As a business owner, I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my processes. Anything that can help me be more productive and creative, then the happier my team, my clients, and I are. Below are tools and workflows that I have found to be particularly helpful in leverage my time, delegate tasks, and foster creativity.

Morning Pages

I've written about this practice extensively - sharing why I keep up with Morning Pages and how I leverage Morning Pages for my work. Writing my Morning Pages every day helps me clear my mind, focus on my priorities, and generate new ideas. Over the years, I've switched from writing by hand to typing my Morning Pages in Google Docs, and now I keep them in Notion.

Notion

Speaking of Notion, this is another tool I've grown to love. Notion is incredibly versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes. For me, it serves as my company wiki, my editorial calendar, and our family's recipe cookbook (just to name a few ways I use it). I find that Notion is particularly helpful for big-picture thinking and brainstorming. In addition to housing our SOPs, I also use notion as a creative space for product development. Many people also use Notion as their project management tool, but for me, I find ClickUp more suited for those needs.

ClickUp

Ah, ClickUp. This, like Notion, has been a gamechanger in my business! ClickUp is my project management software and my CRM. I use it to track projects, tasks, client work, sales pipeline, and contacts. ClickUp is incredibly powerful and customizable. It's been essential for keeping track of all the moving parts in my business.

Telegram

Telegram is a tool I use both personally and professionally. I love using it to stay in touch with friends and also for communicating with clients. Clients can easily talk through their questions and ideas in a voice message, and then get my answers and feedback. Hearing each other's tone in messages enhances the coaching experience tremendously compared to emails back and forth.

I also use Telegram when I'm on the go to record messages when I get hit with flashes of inspiration. Those recordings then get added to ClickUp and turned into tasks. 

Canva

Next up is Canva. What a beautifully helpful, user-friendly tool. Now, some design purists might snub at Canva and I get it. There are certainly other professional-grade options out there. And there are plenty of situations in which those should be used. But Canva provides so much agility for me and my team.

We use canva for presentation slides, case studies, digital and print ads, lead magnets, and more. Their new AI functions - like image creation - are pretty handy as well. 

I also use Canva as my mind mapping tool for larger projects. 

Honorable Mentions - Personal Productivity

Under the umbrella of personal productivity, these apps also get used daily.

Spotify for podcasts, LoFi and binural beats for deep work. Freeletics for work workouts so I don't have to spend mental energy on what my workout for the day should be. Down Dog is my daily dose of peace with yoga, meditation, and breathwork.

Whether you, too, are an entrepreneur or just looking for ways to be more creative and productive, I recommend you give these tools a whirl!