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5 things you need to know about invoicing when starting a business

2017-08-09 | ALL, Invoicing | No Comments

5 things you need to know in order to create the perfect professional invoice for your first clients when starting a business

Did your business just started to boost, and you are caught in the maze called invoicing instead of working on getting more things done? If so, even though it might appear complicated, we all can, at some point, become invoicing masters.

Here are 5 things you need to know in order to create the perfect professional invoice for your first clients:

Start at the beginning

The first and most important thing you need to understand is the anatomy of one invoice. It doesn’t matter if you are handling your own invoicing or you hired someone else to do it for you. Here are several things you need to be familiar with:

Your invoice should include both yours and your client’s contact information
Your invoice should include Invoice number and Due Date
Your invoice should include a breakdown list of the service your provide
Your invoice can include a Terms and Conditions
And of course, your preferred payment methods you want to use like for ex. PayPal, Stripe, Payoneer or credit card

Get paid at once.

Did you know that only 18% of the people who are waiting to get paid more than 90 days, get paid from clients? To avoid not getting paid on time, establish a good paying time cycle for you and for your clients, in order to send invoices promptly. You can have a recurring invoicing schedule and have a specific time when to send your invoices. In the beginning, the best time to send out an invoice is immediately after completing the project/service. You can also assign yourself a day in the week that will be spent on invoicing every week.

Track your income and invoices

Same as using a time tracker tool, you can start using an invoicing software which can help you track your expenses, completed projects, clients, send invoices, and much more depending on the software. Some invoicing apps have also recurring payments features and sending automatic payment reminders features that can help you automate your invoicing process and get paid faster.

The good thing about using an invoice software is that you don’t need to worry about tracking the numbers of your invoices or worry if you added the right email address, or contact name, even if your invoice looks professional enough. Almost all of them will take care of those problems and help you save time while invoicing your clients.

Don’t forget to follow-up

It’s so frustrating when we have to chase our clients for due payments, spending time in emailing and phone calls instead of focusing on our business tasks. That is why most invoicing solutions have features that will help you set up a reminder emails to remind your clients for due payments.

Be nice and always ask for a testimonial

It’s professional and polite to say “please” and “thank you”, which will increase your chances of invoices being paid on time. Your customer testimonial is always important, don’t forget to ask for a testimonial from your clients.

By Eva Piperevska

PayPal hidden fees and how to notice them

2017-08-02 | ALL | No Comments

While starting my business in the beginning I never checked how much money I received from my clients as a payment. As I was using PayPal for online payments I only gave my PayPal account and withdraw money when they were sent. Of course, as I am not in a country where you can pay with Euros or US Dollars, I usually converted them money into the local currency and never noticed the difference in the sum.

As you probably know PayPal is a popular transactional website that allows you to send and receive money online quickly and easily. When I started Payoneer was not that famous and somehow I trusted PayPal more so I made it my primary payment method.

It was only three months ago when I started to calculate the amount of money I lost in fees while getting paid online via PayPal.

So I did a research and starting to read even more about this thing everyone calls “hidden fees” – or the amount of money PayPal deducts from your account as fees. (And they can be a lot of those fees depending on the amount you receive and the business you run). But there is some good news even though PayPal does charge fees for some of its transactions, it does offer money transfers that do not incur charges. You will be able to send, receive and withdraw money without incurring any fees.

But let me share you some tips on where you can potentially have problems with PayPal “hidden fees”:

While Sending Money

If you want to send money to your friends and family than there will be fees when you use your PayPal balance or connected bank account as your funding source.

But when the transaction is funded by credit, debit or PayPal credit, PayPal charges 2.9% of the amount of your transaction plus $0.30 per transaction.

So for an example: a payment of $100, will be charged $3.20 ($2.90+$0.30) to the account sending the money.

For all of you that transfer money internationally you will be charged an additional fee. Typically, this will be somewhere between 0-2% when funded by your bank account or PayPal balance. If you use credit or debit, then it will be 2.9% to 5.99% plus a fixed fee based on the currency of the transaction will be billed to you.

Note that international transfers to Canada in US dollars are free if they are funded by a bank or account balance.

