Small Business Owner Must-Have Productivity Tools

Ivan Widjaya·August 20, 2008

As a small business owner, you are often required to travel, either to attend seminars, meetings, or leisure traveling.

I personally like to work at home. I like to be ‘bothered’ by my wife and son :) To me, working at home is heaven.

However, there are times that I need to travel to attend meeting with my staffs and to attend seminars. There are also times that I need to simply go outside the house to seek for inspiration and to brainstorm ideas – My favourite place to do this is the coffee shop.

To stay productive whether I am ‘in office’ a.k.a at home or on the road, I need some basic equipments for my survival. Laptops are the most common must-have for small business owners. However, there are plenty of other productivity tools to keep you, well, productive.

My choices of productivity tools

These are common must-have productivity tools for small business owners to stay productive when the need to travel arises:

A mobile phone
Entrepreneurs today are dependent on mobile phones – they are must-haves to keep the communication channels open.
An internet connection
With more and more work involving the Internet, the access to it is very essential to have. Thanks to the 3G technology (4G is still not widely used), you can have your Internet connection almost anywhere.
A laptop
Laptops are still better than PDAs, in term of performance. My wish list: Apple Laptops – MacBook Air, please :D
A digital camera
Although most mobile phones today can take pictures, Digital Cameras are still better in term of resolution. I include digital camera in the must-have list, due to the need for a business owner to take picture of things to improve in-store, to take picture of potential locations, etc.
A portable scanner
Instead of taking tons of brochures and offers you might encounter on the road, you can scan and save them to your laptop. Portable scanners are useful to keep you paperless and clutter-less.