The Tool Show

Ep03: The Tool Show Episode 3 is all about the business and productivity tools I use to run Mike Murphy Co. Episode Summary: Learn. Create. Move Forward

Episode Summary: Every web and business tool used to run Mike Murphy Co. — hosting, email, organization, accounting, freelancing platforms, stock resources, and where the ongoing education happens.

What You’ll Learn

The full web and business toolkit used to run Mike Murphy Co.
Organization and productivity tools that actually get used, not just downloaded
Where to find affordable freelancers, stock assets, and design resources
The go-to platforms for ongoing online education

Hosting & Website

Bluehost — the best hosting company, with equally good customer service. Divi by Elegant Themes — words can’t do justice to how great this theme framework is. X-Theme by Theme.co — the favorite WordPress theme before discovering Divi, and still great.

Email & Communication

Mailchimp — the preferred email service for newsletters. Slack — eliminates internal email entirely.

Organization & Productivity

Dropbox — no explanation needed, an absolute must-have. Google Apps for Business — if you do one thing for your business, install this. Buffer — genuinely one of the favorite tools in the stack. Baron Fig — notebooks that make working feel more creative and organized. Evernote — still working on making this a habit. Trello — the favorite organizer, keeps track of everything. Asana — another great project management tool. Calendly — a cool scheduling tool that integrates with Google Calendar. List.ly — make and share lists with the world. Workflowy — awesome for long lists, even if underused.

Writing

Scrivener — working toward making this the default writer. Byword — a great markup writing tool. Medium — for writing and publishing articles.

Security

1Password — a genuine game-changer; being locked out of everything without it is unimaginable now.

Accounting

FreshBooks — beautiful invoicing and much more. Xero — makes accounting genuinely enjoyable.

Freelancing & Outsourcing

Fiverr — great for small jobs. PeoplePerHour and Freelancer are also worth knowing.

Design & Stock Resources

DesignCuts, Envato/ThemeForest, The Fancy Deal, The Stocks (hipster heaven), Unsplash, AudioBlocks, VideoBlocks, CompFight (a Flickr search tool), Pixabay, picjumbo, Placeit (mockups).

Online Education

Lynda.com — the cream of the crop for online education. Udemy — a huge resource for online classes. Skillfeed — another good place to learn. Skillshare — a new favorite for tutorials. KelbyOne — a lot of design and Photoshop skill is owed directly to Scott Kelby.

Music: “Life of Riley” & “Wallpaper” (incompetech.com).

Content

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