The Entrepreneur’s Toolkit

Published on March 21, 2018

50+ hand picked tools for the everyday Entrepreneur

If you are an Entrepreneur who is just starting out, or wanting to take your business to the next level – then this toolkit is for you.

It can often be difficult to know just what makes up an Entrepreneur’s Toolkit and it’s often tempting to think a CRM is the full kit.

In reality, a good CRM is simply a (very important) piece of your overall toolkit. We’ve kept the lists in each section to our favourites and through this list of 50+ hand picked tools, hope to give you the tools you need to make your business a success.

CRM Software

There’s plenty of choice in the market when it comes to choosing a CRM, our CRM of choice is, of course, Jetpack CRM we’ll keep the choice simple here and highly recommend Jetpack CRM as your Entrepreneur’s CRM. Why?

  • It’s free and easy to use
  • It’s modular, only use the features you need
  • It’s self-hosted – keep control of your own data

CRM choices are:-

  1. Jetpack CRM (recommended)

Accounting Software

Accounting software is something which you may not consider as an Entrepreneur, but often it makes sense to get in early with some accounting systems. You can use Jetpack CRM’s invoicing feature, but there’s also tons of other accounting software

  1. Intuit Quickbooks (recommended)
  2. Sage
  3. Quicken
  4. Kashflow

Email Marketing Software

Email marketing software is critical to your growth as an Entrepreneur. Again, there’s so many options here, and the majority of these escalate in cost the more subscribers you add to your list. We’ve put our Jetpack CRM Mail Campaigns extension up on the list here, as it can help you with your email communications and won’t skyrocket as you grow your business.

  1. Zero BS Mail Campaigns
  2. MailChimp
  3. ConvertKit
  4. Mailgun
  5. Mailshake

Landing Page Software

Separate to running a blog about your business (more on that later) you should consider landing page software. This gives you the edge when it comes to creating custom landing pages. Like everything in this toolkit there’s lots of choice here.

  1. Unbounce
  2. Landrr (WordPress Plugin)
  3. Optimizely
  4. Click Funnels
  5. Elementor
  6. Landing Lion

Blogging / Content Management

If you’re not blogging about your business, then you’re missing an opportunity to capture your audiences attention with useful content. Here at Jetpack CRM we love WordPress and would recommend this to anyone running a business (or wanting to start their own side project)

  1. WordPress (recommended)
  2. Drupal
  3. Joomla
  4. Ghost
  5. Medium
  6. Blogger

Social Media Management

Social Media pages for your business is an absolute must. It gives you a place to connect with other people and it helps you get the word out about your brand, your content or any special offers. The networks to use are obvious (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc), the tools to help you may not be

  1. Buffer (recommended)
  2. Hootsuite
  3. Click to Tweet
  4. Dlvr.it
  5. Post 2 Tweet (WordPress Plugin)

Presentation Software

It may come a time where you need to create slides for your business, and share these online. Here’s our tips for which software and systems to use for any presentations you need to create

  1. Keynote (Macbook, recommended)
  2. PowerPoint – the familiar tool
  3. SlideShare (for sharing presentations online)

SEO software

Under the banner of SEO software we cover tools which allow you to check on your web presence as well as how you’re website and competitors are ranking

  1. Google Analytics (recommended)
  2. Ahrefs
  3. Similar Web
  4. SEMrush
  5. Moz

Financial Metrics

Tracking your financial metrics is important as you start out and grow your business. There’s plenty of nice tools to help you do this. Track your revenue per month, how many new customers you generate. Plus much more

  1. Jetpack CRM: Sales Dashboard (recommended)
  2. Baremetrics
  3. Profitwell
  4. Google Spreadsheets

Payment Solutions

You’re up and running. You need to get paid. There’s some great choices here and by far the most popular is PayPal. PayPal gives you the ability to accept payments online, but also via a card reader (using PayPal here). This takes the pain out of accepting card payments in your shop (if you have one) and you can be up and running in no time.

For online payments and subscription type businesses, we recommend Stripe. Stripe is the easiest to use system and accepts both credit and debit cards.

  1. PayPal + PayPal Here (recommended for physical shops)
  2. Stripe (recommended for online)
  3. WooCommerce (has integrations for the above + more)
  4. Payoneer
  5. WorldPay

Lead Generation / Lead Capture

Generating leads and capturing them for your business becomes important as you grow. You could be running your business for years and not capturing your leads and customers. This means you’ll potentially miss out on a lot of opportunities. Just because someone hasn’t purchased from you on their first contact, doesn’t mean they won’t purchase at some point down the line.

If you don’t capture them as a lead, then you’ll never have the chance to convert them into a customer later.

  1. Jetpack CRM Forms
  2. Exit Bee (recommended, free for a single campaign)
  3. Sleeknote
  4. OptinMonster

Product Launch

Launching a product, there’s a number of places you can look to for exposure. We have a list of favourites. Your product doesn’t have to be a digital product. You can launch website articles, participate in discussions and grow your brand through active participation in communities like the ones below

  1. Product Hunt 
  2. Hacker News
  3. Growth Hackers 
  4. Reddit
  5. Quora