15 Cheap Work-Life Hacks for Small Businesses
When you start your own business you want to run the business not hassle the small stuff. Here’s a set of inexpensive tools that take the donkey-work out of being an entrepreneur.
1. Quickly find free WiFi.
Cubefree helps you places to work with WiFi outside of your home office, such as coffee shops and public libraries.
2. Get your calls anywhere.
Use Grasshopper to set up your phone directories and to route incoming calls to mobile or home phone lines, or your Skype account.
3. Make scheduling painless.
With Calendly your prospects and customers can schedule appointments, demos and meetings (with you) without futzing with Outlook or Calendar.
4. Simplify and automate your contacts.
Humin spiders your email, social networks and calendars to build a master contacts list, from people you interact with frequently to that dude you met at a tech mixer last year.
5. Jettison unwanted email subscriptions.
Unroll Me unsubscribes you from mailings that you no longer want and then rolls up the subscriptions you do want into a daily digest.
6. Manage complex projects remotely
Smartsheet is like a spreadsheet for handling complicate projects with multiple people, without tedious emails and the unexpected appearance of out-of-date documents.
7. Never run out of ink again.
HP Instant Ink orders a new printer cartridge for you before you run out, which is delivered to your home office.
8. Organize and share your lists.
Wunderlist helps you organize and share your lists (to do, grocery list, books to read) to the list of books you want to read–and virtually check items off once they’re complete.
9. Ship packages from your desk.
Shyp picks up your items, packs and sends them anywhere using the lowest cost, most reliable option.
10. Stay focused on what’s important.
SelfControl blocks your own access to distracting websites. Until the timer expires, you can’t access those sites, even if you restart your computer or delete the application.
11. Have someone else run errands.
By texting through GoButler, you can get stuff delivered, travel booked, restaurant reservations, and so forth at the same price you if you did it yourself.
12. Get food when you want it.
GrubHub lets you order food from a selection of your local restaurants. (If you live in the boonies, though, your choice is limited but that goes without saying.)
13. Sign contracts remotely.
RightSignature sends files off for signature and receive the signed documents in the same account, ensuring a smooth workflow.
14. Stop losing your stuff.
Attach a Tile to anything–phone, keys, laptop bag , luggage–and you can track it with Bluetooth. Double tap your Tile to make your phone ring–even if it’s on silent.
15. Hang around a virtual water cooler.
Slack lets a team trade comments one-to-one or one-to-many.
