On this page we lift the bonnet (the hood to our American friends) on the tools and resources we use at The Big Red Tomato Company to run and grow our business.

If it’s recommended here it’s because we recommend it and use it. These tools will help you grow your business:

Building a Website or Blog | Email Marketing | Becoming an Entrepreneur | Productivity | Recommended Reading

Website / Blog

WordPress is the #1 blog publishing platform which is free and easily customisable. This site is built on a WordPress platform

31 Days to build a better blog is an excellent e-workbook from the guys at problogger to help you build a better blog in 31 days. It’s full of really useful exercises which will increase your traffic and improve the quality of your posts.

E-JunkieIs the shopping cart I use to sell my e-books and services. It’s compatible with Paypal, Google Checkout, Clickbank and others.

Paypal is a brillant way to make a receive payments over the web and pretty much the standard tool for payment processing.

E-mail Marketing and Subscription Management

We use Aweber to manage our email subscribers. Why use a paid option when there are so many free ones? Simple: Because Aweber gives you tonnes of flexibility. As well as automatically emailing your subscribers when you have a new blog post, it lets you email them any time, for any reason. You can even build auto responders to deliver an email series or short course.

Entrepreneurship / Working for yourself

Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non Conformity has long been an inspiration to me. He has published a number of Unconventional Guides on working for yourself, working as a freelancer, or even how to make money from your art – top products which will help you set up your own business, promote your business via social media or  tips on travel hacking.  These are seriously good guides full of practical advice.

The Empire Building Kit is one of the newest products that Chris has produced, which will help you build your own empire – from start up to running your own lifestyle business in the course of a year.  It’s a step by step guide with interviews with succesful lifestyle entrepeneurs earning money from the things they love.  Most powerfully it includes a daily email with a task to take your business forward. This is a great motivator to prompt you to move things forward.

Productivity

Good ideas come when you least expect them. You can’t help it they do. So make sure you have a notebook that you carry with you to capture those ideas. We personally use Moleskine books as they are very durable and they look nice.

On the iPhone we use a great little App (also available for Android phones too) called Evernote. Which allows you to type notes, speak notes, or take photos of things you want to remember (like wine labels, receipts). You can tag your notes and find them using the search facility. Very cool.

Books

Books are a great way to learn quickly for low cost. If you choose the right book and you can seriously bootstrap your business or life when you apply your new found knowledge.

We read a lot of books here at BRT and one of the most common questions we get asked in the BRT inbox is what books do you recommend for X?

So we’ve put together this selection of some of the best books that we’ve found that have helped us grow our business, which could help you too.  You can read the full list or share your own books in our Library.

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated Edition by Tim Ferriss has got to be the ‘bible’ for those looking to become location independent or fund a lifestyle, by working only a few hours a week. Don’t read too much into the title though, it’s not about working 4 hours, it’s about creating a business which works without you, introduces the concept of outsourcing, creating a product and living a low information diet. Well worth checking out.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen has literally helped me get more things done in less time. It uses very simple methods which really do work. You’ll be more organised than you ever dreamed and won’t spend your life searching for emails or papers you ‘knew you put somewhere’.

Rework is a complete book of wisdom from the guys at 37 Signals.com and explains the principles that they’ve learnt from doing business on the web over the last 10 years.  You’ll get some surprising insights in this book such as drug dealers get it right, nobody likes plastic flowers and good enough is fine. It’s a quick read (each lesson no more than a couple of pages) which will really challenge your thinking and inspire you to make a simple business work effectively.

E-myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It surprisingly enough this is not a book about E-business. It’s a book for any business, whether that’s virtual or bricks and mortar. It will help you look at your business as a business rather than a job you do to earn money. It talks about the importance of systems and how to create them, very easy to read with a great case study/story running through it.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t if you’re looking to create a  great business, Jim Collins’ study of what makes great businesses over time has got to be on your reading list. Good to great examines the key differences between those businesses that have lasting success and those businesses that are merely good.  True good enough maybe good enough, but if you want to make your business really special, you should read this book.

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin is a book about being different and standing out in your marketplace.  If you’re setting up a business, you want to be different, not the same as the competition. Seth’s book argues the need to be different and continue to be different to everyone else. Not only will you make more money, but you’ll have a business people want to deal with – e.g. Apple.

eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business by Corey Perlman – Corey shares the ‘secrets’ of internet marketing so that you can get more business using web 2.0 in a non techie way. It really is ideal for small business owners, those starting out or those who have a blog they want to promote. Basically anyone who starting out who wants a straightforward guide to show them the way.

How To Win Friends and Influence People is the classic book by Dale Carnegie about developing your influence. Although written way before the internet, it’s advice is as true today as it was when it was originally written.  The key mantra for BRT when we meet with our clients is always to be more interested than interesting.