Under the Hood With Lea Woodward
In Interviews by Skellie
This week, Lea Woodward (location independent professional and half of business consulting company Project Woodward) gives us a behind-the-scenes look at her digital office.
To market the business
- Wordpress and Typepad for blogs and websites
To service clients
- Google Apps: for email, online docs and calendar functionality using our domain name
- SkypePro for voice communications: I have 3 SkypeIn numbers for clients in the US, the UK and Australia
- SimplyBill: a simple, no frills online invoicing tool
- Paypal & Online Banking: to receive and send client payments
- ProjectStat.us: this is what we used before we streamlined our processes, to manage projects and keep clients up to date with projects
To manage & run the business
- Excel: I’m a bit of a spreadsheet whiz so manage all our business finances on custom-built spreadsheets
- Smartdraw: to create and tweak processes and streamline what we do and the way we do it
- Carbonite: as an online back up for my files; I like the way it just runs in the background without me having to do anything - this is in addition to an external portable hard drive
To stay connected
- Boingo wireless: to stay connected around the world as we travel; Great for airports and major cities.
- Efax: for online faxing services
- EarthClassMail: to manage snail mail we have 2 addresses; one in Oregon and one in Miami.
- The in-laws: we also get most of our UK mail sent to my in-laws!!
And my laptop is a Sony Vaio SZ3 and my browser of choice is, of course, Firefox!
Links
February 10th, 2008
cool some good links… Short post thou.
Of course we all now love this woman.. For her good taste in browsers, thats what won us all over.
February 10th, 2008
@ Grant: The length of the post really depends on how much the interviewees want to write ;-).
February 10th, 2008
Good stuff…I’m learning…(Some things I’ve never heard of)
February 11th, 2008
Sounds productive!
BTW that link to SmartDraw on Amazon is to an old version. You can find SmartDraw 2008 here:
http://www.amazon.com/SmartDraw-2008-Standard-SmartDraw-com/dp/0978653262/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202678127&sr=8-1
February 11th, 2008
@ Aaron: Thanks! I’ll fix that when I get home (just on the way out at the moment.)
February 12th, 2008
Hi, nice post. I’ve been using SmartDraw in my consulting business for a few years, and it’s been awesome for workflow diagrams. I can whip out a workflow in a few minutes, but the results are so good it looks like I’ve spent hours on it. A sure-fire way to impress the clients!
I’ll have to try out some of your other recs…
Best,
Christine
February 12th, 2008
I’m always happy to see a positive comment about SmartDraw! (yes, it’s my obligatory employee comment…)
Quick question about your use of Google Apps. I’m setting up a new domain name and hosting for a friend who is starting a new business. I figure she doesn’t need a lot of hardcore web services but it would be nice to give her decent email access and some simple shared document functionality. Do you use it at all as a repository for your business documents? Does it meet most of your basic needs as a small business?