.png)
Happy Monday! Hope you all had a great weekend and a well deserved break. As we’re nearing the end of the month and starting a new week I thought I’d share some of my solopreneur March favourites to power you through your workweek.
1. Clockify
One of my new favourite tools to use this month has been Clockify. Clockify is basically a time-tracking app, and I’ve used this many times in the past to track my monthly retainers with clients, but this month I’ve started to use the app to track my work productivity. All you have to do is enter in details of what you’re working on, hit start on the clock and it tracks the time you spend until you stop it again. I started doing this for literally every aspect of my work day and found just by creating the habit of awareness itself, I became way more productive with my time. It’s the same reason all those weight watchers style clubs are so successful - what gets measured gets managed. When you’re working for yourself it can be difficult to hold yourself accountable - because nobody’s going to tell you off if you take a 2 hour lunch break to binge the new season of Bridgerton! If you find yourself in a habit of slacking off, this is a great way to get yourself motivated again.
2. The Mindset Mentor
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you’re working for yourself podcasts are your new best friend. You can use them to learn from leaders in your industry, or even just as a motivational friend. That’s exactly how I view The Mindset Mentor. Rob Dial does these 20 minute podcasts 3 times a week that are so encouraging and helpful not only for reaching your business goals but even just your life in general. If you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, just give him 20 minutes of your time and I promise you you’ll feel better afterwards!
3. Pexels
So it’s not technically a March discovery but it deserves a shout out because it’s one of my favourite resources as a designer, content creator and business owner. Pexels provides free stock photos and videos for you to use wherever you want. All designers will be familiar with this one, but it’s really helpful for business owners creating content anywhere, whether it’s physical leaflets or social media posts. Legally you can get in really big trouble if you use a photo from Google Images or Pinterest without permission, but there are plenty of websites like Pexels (though it’s the best free one in my opinion) so be sure to check these out if you’re in need of some photography to spice up your branding.
4. Adobe Lightroom
So I can’t mention Pexels without Adobe Lightroom. This a photo editing software that offers the best presets of any photo editing app (again, this is my opinion). Although you do have to pay for it, it’s a really great software to have. You can do a lot of retouching with it to really level up your photos, and it’s a lot more user-friendly than Photoshop. I actually use this with a lot of my clients to add another level of branding to their content. I create custom presets which suit their brand identity and then apply these to all photos that they put out across their branded collateral and social media. This means, that even if your Instagram grid is mainly made up of just photos, they will all have a cohesive look which adds another layer of brand recognition when customers come across your posts.
So that’s it for my solopreneur March favourites. Have you ever used any of these resources? If you want a a more in depth look at any of them just let me know and I’d be happy to share how I use them in my work as a brand designer.