While Receiving Money

When you receive a notification that you have received money on your PayPal account, there are no fees incurred for receiving payments, and you can use that amount to send money through PayPal or to transfer to your connected bank account. While receiving money within the USA is free if it is done using the PayPal, requesting from another user to send you money with their email address or number, will cost you 2.9% of the transfer amount + $0.30 USD.

While Withdrawing Money

Depending on which country are you, PayPal has different fees. In my case, as I am from Bulgaria, my fees for withdrawal are 2.00 EUR per transaction. That is why you should check your transaction fees when starting using PayPal for your online payments.

Of course, PayPal has different other fee charges but this is the basic info you need to know when sending, receiving and withdrawing money. And also there are other ways you can receive and send money online such as Payoneer, Stripe or eCheck for example but all of them calculate fees for transactions, withdrawal or conversion if there are payment in foreign currency.

If you are still not sure how much money you pay for fees before sending you invoice to your clients calculate your amount fees with Envoice fee calculator.

By Eva Piperevska

Simple guide to influencer marketing for small businesses

2017-07-28 | ALL | No Comments

As a longtime online marketer with almost 10 years experience, I have had many opportunities to work for businesses that are looking to find their market in the b2b segment. In the sea of marketing tactics and strategies, most small businesses tend to get creative and cheap or free techniques, instead of using the standard advertising techniques like TV, Radio and Print media. In most cases, small business and startups focus on interactive techniques to share their messages to the exact targeted audience, which will bring them more credibility, popularity, trust, and sales.

Among those tactics is the influencer marketing.

But what is Influencer Marketing and how you as a small business owner can use it to gain more customers?

In short and simple influencer marketing can be defined as the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. Or in other words letting other people (usually someone who has a decent amount of followers on the internet and is a specialist in his or hers field) tell the story of your brand to his or hers audience.

Why Influencer Marketing?

Well, it proved in the past few years that people can easily buy products from other people that are their idols or heroes.

Who is an influencer?

These days in the world of the internet everyone can be an influencer. As long as they have a small or huge audience. Even you reading this can be an influence to some degree as you sharing specific content which will be some kind of influence on your audience and particular individuals following you.

But the ultimate question is should you as a small business use Influencer Marketing?

If you have money – yes, if you don’t have money it will be a challenge, but it’s worth to try. If we compare the cost per action, there is a significant difference between the PPC cost and Price Per Influence, and most of the time, the second one is very very expensive.

So if you are really up for using Influencer Marketing into your business strategy and you have the financial support for that, you can potentially follow these steps:

Find out what is your buyer persona?

Who are they admiring on the internet? Who is their favorite internet person that they follow everyday? You can use tools like mention.com or buzzsumo.com to identify potential influencers that have an influence on your targeted customers.

Gather as much content as possible.

When an influencer starts promoting your brand you need to have a tonne of content to back up his. A tool that can assist you with that is serpwoo.com.

Make a plan to support your influencer marketing campaign with additional campaigns like remarking, email marketing and social media marketing. That way you will reach to customers that just got a glance of your products or services by the like remarking, email marketing and social media marketing. That way you will reach to customers that just got a glance of your products or services by the influencer.

Contact the influencer.

Before you start sending emails, create a list of potential influencers you want to contact. Research them online, see what are they famous for and write it down.

Send a nicely written email.

There are few tips when it comes to writing an email to influencer:

