When the new year rolls around, every entrepreneur is always thinking, planning and dreaming about big things for the new year. In this episode, I’ve compiled a list of what I think are some pretty great tools that will help any online business thrive.

1) Rescue Time – This is my favorite thing to use and I would definitely not be able to produce a daily content-rich original podcast (in addition to everything else I have going on with another business, family, friends, running a 1/2 marathon is a couple days, etc) without it.

This tool helps you track exactly where you spend your time online. I had no idea until I started using it. There’s a free version and a low-cost paid version that’s worth every penny. Sign up for the free version here and take it for a test drive. You’ll be surprised how much time you re-discover to spend on the important things in your business.

2. Lead Pages – I am so in love with this tool. It makes it super easy to create beautiful and EASY optin pages plus it’s super simple to create high converting content upgrades that I do in most of my show episodes. If you want to build a business that is stable and sees continual growth each year, sign up for this amazing and easy list building tool.

3. Aweber – to Go along with the list building made easy from tool #2, you’ll need to sign up for an email management system of some kind. There are many choices out there and one of the simplest is Aweber. Here’s a great 4-part video series on email marketing with their service.

4. Edgar – I just signed up with this little guy and he looks powerful. I’d recently added a new virtual assistant to my team and I kept wanting to give him some more tasks. He kept getting hung up in adding new social media updates to the automation tools we use like Hootsuite and Buffer. This allows you to create a library and categories of social media posts and automatically recycles through them…. so now, once Philip builds up our library in this tool, the pre-posting is done! Like, forever. Ok… well, maybe not forever but you know what I mean.

5. Idea Paint – There are 2 huge walls of my office covered in idea paint. It turns your walls into whiteboards. You can doodle, brainstorm, add your current favorite inspirational quote (I always have one there) AND you can use clear idea paint so your walls don’t have to be bright, not-so-pretty-decor white.

6. Neu Calendar – These are gorgeously simple, big. bold and beautiful calendars for mapping out your dreams, dates and goals. Absolutely stunning. The guys who started this company started with one little calendar and now have a collection. And, they email you back if you have questions. Click here to get a 10% gift code.

7. Lynda Training – Get up to speed with the latest training on… well just about any kind of software and even things like Facebook ads! I used Lynda when I was learning how to use the internet (I’m not the most tecchy person!) and my team has learned different software applications using this extensive training library. Click here to get a 10 day free pass to learn… well, almost anything you want to!

Next on the 30 Days of LOA for Entrepreneurs: The Power of #Webinars to Sell Your Products and Services.