6 lesser-known but incredibly helpful tools for running a side business, according to entrepreneurs who make 5 to 6 figures a year on the side
- When you're doing double duty juggling your own business and a full-time job, time and efficiency become paramount. The tools you use to run your side gig can make or break your productivity and profits.
- Business Insider asked five successful side hustlers for their favorite tools for running their businesses.
- They recommend Trello for staying organized, Carrd for building a sleak website, and Zapier for automating tasks, among others.
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Around a quarter of the American population has some form of a side business, according to a 2018 report by investment and insurance company The Hartford.
If you assume that most of these peripheral enterprises are launched as passion projects or to spearhead a lifestyle change, you'd be wrong. The study found that the top reason people launch a side gig is for extra income.
The survey, conducted on over 4,000 US adults, also found that while the majority of side business owners (61%) also work full time elsewhere, other individuals with side hustles have another part-time job, are retired, or are homemakers. Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers alike start side ventures in fairly equal numbers, the research stated (26%, 33%, and 38% respectively), and 40% of millennials expect that their side business will ultimately become their primary source of income.
When you're doing double duty juggling your own business plus other paid work, time and efficiency become paramount. The tools you use to run your side gig can make or break your productivity and profits.
That's why Business Insider polled several people with successful side gigs in diverse industries about which tools have been particularly helpful in managing their businesses and reaching their goals. Here are their top picks.
To learn about running a side business: "The Step-by-Step Startup Guide" by PopUp Business SchoolPrice: free
Corinne Card, the cofounder of media training company Full Story Media Limited, relies on PopUp Business School - a website that provides educational resources for helping people start a business on the cheap, without a business plan - for help with her public-speaking side business, which runs alongside her main company and was started in 2017.
Card began the public speaking side of her business in 2017 and since then, it has become both a pipeline for new business as well as a revenue generator in itself. In 2018, she won two of her biggest contracts via her workshops, and she is projecting a profit of $25,000 through public-speaking bookings alone through 2020. This has quintupled from a revenue of $5,000 in 2017.
PopUp's free online course, "The Step-By-Step Startup Guide," has been particularly handy for Card.
"For example, if I want to dip into clear information on building a sales funnel, pricing, or networking advice, I can find the correct step and get all the information I need quickly and easily online," she said. "It's useful for my business because I've never been to business school or studied the topic in depth, and this online course gives me exactly the right kind of bite-sized, practical information I can use straight away to improve my results."
To build a website: CarrdPrice: free for basic package or $9 a year for Pro plan
A must have for many side businesses is a website. Yet creating one from scratch can be a cumbersome task, while hiring a web designer right out of the gate may be pricey.
Serial entrepreneur Bram Kanstein just launched his latest side business this year, after having had two previous startups acquired. (Startup Stash, a curated directory of resources and tools for startups that according to Kanstein is used by over 800,000 entrepreneurs worldwide, was acquired in November 2017 and the newsletter StartupWatching, delivered to over 11,000 subscribers, sold in May 2018.)
His latest project - a course called No-Code MVP that teaches people how to turn their startup idea into a minimum viable product with no coding experience - launched publicly December 17, 2019. Kanstein runs No-Code MVP alongside a full-time role as the cofounder of Venture Minds, an Amsterdam-based innovation strategy and consulting collective.
To build his side-business websites, Kanstein chose to use a free website builder for one-page sites called Carrd.
"Carrd is a super simple, responsive website builder that you can use for pretty much anything," said Kanstein. "One of Carrd's most powerful features is that it offers a great way to build custom form elements that you can use to collect data from your customer segment (email, address, name, etc.). I use it for all [of] my projects!"
Kanstein noted that while the biggest perk of this tool is that it's free to start, they also offer what he described as "an amazing Pro plan with the most powerful features" for just $9 per year.
To automate tedious tasks: ZapierPrice: free for basic package or $19.99/$49.99 for starter or professional package
Kanstein pointed out that one of the tools that Carrd's form element integrates with is Zapier, an online automation tool that lets you build workflows by connecting over 1,000 applications and services. Kanstein identified Zapier as the tool that he uses to automate all of the tedious tasks that he doesn't want to do manually.
"It's the biggest timesaver for anyone who wants to run a side business," he said.
He explained that you can connect two or more apps into "Zaps" to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build the integration. "For example, if someone signs up on [your business] website, you can add their details to a Google Sheet to save them and then send your customer an automated welcome email via Gmail" all through Zapier, he explained.
The distinction between the pricing plans relates to the number of tasks per month that you receive. You can get 100 tasks per month for free, 750 tasks per month for $20 through the starter package, or 2,000 tasks per month for $50 through the professional package, which Kanstein opted for. (Zapier also offers team and corporate packages for $299 a month and $599 a month, respectively, which offer more tasks as well as additional features.)
