What time-saving technology would you recommend to any entrepreneur?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Zapier + IFTTT
With Zapier, I have moved my to-do list from my inbox. Email is meant for communication, but far too often it winds up as a to-do list. Every time I star an email, I have it run through Zapier and add to a to-do backlog. When I have a new meeting scheduled, Zapier adds it to my to-do list for tomorrow, 24 hours in advance. This helps me use one to-do list that is built from multiple technologies. – Michael Averto, ChannelApe
2. Asana
The best project management software and app that any entrepreneur can use is Asana. This robust program helps track projects from start to finish, manage to-do lists and comprehensive workflows, see the project progress, and enable team collaborations. – Kristin Marquet, Creative Development Agency, LLC
3. Wake-Up Light/Alarm
Time-saving is all about increasing productivity. My best work comes early in the day. I used to have a hard time waking up in the morning until I started to use a light-alarm clock that uses progressively increasing light to gently wake you up by replicating sunlight. This makes getting up at 5 a.m. feel more natural and refreshing and makes my whole day productive. – Sam Miller, Boston Biomotion
4. Chatbots
Setting up chatbots and automation scripts can significantly reduce the amount of time spent answering repetitive questions. By data-mining your customer service emails, you can identify the types of questions that most often come up. Automate these responses, both internal and external, to save money and time. – Marcela De Vivo, Mulligan Funding
5. Trello
For most professionals, email can be overwhelming. In a typical email thread, most participants hit ‘reply all’ as a courtesy even when conversations stray off-topic. In Trello, I’m looped in only when someone decides to mention me directly. This helps minimize the sheer volume of messages and notifications everyone on the team receives, allowing us all to reclaim hours of productivity each week. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep
6. Mixmax
Mixmax is an amazing new program that we began utilizing several weeks ago that has saved me hours of time. From boomeranging messages back to me to automating scheduling, it has freed up my time from being stuck in the weeds. If scheduling, reminders and repeating the same emails have you weighed down, Mixmax is the way to go. – Kim Kaupe, ZinePak
7. RescueTime
RescueTime is a plugin that runs in the background constantly measuring your productivity. At the end of each week, you get a detailed report showing what sites you spent the most time on and tips on how to boost your productivity. – Ben Lang, Spoke
8. Zirtual
Zirtual is an online assistant service that’s perfect for entrepreneurs. Use your virtual assistant to do research, schedule your appointments, manage your social media accounts — whatever you need to free up your time to help you make more money. – Codie Sanchez, CodieSanchez.com
9. Buffer
Buffer is a productivity tool you don’t want to go without. The social media publishing tool makes it easy to schedule content on social media. By allowing you to share content across multiple social networks, you ensure that you get the most out of each post. This tool allows you to post at times when you can expect the most followers will see your newest content. It’s a great timesaver. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker
10. Nuzzle
I am a big Twitter guy, but Nuzzle is a great app for when I don’t have time to flip through thousands of tweets. Nuzzle compiles all the big stories happening on my Twitter feed, listing them in article form. It also shows me who has tweeted about each story, while giving me the option reading their tweet. – Ben Landis, Fanbase
11. Toby
Toby is a small and simple Chrome extension that, if used properly, becomes very powerful. It allows you to make decks of your current browser — how many tabs do you keep open? Basically, you can build out your own work tasks and pick up where you left off in online research or activities at any time. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
12. Google Home
Out of all the virtual assistants on the market, the one that most impresses me with its time-saving abilities is Google Home. In addition to common features such as scheduling, placing calls and setting reminders, this gadget can do many more time-saving tasks. These include reminding you of where you put things and responding to complicated demands with shorter phrases. – Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy
13. Feedly
Feedly declutters my inbox by helping me organize what I want to read. I can build multiple boards by saving all the article I liked from my feeds and share it as a recurring newsletter with my team rather than randomly sharing URLs via email or Skype. You can directly share these articles on social media or add to a publishing calendar by integrating Hootsuite or Buffer. – Shilpi Sharma, Kvantum Inc.
14. Meeting Schedulers
Having the ability to send my availability for anyone to book time without having to go back and forth saves me around 20 to 30 minutes of pointless emails, per meeting booked. My favorite tool that does this is HubSpot for sales meetings because it logs everything in the CRM for me. Others like Calendly and Acuity are pretty good as well. – Josh Harcus, Hüify
