By Laura Pompeu

Anyone worth their two cents will tell that starting your own business is a scary and exhilarating experience. So what can you do about it? Alongside the vital SWOT analysis and business plan, you can look at what your work environment looks like and the online tools within your reach, and use them in your favor.

As you can imagine, the options of apps and tools are almost as vast as the internet itself. And while there is an app for any single problem you might have, the key to success is making sure you are optimizing every resource available. So let’s start with the basics: making sure your workspace contributes to your productivity and your contact form builder is doing it’s best to convert leads into clients.

Use an online form builder

A basic contact form is great, simple and easy to plug into your website. It’s the first gateway of communication they will have with you and your opportunity to make a great first impression.  So you also need to account for the time spent answering those fresh, new leads. However, one of the first things to get sucked out of your life, when starting your own business, is time, which is why your first priority is making sure that your every second is optimized. 

An often overlooked productivity tool is the online form builder, a versatile web app that lets you create contact forms, service request forms, surveys and more without having to write a single line of code. Each of which, in their own way, help you better understand your target market and better cater to it.

There are a plethora of form builder options out there, but you need to make sure that the tool was designed to better serve your business needs. A good example is MightyForms, a B2B online form creator that is constantly adding features based on their client feedback, like PDF filling online forms and Real-time Data capture. Once your choice is made, it’s time to start building the forms and surveys that will help grow your business.

Thrive in a coworking space

Take a good, hard look around you. One of the advertised upsides of becoming an entrepreneur is that you are your own boss, you make your own hours and your own space. But that space has way more of an impact on your productivity than you’d think, and while working from your sofa sounds appealing at first, it can quickly turn into an unproductive and lonely experience.

Just a few years ago, Harvard Business Review published a study on how employees thrive. They were surprised to find that people who belong to coworking spaces approached a level at least a full point higher than the average of those who worked in regular offices. The main reasons found for this were the passion that these people had for their projects and the sense of community that comes with sharing a workspace.

Automate your workflow sooner rather than later

Let’s imagine a standard business workflow: a client contacts you, you discover the specifics of what they are looking for and respond to them. While that flow can happen relatively quickly, it can get increasingly more difficult to handle it on your own as the client influx increases and you find yourself spending a full day just answering e-mails.

Every single day dozens of new productivity apps and tools are launched across the internet hoping to help make your life easier. And if you want to use multiple apps in your business, that is commendable, but it’s not smart to isolate them, they need to communicate with each other so that they are updated. 

This is where workflow automation comes in and why the online form builder you choose to use matters. A good form builder allows you to implement instant action with each new lead automatically and integrate with multiple tools. A built-in pop-up message can thank or welcome your users, an autoresponder can notify you about your new lead, and integrating your form with your e-mail, your calendar, and other tools will help keep you organized and up-to-date.

Get the most out of a work community

Starting your business in a coworking environment is great for focus, sense of community and overall productivity. But don’t just stop there. You just surrounded yourself with smart business owners with brains ripe for picking. Network with them, find out each other’s strengths and brainstorm collaborative projects that can help boost both your businesses.

Another invaluable resource that you can get in coworking environments is feedback. From simple surveys asking quick questions, to enlisting them as beta users so you can have the full account of a user’s experience and exactly what you can do to make it better. 

Overall, starting a business isn’t a walk in the park, but with great tools at your disposal and by surrounding yourself with inspiring people, you get that much closer to achieving your dream goals.

Based in Cleveland, Ohio, MightyForms is a Form Builder software specialized in lead capturing and workflow automation.