As you’ve already discovered, life as an entrepreneur involves wearing many hats.

And there’s an app or tool for everything as you build and grow your business!

As a Business Coach and Marketing Strategist, I coach passion-led Entrepreneurs to build and grow their business in a way that’s aligned with their vision and values.

A common value of the Entrepreneurs I work with is working to live, not living to work.

This means streamlining and being savvy with your time. So you’re not working long days to cover the costs of staff, contractors and subscriptions.

Apps and tools can automate your business, save you time and keep you focused on the things that move the needle in your business.

But with all the the apps or tools available today, how do you know what to use?

Let’s dive into my top 10 business tools and apps for entrepreneurs

• Business tool #1: Canva
• Business tool #2: Zoom
• Business tool #3: PLANN
• Business tool #4: Tailwind
• Business tool #5: ClickUp
• Business tool #6: Flodesk
• Business tool #7: MemberVault
• Business tool #8: Ubersuggest
• Business tool #9: Calendly
• Business tool #10: Hemingway Editor

Business Tool #1 for Entrepreneurs: Canva

A great Australian company, this tool is a must have!

It saves you a lot of time and money!

Gone are the days of needing to pay for a dedicated graphic designer. Canva enables you to do it all yourself…or your trusty VA.

Design social media graphics, PDFs, presentations and more in no time.

The team at Canva have made it so easy and accessible. There’s a free version but if you upgrade to the PRO version, you unlock great features. You can save your brand colours, fonts and logos for quick and beautiful designs.

The PRO version also unlocks access to more great photos and elements you can use in your designs.

Business Tool #2 for Entrepreneurs: Zoom

Communication must have for the busy Entrepreneur.

Whilst the peak of the pandemic is behind us, when everything was done with the trusty help of Zoom. The need for Zoom is still essential for the busy entrepreneur.

As the world returns to its new normal, face-to-face events, coaching sessions and meetings are back!

Still, there’s appetite from many business coaches and clients to be online.

And for the busy entrepreneur, it’s a more efficient use of your time.

When you run your business online, Zoom enables to you do back to back calls. Gone are the days of the time suck of transit time and associated costs.

There’s pros and cons to both virtual meetings and events and in- person ones, but the pandemic has changed things forever. Some would argue for the better.

As an Australian, I used to spend a lot of money travelling to the USA for various trainings. Virtual trainings wtan option.

Now, many are offered online to cater for a global audience.

This saves so much time and money…and also provides an opportunity for hosts to capture a global audience.

Win Win!

To recap, Zoom is a must have tool for any Entrepreneur.

Despite the peak of the pandemic being over, virtual meetings, events and trainings should still form part of your mix of offerings. And the way you run your business.

Embrace the technology!

Business Tool #3 for Entrepreneurs: PLANN

Social media! Both the key and bain of our business existence!

A presence on your social media channel of choice is important for growing our audience. And for connecting with other like minded entrepreneurs.

It’s also a massive time suck that can send you down many rabbit warrens on the regular.

This is why a scheduling tool is a no brainer…it saves you so much time and money!

If you’re yet to embrace these, your life and business is about to change.

A massive fan of batching, using a scheduling tool like my fave PLANN, saves you so much time.

A side effect of using a scheduling tool is embracing batching your content.

Schedule into your calendar every month, 2 months or 3 months that you’re going to batch create your upcoming content in Canva.

Then you’re ready to batch your social media scheduling!

PLANN is an adaptive tool you can use for five different channels:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Pinterest

So, you can schedule content across multiple channels, using the same or similar creative!

And when you batch schedule in advance, you can set and forget. It makes running your business a lot more efficient and a huge time saver.

I particularly love PLANN for managing my Instagram account. It lays out the tiles so you can see how your feed will look. Not all planners offer this but it’s a key feature of PLANN!

Business Tool #4 for Entrepreneurs: Tailwind

Another scheduling tool, you can use Tailwind for Instagram and Pinterest. Personally, I currently use Tailwind for Pinterest only (as I love PLANN so much!)

If you’re delving into Pinterest as a marketing strategy, Tailwind is a must.

Tailwind makes it easy to schedule posts, find content, monitor conversations, amplify your reach and track your results!

It’s also the only way to keep up with the algorithms and the volume of pins you should post to succeed with Pinterest.

