4 ways to grow your business / organisation

Day 4 (Thursday) of our annual Newcastle Startup Week is always about ‘Growing & Scaling’ your business / organisation.

Although many of us are still getting used to the Coronavirus lockdown, a new way of living & working or how to save money & reduce costs, some of you might also be actively looking for new ways to start new projects, products or services.

If so, you might find the following things useful…

1. Start planning with Trello

Trello’s handy online boards, lists & cards enable you to organise & prioritise your projects or everyday tasks on your PC / laptop, tablet or mobile.

The free version lets you have Unlimited Personal Boards, Cards & Lists, 10 Team Boards (for collaborating with colleagues or family members) & up to 10MB per file attachment or you can pay to access even more features.

I’ve been using the free version for the past few years to help run all my work projects (including Newcastle Startup Week) so I recommend you try it too.

2. Gather your thoughts with Evernote

Evernote is an amazing web & mobile app that lets you take notes & upload photos for all your personal & professional projects from anywhere & on any device.

You can keep these all to yourself for future reference or share them with your work colleagues, loved ones or family members.

Again, the free ‘Basic’ version is probably enough for most of you (& what I’ve been using for years) but you can get a free 1 month trial of the ‘Premium’ version by clicking / tapping on the image or link below. (After 1 month, your version will drop down to the ‘Basic’ version unless you decide to pay £4.99 per month).

3. Get free CRM & marketing tools from HubSpot

As your project, business or organisation grows you’ll start collecting contact details of people who are existing or potential customers, clients or partners & will need somewhere to store them that isn’t just your phone, email inbox or a pile of business cards on your desk, especially if you work with other people.

This is why CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is so important. There are a few good CRM tools out there but I recommend HubSpot CRM as it’s 100% free forever & also includes some handy free email marketing, data capture form & ad management tools.

I use their ‘Marketing Hub Starter‘ package which sits on top of the free CRM & costs £42 per month for the first 1,000 contacts, includes email list management, landing pages, Facebook & LinkedIn ad management tools, live chat & chatbot tools (& is an extra £16 for every additional 1,000 contacts you add).

You can sign up for the free CRM tool & / or get a free 30 day trial of the ‘Marketing Hub Starter’ package by clicking / tapping on the image or link below.

(Please note, we are a HubSpot affiliate & will receive a commission from them if you make a purchase now or upgrade from free to paid in the future).

If you’d like more in-depth advice or support on using HubSpot, please email me at paul@newcastlestartupweek.com & I can either try to help you myself or arrange for someone from HubSpot to give you a call.

4. Become a Startup Week referral partner!

Before Coronavirus, we were expecting this year’s Newcastle Startup Week festival to be our biggest & best but we are always looking for help in spreading the word & making sure more people get to hear about it.

If you’d like to help us promote Newcastle Startup Week through your network & earn 20% commission on any ticket sales you send our way, please with your full contact details & a short message about why & how you’d like to help.