Tools for entrepreneurs

10 essential email design tips from Justine Jordan

At Marketing United 2016, email extraordinaire Justine Jordan of Litmus dealt out dozens of tips and tricks you can use to improve your subscriber experience, open rates, clicks, and conversions. Here are 10 of those awesome email tips.
Entrepreneurs, here are some tools and resources to support and keep you motivated.
BLOGGING • BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT • CO-WORKING SPACES • CUSTOMER SUPPORT • E-COMMERCE • EMAIL • EXPERT ADVICE •
FUNDING • IMAGES • MANPOWER • MARKETING • GETTING ORGANISED • RESEARCH • TIME MANAGEMENT • WEB DESIGN

networks & spaces

Find like-minded people that will support you in your entrepreneurial journey. 

Lean In Circles | Join the Official Community!

Lean In Circles are small groups who meet regularly to learn and grow together, and they're changing lives. Women are asking for more, stepping outside their comfort zones, and leaning in. A Circle can be a monthly roundtable at your home, a brown-bag lunch series at work, or even a virtual meet-up with people from around the world. The important thing is that you get together regularly-and that everyone participates. Your Circle can also join up with other Circles and create a Chapter that hosts events and supports networking.

Founding Moms

A great platform that supports mums to launch their businesses and get their entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. They have a paid subscription for those who are looking for specific help in certain areas, but you also get lots of free and helpful tips by signing up to their newsletters.

Business Women Network

Business Women Network brings together like-minded business women in a casual and friendly environment to network at monthly meetings and various events. Business Women Network also provides a platform for women to be inspired, engage and get connected with other like-minded and empowered women.

Big Hearted Business

Big Hearted Business is a website that supports and educates big-hearted people from all walks of life in the art of making a living doing what they love, while taking care of themselves AND contributing to the world in some meaningful way.

CreativeMornings/Singapore

CreativeMornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types (including entrepreneurs, developers & crafters). Each event is free of charge and includes a 20-minute talk, plus coffee!

Startup Passion - Discover or Join a Startup

W Hub is a profile-driven platform that showcases the entrepreneur and team behind the Start-Up. W Hub lets Start-Ups share their company mission, product or service and current job openings - a fantastic way of attracting new talent to your Start Up. W Hub is based out of Hong Kong but going global. And what's even better, it's free to join the community.

Good Life Project (watch and listen)

The Good Life project travels the globe, finding and sharing the wisdom and stories of world-class teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, leaders, makers and world-shakers. And highlighting the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It's a great site to find inspiration and motivation do follow your dream.

Avoid business burn out! There is something you can do...

An inspirational and motivational read for those of you who have started businesses and are at the point of break down. It's easy to hate the very thing you created with so much love and hope. Find out why and what you can do about it. This is a post by Jonathan Fields from the Good Life Project

Puttylike

A home for multipotentialites: people with lots of different interests and projects on the go. Here you can find like-minded people, and useful tips on how to make a success out of all your interests.

Secret {W} Business

Secret {W} Business is a community that support female entrepreneurs, changemakers and innovators. They hold regular workshops and networking events supporting women in their entrepreneurial journeys. We (at Take time to BE YOU) have attended a few of their events and they feel very relaxed and professional at the same time, a nice balance that helps to make them less intimidating, especially when it's your first time at a networking event.

Live Your Legend

Scott Dinsmore started this movement. He is in an inspirational guy who has built a business around this whole idea. He believes we can and should do what we love. He has tips and courses on his site to help people move away from jobs they hate or they have to do, to ones they feel passionate about.

The Athena Network Singapore

The Athena Network facilitates monthly business meetings for female executives and entrepreneurs to network strategically in an elegant yet relaxed atmosphere.

Woomentum

Woomentum is a platform that:
- Provides business support to women entrepreneurs.
- Helps women entrepreneurs access alternative funding sources such as Crowdfunding.
Woomentum is the first crowdsourcing platform in SE Asia and Japan that covers both business support and funding access to women entrepreneurs.

space
If you don't want to work from home and want a place where you can easily meet people and feel inspired - you can try working out of a co-working space. There are now several to choose from in Singapore.

Trehaus Co Working

Trehaus is Singapore's first co-working space complete with childcare and learning facilities for kids and it's right in the heart of Orchard.

