I get asked a lot of questions every day.

Many of them have to do with how I go about solving this or that problem but often I get a more open ended question, “what else do you think can help me?” This is besides the three obvious answers indicated on the home page, Salesforce.com, Basecamp, and Quickbooks.

So, I thought I would have a page where I shared what I think can be helpful to many of you. These items are here generally because I use them myself and recommend them but others may be part of a client solution that worked very well or some other means of earning my trust. Relationships are my most valuable asset so my recommendations are very important to me. Also, some of these organizations give me a few dollars for my son’s college fund (He’s two) if you sign up, but that isn’t the reason they are on this list. I am sure you understand that getting paid to do what you would do anyway is a great deal.

Thanks for the privilege of being your Success Rabbi.

Books

The Ultimate Sales Machine – Paperback | Audiobook

Getting Things Done – Paperback

The E-Myth – Paperback | Audiobook

Services

RingCentral provides great professional phone systems like an auto-attendant, toll-free numbers, extensions, voice mail, and a nifty little iPhone app that protects your Caller ID too with no hardware! What? Yep, check it out. It also provides a great little tool that sends faxes from the docs on your computer. Yep, bye bye eFax.

Dreamhost Website & Domain Hosting provides unlimited domains, disk space and bandwidth in a single, easy-to-use web panel with one-click setup for Wordpress, Subversion, Trac, and more. All of my sites are hosted on Dreamhost and this link gives you a free domain name for life!

Adobe ConnectNow provides a spectacular free alternative to GoToMeeting for up to 3 people. As a bonus, it provides a simple video conference ability in addition to desktop sharing if you have a camera.

Hitslink Analytics provides analytics, conversion tracking, and reports so you can know what’s happening on your website. Google Analytics is certainly free (and I use it as well!). However, when you want your data presented better, understood faster, and printable easier, Hitslink is my preference. Not to mention how much more easy to use it is. Free 30 day trial so you can compare it to any other yourself. 5% off when you use this link and no credit card is required.

Tools

Skitch provides a simple and very effective way to communicate directions, fixes, and other things common to business and computing using quickly marked-up screen shots rather than words. See it is use here.

Mozy provides unlimited backup for Macs.

Carbonite provides unlimited backup for Windows PCs.

Spanning Sync enables Google Calendar and Apple iCal integration. This link saves you $5.

LogMeIn enables free remote control of Windows and Mac computers. Yep, you heard that right, free. Compare it to a GoToMyPC free trial and you will be amazed.

Desktop Apps

VMware Fusion 2.0 Mac provides a great way to run those few Windows programs you have to have on your Mac. Much faster than Parallels (yep, already tried it) and very easy to setup. It’ll even suck the life out of your old PC and move it to your Mac for you.

OmniGraffle is the easiest flowchart and diagram program I have found.

OmniFocus is a great way to apply the fundamentals of Getting Things Done (GTD) logic in software. Keep track of tasks in context within projects. Sync it with Basecamp using Spootnik too!

Skype enables free video conferencing with asynchronous chat (they don’t have to be online) and even the ability to get a local phone number from almost anywhere which you can send/receive calls with normal phones. I use this extensively to keep the “face-to-face” a prominent part of my business.