Write a straightforward subject line. Make it look like a headline, short and to the point. Don’t be vague and informal. Make sure to mention your company and what the opportunity is. Ex. Join the Awesome Bloggers Network
For greeting, go with first name only, unless they refer to themselves on their blog as Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc. There’s no need to bring titles when you’re aiming to open a comfortable back and forth line of communication. Introduce yourself in an open manner. Tell them your first name, your title, and the company you work for. Link to your site. Most influencers will not bother to search or type the name of your business to learn more. Make their life easier.Ex. My name is [First Name]. I’m the [Position] at Awesome.
Let them know what is what you are aiming to – your business goal. Get to the point quickly about what you’re looking to do. Keep it brief using one or two sentences.Ex. We’d like to offer you an exclusive position in that network.
Give them a reason to write your email. Shoot the incentive and explain why you would like them to endorse your brand. Here is very important to use the research you have done because each influencer has different incentive key points. Also give them a unique, researched reason why they should be working with you.
Influencers are busy people so make sure to explain that they commitment will not be time-consuming for them.Ex. We’re not looking for a heavy commitment. All we would ask of you for a monthly post on a topic of your choosing
Share an interesting fact about your brand – service or product. Ex. Awesome currently 3500 active users, 5000 likes on Facebook, 2600 followers on Twitter and strong will to grow our audience even more.
Set up a deadline and end the email short and sweet. Ex. The deadline for accepting our offer is July 31st, please let me know if you need more information for our side. I look forward hearing from you.
Write interesting specific content for your niche and mention them in it. That way when you share it on social media they will most likely share it.

BONUS:

Here is a list of the most popular influencers online today – among them are: Logan Paul, Cassey Ho, Emily Henderson, and much more.

By Eva Piperevska

WHY ENTREPRENEURS SHOULD LISTEN TO THESE 10 PODCASTS

2017-07-25 | ALL | No Comments

Between all the clients and the frequent travels, life has become quite hectic. Time itself as a resource is limited and valuable, so we all need to be selective in how we spend it. On the other hand, success doesn’t come from ignorance. Time and effort need to be put into learning new things, keeping the focus and staying on top of your game. And that is why I am a big fan of podcasts. When you don’t have a lot of time for reading books, or don’t have the focus for watching videos, podcasts are the perfect tool for leveling up. There are a few better ways to multitask and to learn new things that podcasts.

And here is a list of the 10 best entrepreneurial podcasts, every business owner should subscribe to.

Entrepreneur on fire – EOFire is a daily interview with the most inspiring entrepreneurs on their best and worst career moments. Perhaps the most valuable part is the segment “The Lightening Round” where Dumas manages to get an extra piece of valuable advice from the guest. You can find a lot of great advice in the podcast that not only are proven to work but are also easy to apply.

Mixergy – Andrew Warner’s interviews with high-level entrepreneurs on how to create a successful business and everything on the topic can provide you with answers to some of the biggest questions you might have. The best take away is that some of the interviews are arranged into online business courses.

The Tim Ferriss Show – Angel investor and #1 New York Times bestselling author Tim Ferriss, interviews successful people from entrepreneurs, to athletes, to celebrities, digesting their success path and thus derives their own tips and tricks with the listeners. This is a great choice for serious content, but with fun and light approach.

Smart Passive Income – Pat Flynn is famous for building an online business almost entirely through passive income channels. On his podcast, he shares a ton of passive income strategies that work as well as the ones that don’t. He is very transparent with his business experience and the results, even his monthly income statement is on his blog.

StartUp – The StartUp Podcast is, as the name suggests, a complete guide on how to start your business. You can find some of the most valuable tips when first starting a company, such as how to name your company and how valuations work, all the way to in-depth discussions about depth and how to conciliate family and career.

The GaryVee Audio Experience – Rock star entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk shares a ton of useful and inspirational material for his podcast. The show follows a simple Q&A format, with Gary answering viewer-submitted questions about marketing, social media, and entrepreneurship.

The Foundation – This podcast contains excellent interviews with so many high-profile entrepreneurs. It is an entirely online program for entrepreneurs, and its podcasts have the role of guest lecturers.

This Week in Startups – This Week in Startups basically shares what’s happening in the world of entrepreneurship. Jason Calacanis, every week has a few experts over in order to discuss and share with the listeners some of the most interesting events and news happening that week. Apart from the world of web companies, the panel of experts also shares their own tips and strategies towards becoming a better business person.

Jocko Podcast – It is a show run by Jocko Willink and Echo Charles on business management and leadership. Besides the business aspect, you can also learn about leadership in war, relationships, and everyday life. You can gain a fresh perspective on how to deal with stress, self-discipline, negativity, how to be strong etc.

The School of Greatness – Lewis Howes podcast will, without a doubt, inspire you to achieve your biggest goals and dreams. His focus is not only on his own views and strategies toward success, but he also interviews other entrepreneurs, celebrities, and athletes who want to share their success story.