Workcentral Coworking Space

This is a co-working space right in the middle of town. And this is what they say makes them different: "We understand that you do not need to wear a suit and tie to work, or have meetings in stuffy boardrooms to succeed in life, yet there is a need to project and maintain a professional image to your partners, clients and stakeholders". They also offer flexible packages to suit individual needs. Membership fees start from S$50 a day or S$150 per month for hot-desking. And they also promise to cater for individual needs. Check out their site here.

The Co | Coworking desks, meeting facilities, event spaces and private offices in Singapore's CBD.

The Co | Coworking desks, meeting facilities, event spaces and private offices in Singapore's CBD. This is an eight story building purposefully designed to meet the needs of its co-working tenants.

The Working Capitol

A hybrid coworking and event space at 1 Keong Saik Road, Singapore. This is a spacious and professional looking co-working space nested in the hip and trendy Keong Saik area. Click on the link to find out more.

The HUB Singapore | Co-working space

This is a cool co-working space in Princep Street. The Hub describes itself like this: "We know that it takes courage to pursue life on your own terms. That's why we've built a home for courageous people and businesses to work together. We close social distances, enabling you to launch your ventures and scale your businesses."

Woolf Works - a co-working space for women in the East Coast

A beautiful co-working space for women in the heart of Joo Chiat.

Collective Works - co-working office space in the CBD

Collective Works was created to offer a flexible and affordable working space in the CBD. The white walls and the ergonomic furniture designs make it feel a bit more 'corporate' than the other co-working spaces around.

expert advice

Hercolab

HerCoLab is a Crowdsourcing platform that connects female entrepreneurs to an amazing pool of female experts and freelancers.

Overcome your fear of public speaking with these 27 useful tips from Brian Tracy.

This is a helpful article from Brian Tracy's website that points out some practical ways to deal with your fear of public speaking. For most entrepreneurs public speaking will probably happen at some point, whether it is to make a sale or to recruit some new investors, it's bound to happen. Now, you can use these tips to prepare and feel a bit more confident.

tools & resources

Hand-picked to help you set up and run your business more efficiently.

blogging

Alltop, all the top stories

All the top headlines from popular topics around the web. You no longer have to fear being left behind. This is a great source of trends and news. Very handy for finding relevant and trending material for your blog.

Blogging cheat sheet

A very helpful post on how to use your blog effectively - to help you turn blog readers into customers. Thank you Groove Digital Marketing for putting this together!

Google Trending Searches

Find out the most trending searches on Google. Know what people are talking about and use this to create relevant posts.

customer support

Zopim Live Chat Software

This is a great way to engage with your customers. It's a tool that allows you to have a live chat with anyone visiting your site and turn visitors into clients. They offer a free 14-day trial.

business development

The Business Model Canvas

This is a simple and easy to use tool for creating your business model – in one page! It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. We gave it a try and loved it! And what's even better - they are happy for you to download it and use it for free. Click here for more info.

The 3 Minute Technique for Brainstorming Your Startup's Product Roadmap

Here is an ingenious way for brainstorming product ideas (in just 3 minutes).

The Suitcase Entrepreneur

If you are contemplating becoming an entrepreneur while on the go, then Natalie Sisson's site is definitely a must for you. She's made it her business helping others do just that. Her site is packed with tips and resources to help you get your project off the ground.

The Value Proposition Canvas

The Value Proposition Canvas from Strategyzer makes it clear how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want. Like the Business Model Canvas, you can download this for free.

E-COMMERCE

Don't Make These 7 Mistakes in Your Ecommerce Business - Shopify blog post.

A handy blog post on 7 very common mistakes that we can easily avoid on our e-commerce sites. Thanks for the tips Shopify!

Gumroad

Gumroad is for independent writers, designers, software developers, musicians, artists, teachers, filmmakers, and anyone in-between. Whether you sell digital goods or physical goods, you can use Gumroad. Gumroad enables you to sell directly to your audience — just like you talk to them. If you use the Free version of Gumroad, our fee is just 8.5% + 30 cents per transaction. If you get the Premium version of Gumroad for $10(USD)/month, our fee is 3.5% + 30 cents per sale.

funding

The ultimate pitch deck for investment

A fantastic downloadable tool for any one looking for investment. These are 11 core slides to help you along the way. They include the actual deck that Reid Hoffman used during his investment round for LinkedIn and Greylock.

33 ways to monetise your site.

