The Top 10 Productivity Tools Henry Lopez currently uses to run his small business. He depends on these tools to run his business and remain highly productive from my home office.

In this episode of The How of Business, host Henry Lopez shares his top 10 productivity tools for small business owners, detailing how each tool helps him stay organized and productive. From essentials like Outlook for managing emails and calendars, to creative platforms like Canva and scheduling tools like Calendly, Henry highlights tools he relies on daily.

He also discusses ChatGPT for content creation, Zapier for workflow automation, Mailchimp for email marketing, and HubSpot as a CRM, along with using an iPad for digital note-taking and Zoom for virtual coaching sessions.

Henry wraps up by emphasizing the importance of project management, team communication, and accounting software for small business operations, encouraging listeners to take advantage of free versions or trials to find the right tools.

He encourages small business owners to explore AI and automation to enhance productivity, recommending that they leverage affordable, accessible technology to improve their business efficiency and communication.

Below are Henry’s top 10 business and personal productivity tools, in no particular order.

My Top 10 Productivity Tools:

1. Outlook – for email and calendar to manage time
   A comprehensive tool for managing emails, calendars, and time, keeping your business communications organized and on schedule.
2. Canva – graphics creation for marketing
   A user-friendly graphics creation platform ideal for creating marketing materials like social media posts, flyers, and presentations.
3. Calendly – scheduling tool integrated with Outlook calendar
   A scheduling tool that integrates with Outlook, allowing others to easily book time on your calendar without the back-and-forth emails.
4. ChatGPT – AI content creation, research, content enhancement, and so much more!
   An AI assistant that helps generate content, conduct research, and enhance communications, offering support for a wide range of business tasks.
5. Zapier – integration to eliminate or reduce manual effort
   An automation tool that connects different apps to streamline workflows, reducing repetitive manual tasks and boosts efficiency.
6. Mailchimp – email marketing, including email automation workflow
   A powerful email marketing platform that allows you to create automated email workflows and targeted campaigns to reach and engage your audience.
7. HubSpot – CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to manage the sales process
   A CRM system that organizes customer interactions, helping you track leads, manage the sales process, and build strong customer relationships.
8. iPad – using a digital note taking app
   A versatile tool (the iPad and the note taking app) for capturing notes digitally, ideal for keeping track of ideas, meeting notes, and to-do lists.
9. Zoom – online coaching sessions and podcast recording
   An online platform for video calls, ideal for virtual coaching sessions, client meetings, and recording podcasts.
10. Google Drive and Dropbox – cloud storage and file sharing
    Cloud storage solutions for securely saving and sharing files, making collaboration and file access easy from any location.

 Other Productivity Tools to consider:

• Project Management Software (Trello, Asana, Monday.com) – These tools organize tasks, track progress, and assign responsibilities, keeping projects on schedule, especially for teams.
• Team Communication Platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams) – Essential for team collaboration, offering messaging, video calls, and file sharing to streamline communication across locations.
• Accounting and Invoicing Software (QuickBooks, FreshBooks) – These tools manage finances, track expenses, handle invoicing, and streamline payroll, simplifying accounting tasks.

Resources:

Related Podcast Episodes:

Time Management & Productivity Episodes

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:11):

Welcome to the How of Business Podcast. This is Henry Lopez, and on this episode, I share my top 10 productivity tools. These are 10 of the current tools that I use as a small business owner and a business coach, and I depend on these tools almost daily to run my business and remain highly productive from my home office. You can find all of the How of Business resources, including the show notes page for this episode. And to learn more about my coaching programs, please visit thehowofbusiness.com. I also invite you to please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon, and please subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new episodes. I also would like to say a quick thank you to a few of my most recent business coaching clients, including David Genevieve, Dr. G and Shannon. I appreciate the opportunity to serve as your business coach.

Henry Lopez (00:57):

I invite you to go to the show notes page for this episode. I’m going to list out all 10 of these tools with links to their respective websites so you can learn more about them. In case you’re not familiar with some of these tools. So here are my top 10 productivity tools. These are not in any particular order, but number one is Outlook. So it’s what I use for email, but more importantly is what I use for my calendar. Everything goes into my Outlook calendar, my personal commitments, my scheduled coaching sessions, my time blocks. If I’m time blocking to research something or work on a project, all of it is on my calendar. If it’s not on my calendar, I will forget about it, but I won’t get to it. So everything gets time blocked. Whatever calendar system you use, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to use it and have everything in there.

Henry Lopez (01:43):

And I do believe that you combine both your personal and your business or work calendars. I happen to use Outlook for email and for calendar. Of course, outlook offers a lot of functionality that I use to manage my emails. I like to flag those important emails that I have to come back to so that I can organize them better. I color code my calendar so that visually I can see what’s going on and what my commitments are. So I use a lot of the features of Outlook. Number two is Canva. Canva is an online, a cloud-based graphics creation tool. It’s been around for a number of years. I’ve been using it for, I don’t know, four or five years. I have the paid version, but there is a free version at least I believe there still is a free version that’s very functional as well.

