10 Tools I Use Every Day in My Creative Business
Today I wanted to share the tools that I use every day in my business. These are organization, design and pretty much every tool in between. Here are the 10 tools I use every day.
ClickUp
I will be doing multiple posts about how I use ClickUp, but it’s basically my all in one organizer. For starters, it’s free, but I pay for the upgraded version, which includes unlimited storage, unlimited views, unlimited integrations, unlimited reporting, and guests. It also includes goals, portfolios and custom fields. Basically, it allowed me to create every single thing I use in my everyday life in ClickUp. From blogging calendars to client work notes, everything is stored within ClickUp.
Adobe Illustrator
I use a lot of the big Adobe programs (Illustrator, Acrobat, Photoshop, Lightroom & Premiere) almost every day, but I definitely use Illustrator every day. Whether it’s creating icons for a client’s website or creating social media images for my own businesses, Illustrator is my first choice.
iPad (GoodNotes)
I just got an iPad and an Apple Pencil for Christmas, which is something I’ve wanted for a really long time. I use the app GoodNotes to store a few important things. First, I keep my daily running to-do list as it’s own notebook in GoodNotes. All the to do’s are in ClickUp, but it helps me to have them all in a list form in GoodNotes. I also keep my 2020 digital planner there, as well as notebooks for each client to take notes during meetings.
Trello
Since discovering many other productivity tools that seem to work better for me, I don’t use Trello as much. That being said, a lot of my clients do use Trello, so that’s why I end up using it most days. I currently create a Trello board for each client, but I’m planning on switching over to ClickUp once I figure out a good way to display client information.
Slack
Slack is the way that I communicate with my clients. I find it SO much easier than communicating anywhere else since everything is searchable and in one place. It’s probably one of my most-used apps.
Google Drive
I create things with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides all of the time, and I also use Google Drive to store other types of files, like images and PDFs that I need to share with clients. I may be changing this as I figure out how to use ClickUp to its full potential.
Airtable
Airtable is pretty much spreadsheets on crack. I store all of my client social media calendars in Airtable, as well as a few project management spreadsheets for a few clients who prefer Airtable. I love using Airtable for social media calendars since it’s so much more organized and beautiful than say, a Google sheet.
Toggl
Toggl is how I track all of my time for client billing. I simply create clients, and then tasks inside each client. Then, at the end of the two weeks, I export the report and bill them using PayPal. Toggl also integrates with ClickUp, although I’m not quite used to using it through ClickUp yet.
Buffer
Buffer is the social media scheduler I use for a majority of my clients, as well as my own business. It’s so easy to set up the posting calendar, and then just add posts in for each day. It’s the most intuitive platform in my experience.
Envato Elements
I paid monthly for Envato Elements all of last year but decided to upgrade to the yearly plan this year, which basically pays for itself in the first month. Envato Elements provides unlimited access to TONS of images, vector art, mockups, fonts, music, video templates, etc. It seriously has leveled up my business and I’m so thankful something like it exists.
What tools do you use every day?
Thanks for reading!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Abbie is a full-time virtual assistant and blogger. She runs the blog Angelic Systems, about creating systems and workflows to improve productivity.