Find out how you can turn your site into a money making machine! It's not going to happen over night, but in this interesting article by Robert Mening from Websitesetup.org we find out how we can go about successfully monetising a website.

Flippa: buying and selling Websites, Domains, and Apps

Here you can buy and sell a website, domain name or mobile App. They have a marketplace with over 600 000 Buyers and Sellers, so definitely a good place to check out.

BUXFER - helps you manage your finances

BUXFER is a free finance web app. If budgeting and managing your finances is a struggle then this might be a good tool for you. Manage not only your own expenses, but a group's when you sync Buxfer with your bank or import statements or financial data files. You'll be able to generate reports on who owes what; there's even an IOU view. And don't worry if your bank accounts are in other countries - there's always an alternative for you. If you have US accounts then you can use Mint.com. In OZ you can use Pocketbook. And good alternatives in Europe are books.zoho.com or moneydashboard. Oh and another good one in Singapore is Moneythor.

Fund your project - succeed on Kickstarter

This course will serve as a guide for a successful crowdfunding campaign. If you've been looking for a way to raise funds to get your project off the ground. This might be the solution! This is a short, free course that will give you plenty of practical advice. So why not give it a try. Sign up at anytime.

marketing

GaryVaynerchuk.com - #ask Gary Vee

Gary is THE person to watch and follow on digital marketing - he is got the eye for what's the best new media to tap into and shares his insights for free on his web and his YouTube platforms.

The Top 3 Instagram Trends for Marketers

Visual content is becoming more important than ever to a brand's marketing strategy. Find out the top 3 Instagram trends for marketers and learn how to better use Instagram for your brand.

Getting started with email marketing

Join MailChimp's Allyson Van Houten and learn how to craft an email marketing strategy that helps you - the small business owners, freelancers, and startup teams - accomplish your business goals. Join this one hour session - for free - now.

6 easy ways to grow your business audience today.

Here are six practical tips to help you grow your business. They call them growth hack techniques. Read the article, and find out what this talk of Growth Hacking is all about.

7 practical tips on how to make your YouTube marketing a success.

Find out if using YouTube to market your business is the right thing for you. Learn from the mistakes of others (30,000 others to be exact), and get some practical tips from the CEO at SumAll on how you can make the campaign work.

Find out how long your social media posts should be.

This is an excellent post by Buffer. They've used an infographic to help us figure out how long your tweets, blog, headlines, facebook posts, etc, should be. And it's all backed up by great research. Definitely worth a read.

How to add slide-ins Call to action

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a call-to-action box you pops up in your blog - helping you get more leads for your amazing content.

6 Tips to Rank High in Google's Search Engine

JeffBullas.com is a blog with tons of tips on how to create a successful blog and how to monetise it. This particular article is a good one; featuring 6 tips to help you rank higher on Google's search engine.

20 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

In this blog by the Social Media Examiner - 20 social media experts share how they're getting results with social media marketing today. Alongside handy tips on how to get ahead of the game they share great resources like BuzzSumo (which provides you with a list of the top-performing content in terms of social shares according to your keyword.) and Edgar (tip 7 – an App that allows you to create your own content categories so you can keep track of the specific types of posts you’re releasing).

9 rules for creating awesome product videos

Learn how to create cool, catchy product videos that are informative and inspiring - and more importantly, that turn into a sale. The people at Vimeo have seen a lot of videos and are now sharing what they've learnt from these with us. Thank you Vimeo.

How to outline your next business presentation in 6 easy steps

Worried about your next business presentation? Not sure what to include and how to get your message across? Here, Scott Schwertly tells us to use the 'storytelling model'. He explains - in 6 very easy steps - how you can make it work for you.

setting up
getting organised

Make Your Mark

Are you ready to "make a dent in the universe"? As a creative, you no longer have to take a backseat. In fact, stepping up and embracing entrepreneurship is the fastest route to impact. But where do you start? And what sets the businesses that succeed apart? Here are 21 leading entrepreneurs and experts sharing their best practices for launching a purpose-driven business —making something that matters.

The Steal Like An Artist Journal

Creator Austin Kleon says The Steal Like An Artist Journal will help get your creative juices flowing and record new (and stolen) ideas, thoughts, and discoveries. Think of it as a daily course in creativity: a portable workshop and coursebook, jammed full of inspiration, prompts, quotes, and exercises designed to turn you into a creative kleptomaniac.

