This is a collection of my hand-picked and battle-tested tools that I use in my business and life.
I would never recommend anything that I don’t use myself. This means that you’ll find some affiliate links in here, which means that in exchange for sharing information about these resources and showing you the light, I may get a kickback for the referral. Helping me help you. 🙂
The following resources are free. They may have paid upgrades, but if they’re listed in this section, I likely use the free version alone
Image Creation – Canva is one of my favorite tools. I used to make all of my images.
Note Taking / Organization – EvernoteEvernote changed my life. I’ll go into more detail on how I use it soon, but until then check out this blog post. You can get a free month of premium with my link here.
Documentation & Resources – Notion.soNotion is an incredible new platform that aims to change the way we approach word processing. I’ve found it to be perfect for speccing out designs and other documentation, since it allows you to seamlessly input graphics, gifs, videos, links, and pretty much anything you could want to do. After that, the page you create can be accessed from mobile or desktop browsers by anyone you allow, either completely public or by specific email addresses.
Drawing Diagrams – Lucid ChartLucid Chart has been my go-to for all kinds of diagram drawing for years now. They have a very reasonable freemium model, and most people should be able to do everything they need on the free plan.
Project Management – FreedcampI’ve used every popular project management solution there is out there, and Freedcamp takes the cake. And better yet it’s completely free to use, which frankly blows my mind because of how good this platform is. It’s not even the ‘freemium’ type of free where you need to upgrade in order to really dig into what it has to offer – everything you need for your whole team is ready to go. It has a customizable dashboard so everyone can set up their homebase the way they like, and you can have unlimited projects organized between your unlimited team members. Home run.
Automated Contracts & Invoices – Hello BonsaiHello Bonsai streamlined my invoicing, getting paid, and remembering to get paid (how strange a problem that is). It keeps track of recurring invoices, 50% start/finish project invoices, and more. And it’s free to start with, only charging like $1 per invoice, or some equally negligible amount.July 2017 Update: Hello Bonsai has changed their pricing and now doesn’t have a good free plan anymore. I recommend Invoice Ninja now.
Productivity – Rescue TimeRescueTime is a time tracking app that scratches my ‘relentless productivity itch’ by quietly running in the background of your computer and phone to generate reports on how you use your time.