New Work: Tools to become a jack of all trades and master of all.

As a corporate 'lifer' who, after almost two decades, has now found herself running a start-up, it has taken me by delightful surprise to discover the online software available to help run a business.

There is something transformative about being resource scarce. I thought I was resource scarce in my past life as a marketer with a team never large enough or budget wide enough. ...Ha!

…now I'm really living life on the proverbial streets of business.?Pre-revenue, pre-funded start-up life is tight with a capital T.?No staff.?No IT department.?No marketing budget.?But I’m starting to discover what a blessing it is to start this way because it really makes you dig deep, get creative and hustle to get the job done.?And without the colourful mix of software we use for our business we could not operate at the speed or quality in which we do.

These tools help me be a jack of all trades and master of all.?That is the magic of innovation driven businesses who make it their business to help me be more efficient with what I do.??

Here are my top 15. Massive shout out to the businesses below, life would be much harder without you!

1. Canva – so I’m basically a graphic designer now.

2. Dropbox – all files, anywhere, any device.

3. Google Hangouts – a newbie here.?Love it.

4. Google Sheets – waaay more fun than standard excel – and no one on the drive accidentally loses the master version.

5. InVision – to show others how our app prototype works.

6. Mailchimp – free marketing automation.?Bam.

7. Moo – drop.dead.gorgeous printing. Best business cards.

8. Squarespace – not a coder. Built an entire website.

9. Trello – never lose a post-it-note/email note to self/thought, EVER again.

10. Typeform – awesome for surveys.?

11. Udemy – let’s face it, we are all learning as we go, and there’s no better way to learn new things [quickly and in more depth than a ‘google’] than here.

12. Wistia – looove the ability to skin videos with our own brand colours and end frame.

13. Zapier – powers our automation…e.g. sends completed forms to Mailchimp for real time email confirmations.

14 & 15.?Let’s not forget my two personal favs, this guy who built some code to put line breaks in your Insta in an instant and my local fresh meal planning and delivery service (because I literally have no brain power left to decide, let alone shop for weekday dinners!).

What other tools do you use in your day??I'm always looking out for new platforms to try.?