These are my picks for podcasts that can give you the unique chance to learn and improve yourself on the go. No matter if you are starting your first business, or just looking for inspiration, you can all find tips and tricks in these podcasts that can turn your business into a great success.

By Eva Piperevska

Envoice — Invoicing app that let you get paid (Media Kit)

2017-07-19 | ALL | No Comments

Thank you for your time and interest to learn more about us and what we’ve been working on in the past months. Truly, building a product is one great experience. There are a lot of challenges and assumptions, but here we are, writing the media kit, getting the last bits ready for the official launch.

Hopefully, this media kit will provide you with some insight of the team and our product — Envoice.

We‘d love to hear your thoughts.
(You can reach out to me on marjan@envoice.in)

Yet another Invoicing app? — You may ask…

Today we see a lot of teams trying to crack the next thing, to become the next unicorns, thus a lot of energy is consumed into inventing the future rather than fixing what is already there. — the result: annoyed end users.

As a company, we believe into creating a digital version of the physical processes. To achieve this, we are trying to learn about our potential users; to understand how they are solving a specific task starting from “pen and paper” up to using an app. All this to avoid users being annoyed and to enjoy using our products.

Envoice is a result of solving our own frustration with sending Word/PDF invoices to our clients. Before Envoice was born, we’ve had three processes:

Sending an invoice to an existing client;
Sending an invoice to a new client;
Maintain the invoice list and stats in an Excel file;

The problems we’ve encountered

What we did here was copying the previous invoice, changing the invoice number, issue date, due date, invoice items and total amount. Before we send the invoice to the client, we were checking if nothing is missed and if the information is correct.

We’ve noticed a trend that we’ve always ended up in making a mistake before sending the invoice to the client. Sometimes we’ve forgot to change the invoice number, sometimes it was the issue date, the due date or the line items.

The excel file was a story in itself. Different currencies, clients and invoice statuses. It was a challenge to create any type of report.

Going in the field

If we’ve had this problem, there have to be other teams and individuals as well. Sasho Mihajlov did a great job outside of our HQ, with interviewing individuals and small companies. The interviews were fruitful.

There were two groups of people who have had the same challenges in a different format:

Freelancers and small companies who were using the same approach as ours;
Freelancers and small companies who were using an app but were annoyed by the overall experience and long learning curve;

To sum it up, we’ve got a feeling that the existing solutions in the wild, have spent more energy in the app development and choosing a technology stack rather than focusing on the overall experience and how sending invoices happens in the real life.

Envoice — the making of

We’ve identified and confirmed the need and wanted to respond in a proper manner. A lot of discussions had happened in and out the office until we’ve set our goals:

We wanted our customers to be able to set their Envoice account without hassle;
We wanted our customers to be able to send an invoice in less than a minute;
We wanted our customers to be able to able to get paid instantly on their PayPal, Payoneer and Stripe account;

We’ve created a mockup(image bellow — first part) to start with and iterated until we’ve collected enough information that the app is easy to use(image bellow — second part).

We didn’t stop there. We’ve dedicated ourselves on adding those small details that no-one will talk about, but if we remove them, customers would not know how they’ve lived without them. Small things like client prediction, invoice number prediction, payment notifications.

Currently, there are a lot of activities happening on our side. In the next months we will continue to deliver items from our road-map for Envoice.
Stay healthy and happy!

Launch Details

Release date — Thursday May 4, 2017 @ 9am UTC+1
Price — $0.0 — $27 per month
Website — https://www.envoice.in/

The A-TEAM behind Envoice

We’re the team behind Emit Knowledge, progressive small agency which stands behind the enterprise software for many big companies like Fokker, Enercon and behind the web apps for many startups around the globe.

As part of our team philosophy to build better software together, we always give back to the community. Our team is actively contributing in open source projects, public speaking, lecturing, blog writing and supporting our local user groups.

Envoice is one of the goals towards our vision to craft products that people love to use. We would love you to be part of our journey.

