7 Essential Resources for Creative Business Owners
Looking to make running a conscious business feel light, spacious, and simple? Have a look at these seven tools and resources for creative and conscious business owners.
In the last few years, I have spent many hours invested in finding the perfect workflow. Not only for myself, but to help my clients move through a coaching series or branding project with me in the most easeful way possible.
I quickly realised that the amount of time I spend working on myself is never just limited to client work. This is just a small fraction of where my energy flows. The rest of my time is spent on things like admin, invoicing, nurturing a small but growing team, making sure my terms and conditions are up to date, content creation etc!
And I'm sure that as a business owner, you also wear a bunch of different hats when running your business. So today, I want to share with you the tools and resources I use in my business that have helped me speed up my workflow and keep things running behind the scenes (even when I'm not in the office).
1. Squarespace
I recommend Squarespace for the majority of my clients. And with additional custom coding from Squarestylist, I have been able to implement truly unique website designs for my clients time and time again. Squarespace is intuitive to use so my design clients can feel confident that they can make simple tweaks and changes themselves without needing a developer.
2. Webflow
For a deeply immersive website experience that breaks all the rules, Webflow is my personal favourite web design platform. Webflow has a much steeper learning curve than Squarespace, but it also allows a much higher degree of customisation.
2. Dubsado
As I started working with more and more clients, I needed an easy way for keeping track of invoicing, new potential clients and contracts. Dubsado is the one tool I use for invoicing and sending out my contracts. I have dedicated a number of joyful hours to setting up my Dubsado so that any new client forms are stored and trigger the right email responses so that booking a vision discovery call with me runs effortlessly in the background. Having automation in these areas makes the onboarding process so much easier and its something that my VA manages a large portion of now.
Want to get your start with Dubsado and save a bit of money?
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3. Calendly
If Dubsado has a bunch of features that you may not need for your business, I think Calendly is a great streamlined alternative for scheduling meetings. By integrating it with Zoom, the client application form on my website has become fully automated. Although I no longer use Calendly since moving my onboarding systems over to Dubsado, my previous experience with it has always been positive so it comes highly recommended.
4. Flodesk
Flodesk is a platform that allows you to design emails with a more personal touch using a drag and drop approach. The thing I love about Flodesk is the quality of their templates and the ease of setting up workflows. The pricing for Flodesk at a set amount per month, irrespective of the number of subscribers. This worked out to be much cheaper for me versus staying with Mailchimp. Compared to other email design platforms, Flodesk has a smooth interface with a beautiful design that makes email automation super simple.
Get 50% off with this link for Flodesk *Affiliate Link*
5. Notion
Notion is undoubtedly one of the best platforms to make use of when running your business. It’s an all-in-one organisational note-taking system that has an incredible number of features and customizable options. You can use it as a planner, note-taking app, calendar or all of the above. I currently use Notion for tracking my goals and vision and collaborating with Donaji on planning and keeping track of our podcast episodes.
Get $10 off on Notion with this Link. *Affiliate Link*
6. Todoist
Running your own business means you’re constantly bombarded on a daily basis with an ever-growing todo list. Todoist is my tool of choice and it helps me schedule my daily tasks. I love that I can tag my tasks based on the project, category, location or urgency. To supercharge Todoist, you can integrate it with your Google Calendar so your todos are automatically added as events.
Learn more about Todoist *Affiliate Link*
7. Planoly
Planoly helps you manage and automatically post your Pinterest and Instagram posts. Pinterest and Instagram are two of the key social media apps that I use for my creative businesses so this app makes things so much easier because everything is in the one place. My VA uses Planoly for uploading the next images, scheduling and adding things like hashtags etc and I go in and write out the captions.
Learn more about Planoly *Affiliate Link*
When you’re running your own creative business, it can feel like you’re being bombarded by a mountainous list of to-dos that are never-ending. And getting super clear about what you need to focus on first, second and third and setting up strong foundations for an effective workflow can feel overwhelming.
If this sounds familiar and you would love to see what life and business could look like with me as a coach to guide you through this, book your free 45 minute discovery call for brand and business coaching.
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