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Today, I am sharing all about my favorite organization apps. Being a digital entrepreneur means that so much of my work and life is done online and these are the most helpful apps to use when it comes to getting the job done.
Getting organized does not have to be a chore.
It does not have to be boring or overwhelming.
There are so many apps and so many tools now to help us with the process. I’m hoping that some of these apps will help you to get things in order as we prepare to finish out the year strong.
Here’s some of my favorite organization apps and why I love them.
- Airtable
- Google Drive
- Google Calendar
- Bookmarks Bar
- QuickBooks & A2X
- Phone Alarms
- Photo Albums
- Pinterest Secret Folders
- Goodreads
- Loom
Honestly, many of these aren’t even apps per say, but ways that I use tools to help organize my business and life. So I’m hoping that one at least might be helpful for you.
Airtable
The first one is Airtable. Airtable is my content management system.
I run a portfolio of a couple different websites and have a lot of content to keep organized.
Airtable allows me to keep the content for all of my different businesses in one database. There are as many custom tables as I want & I can organize it all exactly how I need to.
It has everything on it from the titles, to URLs, and photo attachments.
My team can actively track when we’ve shared things, what still needs to be shared on certain platforms and even ideas for the future.
If you don’t have a content management system you’re currently using, then I would highly suggest you check out Airtable.
Google Drive
Google Drive has become such a game changer for me. Having everything organized and folders by business, by part of the business, by section, and by timeline.
The biggest help it has given me is to the joy being able to find the stuff I need when I need it!
I have never been able to find things in my business quite so fast. And the great thing about Google Drive is it syncs seamlessly from my computer, to my laptop, to my phone. It syncs up anywhere in the world and let’s me access all of my business assets- all of the time.
It makes it really easy to share.
One of my favorite things about Google Drive is I can make folders that are shareable with team members. So say I have somebody that is wanting to edit videos I can put all the raw videos in one folder and give them a link to another folder to download from this and upload the completed ones and we all have access.
It’s hands down the simplest organization option for digital business assets
Just to give you an example, what my folders look like. I start at my main business level. I break things down by sites. I break things down by photos. I break things down by texts, by posts, by products, by podcasts, by anything I want to. And so it allows me to really be able to access anything I need pretty easily
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is what I use for my digital calendar. Now, I do use paper calendars and digital calendars connected side by side but Google Calendar has been really great for me as a business owner because I can make separate calendars that I can share with different people.
And this has been awesome.
- I can set up a meeting calendar and share that with anybody scheduling my meetings.
- I can set up a recording calendar and share that with my husband so he knows what I’m going to be home recording and hopefully doesn’t run in the house and bug me.
- I can set up content calendars
- Even task based calendars
I think the shareability of the Google calendar is one of its greatest benefits.
The color coding system on Google Calendar is also really awesome, especially for those of us who like things to be a little bit on the planning pretty side.
A great way to do this. Is to go onto Pinterest and look for your color palettes or your vibes and grab those hex colors. You can change your Google Calendar color to be any kind of color you want.
So you can make it match your brand. You can make it match your own personal style. It really allows your calendaring not to just be effective, but also pretty which we’re all for
Bookmarks Bar
Number four is my chrome bookmarks bar. Do you use your bookmark bar?
I have really started using mine effectively and it’s been super helpful for saving all kinds of websites that I access regularly.
I have a bookmark folder for blogging, one for podcasting. I have a category for accounts, for products, email, basically a folder for everything I do.
It allows me to access what I need to access on the computer…
In one click I can get to almost any site I need to for my business.
It’s one of those little tools that I actually like never really used before and now that I use it, I can’t believe I didn’t. I can’t believe I used to try to remember what website did that one thing that I needed.
Easy to find, easy to use.
QuickBooks & A2X
The next one is for our finances, I use QuickBooks online.
I highly suggest QuickBooks for anybody who is needing to set up an accounting program. It’s very easy to set up. It’s very user friendly.
If you’re running a business that has product you can combine this with an app system called A2X.
This app transfers your confusing Amazon numbers in a readable way to QuickBooks, and it’s made all of our accounting & our bookkeeping so simple.
A2X can pull it in from Amazon, Etsy, Shopify and anywhere you’re selling products.
It’s a really helpful way to streamline your bookkeeping, especially if you’re not outsourcing it.