@emitknowledge / www.emitknowledge.com

_______

Media Kit Goodies — photos, videos and GIFs

Screenshots

GIFs

Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClTB1bBWnkmAp0FIkrEUafw

Logos:

App Description

Envoice is an invoicing app that let you send invoices and let your customers pay you online with a debit or credit card on Paypal, Payoneer or Stripe.

It will let you to send invoice super-fast, add invoice attachments from Dropbox and Google Drive, track when a client opens the invoice and get super understandable financial report in a second.

POWERFUL FEATURES

Super-Fast Invoicing — Send invoices in less than a minute.
Invoice Tracking — Track your invoice activities. Learn when your client opened, downloaded and paid your invoice.
Get Paid Faster — Accept online payments via PayPal, Stripe and Payoneer.
Multiple Currencies — Multiple currencies are supported. You name it we’ve got it.
Automatic Remainders — We’ll sent automatic reminders to your client for every overdue invoice.
Download Invoice As PDF — Both you and your client can have an offline version of the invoice.
Duplicate Invoice — Stop typing the same information over and over again. Duplicate existing invoices and send them to your client.
Forward Your Invoices To Your Accountant — Let your accountant stay up to date with your invoices.
Email Invoices And Get Paid Online — Send your invoices to your clients by email and get them paid via credit/debit card.
Financial Report — You’ll get a Statement of Success that is easy to read and understand how much you’ve earned.
Custom Branding — Add your business logo to your invoices.
Email And SMS Notifications — Receive notifications when an invoice is paid or overdue.
Multiple Tax Settings — Add multiple tax settings and use them accordingly.
Print Invoice — Print your invoice for your offline archive.
Attach Your Files To Your Invoices — Send your project files and timesheets attached on your invoice fro your Dropbox and Google Drive.
List And Manage Invoices — Filter your invoices by number, client, date, amount and status.
Templates And Help Content — Access to our template and help content for everyday business activities.
Great Support — Our support helps you tackle all your issues and is always ready to help.

OUR STORY

One thing lead to another and here we are with our new product — Envoice, an invoicing app that let you send invoices and let your customers pay you online with a debit or credit card on Paypal, Payoneer or Stripe.

DATA SECURITY AND SAFETY

We have SSL data encryption(same as online banking), daily encrypted data backups of your data to prevent data loss.

MEDIA COVERAGE:

Payoneer now integrated with Envoice

https://betalist.com/startups/envoice

▸ Follow us on Twitter Envoice – Send invoices. Learn and grow.
▸ www.envoice.in

By Eva Piperevska

Envoice Wins Industry Accolades – Great User Experience and Rising Star Awards for Invoicing Software

2017-07-18 | ALL | No Comments

Envoice recently won two industry awards from a leading business software marketplace, FinancesOnline. Our software was granted the 2017 Great User Experience Award and the Rising Star Award for displaying excellence in usability, intuitive design and convenience to its users. We’ve always aimed to simplify invoicing for freelancers and small businesses with our quick-generating invoices and streamlined payment process, so these awards validate our mission.

The Great User Experience Award for invoicing software is given to business apps with an intuitive design and smooth navigation. Our software, Envoice, makes creating invoice a child’s play. File attachment is smooth via Google Drive or Dropbox, and our reporting tool immediately shows your total payments so you have a clear picture of your business health.

Similarly, we were granted the 2017 Rising Star Award because the review expert from FinancesOnline believe our software has the potential to become a major player in the invoicing field. Despite being a new entrant, Envoice has shown that users are more eager to use simple but effective tools. We allow users to send invoice, track them via email notifications and get paid easily by connecting the app with popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe and Payoneer. You can also get paid via credit and debit cards.

On another note, we’re happy to be included in FinancesOnline’s accounting software guide. The list cites the leading accounting and invoicing apps in the market today, and it’s our honor to be part of that group.

By Eva Piperevska

Top 10 Books every small business owner must read

2017-07-17 | ALL | No Comments

My personal belief is that in order to grow your business, you must grow yourself first. Keep your brain in shape, sharp your own knife and learn new things that can help your business through reading books. And there are thousands of great business books out there. In fact, there are so many books on the shelves that deciding which one is worth reading can be a bit overwhelming.

I have put up a list of 10 favorites, which are essential for every small business owner.