Henry Lopez (02:29):

I have the pro version that allows me access to more of their stock photos and videos. And now of course, as with a lot of other tools, they’re starting to layer in AI to make it even more effective. In fact, there is integration between Canva and Chat GPT. I haven’t used that yet, but I know that it’s there and eventually I’ll learn how to use that. Number three for me is Calendly. Calendly a little hard to say, like Calendar Calendly is what I’ve been using forever. I’m comfortable with it and it handles all of my scheduling. So for those of you listening that maybe have had a coaching consultation with me or have scheduled a coaching call with me, you know that I’ve sent you a link or you go to my website and when you click on schedule a free consultation, that’s the tool that you’re going to is Calendly that handles scheduling that appointment.

Henry Lopez (03:14):

It integrates with my Outlook calendar. You can set up different schedules, and so it’s very effective. And then there’s also workflow that you can define within the tool as well. So that’s number three. Calendly number four is chat pt. This has become an essential tool for me. I’ve been using it for, I guess over a year now since it came out. I’m using the paid version. It’s $20 a month. I use it almost every day. I primarily use it for content creation, written content. So if I’m doing research or preparing for a podcast episode or to help me put together an outline for something that I’m writing or an outline for an interview, I really encourage you to start using ChatGPT, just use the free version if you’re not using it already. Number four is Zapier with Z, and it’s an integration technology that they’ve developed all these APIs that can talk to just about every software imaginable to connect things, so it reduces the amount of manual reentry or duplicate entry or uploads or whatever you might have to do.

Henry Lopez (04:17):

Now, you can automate those integrations in particular with Zapier. Number six is MailChimp. MailChimp is what I use for email marketing. There are other platforms out there like Constant Contact, which I’ve used as well. A lot of the CRMs have it integrated, so you need an email marketing platform if that’s at all part of your marketing process. And email marketing is a big way that I stay in contact with. Some of you perhaps have received my emails. Number seven is HubSpot, CRM. For CRM, customer relationship management is what CRM stands for. It’s essential if you’re trying to keep track of any sales process or contacts or anywhere, anything where you’re contacting people and managing those relationships. So I use HubSpot as I work with clients, my coaching clients to keep track of my conversations, all of the coaching sessions, all of that information, all of that data is in HubSpot, and I’m using the free version of HubSpot.

Henry Lopez (05:19):

So that was number seven. HubSpot number eight on my top 10 list of productivity tools is my iPad. Now, specifically what I do in this iPad is what’s important here. I have an app that’s loaded on there. There’s lots of them. I don’t even know the name of it, but what I do is I take all of my notes. I used to do that all on paper, but then I was having all of this paper, but then I was scanning so that I could digitize it and add it to the database in HubSpot for that coaching client. Now, I upload that to Google Drive and then bring it in to HubSpot and attach it to my notes for that session. And so everything is in one place in HubSpot. So that was number eight. My digital note app on my iPad. Number nine is Zoom.

Henry Lopez (06:05):

Zoom is the platform that I use for all of my coaching sessions, and then when I do my podcast, when I interview people, I’m using Zoom and recording it that way. And so that’s number nine on my top 10 productivity tools Zoom and 10 is Google Drive and Dropbox. So those two platforms for cloud storage and file sharing, I certainly recommend Google Drive because it’s affordable and it’s easy and it really works well. As I was putting this together, I just wanted to mention a few other categories of productivity tools that I don’t use because it doesn’t apply to me, but I want to make sure you were aware of them and that you’re using them if it makes sense for you. One of those is a project management software like Trello or Asana or monday.com. If you’ve got two or more people working on projects together, then a tool like that I think is essential as well to keep everybody communicating, to keep track of who’s working on what and what progress is being made.

Henry Lopez (07:03):

Another type of tool is a team communication platform. If you’ve got multiple team members, especially if you are remote so you’re not in one office, then something like Slack or Microsoft Teams to facilitate those communications, I think that’s critical. And finally, accounting and invoicing software. So I do use QuickBooks, and I do recommend every small business owner should have some kind of an accounting and perhaps invoicing software, so something like QuickBooks or FreshBooks. Those are tools that handle finances, including expense tracking, invoicing, if you need that, payroll if you need it, it just makes it easier to manage cashflow and to manage your financials so that you can measure and monitor the financial performance of your business. Those are my top 10 productivity tools. Again, if you go to the show notes page for this episode, I’ll have them listed along with links in case you’re not familiar with them and you want to know where to go, where to go to learn more about them, just go to the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com.

Henry Lopez (08:01):

The key takeaway is this. There are so many tools out there now that are affordable and easy to use. Now, that in itself can be overwhelming. Which ones do we choose? So don’t overthink this. A lot of these, as I’ve mentioned, offer free versions or a trial period. The thing is to use something and to leverage that productivity and efficiency that comes from using these tools. In particular AI tools like Chat, GPT, look for opportunities to automate and leverage these technologies that are affordable and accessible to us as small business owners to improve yours and your team members efficiency and their communication. This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining me on this episode of the How of Business. I wish you the best as you start and grow your successful and profitable small business. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find a show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the How a Business YouTube channel, and not my website, the how of business.com. Thanks for listening.