We’ve been in total workflow with the state of our business lately.
Yes, part of it is to do with our mindset. When we have the work/life balance nailed down, work becomes so much more, well, easy and enjoyable. And isn’t that was the freelance life is all about?
But part of the work/life balance is having the tools in place to make that workflow flow like magic.
When our tools are working for us, we don’t need to worry or waste time on something that isn’t bringing profit to our business — or our lives.
We’re sharing our 5 favourite tools. Without these tools, Thankful Cow’s workflow would be a bit of a mess!
Trello for Workflow
Trello has been an absolute game changer for us! We use it for literally every aspect of our lives – business, personal, and podcasting.
This tool lets you create boards for any occasion, add people to them – instant and easy collaboration around the world, and then set out lists for you to work through.
For business, here at Thankful Cow Solutions, we have a weekly list that helps us keep track of what work we need to complete on any given day. We also have individual boards for all our clients, so none of their work gets missed! We fill our client boards full of handy info to have (quick links to accounts, for example), questions to ask them, and shared workflow items.
For personal, well, we have a lot of personal boards!! Some of our favourites are for general life activities, event planning, and to help us keep on track of DIY in our house.
Not to mention, Trello is awesome for keeping track of your travels; when we went on our last 3 month journey around North America, we had a list with links to all individual flight and rail tickets and dates, quick links to important travel documents, and even some fun lists of places we want to eat at! It’s a total game changer.
Trello also makes podcasting easy. You can share boards with your co-hosts (if you have them) to keep track of all potential episode topics, manage scheduling and post-production, to-do lists, easy access to resources, guest lists, and MORE.
Because Trello is totally customisable, it really is the perfect tool to improve your workflow! Check it out for yourself – and if you want to see it in action, hop on over to our business besties’ YouTube for this awesome Trello tutorial!
Slack for Communication
Slack is the perfect tool to communicate with your teams!
Even (especially?!) as online business owners, communication is vital to a well working team. Slack lets us create dedicated channels in an outside app (available on desktop and phone) so you can keep your work chats in one space.
Super handy to track and refer back to conversations, connect and grow with your colleagues, and, well, just generally have that “officevibe” you tend to miss when you’re working freelance.
Check Slack out for yourself, or again, catch the Moni Does Stuff tutorial!
Google Drive for Simple Sharing
Honestly, we would be absolutely lost with Google Drive.
Gone are the days of using Microsoft Office for all your admin needs. With Google Drive, you can create documents (like Word), sheets (think Excel), powerpoint presentations, and more.
Plus, you can create, organise, and share folders. It’s perfect for working in teams, because you can easily share your work.
In fact, anyone can access a Google Doc whether they have their own Drive or not! By providing shareable links, all it takes is an internet connection to access the date you want them to see.
If you’re not already set up with a Google account, it’s so easy. Just head over to Google and click Sign Up in the upper right corner.
Have fun enjoying the future of document sharing!
Dubsado for Workflow
What if we told you that you don’t have to use 4 different tools to keep track of your clients, hours, contracts, invoices, and more?!
Dubsado is truly the Queen of business management software and our business has changed way for the better because of it!
Before we started using Dubsado, we used Google Docs to create our proposals, a booking tool to manage client calls, a separate invoicing software to send out invoices, and a timekeeping app to track hours.
But we don’t have to do that anymore!
Dubsado has it all – and has recently rolled out their own scheduling software as well! You know what this means? We literally can run our entire business and official client communication through one programme.
One of the things we really like about Dubsado is that it’s totally customisable to suit our business. We can upload brand fonts and colours, word everything how we want to, and set triggers for workflows.
And you can, too!
We’d wholly encourage you to level up your business with Dubsado. Guarantee you won’t look backwards and will amaze in how flexible and useful it is!
Check Dubsado out for yourself.
Discord for Community
Okay, so Discord isn’t strictly a business programme. Well, hardly at all. In fact, it just barely scrapes onto this list.
But we’re putting it here because we both podcast as a hobby (but also watch this space for potential future happenings in the Thankful Cow podcast realm, haha) and it’s hugely beneficial for connecting with your podcast audience if you’re in a geeky/niche zone!
Discord is basically like Slack, only for fun, games, hobbies, and gamers. It’s easily customisable, you can create channels and make them public, private, subscription based, and more.
The best thing about Discord is building and connecting to your community! We hang out with our friends both in text and voice chats, record podcasts, and connect with other podcasters in our network.
It’s a fun programme that really is a game changer in the niche podcast network!
This post contains some affiliate links. If you do buy any of the programmes listed with one of our links, we’ll get a small kickback for it. We only recommend products we use and love ourselves!
Amanda Sloan is a Content and Copywriter at Thankful Cow Solutions and host of Geek Herring. She’s a lover of geek feminism, podcasting, gaming, food, and wellness. You’ll find her talking and writing about feminist discourse, all things geeky, vegan food and nutrition, podcasting, travel, and positive mindset.
Call The Cow to find out how we can help YOU move forward with virtual assistance, content, or copywriting. 🐮
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