8 apps that successful people use

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Best-selling business author Tim Ferriss can’t do without Jumpcut. King of Shaves founder Will King is never far from his Twitter app. Successful people always seem unerringly on top of what’s going on in the stuff that matters.

Sheer personal brilliance, or do they have a secret up their sleeve? Here are 8 tools (okay, we slipped in a couple of extra ones) that highly successful people couldn’t do without…

Productivity

Essential: Dropbox

Serial entrepreneur Kieron White spends only one day a week actually in his office, the rest of the time he’s on the road (or on his boat). So how does he stay on top of his education consultancy WCL? “The Dropbox app allows me to access any of my files and I can send documents to people from my iPhone while I’m on the move. I couldn’t live without it.” He’s not the only entrepreneur we spoke to who just LOVES Dropbox.

Essential: Google Drive

Drive allows multiple people to edit documents simultaneously, wherever you are. Using Drive is far easier than old-school huddling around the same machine. You can see your colleagues edit in real time, wherever they are, and Drive auto-saves. Now teams can store single documents in the same location, rather than emailing a new version every time there’s an update. Top tip: Command-Option-Shift-G lets you see a document’s whole revision history, so there’s no hiding place…

Important: Evernote + TinyScan

The ultimate digital notebook. Evernote lets you store photos, audio clips, lists and stuff that you don’t want to forget. The information is stored in the cloud and can be synced to any mobile device or computer. And it’s collaborative: your whole team can literally be on the same page. TinyScan is an awesome tool for scanning and saving scrawled notes that might otherwise get lost..

Essential: Buffer

How come entrepreneurs and CEOs are tweeting and posting at all hours, don’t they ever sleep? The fabulous Buffer app allows you to schedule your tweets, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ posts for maximum impact. The always-on businessperson is upon us.… (PS: Buffer founder Joel Gascoigne also writes a great blog at http://joel.is/)

Essential: Voice Memos

Ever had a genius idea, only to forget it in the hubbub of business?  If something comes to you in the middle of the night, just Voice Memo it and go back to sleep. Voice Memos is great for conferences too: pop your phone near the action, sit back and listen to what’s being said, safe in the knowledge that you’ve got a super-crisp recording for later.

Money-managers

Important: Goodbudget + Numbers

No self-respecting AAT member would let finances slip, would they? Goodbudget and Numbers are two great personal finance tools. Goodbudget lets you control your own spending habits and easily visualise where your monthly salary is going. It can also be expanded to a household budget, accessible on multiple devices. The Numbers app helps you keep on top of expenses immediately, rather than forgetting them by the end of the month.

Important: call2

Not well-known but we love it, call2 enables high-quality, low-cost calls to and from anywhere in the world.  It’s perfect for travelling entrepreneurs and global businesses as it enables all calls to be automatically paid for by the company rather than having to make an expense claim.  It’s guaranteed quality as it uses real telephone networks rather than VOIP.

News and trends

Important: Flipboard

The entrepreneur’s favourite way to stay on top of news is Flipboard, which collates the latest stories from around the world as well as offering up diversions such as magazines, travel hotspots, stunning photography and fun GIFs. “I’ve used it daily for years to stay ahead of industry tittle tattle,” says ComXo founder Andrew Try. The LinkedIn Pulse app also keeps you in touch, and many travelling businesspeople listen to business programmes on the Podcast app.

And finally…

A shout-out to Quiet Riots, which is a wonderfully cathartic app for moaning about life’s irritations. As the East Anglia startup puts it, “Find others with the same issue and get something done about it.”

Blayne Pereira is a writer and multimedia Journalist at Progressive Content.

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