Start With Why

Do you know your Why? The purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do? Simon Sinek’s online Why Discovery Course aims to help you articulate your unique Why statement.

The will to change has to come from within

Ever try to help someone who had absolutely no interest in being helped? It's one of the most frustrating experiences we can have. We can motivate people to act and perhaps persuade them into action for a short while but for change and action to be sustainable - the desire for it to happen has to come from within. Listen to Jonathan's story and find out more.

Elizabeth Gilbert: The Creative Life

The Good Life Project brings you this amazing talk with Elizabeth Gilbert - who exploded into the public's consciousness in 2006 with the release Eat Pray Love. Since then, Elizabeth has published a series of books, given a TED talk on creative genius that's been viewed more than 10 million times, become a leading voice on the pursuit of a creative, connected and vital life. In this conversation you'll learn about the power of curiosity and the fallacy of passion, where creativity comes from, what stops us from doing the thing we’re here to do, the importance of caring for your vessel, what happens when you think you’ve reached the end of your capacity and her powerful take on what it means to live a good life.

The Hardest Part About Change is Taking Action

It's time to get started. Enough reading and thinking about it - it's time to act!

How to find courage when you need it most

Here is a really helpful article on finding courage within you and learning to cope and overcome your fears. It's worth a read, especially if you've been hoping to make a change in your life - and fear of the unknown, or what people might say - are holding you back. We think the advice here - although directed at working women - can actually be applied by anyone. Happy reading. And be brave!

4 things entrepreneurs should think about that may not be in the business plan

Courtney and Stephanie share 4 top things you must remember to do before you set out your business. Keeping these in mind will put you in a better position than most people who set out and then have to learn the hard way.

Startup Stash - A great toolbox for every start up.

We love this directory of resources by StartUp Stash. They have lots and lots of tools help you build your startup. Their aim is to inspire entrepreneurs and share the tools that will help them build awesome stuff.

Solopreneursbootcamp

The Solopreneurs Bootcamp takes you step by step through the personal growth required to start your business. You’ll get the lessons in a 4-week, online video course that covers every ingredient you need to start your own business. You’ll have access to a beautifully organised set of video coursework, checklists, guided meditations, worksheets, and more.

Asana · Teamwork without email

Asana is a tool that helps you manage and assign tasks to your team, and keep on top of all your (and your team's) to-do list, even from a distance. It's a useful tool for teams that work 'together' but who are in different countries. And you can log into it and synchronise it with your IPad, Iphone and desktop.

Day One - online journal.

Day One is an easy to use on-line journal for iPhone, iPad or Mac. Everything you enter is synced and backed up in the cloud (iCloud or Dropbox). It's specially handy for when you have those light-bulb moments on the go and you need to record them somewhere.

Kanban boards for productivity.

A Kanban board is a tool for boosting productivity and they help improve organisations' transparency, productivity and efficiency. An online Kanban board is a combination of the valued principles of Kanban method and the latest technology. It allows you to organise your work with colourful cards placed on a virtual board. On a daily basis you are able to visualise, control and optimise workflow and collaborate in real-time with your team members. Kanban boards also enable you to track and analyse work with time tracking and time reports.

Penzu - online journal

Penzu is a free online diary and personal journal focused on privacy. Easily keep a secret diary or a private journal of notes and ideas securely on the web.

time management

The Five Minute Journal

This seems like a great way to start and end the day feeling in control. The journal asks you to simply put five minutes aside every morning and evening to think about your day and what you want to achieve. The journal will then help you plan your day by prompting you to answer a few simple questions.

Achieve your goals with visualisation

Seeing is believing: Before we can believe in a goal, we first must have an idea of what it looks like and this is where visualisation comes in. A technique for creating a mental image of a future event. When you visualise your desired outcome, you begin to “see” the possibility of achieving it. Find out why and how you can do this.

James Clear

James Clear writes about breaking bad habits and creating new healthy ones, and more importantly for you entrepreneurs - he shares practical tips on how to get things done more efficiently. An invaluable skill when you are a busy mother!

These savvy young entrepreneurs have 7 productivity tips to share with us

Being an entrepreneur is hard stuff! Now, try and juggle entrepreneurship and motherhood! It's really not for the faint hearted. So, we thought you'd appreciate this article with 7 handy productivity tips. These are by younger guys - who don't have to do all the stuff we mums do - still, they are very insightful and you can definitely adopt them into your routine.

WorkFlowy - organise your brain.

