My favourite tools for self-employed life

I love reading about the tools people rely on to manage their work, so I thought I would shared some of my favourite tools for self-employed life, and how I use them. Some of the links in here are affilliate links, but I’ve only included stuff I have used regularly over a long period of time, so they’ve been WELL tried and tested by me.

GSuite / Google Workspace

What don’t I use this for? My emails are all hosted in Gmail, my files are all stored on the cloud, and when I organise meetings myself, I find Google Meet infinitely easier to use (and cheaper) than Zoom. When I start working with a new client, their questionnaire is sent to them as a shared Google doc, and my weekly check-ins are done on a shared document as well. My finances are all organised in a Google spreadsheet – I basically use it for everything.

Once this is all set up, the Google programmes are so intuitive and easy to use, and I really love using them. BUT it did take me a bit of faffing about to actually get them set up. Getting my own email address (hello@katiemorwenna.co.uk) feed through to gmail seemed like it might be beyond me. I actually put off doing this for TWO YEARS because it seemed so intimidating.

But then my amazing hosting company (see below!) gave me some step by step instructions and helped me get it set up, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. It did require *quite* a lot of concentration on my part, though!

WordPress

I know that Squarespace is the cool new guy on the block for creating websites and blogs, but I started out on WordPress, and here I shall remain. I love them because whatever you want to do on your website, there’s a plugin for that.

WordPress does sometimes require a bit of technical know-how, particularly in getting set up. But if you find a good hosting provider (mine is *excellent*), they often have step-by-step instructions, or can help you when you get stuck. If you have issues once you’re up and running, there are very active WordPress help boards. However, I’ve yet to get any technical support from someone actually employed by WordPress, which isn’t brilliant.

Netnerd*

If you have a self-hosted website or blog, I cannot recommend Netnerd enough. Someone in the Doing it for the Kids Facebook group recommended them, and think they are brilliant. It’s SO much cheaper than what I was spending before, and the customer service is outstanding. Really highly recommend.

Flodesk*

Technically I don’t NEED Flodesk. My mailing list is not over 2000 subscribers, and I could therefore use the free Mailchimp option. BUT Flodesk lets me do so much for my $19 a month (until the end of November 2021, you get it half price for life by using an affilliate link like mine).

I have all my workflows set up so that the right people get the right content.Deliverying freebies to people is easy (check out my freebies here, if you don’t have them already). And generally just doing anything within the platform feels straightforward.

It’s a female owned business, and they have been incredibly responsive to people’s requests for new functionality. I love having my emails with them, and can’t see myself ever leaving.

HP Instant Ink

I have an HP printer and when it’s low on ink, the printer tells HP that, and they send me more ink.

This is such a great customer experience, and it costs so little (it could even be free, depending on how much you print). So worth signing up for and thinking about if you need a new printer.

Calendly

If you book in a call with me, I will send you my Calendly link. It’s SO handy and makes setting up meetings so much easier. You can see availability and book in a time that suits both of us. It DOES mean that I need to make sure that my digital calendar (I use a Google calendar, what a surprise) is completely up to date. But I should be doing that anyway. There is a free option if you don’t have many different meeting types, and I generally find this to be an absolute life saver.

Canva* and Photoshop

I love these two pieces of image editing software. I use them both almost every day.

In Canva I:

• Set up blog post images, like the ones the top and bottom of this post
• Create my free and paid downloads
• Lay out any presentations I am giving (SO much better than powerpoint)
• Occasionally create images for authors to use. I create the background in photoshop, upload it to Canva, and then share it with them. They can then add their own text.

Photoshop I use for anything more complex that just moving images and text around. So, I create 3D book packshots (using these free templates) and social cards for authors to share on their channels.

I still have the free version of Canva, and it does pretty much everything I need it to. That said, I do occasionally buy a nice image or effect.

Pen and paper!

And my absolute favourite – pen and paper. I still jot most things down in a notebook or weekly planner.

I DO use Trello as an organisational app. And for some things, it’s absolutely perfect. But for the most part, I fall back on nice (and not so nice) notebooks and a black bic biro.

Whether it’s planning a marketing campaign or laying out a social schedule for a book I’m working on, nothing beats pen and paper.

What are your favourite tools to manage self-employed life? Or your favourite work tools, generally?

PIN FOR LATER