The Entrepreneur’s Toolkit II: Digital Dash

Innovation is birthed out of the most trying times and adversities that can make or break a society. Time and time again, with our backs against the wall as individuals, communities and as a human race, we’ve used our infinite powers of imagination and perseverance to make substantial change. I’d be remiss as a writer, a Black man, and a human being not to acknowledge the blatant horseshit (re: systematic racism, police brutality, misogynoir) that is plaguing our communities in the United States of America with compound interest during an entire pandemic. One ultimate consequence from these situations is that things will not “return to normal” after this. The mix of depressing situations in the tandem of 2020 has elucidated the faults in every system we just let go by for the sake of every day survival. Now, people are tired beyond measure and it’s likely the anger for the roots of these problems will translate into ending them for good. From education, the workforce, food distribution, the economy, politics, and more institutions with crumbling infrastructures, nothing will ever be the same again.

But as we break down, we build. This is how humanity will innovate once more to achieve the ideal we deserve. I wrote this months ago at the beginning of the pandemic in an attempt to send hope to those who want to create a way out of no way, their own platform as a way to fix a communal problems or to finally use their passions for a living. With the help of a great community, I penned this to give tools to those wanting the toolkit to succeed. Wherever you are in your entrepreneurial journey to make a change, I hope this helps:

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Entrepreneurship does not necessarily entail greedy capitalist grabs, but utilizing the skills you have to solve long-standing societal problems, even those your own community.

Being essentially forced to sit your ass in the house most of the day without the usual social activities we are used to engaging in will lead you to the thought-process of “I’ve always wanted to get into _____”. This therein leads to questions “How do I get started?” “What do I do?” and those of the like. Fortunately, in our current time, hobbies can turn into profit more than ever, a remedy to a societal problem that seems pressing in your eyes, an answer to both, or even something greater. Entrepreneurship personally provided a way of bettering my life and others in ways I couldn’t imagine and still are benefiting my life and others with the same energy.

I harped on ways to equip oneself with entrepreneurial gadgets with an article in 2018 with what worked during my travels, so check that out for the basics regarding essential entrepreneur travel items, payout systems, and key beginning strategies of organization to have that can set you up. Even in lockdown, we are still infinite, and the power of supercomputers in the power of our fingertips via today’s technology makes it more feasible than many would think in getting your own thing poppin’ — take it from your favorite Pokeball backpacking full-time, globetrotting tutor and writer. This time, I brung a couple of friends with me who are pretty poppin’ in their respective fields.

But first, here are my additions roughly two years later deeper into the full-time entrepreneur full-time hustle.

Big Branded, Big Bank: My old mentor would always tell me in class, “a business without a sign is a sign of no business.” Even though physical signs won’t obviously be the smartest of one’s options to employ at this time, a digital sign might be the next best thing — what I am referring to is a centralized page (aka a “landing page”) so that people know what the heck you’re trying to advertise or sell. Everyone is not technologically savvy, but the Microsoft Office literate, average ‘copy-and-paste’ joe could use these tools to set up full-websites, landing pages or pseudo-versions of both for basic branding purposes. Linktree allows one to make one’s main social media pages, musical links, podcast links, or whatever other platforms they use available just one click away via a simple centralized tree of links. If you aren’t the best at developing websites, sites like Linktree, that can edit at any time, are a good quick fix. Wix.com, Squarespace, and Wordpress allow for one to experiment with low to mid-tier coding for beginners in website design, allowing for them to experiment in customizing dexterously designed websites or simple ones to get their point across. Calendly allows you to get professional with the branding process by having a simple, but efficient appointment system so you can meet with clients, collaborators, etc. Even if you are behind on being a coding professional, these quick fixes should help flatten the learning curve.

Streaming Underground Kings: Let’s say that you want someone to hear what you gotta say, sing, rap about or whatever else of the oral like. There are a plethora of streaming services that have emerged in the past decade, but to work more smart than hard, it’s best to utilize the streaming services that still champion the underground king. SoundCloud, iTunes, and Apple Music are great, but Spotify and Audiomack allow for the average up-and-coming streamer to reach more audiences and get paid more for it too. A case study can be found in Baltimore’s exemplary podcast, The Working Title Podcast. When they first started in October 2017, they were on Soundcloud, amassing an average of 250 plays per episode, peaking at a high of 5,000 plays for one episode. These statistics still weren’t bad considering other startup podcasts in the area, region and nation. However, since continuing that fanbase, The Working Title Podcast has flourished in plays and viewership via Audiomack in 2020. They have garnered three individual episode plays of 10,000 listeners and an average of 1000 listeners per episode, with even more plays on the other streaming platforms they are located on alongside their other noteworthy initiatives both on and offline.

