The Entrepreneur's Tool Box

By Shannon Marshburn
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As a busy designer filling many roles and many design jobs, I often start my mornings with some tools and resources to get up to speed for the day. Whether it is for design inspiration, to spell check an event description I wrote the night before, or to learn something new, I use these tools everyday. So work smarter not harder and check out and add these websites and resources to your bookmarks:

ProWritingAid 
ProWritingAid is a powerful, accurate grammar checker and style editor. It's suitable for fiction writers and doesn't require a monthly subscription. There is an easy to use “Web Editor” function on their website that allows you to input your text and get feedback from the program for free. 

SproutSocial Toolkit
Take a look at this 2021 social marketing toolkit to help you understand more about general marketing, how to understand insights, organization, social and marketing trends, strategy and much more. 
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Email Subject Line Tester
The subject line of an email is a make or break point in your email marketing and can increase or lessen the chance of people reading your messages. Before you send out your next newsletter blast, try this free subject line tester to see weak points, get feedback, and improve your email open rates. 

“My Hours” app 
If you have lots of jobs going on at once and need to keep track of time for records, I use the free smartphone app, “My Hours.” It works like a stopwatch. You start and stop the timer when you sit down to do your work. Just remember your time log is going! You can add a description of what you used that time to complete so you have a record of your progress for reference. 

Creative Market
Explore this online marketplace for community-generated design assets like graphics, stock photography, fonts, vectors and millions of other items. Think Amazon, but for design products. Most of them are for sale, but if you subscribe to the newsletter you get an email each week of hot items to get inspiration and see design trends, and also access to six free items curated by Creative Market. 


Adobe Color
Need to get specific with a manufacturer?  Asked to supply pantones? Or maybe you just need some color inspiration from a presentation or a product design. Adobe color allows you to play with the color wheel and find your color palette by using set color harmonies or take a spin around the wheel to find your own mix. You can then download your colors right from the website and have them ready in your Adobe cloud. 

Possibly the most important tool, your local coffee shop’s newsletter:
Next time you visit your local coffee shop, ask them if they have a newsletter list and go ahead and subscribe. All shops will be different, but you can hear about deals, get newsletter exclusive coupons, support local businesses and keep your community growing. 

I hope these tools and resources will help you along the way. Share them with the go-getters around you. Comment below other helpful programs or tools you use that I didn't mention!