The Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit Free eBook Download
What can you expect to get from the Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit, and its 64 Free and Low Cost Softwares and Tools? Maybe you're new to being a Solo-Practitioner or Entrepreneur? Maybe you’ve been one for a while and you’re learning that you need to plan and optimize your business for success.
Perhaps you’re a consultant, freelancer, or a small business owner with a small team and you don’t have the budget to spend on all the Salesforce level enterprise tools out there. Whatever title you go by, there are a few commonalities that we all share. The pain-points of optimizing and organizing a business without (1) spending too much time, and (2) without spending too much money.
Ok, now that we've established that I GET YOU, let me tell you what I've done to HELP YOU. I’ve curated the Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit based on my 16 years of experience in Recruitment and HR, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area for major tech companies and design studios. I've also worked as a Solo-Practitioner 3 times. Every time, I've had to do a TON of research into tools to optimize my solo-business.
With all of this experience of being around tech, software, engineers, designers, strategists and management consultants, I’ve had to learn quickly how to organize and streamline departments while in-house and to organize my business when I’ve been an HR Consultant. This has taken A LOT of research and time… and so many failures... to find the right solutions. Why spend all that time yourself? Why not learn from my research and my learning lessons?
I put together this free Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit to help save YOU time and to save you money. The goal is that with my curated and tested Tool Guide, most Solo-Practitioner businesses or business owners with 1-3 employees can get the suite of tools needed to launch or optimize a business with a suite of tools under $75 per month (on average).
Most of the softwares and tools recommended in the Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit are free or offer entry level pricing between $5/mo to $19/mo (when they aren’t free). I’ve also partnered with a lot of these tools to offer subscribers an exclusive discount or extra features that you wouldn’t receive simply by visiting their website directly!
Tool Types included in the Free Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit eBook:
Invoicing & Bookkeeping
Payment Processing Comparison
ATS & Freelancers
Design Tools
Website Hosting & Domains
Project Management
CRM
Email Marketing
Social Media Management
Wordpress vs Squarespace
Website Design
Video Editing
Podcast Editing & Hosting
Webinar Hosting & Design
Image Resizing
Course Hosting
Gmail Contact Tools
YouTube & Insta Videos
Calendar Scheduling
All This and More…
Don’t spend all that time researching how to organize, automate and optimize. I’ve done the work. I got you!
I believe in my softwares and tools so much that I’ll provide you a sneak-peek into three of my favorite tools BUT you must sign-up to receive the exclusive discounts on each software!
Flodesk Email Marketing
Your email list will be your most valuable resource when it comes to your business. No matter what business you’re running… online course host, food-truck, marketing consultant, charter fishing boat… You NEED to build an email list and you should nurture it. I personally recommend Flodesk as the most cost-effective email marketing tool, for robust and effective email list building...and… it's beautiful and easy to use to create workflows and newsletters.
Flodesk is similar to MailChip, but with sexier templates, a better UI experience, and all the features that would cost well over $250 per month with MailChimp are only $38 per month. Guess what else? I have a referral that will provide you 1-month free so you can try the tool out, and if you like it, you’ll receive 50% off *for life* with my referral… Yup! For life… That makes your membership only $19 per month at 50% off!
In Flodesk, you’ll have the capability to build Flodesk segments with your subscribers based on where they subscribed, how you obtained their business, what their interests are etc. Then, you can set up Flodesk Workflows where emails will auto-send based on time or actions from your Flodesk segments.
The ability to set up Flodesk Forms is also available. Plus, you can integrate your Flodesk Forms with your Flodesk Workflows. This way, when someone signs up for your newsletter via a form, an email will be automatically sent to the new subscriber to welcome them and/or to deliver their promised freebie, pamphlet, flyer etc… Seriously, these features cost over $250 per month on MailChimp and MailChimp will limit your subscribers list and require you to upgrade subscriptions as your list grows. Flodesk won’t do that to you. Unlimited subscribers right in one tool with Flodesk!
Nothing compares in price, usability and features to Flodesk for Solo-Practitioners or a small business.
ClickUp Project Management
ClickUp is absolutely my new favorite tool, and one that I waited waaaaay too long to start using in my solo-practice! My business has a ton of repetitive tasks that loop back around every 2-6 weeks. Using blocks in my calendar was just clogging up appointment times with reminders of tasks that ranged from 2-60 minutes in time. Using calendar blocks is not an effective way to manage these tasks. I can also track the time it takes for each task, and business function, which I can’t do when using calendar blocks.
It took me a couple days to properly set-up ClickUp in order to manage my whole business workflow. I easily save 5 hours a week now that it’s set-up, and I never miss a task or feel like an area of my business is neglected. None of those Friday evening “Oh, I forgot to do X” thoughts anymore! I can close my laptop and enjoy my time off, knowing I don’t miss important tasks.
With ClickUp, I can set goals with milestone achievements, daily to-do’s, integrate with my gmail (or Microsoft Office if that’s your thing), Calendar, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, Zapier etc. I can attach and link documents and urls to tasks. Seriously, if you want to organize it and plan it, ClickUp can do it.
If you’re used to Trello or Asana, ClickUp has every view imaginable for the transition or for your preference; ClickUp views include list view, board view, calendar view, box view, mindmap, timetable. ClickUp offers a free plan, and one that includes every major feature for $5 a month (Unlimited Plan is $5 a month and the Business Plan is $9 a month). I have the ClickUp Unlimited Plan at $5 a month and it has every feature that I can ever use as a Solo-Practitioner. I use the Android app (iOS too) and the reminders and integration are flawless. I can’t recommend ClickUp enough!
Wave Free Accounting & Bookkeeping Software
I used WaveApps (now called Wave) all the way back in 2011 when I was consulting in Toronto. Yes, it works in USD too. All the features for invoicing, bookkeeping and accounting are completely free. Wave makes its money on payment processing and payroll features. I’ve never used Wave for those features, but if you want to integrate services, it has that capability with similar fees as all the major service providers in the space.
The nice thing with Wave is that there are no monthly fees until you get into the payroll service offerings. Otherwise there are no monthly fees at all, and the only other fees are payroll processing. For invoicing and bookkeeping only, Wave is completely free and a great and robust tool!
Final Thoughts…
If you like the three tools mentioned above, you may very well be interested in the Solo-Practitioner Business Tool Kit. It’s completely free. I would be very surprised if you’ve heard of all 64 Tools and Softwares recommended in the free eBook and guide!