Tailwind optimises your pinning schedules based on when your audience is most active.

Another great feature is being able to schedule pins onto multiple boards at the same time! Increases your reach and saves you a lot of time!

Pinterest and Tailwind are not for the faint hearted but once you get the hang of them, you’ll never look back! Perseverance is key here!

Business Tool #5 for Entrepreneurs: ClickUp

The three pillars I guide my clients through are Mapping, Mindset and Marketing.

ClickUp comes in when we talk Mapping. It’s all about Planning. Project Management. Organisation! Productivity!

I love this stuff but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity tool you can use with your team to plan, track and manage projects. You can also build workflows and create marketing campaigns.

It’s packed with features to help you simplify your workflow, save time and increase your work efficiency.

Streamline your projects and optimise the potential for your business to grow!

Some of it’s most notable features include:

• Multiple views: ie. List, Board, Calendar, Forms and Activity, among others
• Team communication
• Real-time reporting
• Time Tracking

If you don’t have a product management or productivity tool, or are looking for a new platform, you can’t get any better than ClickUp.

Business Tool #6 for Entrepreneurs: Flodesk

Flodesk is the most visually and aesthetically appealing email service provider on the market.

And more importantly, it’s easy to use. I’ve tried several different email platforms and Flodesk is the clear winner for me.

It’s really easy to use, with countless templates you can customise for your branding to create high converting emails.

They’ve also just released stunning new sales pages to further enhance sales conversions.

Not to mention a 50% discount for the first year, for new subscribers.

Business Tool #7 for Entrepreneurs: Membervault

Whether you work 1:1 or offer courses and memberships, using a membership site like Membervault is a game changer.

It saves you a lot of time and creates a better customer experience for your clients.

I’ve tried many different membership platforms and Membervault came out on top for me. There are many others like Kajabi, Searchie and Kartra.

When choosing a platform these factors should be considered:

• Cost: running an online business is empowering but the associated costs of the various apps you should/could use can add up
• Ease of use: how easy they are to use makes a massive difference. I’ve tried some out that promised the world with unique functionality. But they were so confusing and time consuming that I had to give up. I don’t want that for you!
• Appealing look and feel: how easy it is for you to upload your content as well as the experience for your clients is so important. You want to make sure it’s easy to find where the downloadable documents are and where and how to view the videos

Membervault is easy to use and has simple functionality. Unfortunately, they recently increased their prices but they’re still competitively priced and value for money when you price match with other platforms.

Business Tool #8 for Entrepreneurs: Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a game changer if you’re looking to grow your website traffic through content marketing (I hope you are!)

It’s a SEO tool that generates new keyword ideas, monthly search volume and interesting competitor-related data.

It can also help you identify broken links on your website and enhancements you can make to improve your SEO.

You can also receive daily rank tracking to see how yourrSEO efforts are improving your rankings in Google and other search engines.

It can also track your competitors website content and what is likely working and get valuable ideas you could replicate on your own website!

There’s a free version and also a relatively low cost monthly or lifetime pricing.

Business Tool #9 for Entrepreneurs: Calendly

Calendly is a must have tool if you’re scheduling appointments with clients. It eliminates the need sending emails back and forth to arrangement appointments. Your clients can select a day and time that works with their schedule. It’s brilliant!

Plus it sends reminders so you don’t have to manually follow up clients and miss out on potential earnings if they don’t show up.

You can integrate it with many websites and streamline your processes. And it accepts payments so you don’t have to chase your clients.

It also enables you to brand it and ask pre-qualifying questions before appointments.

I use their Essentials Plan.

Business Tool #10 for Entrepreneurs: Hemingway Editor

Hemingway is a new new tool I’ve recently discovered for writing my blogs and emails.

It’s brilliant!

It helps you write with less words and get to the point.

It highlights words that are boring, complicated and written in a passive voice.

It’s not an online tool, but one you download to your computer. You can use it anytime, without the internet (brilliant if you want to write with gettin distracted!) and you can directly publish your blogs to WordPress!

You can also easily import text from Word documents and export to text, PDF or Word when you’ve finished!

I’ve used it to write this blog and it’s saved me so much time and I’m feeling more and more confident with every blog I write!

10 brilliant tools and apps for the busy Entrepreneur

So there you have it. My top 10 tools and apps for Entrepreneurs to help you save time, money and attract more clients efficiently!