Let me paint you a picture of our lives before Trello! Endless piles of paper, three journals working simultaneously (supposedly with different subject matter in each), scratched out to-do lists (and when they got too messy we would spend time rewriting them). I was in a constant state of panic, like I was going to forget a meeting or a deadline. I worried (even more than normal) that our whole business would fall apart over one missed task.

In the past we used Wunderlist as our project management system. It worked for a time but as our business grew and became more complicated, it ended up like the notepads, one hot mess.

We knew there had to be a better way!

Enter Trello - A free business tool that changed our lives and improved our business. But don't Google anything yet! Trello on its own is a little confusing, but don't worry - we've fixed it.

If you're the kind that has lots of 'almost-ready-but-not-quite' products on your launching back burner, this get shit done post is for you. Here's what we know for sure: launched is better than perfect, and there are people out there who need what you have to offer. Here's how to know if it's time to get it off the shelf and into the hands of your dream customers. 

Instagrammers. Influencers. Tastemakers. These are a lot of the buzzwords that have been circling the marketing realm in the past few years. It may seem super daunting and corporate but influencer marketing is something that can be scaled back to work for your small business. But how?

Getting your brand out of the shadows and reaching out to Instagram influencers can be terrifying. You’re putting yourself out there and you're getting visible. The idea of this makes a lot of us recoil and want to get back into bed. (Try to resist that temptation and hear me out. I know it’s hard!)

But, it can also bring invaluable results to your business. By creating meaningful collaborations with Instagrammers, you can increase your brand exposure, grow a community  and build trust in your brand. Let’s get started!

Starting a new business means introducing a whole new set of tasks to your plate, and the crazy part is, you don’t even know what half of them are yet.

The first few days will be busy as you set things up, such as your domain and social media accounts. Maybe you’ll write a business plan. Then comes the hard part, as you settle into a routine.

Email marketing isn't as simple as compiling a list, writing a message and then sending it out. Of course, if it were that easy every company would be doing an effective job with their email marketing campaigns. There is much more that goes into a successful and highly effective email marketing effort, but once you've realized the mistakes you may be making and work towards fixing them, you'll almost certainly see a significant increase in the conversion rates you see and the amount of traffic being driven to your website.

Raise your hand if launching gives you the heebie jeebies. I get it, boss. There are a million and one moving pieces and it’s hard enough for you to remember all the steps - let alone have some sort of organization that helps you keep it all together. Here's our secret formula for using Trello to go from Idea to 10K launch in just 30 days. 

Abagail here. I love paper. The smell of fresh ink on a hot sheet of paper makes me feel giddy. This shouldn’t be such a surprising phenomenon considering my background in design, but I have a confession to make.

I’ve broken up with paper.

Gone are the days of endless stacks of Post-it notes, forgetting which notebook contained what set of notes from which meeting, and constantly worrying that I would forget (or even lose) my to-do list.

Figuring out how to be productive as a small business owner is a job in and of itself. If you’re like us, then you’ve tried ALLL the systems! Some are free (like post-it notes, the notes app on your phone, notebooks and notepads) and some are paid (expensive software or paid apps that you think will do the trick). For some reason, they’ve all failed — and you may feel like you’ve failed all of them. Because for a lot of us (especially us creatives), our brains only work a certain way.

Seriously — for us to be productive, organized and put together we have to have the moon in a certain phase, standing on one foot, in a finger towards the north wind kind of pose. You feel us?