The Young Entrepreneur Council is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. Read previous SmartBlogs posts by YEC.
What is one app that has made you a more productive leader and why?
Contactually is a CRM that makes it very simple to follow up with employees, mentors, customers and other people in your network. For most businesses, relationships are a key component for growth. The simple reminders from Contactually suggest who you should follow up with to keep your business objectives moving forward. — Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers
Basecamp is a project management and collaborative software that keeps our team on task. It makes communicating with our clients as well as assigning tasks to our remote teams a breeze. And, we all have the app on our phone, so we can stay in touch while on the go. — Michael Quinn, Yellow Bridge Interactive
TINYpulse sends out a weekly, one-question anonymous survey to everyone at my company. I can stay informed of company issues before they get out of hand, and I can keep a “pulse” on company culture. The product provides an easy way for employees to engage with and provide feedback to me. I’ve become a much more effective leader thanks to TINYpulse. — Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Inc.
With eight team members and everyone doing multiple projects, I used to struggle to figure out what the absolute must-do priorities were for team members. Asana allows for clear visibility and prioritization, which means I’m able to offer timely support and get ahead of potentially stressful situations. — Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
We’ve been able to use Okta to provide a simple front end to all the apps in our business and remove the “where do I start?” question from everyone’s mind. It turns a Web browser into a list of apps like an iPad, and users can click and log in to an app. Our admins can provision and de-provision a new user across our infrastructure in minutes, and we can now work from Chromebooks. — Robert Castaneda, ServiceRocket
I’m obsessed with Captio because it makes a process I repeat a million times a day much more simple. With Captio, I can send an email to myself in nearly no time at all, and I’m convinced the time saved makes an exponential difference on my productivity. — Derek Flanzraich, Greatist
Google Drawings lets me flowchart my processes and hand them off to my employees for free. I spend about 20 minutes flowcharting a process, and they can then access that any time they get stuck or forget. Also, it helps immensely with onboarding of new hires. Flowcharts allow my team to get in my head in just a matter of seconds without me having to explain in spoken language. — Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in meetings and whipped out my iPhone to use my calculator app to confirm some revenue-related discussion. This calculator is my favorite and most frequently used app. — Brett Farmiloe, Markitors
Google Keep is a great tool for organization. Because it has several functions, I can add notes, create lists, take pictures, etc. This helps me record things on the fly, so I don’t forget them at a later time. — Phil Laboon, Eyeflow Internet Marketing
With the employee feedback tool 15Five, each person answers five questions in 15 minutes. As a leader, it’s easy to lose focus of the most impactful actions. Receiving consistent feedback from employees allows you to realign priorities, and it increases overall productivity. — Shradha Agarwal, ContextMedia
I remember my first boss, a serial entrepreneur, had stickies and other notes everywhere — a real nightmare I thought. Funny enough, I ended up doing the exact same. However, Evernote, which allows you to keep notes in the cloud, has certainly helped me clean up my act and stay organized. — Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net
12. Dale Carnegie Training: Personal Leadership App
The Dale Carnegie Training: Personal Leadership app offers help for those looking for ways to be better leaders and information on how to choose the proper leadership style for individual situations. Plus, it’s free. — Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
Workflowy is a really easy way to organize your ideas. When you’re running an organization, you are often inspired by a lot of new features or ideas that can enhance your company, but at the same time, it’s important to stay focused. When I can’t necessarily address an idea in the short term, I quickly add it to Workflowy so I can follow up on it later in an organized fashion. — Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
Refresh delivers instant insights about the people you meet, so you can make your conversations more meaningful. The app perfectly times these insights to coincide with all of my meetings to keep me fully informed and up to date. — Adam Lieb, Duxter