To manage projects and track time spent: TrelloPrice: free for basic package or $9.99/$20.83 a month for business or enterprise package
Business blogger Becky Beach flagged Trello - a collaborative project management tool that uses online boards, lists, and cards to help business owners stay organized - as the top tool she uses to manage her side business, an ecommerce store for women's accessories called Mom Beach LLC.
In 2018, Beach made $500,000 in sales from her side business, which she launched three years ago while pregnant with her son.
In addition to giving her freelance hires access to Trello so they can track their time and see their duties for the day, Beach also finds the tool helpful for tracking her own time and daily projects. When testing a new product, she also uses it to post notes from her research.
Hena Husain, whose full-time occupation is as a public relations contractor, founded The Content Architects on the side in 2017, which provides planning services for businesses. Initially launched as a PDF, Husain decided to take the plunge to turn her business into a web application; she is currently working with developers toward a relaunch in mid-January.
Husain called Trello her "savior."
"Trello is popular amongst developers, but I have found it a great way to organize the various tasks on my to-do list," Husain said. "I have a board for finance, social media, marketing, [and] meetings. The application allows you to create reminders, track progress, and label tasks by color, making my work stream slicker."
The free Trello package gives users unlimited personal boards, cards, and lists with a 10MB limit per file attachment. The business and enterprise packages allow up to 250MB per attachment, plus additional support and features.
Price: free starter package or $8.25/$16.58 a month for basic or plus package
Card also depends on a free tool called UENI, which helps small businesses manage their online presence so that customers can more easily find them.
"If [my] website is professional, high quality, and also easy to find via Google, it's much more likely to appeal to people who need to book a speaker for a conference, corporate event, or training session," explained Card.
She added that UENI is helping her build an online presence with "virtually no time spent and at zero cost." Card relies on it to assist with a number of website-related tasks, including search engine optimization, images, and content.
The entrepreneur is also leveraging UENI to create a Google My Business listing - which helps businesses manage their presence across Google, including Google Search and Google Maps - since UENI includes this service as part of their standard free package.
UENI includes unlimited web hosting and maintenance on Amazon Web Services, and takes care of technical and maintenance updates for users, which can be a huge timesaver for new business owners.
In addition to UENI's free starter package which includes a professional website, web hosting and maintenance, and Google My Business among its services, the tool also has options for a basic package that includes other bells and whistles like a free domain name and complete SEO audit. UENI's plus package offers everything that the basic plan does, plus a shopping cart to accept payments, a yearly website tune up, and more.
"It's useful because it is saving me the time and energy I'd need to invest if I were using one of the more established website builders, which still leave a lot of this work to the business owner," she said.
To manage your finances: BenchPrice: free with trial or packages start at $139 a month
Evan B. Knox has two side hustles in addition to his full-time role as a marketing director at a church. His first side venture is as the founder of Atlanta-based digital marketing agency Caffeine Marketing, and his second is serving as an active partner in a fly-fishing guide business in North Georgia.
Knox launched his marketing agency in July 2017 and reported that revenue has more than doubled every year for the last three years - from $22,000 to $52,000 to $115,000 - while working the same number of hours. And in the last year, from August 2018 to August 2019, revenue from the fly-fishing business increased from $1,000 to $4,200 (Knox came on as a partner in January 2019).
"Bench accounting is my secret weapon as an entrepreneur," said Knox. "I do not have the time to do bookkeeping for my side hustles, and Bench does it at an affordable rate." He explained that using Bench for his bookkeeping saves him hours of time categorizing expenses, reconciling his books, and creating profit-and-loss statements.
"There is an additional time saver when it comes to the peace of mind I have with having Bench take care of my books," said Knox. "When creating a successful side hustle, one has to be really intentional about delegating tasks to people so you can be freed up to do the things only you can. Having someone else do my books enables me to create content, take sales calls, and stay present at home with my family in the evening knowing my books are taken care of properly."
Knox added that he chose Bench over other bookkeeping tools not only because of the pricing and online reviews, but because he looks for tools that are aesthetically pleasing when he uses them so that he doesn't want to avoid them. "They have a beautiful design and UX, so I enjoy looking at my finances," he said.
Bench uses a simple business model that involves three steps: setting you up with a dedicated bookkeeper who becomes your online contact with the service, doing your monthly bookkeeping by importing your business transactions that you provide, and delivering real-time monthly financial reports.
Bench offers a one-month free trial for its bookkeeping services, which includes a prepared set of financial statements for you to keep.