7 things that are indispensable for me as an entrepreneur

I don’t really do my own business completely on my own. I get good help every day from all kinds of handy tools, great planners and gadgets that I couldn’t do without. For example, as an entrepreneur I would be nowhere without that one type of music on YouTube and without my best HEMA purchase ever. From Binaural Beats to accounting supplies – this is indispensable for me as an entrepreneur.

Tip 1. Canva (as a Photoshop alternative)

Although I love photography, I am almost never in Photoshop. I think it is a brilliant program, but I just don’t feel like it that much. I can’t find the buttons. And secretly I don’t have the patience to fully immerse myself in it. That’s why I am happy with Canva: a  foolproof  alternative to Photoshop. And free! I use Canva for everything.  I make my Vaker Vrolijk poems with it, have my templates for Pinterest images in it and also use it for images on LinkedIn.  I even made my business cards with Canva.

Thanks to the standard templates, you don’t need to have any Photoshop knowledge and can still create beautiful designs. It’s also nice that you can save images you’ve created, so that you only have to replace the photo or text next time. Handy if you prefer not to spend too much time on design, but also don’t want to invest a lot of money in a designer right away.

Tip 2. Good earphones and Binaural Beats

I always work best in silence when I am completely in my own bubble. Something like neighbors who have loud music on (and sing along happily) can already take me out of my focus.  Thanks to my nice earphones I can easily shut myself off from almost everything , so that it is really just my laptop and me. I can even blog undisturbed with earphones in when the television is on next to me.

I seem to have a kink in my ear canal, which is why in-ears don’t stay in my ear at all. That’s why I still have old-fashioned Apple earphones (without Bluetooth and other fancy gadgets). They stay in perfectly. By the way, I always use earphones for phone calls. It makes it easier to type along now!

What do I hear through my earphones? Often it’s Binaural Beats.  A brilliant tip that I owe to the book  ‘Every day at 15:00 ready’  ! That music apparently does something with your two brain hemispheres, which puts you in the ultimate focus mode. It works great for me.

I also find ‘Deep Focus Study Music’ very useful. Just type those words or ‘Binaural Beats’ into YouTube and music that fits that genre will automatically surface.

Tip 3. A handy accounting system

Whether you are crazy about numbers or not, as an entrepreneur you get the administration as an extra task. Also something that is indispensable as an entrepreneur; we can’t make it more fun… or can we? 😉

Since I became a full-time entrepreneur, I have given my administration system a thorough overhaul. With special thanks to my father, who built me ​​a supersonic Excel sheet. If I change something on page 1, the new amounts for the tax return immediately appear on page 3. Brilliant!

But last month I tried something new that allows you to keep your administration up to date without Excel. I got started with  the brand new accounting software from Quickbooks . This young brand makes administration fun and light.  You don’t need to know anything about assets and liabilities and you certainly don’t need to be an administrative genius to still have a correct administration.  The makers started QuickAc to show that accounting doesn’t have to be a headache. With step-by-step videos they guide you through the software, although I have to say that many things are already fairly self-explanatory. Great!

My experience with QuickAc

What I especially like about QuickAc’s software is that you can also use it to register your hours and create and send your invoices. You can also put your bank statements in it to link QuickAc to your business account.  So you no longer have to manually put together your invoices in another program and you don’t have to check whether your invoice has already been paid.  Super easy!

Until now, I often scheduled the first weekend of the month as an administration weekend, in which I sent out all my invoices with a separate program. With QuickAc, you can do those three things in one place and therefore automate more.  For example, you can create an invoice directly based on your hours and send it to the customer.  I used to keep track of hours in Toggl; create invoices in an invoicing program and the administration in Excel. Very handy to have everything in one place!

I have to admit: I still think my father’s Excel sheet is brilliant. So I like to work with it for my tax return. But that’s more because that sheet is so well put together and completely tailored to me (I would never have managed that myself!). If you are used to working with a self-made Excel sheet with a lot of manual input, QuickAc is a tenfold improvement anyway and can save you a lot of time.  I will definitely continue to use the program in addition to my father’s Excel sheet.  It is great not to have to go to other tools for my time registration and invoicing system.

Tip 4. My cheap LIFE planner

Cheap is sometimes just a good buy.  There are countless expensive planners with smart systems behind them, but I myself love my paper planner from Life Plans. Cost $7 and offers everything I am looking for. The best thing I find is that the planner has a stripe for every quarter of an hour from 8:00 to 20:00 on Monday to Friday. This way you can plan your entire day and block times for certain tasks. The productivity junkie in me really likes that.

Since I started working with this detailed planner, I have  started planning more realistically . I used to have a habit of filling my to-do list with too much, because I simply crammed all kinds of big tasks onto a few lines. No idea whether it would fit in time-wise! Often, when push came to shove, I ended up with 12 hours of work in a day. Since I started working with my full-page LIFE planner, I never have that problem anymore.  Of course, I still sometimes overestimate things, but I am rarely off by more than an hour.

Tip 5. Podcast about time management

Does this belong on the list of things that are indispensable as an entrepreneur? Well, it is not a gadget. But it is a listening tip that I can recommend to every entrepreneur (and also non-entrepreneur).

As a copywriter, I write blogs every month. The fanboy that I am, I obviously had to listen to the podcast of Lucas Bolton (owner of the company). He joined Gary Bordon in the fanboy podcast to talk about being less busy and getting more done. A nice practical podcast! I was able to get a lot of useful tips from it, such as sending fewer CC emails, downloading useful productivity apps, making a brain dump list and also keeping your to-do list and agenda clearly separated.

So: a listening tip for anyone who is sometimes (or quite often) short of time!

Tip 6. Stack and an external hard drive

“Have you made a backup yet?” My father used to ask me that question regularly, and since Bart and I have been living together, that comment has mainly come from Bart. A fair suggestion! As an entrepreneur and actually just in general, you don’t want to be without all your documents and photos.

I have been following that wise advice obediently for a while now. I have two hard drives on which all my photos are stored. In addition, on Bart’s advice, I have taken an account with Stack. That is a variant of One Drive or iCloud.  All documents that I upload to my Stack folder on my computer are also automatically saved as a backup in the cloud at Stack  (super well secured of course!). This allows me to access my files on other computers and I don’t have to worry about losing things. Not even if my computer crashes.

So yes, Dad and Bart, you were right. Took me many years to figure that out, but I have improved my life.

Tip 7. Ergonomic laptop setting

I still do my work on a modest laptop instead of some mega-screen, but I did decide a year ago that I didn’t want to type on my mini keyboard anymore.  I’ve had an external keyboard for a year now, and I definitely should have done that a long time ago.

When I ended up at the physiotherapist after a few months of working from home, fortunately there was nothing wrong with my body, only with my working posture. The advice? A laptop riser, a separate keyboard and an office chair. It turned out to be the golden tip, because I have indeed been largely relieved of my back and shoulder complaints since I sit much more ergonomically behind my computer.

I am often surprised when I see people working from home for weeks on end on dining room chairs with their heads bent down because their laptop is there. An ergonomic office chair may not be the prettiest addition to your interior (mine certainly isn’t!), but it is the best gift you can give your back. In my opinion, it is indispensable as an entrepreneur who works from home and actually for anyone who does “things with computers”.