Phone Alarms
The next one is phone alarms. I talked about this the other week and the productivity tips show episode 1. Starting to use my phone alarm throughout the day has literally has changed my life.
I set phone alarms for anything I need to do throughout the day.
It works as like my short term memory…
- So if I need to call somebody
- If I need to buy a gift
- Remember to say something
- To send an email
- To place an order
- For a quick store list
My alarm gets set for these things and when it rings, I let it be my boss and I do what it says.
It’s also really effective for focus time. And so being able to set an alarm and focus in the middle of that until it goes off.
It’s a great way to activate that deep work side of your brain to get something important done without repeatedly looking at the clock or seeing how long it’s been. You just have a timer set. You have an alarm set.
You know when that goes off, your time is up. And so in the meantime, until you hear You can really focus in. So phone alarms for much more than waking up in the morning. I use it all day long.
Photo Albums
Another thing on your phone is iPhone albums. So if you’re not using your albums, this is a really great way to be able to recall things pretty quickly for social media.
If you’re doing manual posting , on your social media accounts, it’s a great way to have drafts and everything ready to roll.
I keep things in folders in my albums and I have them so I can post them really easily and quickly.
Great for screenshots
I do a lot of screenshots, so I have separate folders for different screenshots, for ideas.
If I see something that somebody’s doing in their business that I think is really smart, and I maybe want to look more into that, I’ll take screenshots of that and save it in a folder that’s called look.
That just lets me know that these are things I really want to look into doing or look into trying to figure out how they did it.
That’s how I use my iphone albums not just for saving cute photos of my kids, but for actually saving important things that come up throughout the week in my business.
Pinterest Secret Folders
I also use Pinterest for saving all my visual inspiration.
The trick for this is if you don’t want everybody seeing what you’re saving on Pinterest, you can just make your board secret.
I have an entire secret Pinterest board that is just cool email templates.
When I join people’s email lists, if I like what they’re doing, if I’m like, Oh, this resonates with me, or maybe this is something I could use in the future. Then I will save that to my Pinterest board.
I have Pinterest boards for product design, for development, for photoshoot ideas, anything that’s photo or URL based, you can save on Pinterest in a secret board, and it becomes a really easy place to be able to quickly scan and look at ideas when you’re working on something.
Easiest Way To Save Gift Guide Inspiration
I also do gift guides at the end of the year on some of our sites. If I see a cool product, if I see something that sparks my interest to include in that, I will go ahead and put it in the gift guide.
It’s just a secret folder.
And then when I go to sit down to do my gift guide at the end of the year, instead of starting from scratch, I had this whole list of ideas I’ve been saving all year that are awesome.
Goodreads
Second to last is Goodreads.
So I know I was so late to this boat, I just started using Goodreads a year or two ago and I love it so much.
Not only can I save all the books I’ve read and make different bookshelves on Goodreads, but also did you know that you can start clipping audible clips now?
So when you’re listening to a book on audible, you can clip it, manually enter it into Goodreads to save those important quotes and things you learn along the way.
It helps me to be able to process what I have heard and for my fiction books or anything I read on my Kindle, the quotes automatically sync!
Great way to keep track of what you’re learning and what you’re reading as far as books are concerned.
Loom
Loom is an awesome app for video, it does all my screen sharing and screen recording for me.
It’s a really great way to organize your training and your SOPs for your business. So if you have freelancers or contractors working for you, instead of having to re-say the same thing a thousand times, I just make a loom video of it.
I show them what I want and then I can save it. And that way, anytime they have a question about it, they can go back to the video and watch it again.
Anytime I hire somebody new, I can send them the video to train them. It’s a wonderful way to be able to train and show people how to do things online one time and have it be saved and organized for.
Loom has been such a lifesaver to me.
So those are the 10 organization apps that I use most often.
I encourage you if there’s one on this list that you haven’t tried, or if there’s an area of your business that you feel like is super unorganized, to find a tool, find something that works for you.
Really, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what tools or what apps you pick to use.
What matters is that you find something that works for you and systems you’ll keep up with and that you do the work to organize.
It’s really hard to grow a disorganized business. If you want to see growth in your business, if you want to see movement and goals reached. Getting organized is a really important first step to doing those things.
I’d love to hear in the comments if you have any organization apps that you adore that I missed.