1. “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber – Lack of systems is one of the reasons small businesses fail. In this book, the author not only explains why systems are important but how to install them as well. This book will help you grow your business in a predictable and productive way and the end result will be both happier employees and happier customers.

2. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey – One of the all-time best sellers teach us how to become more effective by balancing the personal and professional at the same time. Stephen Covey, with his holistic approach to solving personal and professional problems, fills the book with anecdotes from both his worlds.

3. “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t” by Jim Collins – In this great book,

Collins answers the question why some companies achieve enduring greatness and others don’t. He shares his extensive research of 6 000 articles and 2 000 pages of interviews and reveals what it is that makes top companies tick.

4. “How to Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie – This one is an oldie but is a must read on every entrepreneur’s read list. Solid network and good relationships are the foundations of successful business, and that is what makes this book a great read. It is full of techniques for enhancing relationships that can help you in getting what you want out of people (in a good way!).

5. “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki – This is probably the number one book on personal finances of all time. The author busts the myth that you need to earn a high income in order to be rich. He explains the difference very well between working for money and having your money work for you.

6. “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz – Ben Horowitz, an entrepreneur himself, share the difficulties of running a business. In the book, he shares stories of when his business nearly failed, how he fought to defeat, and how all of us can do hard thing too. It is a nice reminder that our problems are not unique and other have succeeded in the face of similar challenges.

7. “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters – Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and a lead investor of Facebook thought a class on start-ups, at Stanford, and Blake Masters took very good notes. It resulted in a legendary book on how we can find singular ways to explore uncharted frontiers and create new inventions.

8. “Speak and Get Results” by Sandy Linver – Public speaking, even one on one speaking, can be frightening to many people and this is a book that offers a solution to that problem. The author broke down the science of designing a speech or presentation that will get audiences hooked. In the book, there is a formula for this which can be used at every sales meeting, pitch, client proposal, and so on.

9. “Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box” by the Arbinger Institute – This is a straightforward

book on how to discover your own self – deceptions, which, according to the book is the root of all leadership problems in today’s organizations. The authors demonstrate that breaking destructive patterns can lead to improved teamwork, communication, trust, motivation, commitment, and leadership.

10. “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen – Small business owners know how hard can be to find and maintain high levels of productivity. This is a book that offers a popular method on organizing, prioritizing, and accomplishing tasks that are important. According to David Allen, the secret to increased productivity is the ability to relax. The whole book outlines a system that will help you achieve it.

I can probably add twenty more on the list, but let’s keep it short and basic. It is no easy being a small business owner, and always being prepared and on top of your game. So, keeping your mind sharp and building off the experience of others will give you this advantage. These books will provide you with the wealth of knowledge of those who have gone and done that before you. Happy reading!

Envoice is a professional invoicing app that can save you time that you spend for invoicing and help you run your business smoothly. Learn more about Envoice on www.envoice.in

By Eva Piperevska

5 MUST HAVE TOOLS FOR SMALL BUSINESS

2017-07-10 | ALL | No Comments

One of the biggest challenges, when setting up a business, is the administrative part. Nowadays there are hundreds of thousands of software, tools, and apps that are created to make life easier for small business owners. However, the vast offers can be overwhelming for even the tech-savviest people.

In a world where the Internet offers millions of opportunities, be sure that your competitors are taking advantage of such opportunities. So, if you want to stay ahead and on top of the game, using the best tools will up your efficiency by allowing you to focus on more important activities. After all, the goal is to work smarter not harder.

Many of these tools are available as monthly or yearly subscriptions so those can add up fast. Most small business’ needs may not need feature-rich and expensive tools. Free or low-priced alternatives can get the job done just as good. This is a list of free or affordable options in different categories.

Overall business management: GSuite

Google created their apps with a strong focus on collaboration, and effortless sharing with team members or external party. Google Apps for Work (G Suite) was built in that direction too. It is organized into four categories spanning eleven products. Under Communicate you’ll find Gmail, Hangouts, and Calendar; under Store, there’s Google Drive; under Collaborate there’s Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, and Sites; and under Manage there’s Admin and Vault. That final one is designed to archive corporate email in organizations that have to retain data for regulatory compliance. So, basically, you can purchase a domain, set up an email client, track analytics on your website, launch and manage advertisement campaigns etc. With GSuite everything is centered and in one place.

