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Are you a tech junkie and have at least 2 or computers that you work from? I love my iMac because it is and forces me to stay productive (or at least believe I am!). Since the El Capitan upgrade, the split screen capability is a life-saver for bookkeeping work! 

my old school MacBook Pro is great for travel. Or if I’m getting some work done between waiting for dinner to finish.

It’s great to have more than one computer. It’s also a burden trying saving the same project on two different computers simultaneously. What happens when you forget or don’t even have an extended hard drive?! This became so annoying!… Until I started to use Google Apps for Work in my business. 

Is this you?! 

– You’re working on a project and save it to your desktop then head to Starbucks (Remember that latte by yourself is NOT tax deductible!). You open your laptop and hope that you have a very productive day. 

Face. Palm. You realize that your file on your desktop computer! Your day is practically ruined. Especially if you choose to be cute and go to a hipster cafe. I heard Octane is where the cool kids go do werk in Atlanta.

WHY ALL BUSINESS OWNERS NEED GOOGLE FOR WORK

Last week, I finally brought up the courage to attend a Tuesday’s Together Event with the Atlanta division of the Rising Tide Society. As an introvert, in person meet-ups always rack my nerves. In the end, I met some lovely women. Michelle Gainey (owner of three businesses!) was the speaker. She talked about being productive with her three businesses while maintaining a thriving household. 

Throughout the meetup, we discussed the best ways to find productivity in your business. Streamlined systems not only help us be better business owners but all around.

When I got home, I dug a little deeper about the one tool that made my business productive. It was just the fact that I had one place for all of my documents!

 I remembered what it was like to be unorganized with my work. Countless times, I found myself losing documents all one too many times.

On my personal blog, I had to go through hoops to log into my domain email account to get to my inbox. Total waste of time. All to find out that the interface was one of the ugliest things coming from 2010 when I worked at an accounting firm. Like NOTHING changed about the SquirrelMail thing! 

I was faced to make a similar Gmail account and forward all my emails there. The downside was my outgoing mail was going to be from Gmail instead of my domain name. 

This exhaustive process lasted until I started my business site on Squarespace. With one click, I was able to have Google for Work integrated with my hosting bill. 

I couldn’t be happier.

Google Drive has single-handedly been the best asset to the streamlining of my business! When you use Google Drive (I even love this over Dropbox!), you will have no worries about everything that stored on your computer. You Google Documents such as Doc, Sheets, and PowerPoints are all compatible with Word. 

One of my favorite things is sharing huge files. Instead of having to attach huge Adobe files (Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator), I can easily attach them to a folder. 

And when I share final files with clients, I have separate folders for each and share files straight through there with no worries.

SOME OF THE BEST USES

Your entire editorial calendar can all be in one place. You also have the option for your Mac to download the app, and it will sync whenever you get back online. It is even an app on your phone or tablet – all of your documents on all devices! 

Roughly what my folders consist of:

1. Bills
2. Bookkeeping Clients – Each Client with shared folder
3. Consulting Sessions (with my Biz Coach) – Files of summary of calls and action plans
4. Content
   1. Each Category with blog content
   2. Email Marketing
      1. Email Opt-ins with sequences and images
   3. Tracking – Google sheet of tracking growth in all areas including pageviews, social media, and email marketing
5. Blog Photos
   1. Featured blog post image and templates
   2. Click-to-Tweet images and template
   3.  Instagram images and template
   4. My headshots
   5. Stock photos purchased
6. Personal

On a Google Doc, you can work with your team (if you have any) in editing your posts. You can have someone input comments for editing, and when it’s time to put it on your Squarespace or WordPress blog post, you will know exactly what your editor wanted to change.

Compared to Dropbox, Google Apps is linked to your business Gmail account, so there is no additional login. In the default account, you are given 30 GB of space for only $5 a month! 

Google Doc Add-ons that are useful! 

Google Docs, itself, has add-ons that integrate right on your document. 

When signing contracts, you can integrate both HelloSign and DocuSign and have your contracts and/or engagement letters in the folder of your clients’. This makes it easier to have everything in one secure place! 

Another add-on that I love as we speak (literally), is the speech recognition feature! Instead of having what feels like endless hours of typing your blog post, you can cut it and half by having the speech to text capability! 

When I do my batch-work of writing (usually on Monday’s), I come up with an outline my blog post… then when I’m ready to start the draft, I get to talkin’! When I’m done, I go in and edit the things that were hard to understand make it cohesive.

I am usually done with my draft blog posts within 45 minutes… or less!

Another Google Doc feature I love is the word-count feature. My goal for most blog posts is on average 1000 words!

OTHER SOFTWARE THAT google drive WORKS WITH!

It’s important in any online business that your software are able to speak to each other seamlessly! Here is a list of apps that I use that works well with Google Drive:

1. Trello – I to keep my business organized but I do not use it with others! (Dana Malstaff’s free Trello course is an amazing place to start!)
   1.   I attach the Google Docs or Sheets I need to focus on that specific day. 
2. Most cloud-based accounting systems (like Xero). You can link your receipts, invoices, have your emails all in one place for clients. 
3. Asana – Like Trello, I attach documents on specific tasks. To me, this is a much better site for projects with a team.
4. Zapier – I use it to link my Squarespace site to ConvertKit directly from a Google Sheet!  
5. CoSchedule – Hands down my top source for an editorial calendar! When I schedule future posts, I link my Google Docs directly to the content.
6. Toggl – Time tracking app that has a little timer button just about everywhere including, Google Drive! 

Next level organization!

In a previous post, I talked about personal mishaps that can happen in your business. One of the things I suggested, was making sure you are creating content in advance, while keeping things organized! 

These next set of tools are things I purchased/use in my own business. It takes away the stress of keeping things streamlined!

1. Maya Elious’s Smart Content Toolbox – THE most perfect baby to organize the content for your blog posts, email courses, workshops, etc!! 
2. Whitney Ryan’s Bloglassary so that you can organize your blog posts quickly and interlink previous posts
3. Nesha Woolery’s Organize & Automate Course – If you’re a designer, Nesha’s class is superb for organizing your workflow. She shows designers how create a perfect beginning and end to the design process for clients. 
4. Meera Kothand’s extensive 105 email marketing content swipe file – perfect for never running out of ideas to send your list!

Feel overwhelmed with getting your business organized?! Don’t worry. I created folders with all of the elements you need for your business in one digital file cabinet!

Did I miss anything?! What are some of your favorite features of Google Drive? Let me know in the comments. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this blog post! Share if you liked!