In this fast paced, technological world we live in I’ve had to reconcile myself with an ugly truth.

I am a late adopter to technology.

As an online entrepreneur, this feels like quite the confession. I am not an innate technological explorer. I never have the newest gadgets and am often behind on the latest trends.

So while I can’t recap the hottest trends in tech, what I can share with you are some rock solid tools out there to make your life and business run smoother.

These are applications I use in my own daily life – so you know they’re easy to understand and integrate, and they’ve had a profound effect on bringing my life and business into what sometimes feels like The Jetsons territory.

Here are the Top 5 must-have tech tools to make your business (and life) run smoothly:

Color Coded Google Calendars
Something so simple, yet the impact is profound. By color-coding my various google calendars, I’m able to at a glance see when I’m busy, and for what different variables in my life. I can easily see what weeks I have a lot of social plans, work engagements, or volunteer activities. It’s helped me stop accidently double booking my time and finding balance, even amid busy weeks.

Take the time to organize your calendar, you will be repaid for your time in dividends.

WordSwag
I am hooked on this app. I use it to make branded graphics for my business, but I also use it to make hilarious infographics to text to my friends. You can take one of their many backgrounds, or upload your own, and with a few swipes have custom designed typography overlaying your chosen image.

Great for upgrading your text communication, as well as your Instagram game.

B612
Ah, the ultimate selfie ap. I didn’t think taking selfies was a big deal, or even fun until B612 came into my life. Dozens of built-in filters for the historical and glamourous, it’s upping the selfie game and makes it incredibly easy to share your glamourous self with your friends.

Frivolous and fun, you and your business have never looked better. No filters needed.

If this then that
This app makes me feel like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. It’s amazing. You can program it to take actions based on a specific action that happens. So say you get a lot of emails with attachments, and you hate searching thru your emails and opening them one by one. You can set this program to automatically save every email attachment you get in a specific folder in Google Drive.

Or say you post a lot of Instagram photos, but when you click share to twitter, you hate how it turns it into a link, not an image. You can program If This Then That to automatically share your Instagram photos as images on twitter, instead of boring links. Amazing!

They have functions for business owners, parents, artists, etc, they really make it easy to streamline your day so that you’re not constantly doing the same menial tasks over and over again.

I.flux
We’re all screen addicts here, right? Can we admit that now? Especially at night, the glow from your screens is really not great for your eyes and brain. It’s a big disrupter of sleep patterns, which is alarming. This application helps change all that. You install it on your gadgets and it syncs with your local time zone and dims the lights on your devices to match the time of day. So at nighttime the backlighting is much softer and easier to turn away from.

So, there you have it. Take it from a technophobe who also runs a successful six figure business, these tools will help keep you sane all while taking your business to the next level.

Got an app or a plugin you simply cannot function without? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a note in the comments and tell me all about it.

xo,
Ellen