WorkFlowy is a notebook for lists. It's an organisational tool used to be more creative and productive. It helps you take notes, make lists, collaborate, brainstorm, plan and generally organise your brain.

images

Amazing photographs free for you to use

Trying to find the right image to illustrate your blog can be a hard and time consuming task. Thankfully, Bootstrapbay has published this helpful post which gives you the lowdown on the most popular sites with beautiful stock photography free for you to use.

Gratisography: Free, use as you please, high-resolution pictures.

If you are worried about using pics from the web then this seems like a good (although limited) alternative. Gratisography offers free high-resolution pictures for personal and commercial projects. There is not a lot but what's there is really cool. All pictures were captured by Ryan McGuire of Bells Design.

Death to the Stock Photo -

Free monthly photos for all your creative needs.

Thematic - Create your own scrolling album for free!

Thematic offers a creative way to share a visual narrative, whatever your story may be. Thematic is not a photo album, but an app for showcasing events in a specific sequence.

Thinkstockphoto

Thinkstock claims to have millions of royalty-free images, high resolution stock photos, vector art and illustration from getty images and istock.

Design 
your website

Customisable plugins library for websites

If you're looking to add plugins to your site - this is a good place to look for (mostly) free customisable ones. And apparently you can add them to any website.

Website Launch Checklist

This is a handy free e-book that includes a checklist of things you should review before your website launches, like: Web Forms Title Tags/Meta Data Site speed Browser Compatibility Stress Testing and much more! The only catch is you have to submit your email address so they can send it to you.

HTML Tutorial

Free tutorials for people putting together their own websites without an IT background. Learn HTML, CSS JavaScript, and more.

Optimizr.com

This website checks for errors on your site - anything that might stop it from being picked up by search engines or that might slow it down (our report told us we had too many CSS files in our template. Eek). Optimizr then gives you some tips on how to fix it - but the help of a techie friend might come in handy too.

Website Grader

Website Grader is a free online tool that grades your site against key metrics like performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security. It's free to try it too. But you'll need someone who understands the results to then help you do something about the findings.

Email

Really Good Emails

This site is all about putting together and sending out amazing email campaigns. You can find how to guides as well as samples to help inspire you.

10 common mistakes that stop people from reading your email.

There's a lot more to writing email than you think. It's a real art! So you'll find this article very helpful - as it points out some popular mistakes that can be easily avoided when drafting your next mail out. Paying attention to your subject line and the words you use in it being number one! Read on to find out more...

Zoho Mail

Zoho mail is a good free email option for entrepreneur teams starting out. It offers free email for up to ten users! It also offers an office-docs feature and multiple domain management so you can swap your from name and recipients.

Too many email subscriptions in your inbox?

If you are feeling overwhelmed with all the emails subscriptions in your inbox then Unroll.Me might be for you. It allows you to unsubscribe from any unwanted email subscriptions and combine the rest into a comprehensive daily digest.

manpower

Fiverr - Hire people to do business projects for $5

This is a really helpful site for entrepreneurs, especially start-ups. At Fiverr.com you can hire people to help you with tasks like logo design, cartoons, copywriting, business cards, etc... People will offer their services (gigs) for as little as $5! Depending on the skills and size of the task you can decide who the right person for you is.

Upwork: online workplace

Get the help you need to get on top of your to do list. Upwork enables you to hire, manage, and pay an on-demand for freelance work.

Zirtual - Virtual Assistants for Busy People.

Zirtual is a virtual assistant service that matches busy people with dedicated assistants. Zirtual only uses US based, college educated and trained assistants but works with companies worldwide.

ZipRecruiter - job posting online.

ZipRecruiter is a job posting service online. When you post a job on ZipRecruiter it automatically distributes it to 50+ of the most visited job boards, websites and social networks on the Internet.

research

Five Best People-Search Engines

LifeHacker shares with us their list of the top five people-search engines as voted by their users. Check them out, and good luck finding the person you are looking for.

The 12 most useful search engines for beginners

A good run down of some of the most popular search engines. There is also a brief summary on each one explaining what differentiates them from the others.

BuzzSumo: find the most shared content and key influencers in your industry.

BuzzSumo allows you to discover the most shared links and key influencers for any topic. This is a fantastic tool for when you are doing your market research or even after you've launched your business - as it will help you stay in the loop, know what works and what doesn't. And it's free to use.