Over the past few years of building my business online I have found that finding and using the right kind of business tools can be the difference between insanity and peace in my everyday world.  I not only have a business to run, I have a crazy busy household with 4 awesome children, a loving husband (who also has 2 businesses), and a very smelly but beautiful dog!

So keeping everything running smoothly takes a little finess, alot of patience, and the help of some very much needed tools and resources!  Here’s a quick list of the tools and resources I love to keep me organized and productive everyday (and half way ~ sane)!

My favorite tools and resources:

Basecamp This cool tool keeps my ongoing projects ultra organized.  I can manage many projects at one time along with any subcontractors or outsourcers I may be using.  I can also give other people access to the ongoing projects for overall better communication and management per project! This is a must have tool if you work with several outside sources or have many projects going on at one time.

Hootesuite As a social media manager I manage many social media accounts at one time. Hootesuite allows for me to have one central place to monitor and manage all of my accounts to save time and assure I don’t miss a beat when taking care of things on a day to day basis for my clients.

Aweber If you have a business online then you should be using some type of autoresponder for maximum email follow up with your potential and existing clients.  Aweber makes it easy to build a list, monitor your progress, schedule out messages for ongoing contact, and more. The ability to schedule out ongoing email sequences is a great way to stay in contact with your prospects without having to be tied to your computer every minute.

QuickBooks Managing your books for any business is something that can be time consuming and overwhelming if you do not have the right systems in place from the beginning.  Quickbooks makes it easy to keep track of what’s going on with your day to day funds! It does take a little time to learn if you are going to attempt to do it yourself (or also hiring a great bookkeeper is always a great way to go too to save yourself the headache!)

My beautiful and lovely house cleaner! This is the best resource and my most favorite on the list!  For along time I tried to be super woman and do it all myself… what was I thinking!  If you know anything about having 4 kids, a husband, and a dog… you will quickly realize that having a house cleaner come every couple of weeks is a complete and no nonsense life saver.  Even though with 6 people and a dog living in our house I still have to clean something up everyday… at least knowing she is coming every other week to take care of the big stuff I can give myself a break once in a while because I know the cleaning calvary will be here any day now! (As a self pronounced perfectionist..this is huge for me!)

I would love to hear what tools you use everyday in your business and life to keep things going smoothly … please leave a comment below to share!

To Your Success!

Kate Wilber

The Marketing Momma