One of the things that I thought would be useful to others starting a business is to describe the types of software I use in the event this could help someone else. For many who think “you don’t need all this”. You don’t quite understand how organized I need to be at all times. ;-) I don’t want a list of things rolling around in my head in the middle of the night. I want to know where my appointments and work are, and make it easy for myself to deliver great service. It doesn’t have to be an obsession either. It took me about 2 weeks to set all this up, and now I don’t have to think about it anymore. No affiliate links here!

Couldn’t run the business without:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: the network

• Quickbooks Online: the numbers

• GSuite: storage, email, docs, presentations

• Hubspot (CRM, email, meetings, pipeline). I evaluated a few others.

• Squarespace (I could have built my own but why?) I evaluated a few others like Wix. Mobile templates are really great.

It’s worth spending money on tools that multiply my time. All of my tools need to have strong mobile apps to log and update information. I can update my contacts, meetings, website, blog, finances from anywhere in the world.

Nice to have:

• Buffer: social media posting

• Google Analytics: obvious

• DocuSign Truly useful, fast, easy. Even if others might be cheaper, everyone trusts and knows this you will work with.

• Kapwing video editor

• LinkedHub: easy to add LinkedIn profiles to Hubspot

• Google Tag Manager (sorry, I’ve been in eCommerce too long, who can survive without a tag manager :-)

If these went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t make any real difference to my consulting business. I would just lose a little time.