Communication: Slack

Slack makes communication with the team easy and stress-free. What makes it special is that it was created particularly for business communication. It allows you to create public channels, private groups, message threads and private messages. With all these Slack offers maximum communicative flexibility.

Project management: Trello

Trello is one of the most popular teams and project management tools in recent years. It has simple and easy to use interface, which business owners find very productive and efficient in tracking ongoing projects. You can create various boards and cards, assign tasks, set due dates, add notes etc. You can easily ask for updates from team members or employees regarding the status of each task and see what has been done and what is still ongoing. Trello is free for individual and small teams use.

Cloud Invoicing: Envoice

When starting a new business it can be tricky tracking and send out timely invoices. Envoice is a solution that offers free fast invoicing, online payments, email invoicing, financial reports, invoice tracking, custom branding and much more. It will simplify your invoicing process and you can get paid online with a debit/credit card on PayPal, Payoneer, or Stripe.

Social Media Management: Hootsuite

The start of every business is tightly connected with building brand awareness and promoting it. Hootsuite is a tool that enables you to monitor all your social media activity without the hassle of switching between multiple tabs. With Hootsuite, you can post across various social media channels, interact with customers, and overall keep track of all social activity in one simple dashboard. It saves you time and boosts your productivity.

The tools mentioned above are the starter pack for beginning making your life simpler. As your business advances forward, you might find yourself in a need for various other software and tools for different needs so you might want to check SalesLoft for sales and lead generation especially if you are a b2b company. If you are not tech-savvy, but more design-centered, Wix is a tool for you. It will help you set up a website and blog. MailChimp, Dropbox, Skype are oldies but goldies. If those mentioned above are not for you, you can always check out other options before deciding on the best tool for each specific business function.

By Eva Piperevska

MAXIMIZE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY IN A CO-WORKING SPACE

2017-06-22 | ALL | No Comments

As a freelancer, who has worked both from home and various public places, I welcomed the new trend of co-working very enthusiastically. Because finally, there is an innovative alternative to traditional office spaces which allows people to thrive professionally and personally in a collaborative work environment.

Co-working as a working style means a whole lot of people, from different companies and industries under one roof. This also means sharing office space. Conference rooms. Break rooms. And everything that a co-working space offers to its members. What is probably the greatest thing about this whole concept is the chance to network with all these people. Build a personal network of connections. And create business partnerships, with the possibility of expanding your business and client list.

While in my experience working in a co-working space can provide numerous benefits, being around other people in such vibrant, energetic, and buzzing space has impacted a lot on my productivity. In most cases, people using co-working spaces can be seen as more passionate about their work from one side. And want to be productive and time efficient on the other side.

So, here are a few tips from my experience, that can be beneficial for you and can boost your productivity:

Be self-disciplined – Keep yourself accountable. It is very easy to get distracted in a social environment like a co–working space, so writing down tasks and completing them is a good foundation for a productive habit;
Take a break – It is very important, in order to keep yourself focused, to take regular breaks. A break doesn’t necessarily mean running a personal errand. It can simply be getting up and stretch or move around for a couple of minutes;
Be engaged – Engaging oneself means to be productive to your work or your team. Otherwise, it is just a waste of time. Personal time tracking can be crucial in maintaining productivity. You can use Toggle as one of the most intuitive time trackers. RescueTime app has proven to be very helpful in providing insight on my time management, as it runs in the background and tracks time spent on apps and websites, and delivers detailed reports on time spent on replying emails or browsing social media;
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail – Having a general plan for the day or week gives you a direction and structure. This keeps you on the right track and reminds you of what was done and what was not.
Good work rewards – After completing a task or achieving a milestone, reward yourself for the good work. This makes the work easier and encourages hard work. Pick your own rewards;
Defeat Procrastination – Large projects can be broken down into smaller chunks and set smaller tasks, so that you don’t get distracted by the environment, trying to avoid doing what has to be done;
Be tech sassy – Use technology to your advantage, by synchronizing emails, events, calendars. Use websites that store all your documents and data in a cloud. Digitalize everything to avoid cluttering your workspace with paper. This will not only save time but boost your productivity too;

Besides all this, maybe the most important thing is taking care of yourself. Being surrounded by highly passionate and business driven people can be motivating and at the same time can easily make you a workaholic. Getting your beauty sleep will only make you more focused and productive the next day. Lack of sleep, on the other hand, contributes to concentration issues and negative attitude in general.

