Last Tuesday my new client Sarah and I headed off to Saks Fifth Avenue in Boston to have her makeup done before the photo shoot for her new website. I had made the appointment with Emily, the makeup artist at the Trish McEvoy counter, after receiving a referral from my fabulous hair guy, Jon Paul.

I could tell right away that Emily is a pro. No kidding. Not only did she look glamorous herself, but she also took more than an hour with the already beautiful Sarah and did a great job on her makeup. What struck me the most was how many different products Emily used, how many colors she blended and how many brushes and applicators it took to get the final result.

When Emily was finished, she and Sarah talked about which products to purchase so that Sarah could get a similar outcome at home. The products and the colors I understood; it was the brushes, however, that threw me for a loop. 

There was the bronzer brush, the blush brush, the eyeliner brush and three or four others just for applying eye shadow. To tell you the truth, they all kind of looked the same to me.

So Sarah and I asked questions about each brush. As Emily explained the distinctions, I began to realize that, absent the proper tools, and even with the necessary products and colors, Sarah would never get these same results at home. 

And then I thought about how often solo professionals and small business owners are prone to do exactly the same thing. We listen to a professional tell us how to grow and manage our business and then proceed to use scotch tape and paperclips to try and get the same results.

It used to be that the tools you needed to smoothly and efficiently run a small business would cost a small fortune. That’s no longer the case. While working on my financial plan for 2015, I reviewed the cost of the tools I use to run my business. Can you guess how much it costs me to have every tool I need to be efficient? A mere $186.62 a month. 

That’s right. For $186.62 a month I have accounting software that I love (Xero $30.00), the latest version of PhotoShop ($21.24), a Constant Contact account ($42.50), Last Pass (password management $1.00), Contactually (contact management $19.00), Toggl (time tracking software $5.00), Dropbox (file sharing $9.99), Screen sharing (Join.me $23.99),  Audio Acrobat ($19.95),  web hosting (Host Gator $8.95) for several websites, Akismit (spam blocker $5.00) and Square (credit card processing 2.7% of sales).

Sure, I could probably save some money by not using all of these tools, but what I’ve learned as a solopreneur is that you need to jump in with both feet and set up your business with the tools that will support what you’re trying to do.

Every second you spend on a work-around or a cheaper, less effective fix is more than just a second wasted. Working on our own we need to leverage our time, and great tools can do that for us.

So don’t delay. Take the plunge and get the tools you need to make 2015 your best year ever. I’ll be right here if you need me, learning how to use my new brushes!

P.S. For a complete list of the tools I use and recommend for others, visit my resources page here.

Full disclosure: If you click one of these links and sign-up for the service, in some instances I get compensated by the company.

Last week I met with my client Jim at Panera Bread in Coolidge Corner. I really like that place. It’s so big that you can comfortably sit and work without feeling rushed. Even better, in the summer they open up the porch so you can work in the shade, surrounded by fresh air and Wi-Fi!

Jim’s been a consultant for nearly 15 years and we’ve been working together since last spring. He’s successful and makes a nice living. Jim has clients he likes to work with all over the country, so he’s also on the road quite a bit. And it’s wearing him out.

For at least 15 days a month, Jim finds himself in airports, hotels and various corporate offices. In between the training sessions that he runs, he’s busy trying to keep up with email, voice-mail and everything else.

Jim and I sat down and talked about how to make his work flow easier and his life more mobile. These were my three key suggestions:

1. Get your email into the cloud. Using cloud technology means that your email, rather than residing on the hard drive of your individual computer, “lives” on a server somewhere on the Internet. Gmail, Yahoo and many other services are cloud-based, and the benefits are HUGE.

For example, in my “pre-cloud-based” life, when staying in a hotel and trying to check my email, I could receive but not send. Why? Because of something called an SMTP gateway that needs to be configured according to the Internet service provider you’re using at the moment (whether that’s Panera or the Four Seasons Hotel).

Unless you’re on the cloud, that is, in which case there is no gateway. I now use Google Business Apps (essentially, Gmail for business) and I’m able to send and receive anywhere I have an Internet connection. And this isn’t just a temporary fix for when I’m travelling. It’s the way I use email each day, which means that, no matter where I am, as long as I can get on a computer it’s the exact same experience.

And what about when you’re going to be somewhere where there is no Wi-Fi? No problem. Download Gmail Offline and answer, archive and file any of your email. When the Internet is available again, everything will automatically sync.

2. Get your own Hot Spot. If you’re on the road a lot, you need to bring the Internet with you.

Instead of looking for Wi-Fi, trying to figure out passwords and working to bypass corporate firewalls (not to mention paying for connectivity while you’re waiting for an airplane or train in many cities), you can connect to the Internet through your cell phone by using a hot spot!

With one phone call to your cell provider, you can turn your smart phone into your very own hot spot. Then, search for your phone’s wireless signal, connect your laptop to your phone just like you would any other network, and you’re on the Internet.

3. Breeze through expense reports. If reconciling the piles of receipts that you collect while traveling turns into a full day’s work when you get back to the office, you’re making your life unnecessarily difficult. With the nifty application Expensify you can make this whole nightmare go away.

After signing up for an account, link your business credit card to the application and use this credit card for as many expenses as you can. This way you’ll make sure all your expenses are accounted for, even if you lose a receipt.

Along the way, open up the Expensify app on your smart phone and snap a photo of each receipt, make a note of the business reason, and assign it to a trip. When the trip is over, use Expensify to easily create a great looking expense report with PDF images of all your receipts in one file that you can email to your client.

Whew. Business travel is tiring under the best of circumstances. To make it a little easier next time, take care of fixing the things you can before you hit the road!