Video Conferencing Apps: With the national/international news becoming more bleak day after day about when it’s safe for us all to be released into the option en masse again, video conferencing is the literal wave of the future that we must embrace. If Facetime is not professional enough for you in conducting online classes, meetings, consultations with clients, and other occupations focusing on oral/face-to-face interactions as a selling point, then Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Skype/Skype for Business has helped. It’s hard not to rely or know about Zoom, given its unprecedented boom in being the premier modern business video conferencing app shortly after the normalization of quarantine/social distancing. Keep in mind that Zoom only allows for free calls for one-on-one interactions and any call with 3 more participants will have a strict time limit of 40-minutes. “Dem da rulez,” as the kids say unless you wanna pay. Google Hangouts is something that I have utilized with my tutoring sessions with clients all across the world, a platform in which you are able to share pictures, stickers, a live thread of messages and much more. Google’s Duo works well too, alongside the OG video conferencing app Skype and even Skype for Business. These are some of the more popular modern video conferencing tools, but if they don’t fit your fancy after test driving them, there are loads more.

DOUGHNATIONSSSSSSS: One additional stream of revenue is a donations stream, a base that actively supports your work or wants to support whether they purchase your products or not. What if they are a professor that doesn’t need tutoring? What if you have a benefactor who is already wealthy and doesn’t necessarily need to know how to build a business? Setting up a Patreon, Onlyfans, Buy Me a Coffee on Ko-Fi, or donation/tip friendly platforms you can link to your platform that are bringing the most viewership and traffic. Passively, a follower or supporter here or there will drop a couple dollars to support your hustle. Whether it be $1, $5 or $100, those numbers add up and can holistically help your entrepreneurial hustle all around.

Whipping Work (Homecooking Content): If you look around you, we as a human race are in a more visualized global society than ever. Given recent circumstances and even going forward, we will be almost completely reliant on visual technology. We are either glued to our phones, television, laptops, video game consoles or conference call screens on whatever one of the mediums. The one who becomes the distributor is the one who is their own master. Not being one’s own distributor of their own product is not yet the master of their own hustle. Why not create your own cartoons? Your own memes? Your own super wavy video montages for a product or campaign? Your own mini-series? You don’t have to be a seasoned artist to start just like with any skill. There are affordable or free tools on the laptop, PC and smartdevice such as Toonly(for making cartoons), Videoshow(for starting off the basics of making productions), PicsArt (for placing pictures within your videos), Garageband (for starting off your music producing career),. The creation age is at your command!

Setting Up Shop: Capital is key if you want to build business, as well as having your own base where people can browse your information. If you are technologically challenged or need a quick fix in creating you own landing page, Fiver, Wordpress, a social media page dedicated to your business or a Skillshare account are all freelancer friendly avenues that will allow you to build clientele, track data and begin to grow statistics/capital for your new endeavor.

Reading Rainbow: I have a personal reading list that I have kept up with every season since the beginning of Winter 2017 and being proactive about reading outside of school, but one discussion with an old colleague taught me that one should keep a personalized curriculum of readings for whatever field you want to engage in. How are you supposed to run a record label without knowing the hard statistics and legal jargon? Why would you enter into a business wanting to be one of the best Black businesses of all time without knowing the history of Black business? Why would you want to be an entrepreneur, community change agent, millionaire or whatever you desire without having the dauntless mindset required for any of these titles? It’s up to you to research your own readings, and it helps better if the author(s) is /are of your demographic. That relatability in the testimonies to success has helped me tremendously over the years! Some books I would recommend to start off with would be The History of Black Business : The Coming of America’s Largest African-American-Owned Businesses by Martin K. Hunt and Jacqueline E. Hunt, An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto by Steve Mariotti, and Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

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Recommendations from the Bosses Themselves

ZANE MARSHALL

“As a young black Entrepreneur having obtained a significant amount of success, I stand with my community as an example. I stand with my community to show them that even if you have all the odds stacked against you whether it’s the color of your skin, age, educational level, financial status or lack thereof anything that you put your mind to is possible.

Being a Business Development Specialist, it’s extremely important for me to educate my community on what it takes to not only obtain ownership by starting their own businesses or foundations, but to educate them on wealth generation as well as creating legacies.

As a community, our TIME IS NOW. While it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes dedicated leaders to build a community and I’m dedicated to do just that!

We’re in this together ✊🏾”

— Zane Marshall

Zane Marshall is one of the most certified entrepreneurs to ever do it. Hell, he even wrote an entire book on what each and every entrepreneur should have if they actually want to call themselves an entrepreneur. Zane Marshall is the Lead Business Strategist at Beast-Elite in Bowie, MD. In Zane’s own words, “We help businesses and nonprofits activate and scale organically.” Zane and his team help both the little people and larger companies maximize their full business potential from marketing, sales, branding, etc. I was able to chat with Zane for an afternoon so that he could discuss his favorite tools that help maximize his personal success.