Working in a co-working space takes some getting used to. But the whole concept and experience can be very rewarding. So, all you need to do is to find the right balance between being social and private.

By Eva Piperevska

6 TIPS FOR WORKING ON THE ROAD AS A DIGITAL NOMAD

2017-06-15 | ALL | No Comments

One of the biggest social developments of this millennium is the rise of the digital nomads. We all read about them, we all met a couple of them and we all had that thought popped up of being one.

There is no single profession that has a monopoly on who gets to be a digital nomad and who doesn’t.

The one shared factor is the “digital” part. As long as you have an internet connection you can work from anywhere. So, if you get to travel on business trips, go to conferences or just cannot travel without a laptop on your vacation, you have experienced a small portion of the digital nomad’s lifestyle, and that is working on the road.

As a frequent traveler for work, I face a lot of issues while trying to stay on top of my tasks. From bad internet connection, terrible WIFI Hotspots to over-expensive mobile data plans and more.

To make sure I have the best time while I travel, I had to take a few steps in advance. So no matter what happens I will be better equipped and keep everything going swell.

Here are some tips I do while working and traveling that can you find them useful:

First, I make sure the WIFI is strong and reliable in the place I am accommodated. Well, obviously I can never be absolutely certain. But I can take some precautionary steps to ensure I mitigate any risks when it comes to finding strong and reliable WIFI. If your work is dependent on the high-speed internet, I recommend you to run a speed test as soon as possible. You can even ask the owner/staff to run a speed test and share the results with you.
Another great way is bringing my own hotspot. In some situations, I have bought a local SIM card, popped it up in the hot spot and took my own internet wherever I was. Mobile phones can be used the same way, but bear in mind, when traveling internationally, using data on roaming can really impact your phone bill, depending on where you travel.
When I am planning for my next location, I make sure I do my research on nearby cybercafés or cafés such as Starbucks, free wifi hotspots like public parks and libraries, and of course nice co-working spaces. Or I make a list and keep it in hand, one never knows when it may be needed. Sometimes I even ask my friends who have been on that location to share me some locations links and I store them in my Google Trips app.
What has been proven as a safe and good strategy for me is keeping offline copies of all my files\materials I might need to access. Gmail offers Offline access, but note that if you have multiple accounts you will be able to access your accounts you were most recently logged into. Using a desktop mail program will store your emails onto your computer as well as in the cloud. So, whenever you find yourself without internet access, you can always go through all of your emails you didn’t get to answer, save replies as drafts and send them out when the internet is back on.
It is also extremely useful to have an online backup of your files. This way you can access them from any computer, wherever you can find an internet connection. A lot of free services can be found online, like Dropbox, SugarSync, Carbonite etc.
Managing expectations of clients, partners, colleagues, and even family can be very helpful in these situations. If your internet is not reliable, just warn them about it. This can spare you a lot of stress and anxiety when you are on a deadline.

Going offline will often give you the focus on getting chunks of your work accomplished. You will be able to eliminate distraction such as social media and focus increasing your productivity.

Being a digital nomad or just a person who likes to travel and get things done, work-wise while traveling, can be so much fun if you stay organized. If you are still new in this field and you want to read a bit more you can look up digital nomads like – Robert Reid > @reidontravel, which I really like. I follow him because he investigates the experience worldwide for National Geographic. Or on the other hand, you can check out the Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad.

Have you had experience as a digital nomad? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments. And I would love to hear your stories while overcoming those or some other obstacles as a digital nomad.

Digital Nomad Checklist (Download for Free)

By Eva Piperevska

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One of the biggest social developments of this millennium is the rise of the digital nomads. We all read about them, we all met a couple of them and we all had that thought popped up of being one.