The best tools for managing my online business
Now that I’ve been with Visual Bloom for over two years and have gained quite a bit of experience during that time, I feel a little more comfortable sharing my experiences. I know I’ll keep learning new things every year—it’s inevitable (and that’s a good thing)—but I feel like I’m now at a point where I can really offer valuable insights to someone who’s just starting out or thinking about starting their own business.
So today I’m sharing this post, in which I’ll talk about the tools I consider essential for the day-to-day management of my business, and in another post I’ll discuss the ones I use for content creation.
Some of these apps include my affiliate link because I genuinely recommend them.
My minimalist management philosophy
Before diving into the tools, I want to talk a little bit about how I’ve decided to organize myself and why, since everyone is unique and what works for me won’t necessarily work for everyone else… though I do think the reasoning behind the decisions I’ve made can serve as a starting point.
Learn to figure out what works for you and what doesn't
Starting a business is a learning experience—not just in terms of business, but also on a personal level. Over the past two years, I’ve come to know myself better, discovered that I’m actually more productive when I listen to my body’s unique rhythms (which aren’t the same for everyone), and learned to identify the things that drain me mentally or cause me anxiety.
One of the things I’ve learned is that I’m a highly sensitive person ( HSP ), and this has helped me understand why certain cognitive overloads cause me anxiety and—very importantly—that there really isn’t much I can do about it. It’s a trait that’s hardwired into my DNA, as unchangeable as the color of my eyes. So what does this have to do with managing my business and the tools I use? Well, I’m a very curious person; I like to try and experiment with new things: any tool I hear about, I want to try. And while this has helped me experiment and ultimately stick with the app I know works best for me, the result was often that I had a gazillion different accounts on different apps, and I was using ten different tools for the same thing.
The result? It was incredibly inefficient; my processes were fragmented and scattered, and I had to spend far too much time testing and configuring the apps. And, in the end, it stressed me out because I felt like I was spending too much time on administrative tasks... even though, in reality, my time and mental energy were going into managing all the tools, rather than the administrative work itself.
How do I decide which tools I need?
Since I know that having too many things on my mind ends up overwhelming me, I’ve learned to be strict about which work tools I try out. With the experience I’ve gained, I’ve been streamlining my processes and finding ways to manage my work using as few tools as possible:
The first step is to have clear workflows in place—both those that are entirely internal and those that involve establishing a working relationship with a client, for example. Once I have a clear workflow, it’s much easier to determine which parts I can automate partially or fully, or in which areas a tool would truly simplify my work or help me stay organized.
Once I’ve figured out what kind of tool I might need, I spend a few days trying out all the options that seem interesting to me. That said, once I finally settle on one, that’s it. I get rid of the others and stick with the one I’ve chosen. This also leads me to look for all-in-one tools that cover as many needs as possible.
One final point is that I try, whenever possible, to look for free or low-cost alternatives, although this isn’t always the case. What I always do is ask myself: Is the cost of tool X worth the time and mental energy it will save me? If the answer is yes, then I pay for it.
So, my approach to running my business is minimalist in the sense that I use only the tools that are absolutely necessary and serve an important purpose… I don’t like using tools just for the sake of it, let alone paying for more tools than I need.
Now then… what tools do I consider essential?
1. Hellosign
This is the tool I use to sign all my service contracts. It offers both a free plan and a paid plan, but the free version is enough for me because I only sign a small number of contracts each month. Hellosign has the advantage that you can add different fields for clients to fill out before signing (not just the signature itself), and the system includes all the necessary electronic signature technology to ensure these contracts are legally valid.
2. Asana
Asana is a crucial part of my client project management system. Although I usually only work on two or three projects at a time, when you add in the projects already booked for the coming months, managing them all can get a little chaotic. With Asana, each client has access to their design project, where everything is organized: the work schedule, my tasks and my client’s tasks, deadlines, file access… everything!
It's very convenient and helps both my clients and me stay organized and up to date on the project's status. Some clients have even told me that after trying this app with me, they've decided to incorporate it into their project management tools for other projects.
Asana also offers a free plan and a paid plan; although the paid plan has some interesting features, I’ve never gotten around to trying it because the free version works well for me.
3. AND CO
Another important aspect of my client projects is payment management, and for this I use AND CO.
