Entrepreneurs Should Share, So Check Out These FREE Apps!

AWE’s three-part series, “Launching Your Brand”, which was hosted at Lululemon Queen St was a huge success! Now, I don’t measure success based on new clients gained or tickets sold (although all of the events were full which was amazing). I measure success based on engagement, feedback and interaction. My goal is to make law accessible and to provide new knowledge and value to the attendees. In doing so, they leave feeling empowered with a new understanding of their business and branding needs and having the opportunity to connect with other entrepreneurs.

In the latest instalment of the series, #BoostYourBrand, the interactive session at the end had the entire room buzzing. I decided to end the series sharing some of my favourite FREE tools I’ve used as an entrepreneur that have helped me to organize my business, finances, marketing and just make my life easier in general. I live by the 'abundance model'. I believe that information is meant to be shared, and that there’s plenty opportunity for everyone to succeed without being sneaky, stingy or stepping on toes. I don’t believe in hoarding ideas, good products or good people for that matter. I love nothing more than referring my clients or friends to awesome people I’ve met at events or along my journey. I truly believe the more we do this, the more space we create for it to be reciprocated and for new connections to form. This is contrasted to the 'scarcity model', whereby the person believes there are only a limited amount of resources and only few can succeed. Therefore, they are not willing to share and are protective of their knowledge and contacts. I’ve met people like this and will always promote the way of abundance to any entrepreneur, as vibes attract vibes. It was actually during a coffee chat with the CEO of a tech-investment company where the guy I was having coffee with, after hearing about me and my workshops and goals, told me that he can see I'm all about the abundance model. I nodded and smiled, but to be honest, before this I’d never heard of that classification or really thought about it, as I tend to avoid labels. Then, the more I reflected on it the more I realized it was true and would be a core value of mine and of running AWE Legal.

So, in line with all of that, the purpose of this post is to share some of my favourite online tools and apps (they are not law specific) and also to share the other apps that were mentioned by my workshop participants. Let’s just say we all freaked out a little but when we heard about the FREE parking downtown. Yes, you read that correctly. Below are all of the free apps that hopefully will help to make your life a whole lot easier as an entrepreneur, saving you time and money!

My Recommendations:

Mail Chimp – Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation compliant mailing list in terms of allowing opt-in and opt-out functions.
Wave Accounting – amazing for branded invoicing, tracking payments, can enable credit cards and do taxes.
Canva – easy to use design platform. Great for creating Instagram posts or promotional posters.
Slack – seamless team communication app, can share documents, internally chat, and create private group threads.
Zoom - video calling and great for group conference calls.
Eventbrite - great for creating events, duh. But easily tracks your attendees, shows analytics, easy to use, integrated with Facebook, and promotes the event on their own platform.

Workshop Attendee Recommendations:

DocuSign – electronic signature app for your clients/ customers. So it's easy to sign on-the-go.
Green P – So, this is exciting stuff. The city of Toronto is offering a parking promotion around with King West area, where you download the Green P app and enter “kingpilot” code when prompted into the discount section in session options to get 2 hours of free parking or up to $10 of discounted parking! Check to see the locations on the map that are included for the promo code and FYI t’s running until November 2018! (Only valid with the app).
Over – tired of the same Instagram fonts? This app offers a whole lot more font options.
PDF Filler – for all those entrepreneurs constantly modifying contracts, this is a game changer to edit and fill PDF documents.
Inshot – create your own watermark to help protect your intellectual property and a great video editing app.
Videoshop – another watermark and video editing app.
Splice – great for video editing, making movies, and it syncs with your music on your phone.
Legend – create your own motion graphics. So, you can animate text in your video, use GIFs and more.
VSCO cam – great for photo and video editing.
Tiny Invoice – another useful invoicing app for small businesses and clients.
Flipagram (*Now Vigo Video on the App Store)– great to create photo slideshows.
Asana – Awesome project management tool. You can track your team’s work, manage and organize projects.

If you have any questions about starting or growing your business, branding, hosting workshops or if you’d like to share your favourite tools, feel free to get in touch with AWE Legal at info@awelegal.com