of its personal shoppers will select, wrap and ship an individualized gift to you -- or the recipient -- in time for their special day.
Occasion Station also offers a corporate gift-giving service. Occasion Station's staff will reach out to you when one of your clients, employees or vendors has a "giftable" event coming up, such as a product launch. If you opt in, it'll take care of the entire gifting process for you.
Headspace
Headspace can help you improve your health, which can in turn positively influence your performance at work.
Meditation can help you manage the symptoms of anxiety, chronic pain, high blood pressure and more. In the workplace, mindfulness can increase your focus, listening skills and job satisfaction.
HabitBull
Although entrepreneurship can consume your life, it's important to make time for yourself. You should focus on becoming a better person in addition to a better leader and business owner.
One of the best ways to keep tabs on your personal goals and achieve them is HabitBull. This habit tracker can help you break bad habits (like smoking) or build positive habits (like exercising).
Related: 25 Creative Ways to Promote Your App For Free
Why use these tools?
These tools will allow you to connect with your company, your team and your customers like never before. They'll also help you work from anywhere, as you won't be tied down to location-dependent tasks.
If this sounds too good to be true, you can try out these tools for yourself. Many of them offer free or low-cost trials you can benefit from today.