My services are paid in installments (two to four payments, depending on the project), and if I didn’t have a tool to help me keep track of each client’s payments—calculating how much they’ve paid, how much is left, whether there have been any additional charges, etc.—I’d go crazy. Some people manage just fine with an Excel spreadsheet and that’s it, but honestly, that’s not the case for me; plus, with a spreadsheet, you have to create invoices manually, and that alone is too much of an investment of time and energy for me.
With AND CO, I can also manage other aspects of each project, not just payments:
I can set up different billing plans,
track the time spent on each project task,
generate income and expense statements,
create quotes and even sign contracts (although I don't use that last option because I prefer HelloSign).
In addition—and this is very important for invoices, for example—it is available in Spanish.
I’ve tried other apps like HelloBonsai and Freshbooks, but I haven’t liked any of them as much as AND CO. I really liked Bonsai—even more than AND CO in some ways—but it’s only available in English, and I need my invoices and quotes to be in Spanish. Freshbooks is available in Spanish, but it’s only for invoicing… you can’t really link a project to a series of invoices, or link multiple projects to a client (at least not the way I do with AND CO), and in short, after using it for a couple of months, I canceled it because it didn’t offer the client+project+invoice management that AND CO provides.
AND CO offers both a free plan and a paid plan, and in this case, I’m more than happy to pay for it because it makes my life so much easier. And, if you sign up using my link, they’ll give both of us a $20 credit.
4. TransferWise
90% of my clients are in Spain, and I’m in Mexico, so I need a reliable tool to receive payments for my services. I used to use PayPal, but the problem is that it charges extremely high fees for these types of transfers… in my case, they reached 5%, which I always had to cover myself. On top of that, I also charged my clients a somewhat high exchange rate, since they paid in euros but I received the payment in Mexican pesos. In short, with PayPal, both my clients and I lost money on every transaction.
But ever since I discovered TransferWise, I’ve been in heaven. TransferWise also charges transaction fees, but they’re tiny. For starters, through the platform I can set up a virtual bank account in euros, so my clients can make a deposit in euros at almost no cost to them (just whatever their bank charges for the transfer). Then I transfer those euros to my account in Mexico at a very fair exchange rate, and so far the fees I’ve had to pay per transaction haven’t even reached 1%. It’s amazing .
As I said, I’m really happy with this platform (I have my roommate to thank for it—she’s also self-employed and, like me, has clients outside of Mexico)—and now I can’t stop recommending it to everyone. And if you use my link to sign up for a TransferWise account, we’ll both get a credit.
5. Squarespace
Squarespace is the platform on which my website is built and hosted, and although I’ll talk more about it in the post on content management tools, I can’t help but mention it here. A website that works well and helps attract new customers is essential for a business like mine, and Squarespace makes my life very, very easy in that regard.
Many people dismiss it when they see that it’s a paid platform, but after using it for my website for nearly three years and building several client websites, I can say it’s worth every penny. If you want to know why I think it’s so great, check out my posts on Squarespace—especially the one where I explain why I consider it ideal for minimalist entrepreneurs.
As I mentioned, Squarespace is a paid service, and you can check out its different plans here (I recommend the Business plan, although the Personal plan might also work for you if you're just starting out). And if you ever decide to work with me on your website design, I can offer you a 20% discount on your first year's subscription.
6. Acuity Scheduling
This is the tool I use to let my clients or potential clients schedule calls with me (you can see an example here). It’s super convenient because I’ve set up my available times for each day of the week, and the tool automatically adjusts to the time zone of the person making the reservation. Once the booking is made, both the client and I receive an email with the date and time details (each with the time in their own country), and an event is automatically added to my Google Calendar. It’s one of the most useful automations I’ve implemented, and although there’s another very similar service called Calendly (which works very well), I’ve stuck with Acuity because it’s integrated with Squarespace.
Acuity offers a free version and several paid plans, and I use one of these that’s included in my Squarespace plan.
7. Google Suite
The last tool I use (or rather, set of tools) is the Google Suite. This is a paid service, but for a very affordable price, I get: a custom email address with my domain, a Visual Bloom-exclusive Google Drive account with all the office tools it includes (Google Docs is the one I use the most), Google Calendar, and Google Forms, which I use for all my design projects. This is super useful for me because I can share documents and folders with clients to manage all the files for a design project.
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And these are the tools I use to manage Visual Bloom and client projects. If you’d like me to write a post about a specific one, or if you have any recommendations, let me know in the comments and I’ll get right on it.
