Today I’m celebrating the 6 month anniversary of What’s Next. When you’ve worked as an employee for almost twenty years starting up on your own is a daunting prospect, but I’m so pleased I took the leap. The biggest blocker for me was fear. Fear of instability and of putting my work out into the big bad world for all to critique. What I’ve learnt so far is to have more faith in my own abilities and to trust the process of building a business. Hardly groundbreaking insight, but tough to put into practice.
If you have the hankering to start up on your own, here are a few of my favourite tools for starting up on a shoestring.
Trello Basic project management tool. Create boards to track your sales pipeline, your paid projects, and your own marketing efforts. The free version offers enough to get you started.
Canva Simple graphic design tool with basic free version, perfect for social media post creative (and a whole lot more).
Grammarly Check spelling, grammar and get suggestions to improve the clarity of your writing. The pro version was one of my first investments, it works out as a very cheap proofreader.
FreeAgent This is my main accounting tool. It makes it easy to track income and expenses and gives a rolling estimate allowing you to budget for tax. I now create all my invoices here too, so it’s easy to match up against payments and track overdue invoices.
Mettle A free business account for Sole Traders and Small Businesses from NatWest. This also gives you free access to FreeAgent, which it connects with. Perfect for starting up.
WordPress There are countless platforms out there to enable you to build a brand website, I’ve created a few basic sites with WordPress in the past and love the flexibility it offers.
Google Drive & Meet Full disclosure, I am absolutely rinsing Google apps. Imagine going back to sharing marked-up documents back and forth on email. No, thank you.
And, of course, LinkedIn. It is often mocked and derided, but it’s been the best platform for my business, and that’s without going full broetry.
Work in the wild
My exploration of Twitter-rival Mastodon is now live over on Practical Ecommerce.
We’re talking People Analytics and Automation over on the Talent Insight Group blog.
Fresh copy has hit the ITEC North East website, head over to discover their range of training courses and apprenticeships.
