When you're a self-employed entrepreneur, you wear many hats. In some cases, you wear ALL of the hats. In my case, I'm wearing a KC Royals ballcap right now, while in Tokyo, representing Kansas City. Why? Because I have no boss and I wear what I want! But I digress.
When you are self-employed, you are responsible for everything within your business.
It’s no surprise the number of people in the gig economy is exponentially growing. According to Intuit’s latest study, Dispatches From the New Economy: The On-Demand Workforce, the number of people working on-demand jobs will grow from 3.0 million Americans to 7.7 million in 2020, and will reach a whopping 9.2 million by 2021.
Being self-employed can be a challenge.
I reached out to several self-employed entrepreneurs to gauge which tools they use to help them manage their small business, venture, or career.
I asked Joel Comm, a live video expert and 12-time NY Times best selling author of the upcoming book, “Self-Employed”, his thoughts on being Self-Employed and he said, “As a perpetually (and unavoidably) self-employed businessman, I can’t imagine operating without the freedom to manage my own schedule. Being self-employed means I live my life on my terms!”
Personally, I've been self-employed a few different times, and I am currently the cofounder of a digital agency, CCP.Digital, based out of Kansas City. Even though, we have a growing team of marketing & growth hackers, I still view myself as self-employed.
Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Accounting, Invoicing, Communication, PR and others. You name it, you're responsible for it.
Here are some tools that may help you manage all of your hats.
FILE MANAGEMENT
When it comes to the day-to-day business/admin functions, one of the tools mentioned overwhelmingly was Google GSuite. Having Google Drive, with Docs, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations and of course, using Google to power your company business email, this tool is a no-brainer. Dropbox and Box are also great solutions.
CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT
Nimble is a social customer relationship management platform that allows you to keep track of all of your contacts social activity to build relationships with them.
Nimble has an amazing Chrome extension that allows you to roll over anyone's name and add them to your Nimble database. You can then connect with them on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks. It's a solid tool to have in your arsenal.
ORGANIZATIONAL TOOLS
A great productivity tool for the self-employed is Evernote. Evernote has stand alone native apps for PC, Mac, Android, and iOS. They work great and allow you to keep notes on virtually anything. I personally use it to keep track of my to-do tasks.
And it was instrumental in planning and research for my book, Digital Sense, the Common Sense approach to Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technologies, and Customer Experience.
Without Evernote and Google Docs, I would have never been able to write a book.
FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS
One of the companies at the forefront of the self-employed movement is Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks. Intuit has a specific version called QuickBooks Self-Employed that can be a valuable tool in your arsenal. From automatic mileage tracking, to easily separating business and personal expenses and along with invoicing and accounting features, in many cases, it is the master control for the financial health of your business.
Every single entrepreneur that I asked mentioned QuickBooks – even a pro golfer! Yep, you read that right. Intuit was a sponsor of the recent AT&T Pro-Am and I had the chance to hang out a bit with pro golfer Matt Jones who mentioned, “I’m a self-employed golfer, and I use Quickbooks to track all of my expenses.”
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Next on the list is Trello, Asana, and Basecamp. These are project management tools to help you stay organized and on task. As mentioned, I use Evernote for personal to-dos, but for my agency, we use Basecamp 3, which helps keep everyone on the same page with each project that we are working on.
SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARD
For social sharing and management of your social media, there are many tools. Hootsuite and SproutSocial are great tools for SMBs and the self-employed, who are responsible for sharing news about your business on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
WEBSITE TOOLS
If your business is digitally savvy, you have a website. Make sure it definitely has Google Analytics on it at a minimum. With GA, you're able to track your web traffic, see which pages are driving traffic, your conversions, the bounce rate of your pages, and gain many other valuable insights.
You would also be wise to have the Facebook custom audience pixel on your site, as well. If you are driving people to your website with social media, you will definitely want to retarget them and market to them later on.
TIME TRACKING
If you are working on multiple projects and need to bill certain clients for various amounts of time, you may need something like Toggl. It helps you manage all of your daily time.
Also, if you are wanting to be more productive overall, consider using a pomodoro timer to keep you on task!
CALENDAR & MEETING SCHEDULING
Scheduling meetings can sometimes be a CHORE! 17 emails back and forth until a time is decided on is a blatant waste of time. Consider using a tool like Calendly or Gigabook to help you schedule your meetings more effectively.
I couldn’t manage my business without one of these tools.
CREDIT CARD READERS
Changes are, if you are self-employed, you will need a way to take credit cards with your mobile device. Square and Paypal are perfect for those tasks. Unless you have an iPhone 7, and you no longer have the headphone jack to plug in the dongle.
Thanks Apple!
BUSINESS TRAVEL
If you are a road warrior, then it is imperative that you have some great travel apps to help you navigate. I like Skiplagged to find the best priced flights. Hotel Tonight, AirBNB for lodging. FlightTrack Pro and Tripit are also good choices.
And of course, Uber and Lyft. Duh. (Unless you’re in Austin, TX)
OUTSOURCED TALENT
As a self-employed person, you are typically an army of one. What do you do when you need to ramp up or need some bench strength to help get you over the hump? Personally, I use virtual assistants and outsourced talent. There is a ton of services out there, you just need to look in the right places. Upwork is a community of over 12m freelancers available to help you. Fiverr is a great place to get cheap tasks done. Growgig is another site for small recurring marketing tasks for your company.
And if you are looking to hire talent to help full-time, consider using a service like Staff Virtual, they have a ton of qualified full-time people in the Philippines, who can help your business while you are sleeping at night. I’ve used them extensively in my business, as they all speak great english, and they are all college educated.
Being Self-Employed is a Journey
Being self-employed is a challenge and with the right tools, you can manage your business more effectively. Tools are just tools, however. You need to first have a solid vision, goals, and roadmap set up before you can be sure of which tools you might need. Hopefully this gets you going in the right direction! Feel free to share and comment below with any other tools you think self-employed entrepreneurs need.