• iMovie: Available on the iPhone, Zane suggests iMovie for creating video materials for your business, brand or product.

• Intro Mate: Another useful tool for the video-making portion of entrepreneurship, Zane suggests Intro Mate, a nifty tool that helps you make dazzling professional intros for your video as well as titles, inserts, announcements, film credits and more. Sometimes compiling the content together is the easy part of the process, with how to start and end it being the more intricate parts of the process.

• Canva: Zane suggested Canva, a tool that allows for the user to create different design logos, posters and more for free. A big part of bringing your idea to life is an image, and Canva is great for doing that on a very feasible basis.

• Mailchimp: While modern mainstream social media tool marketing (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.) is the go-to immediate digital marketing method of today when discussing how to reach the masses online, all too often underplayed is the value of email campaigns. Email campaigns offer detailed updates of how the entrepreneurial venture is going, alerts of special deals to rear in old supporters, and more ways you can keep your clientele best engaged. Mailchimp is one of the best in the game for customizing email campaigns.

• Stripe: Zane’s suggestion of Stripe is underrated in terms of business payout efficiency. I was an independent contractor for the Tutoring company, Frog Tutoring, in 2018. For some reason or another, their payout system with PayPal at this time became severely distorted, consequently halting the payout system for the site’s tutors across the nation and world. Stripe came to the rescue, and it finds a way to fuse easy to navigate UI (user interface) alongside clever options to optimize payouts for your business, nonprofit or venture with tracking involved as well. Stripe looks out for the small guys, big guys and everyone else in between.

• SignEasy: More than ever due to the pandemic, and even before, it is tedious to print out a contractual agreement and bring it to an independent contractor, small business and/or corporation. SignEasy, as suggested by Zane, allows for quick official signatures for written agreements.

• Acuity (Different thing from Calendly): Calendly is great for booking appointments, but Acuity, as suggested by Zane, offers a nice and viable alternative option.

• WebinarJam: Zane operates with big businesses and big business problems, so some of his suggestions may not seem as relevant now, but even as you grow and start off, you should definitely take heed. Webinar Jam allows for you to reach up to 5000 people via one presentation, presenting ideas, concepts and much more.

• Google Voice (Substitute for Office Line or Business Line): You better call Tyrone or someone else if you don’t want customers calling your direct line. Zane explains in our chat that meshing your personal line alongside a number that clients can call you from is murky territory. It’s best to keep the business and personal lines separate, even at a lower level of entrepreneurial operations.

• Anchor.fm: Some people like to talk in a “Chat chat chat chat chat” as my Chinese teacher facetiously described one of my classmate’s behaviors to me. If you’re someone who wants to capitalize on your own opinions and oral communication debate skills that you believe needs to be heard, then you can start a podcast. Zane recommends Anchor.fm for starting your own podcast.

CIARA SHAW

“As an entrepreneur, it is important that I do what I do not only for my own community but given the times we’re in, because I am a Black Millennial Woman living in America. For some that may mean very little, but for me that set the precedents of being a change agent, a spokesperson and a dominant advocate for Black people in and outside my community.

Attending Spelman College, the most well-known liberal Arts college in America and the #1 HBCU in the Country, this institution prepared me for moments like these. Moments where I would have to educate my people and others around me on the importance of reputation and standing firm on your beliefs without making a mockery of yourself. In a short amount of time the world has seen on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Celebrities, Working Class, the Influential and the Privilege pour their hearts out for the world to see, only to understand how crazy and dumbfounded they sound to the masses.

As a Black Woman speaking on behalf of clients from all walks of life, part of my job is to make sure my clients are educated on the premise of where we stand in America. That this isn’t the home of the Free but of the Forgotten. To understand the truth of who we are but importantly for others to know who we are and what we stand for. As a Black Woman, I stand proud knowing that I’m doing great works for my people, changing the narrative and creating a more magical illustration.”

— Ciara Shaw

Womanpreneurs are doing it big constantly as well. I’m blessed to know many womanpreneurs killing the game on national and international levels right now, so having an hour and some change with one of my favorites was healing, invigorating and illuminating. Ciara Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Eagle Eye PR, a public relations company located in Atlanta, GA that works within the city and beyond with Entrepreneurs, Athletes, Authors, Small Business Owners, and more. Ciara can be seen giving in-depth interviews and creating eye-catching content of her clients on the regular. PR is hard work, but her big brain tactics combined with her tool-belt of clever tools makes it look like an effortless work of art.

