As Botanical Brouhaha continues to grow and evolve, it’s become increasingly important to find tools to keep us organized and working efficiently. Of course, we utilize many platforms and programs to run our businesses, but we don’t want to overwhelm you with all of them at once. So, today we thought we’d share 3 tools with you that help us stay organized:

Basecamp

We use Basecamp for project management and set it up to reflect the three main branches of our business — Botanical Brouhaha, Bloom Trust Co., and the Botanical Brouhaha Podcast. Each project board we set up contains a message board, to-do lists for team members, a calendar, and a place to house docs and files. We find internal communication around our projects through Basecamp to be much less confusing than sending strings of emails and trying to copy everyone in on the emails. All the communication is right there in Basecamp which eliminates hunting for stray emails to remember what was said in past meetings or conversations.  The template feature is especially helpful for managing events. You can set up templates for the various types of events you host or service, then choose the appropriate template when you begin planning an event. Updating the template is as simple as adding the information for that event. You can use a free account for up to 3 projects or get the paid plan for more than 3 projects. Templates are a paid feature.

LastPass

LastPass is a password manager. It’s free for one device or you can pay to access LastPass on both mobile and desktop. We find it helpful to have access on both mobile and desktop, so we’ve opted for the paid plan and it’s extremely affordable. LastPass stores all of your passwords so you only need to remember one master password (hooray!) and it also generates strong passwords for you if you have a hard time coming up with them yourself.

Google Forms

Google Forms is a free (for those with a Google account) online survey platform. Occasionally, we use it to create online surveys when we need to get quick feedback on one or two questions from the Botanical Brouhaha community. We also find it helpful for creating sign-up sheets for Bloom Trust Co. meetups. Google Forms allows you to choose from a variety of pre-made themes or you can create your own. You can choose colors, but there are limited font options. This is more of a back-end tool of convenience for collecting information for us. If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-navigate option that gets the feedback you need from your clients, this is a good option. For more in-depth surveys, we would probably choose a more customizable platform like Typeform. 

Let us know if you find this type of content helpful. We’re all about flowers! But, we also know it takes a lot more than pretty flowers to run a flower business. We’re here to provide support and resources you need to continue flowering with purpose in your community. If you find this type of practical behind-the-flowers info helpful, we’re happy to continue sharing it.

If you’re looking for a place to find ongoing support and floral resources, check out our sister company, Bloom Trust Co.