• Instagram: It may seem obvious to those already accumulated, but Ciara’s suggestion of Instagram as a necessary tool speaks to knowing your audience and line of work. If your business is more image oriented, Instagram might be your core focus. If your audience is older, Facebook might be more your audience. This is not to say to alienate other social media apps that are not as relevant, but pick your main one for your growing brand and work hard to set it as a standard for the others to follow.

• Zoho Invoice: Ciara would hilariously quote the commercial line, “It’s my money and I need it now,” when referring to the Zoho Invoice app. Say you just closed down a deal with a client but need to lock in the payment to truly secure the deal. You could be on a cruise, in the desert, in the comfort of your home, on a plane, or walking down your local promenade, and Zoho Invoice will allow for you to make an invoice easy for your client right then and there.

• Calendly: Calendly is excellent for setting appointments in accordance with your Google Calendar. It’s been one of my most simple things to use for the past couple of years and it has helped tremendously.

• Slack (Professional/Social Media): Ciara suggested a staple for the business world but a tool that some may not know about: Slack. Slack is the premier group chat tool for professional communication. Slack allows for sending files, starting side conversations, assigning tasks and more. Trello is a good alternative but Slack usually comes up in more conversations that I have heard regarding professional group communication applications for the modern era.

• Canva: Like Zane Marshall, Ciara too suggests Canva for creating quick designs, logos, etc. She suggests Adobe Premiere for flyers.

• Stock Photos: Ciara suggests Pexels and Unslash for great stock photos. If one is starting a dialogue or writing an article, these apps can provide great quick fixes for cover photos.
• Facetune: PR is all about image, so with Facetune, Ciara helps clear up blemishes or to remove/add things. Who knew it could be used beyond a viral challenge?

• Instasize: Getting frustrated of having to resize all of your Instagram photos? This app allows for it to be done for you before posting on Instagram. Anyone who has tried to post a high quality series of pictures or videos but has been thwarted due to the “one-size-fitting-all-but-not-really” mechanics of the resizing tool on Instagram can attest to the tedious frustration that it has caused.

• Focus Keeper: Sicker than your average timer, Focus Keeper helps the average entrepreneur of whatever field stay on task for one project or series of projects they are undertaking for the business day. This may not seem essential for everyone, but for those who have trouble focusing, this tool can go a long way.

• Talku: Talku is a free number tool that serves as an alternative to Google Voice.

• Alarmy: “You gon learn today,” Ciara stated to me jokingly when describing the positively forceful nature of this particular app. While regular preset alarms that can be set to wake you are a dime a dozen, Alarmy is a bizarre alarm that forces you to do an actual task before turning it off. Whether it is a puzzle or a math program, its programming will literally not turn off until you complete the task. As bizarre and annoying as it might seem, it’s positive for activating your brain in the morning, and by time you finish, you’re likely to be multitudes more aware to do activities than simply waking up to swipe snooze.

• Shazam: If you haven’t heard of it, Shazam is a clutch app that can help you find the name of a song, even if you don’t know the words, by playing the audio of the song when the app is open. For those that create videos or are in a business that uses song selections for marketing tools, Shazam could help you more than you would think.

• Skiplagged: Ciara’s suggestion here is mega clutch for the flight-catching entrepreneur. Skiplapped is a website that will find connecting flights to different cities and drops you off there for the deal price. Take for example you have an important in-person sale that you have to close with a big client in Baltimore, and you were located in Atlanta. The one-way ticket costs $250. Now let’s say that you get on Skiplagged and find a flight for $75 on a one way from Atlanta to NY with a stop in Baltimore. Finding this through Skiplagged would allow for you to get off in Baltimore for your meeting and essentially save over $175. The only caveats to this finesse is that you may have to do two one-ways with the same method even though you end up saving more in the long-run, as well as hopping off on your actual destination with as little as a carry-on bag. This strategy is meant for short trips and not for long ones unless you plan to stay there for a long time and want to save. Either way, it’s your clutch prerogative.

• Stress Management Apps: The entrepreneurial journey can get stressful and stress management will be key to performing as your best self. I personally have habits of casual video gaming, power naps, and watching a TV show during a lunch break as my go-to’s for small stress management strategies. The apps of Insight Timer and Calm can assist if you’re stuck. Insight Timer is a mediation calming device while Calm is more so for breathing, controlling your breath, and inhaling correctly.

The extensiveness of this article comes from two years wiser, stronger and more successful than from the first article. Even with these tools, and no matter what field you enter in, entrepreneurship is not the easiest path. There are even some things not included in this article, such as small business tax information, how to register your business legally as an LLC, etc. Some of those topics can be researched on your own if you are becoming serious about your hustle, or you could contact people like Zane or Ciara for professional assistance. If anything, hopefully this sequel could show you that the world is at your fingertips.