When we started out on this whole ‘Can we run a million-dollar business in three months’ thing, we knew nothing.
We started from scratch. And looking back on it all, one of the greatest lessons we learned along the way was also a lesson my grandfather had taught me.
Watching him root around in his cluttered workshop, he said to me:
“Everything’s easy, once you have the right tool for the job.”
That bit of wisdom has stuck with me ever since.
And it has never been more true than on the journey that is building a small business.
I would estimate that fully half of the time we have spent building our businesses has been spent trying to find the right tool for the job. So without further ado, here it is, some of the best tools we’ve been able to find.
We wasted countless hours and unnecessarily spent I-don’t-even-want-to-think-about-it dollars because we didn’t know or have access to these tools.
Reading
Starting a small or home-based business is more than just the actual tools you use.
To be successful you will need to curate a solid reading list. Books, blogs, articles, and the people that write them will serve you as a sort of team of distant mentors. You can learn from their experience and example.
Dollar-for-dollar this is the single best return on investment you will ever see. More information is available for free or next-to-free than ever before in human history.
There is a ton of great information out there.
Unfortunately, there are also two tons of bad information.
You need to be careful as you build your reading habit. Curate sources that are honest, reliable, and actionable.
Here are a few of our favorites to get you started. These are sources we find ourselves returning to time and again.
Websites
The Ways To Wealth
Created by R.J. Weiss, a certified financial planner, The Ways To Wealth is one of our all-time favorite sites about all things personal finance.
Why?
Weiss’s principles align with our own. His blog is filled with actionable, pragmatic advice that is, above all else, honest and transparent.
You won’t find get-rich-quick scams here.
But you will find hundreds of real, honest articles about building wealth. Whether your goal is to scratch up some pocket change or to get your whole financial house in order, you will find your answers here.
Want a great example?
Read his post on How to Get Rich. I’ve been reading Weiss’s site for a long time, but I think this is the post that endeared me to this site. It’s practical, honest, and actionable.
Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.
Berkshire Hathaway’s Shareholder Letters
Ok, I admit this one is a bit extreme, but it literally changed our lives: Read the shareholder letters. All of them.
Here’s what I did:
I started at the beginning (meaning 1977, the earliest letter hosted on Berkshire’s site). I printed one each week, read it, highlighted and annotated it, and put it into a three-inch three-ring binder.
It took me a year, and two three-inch binders, but I learned more about investing and business ownership in that year than my years before or since.
It beat any and all of my investing classes from college, hands down.
This is why we started applying the concept of “look-through earnings” to our small business.
And it’s how we came to develop our Build Your Own Berkshire Strategy.
It’s a lot, I know. And you will have to slog through more information about the insurance industry than you’d ever want to know.
But it is worth it. Back-of-the-envelope math tells me that our business would be worth less than half of what it is today had I not read those letters.
Note: There are several books out there that round up the ‘best-of’ of these letters, or even just collect quotes by Buffett.
I think I had read all of these before starting my year with shareholder letters. Somehow, I just never learned the same lessons on the same level as reading them in their entirety. I wish I could put it into better words, but reading them all was a transformative experience and I’m at a loss to say exactly how.
Multpl.com
And speaking of investing. Multpl.com is a simple little site that compiles a bunch of data about the S&P 500 and displays it in either table or line graph form.
At the core of our Build Your Own Berkshire strategy is knowing the earnings rate of our investments. And because we recommend investing in the S&P 500 so often, this site has made it very easy to track our earnings.
Bookmark this link: Earnings Yield. We simply multiply that percentage by the dollar amount we have invested in VOO (our favorite S&P 500 ETF), to get an estimate of the earnings attributable to our position.
Investopedia
I’ve been using Investopedia for my entire investing career. I remember using them to get through a class on derivatives when I was learning nothing from my professor.
It’s just what it sounds like, an encyclopedia on investing topics.
I still go here when I need to shore up the definition of some term or other.
Morningstar
If you like to stay on top of financial and business news (I’m a bit of a nerd for it) I recommend Morningstar.
They are my favorite stock market analysis site. I find their articles to be more down-to-earth and realistic when compared to some of the other venues out there.
They also have an investment service that I use and recommend. I find it to be the most objective, data-driven, and independent service out there.
Yes, we strongly advocate that you invest in a broad S&P ETF like VOO, but if you do want to invest in individual companies, this is the site to use for your research.
Books
I read a lot of books. One of the things I am most thankful for is the time I have to read and think. I try to read at least 100 books per year.
That means I have too many recommendations to list here, but I do try to keep this reading list updated with the really big important ones when it comes to building a 3MM business at least.
The Best Business Formation Services
Probably the #1 thing we regret in our business adventures is waiting so long to form an LLC.
It just seemed so complicated and scary. And expensive.
Turns out it was none of those things. In fact, not forming an LLC was the (potentially) scary and expensive part. We simply did not know how much legal trouble we could have gotten in had we stayed a Sole Proprietorship.
Unfortunately for us, we messed this all up.
Fortunately for you, you get to learn from our mistakes!
We formed our LLC the slow, hard, and (kind of) expensive way. Here are the fastest, cheapest, and easiest ways. Now you can have the whole thing done for less than taking the family out to dinner (and get ongoing support and protection too!).
ZenBusiness.com (Best Overall)
Far and away our top choice for creating your LLC. Fast, friendly, and cheap! These guys cost a full 30% less than what we paid and, frankly, we’re miffed that we didn’t know about ZenBusiness at the time.
But the thing that really pushes ZenBusiness over the top, in our eyes at least, is this:
On-going service.
Your $49 payment to ZenBusiness buys you one year of ongoing support and service for anything that might crop up. You then have the option to renew for another $49 per year as long as you need it. (You will still have to pay fees to your state government. They vary by state. This is true of all business formation services).
ZenBusiness will get your corporation filed, sure, but they stick with you as long as you care to have them around. They have a ‘Worry-Free Guarantee’ that makes sure all of your recurring government paperwork is filed on time.
Which saves you fees, fines, and worst of all, a lapse in your liability protection.
Rated 4.5 stars by Trustpilot (3,000 reviews as of this writing) Click for more info.
The Best Way To Get Your Website Legal
Small business owners get hit with a lot of legal requirements. Privacy Policies, Terms and Conditions, Terms of Use, Terms of Service, EULA, Return Policies, Refund Policies, Cookies, Disclaimers….
AND we need special versions for California, Europe, and the Apple App store…. You get the idea.
Thankfully you can have these created for you, online, without talking to a lawyer!
TermsFeed
TermsFeed is the great set-it-forget-it option here. They can make any of those legal agreements in a snap (you click through a series of questions that make sure you are getting exactly what you need).
But the best part is that TermsFeed will automatically update your legal documents as laws change.
Set it. Forget it. TermsFeed has you covered.
So what does it cost?
Hard to say. TermsFeed charges via ‘a la carte’. The upside to this is that you only pay for what you need. The downside is that I can only give you my best guess.
After poking around a bit and selecting everything I could, whether I would have needed it or not, it looks like you would have a hard time paying more than $100 dollars for any legal agreement.
For the same document at my local neighborhood lawyer’s office, I’d pay $300 dollars.
So the worst-case, most expensive thing I could find was still 1/3 the cost of the traditional route!
*UPDATE: We helped a nonprofit get legal with TermsFeed just the other day. Because they had simple needs, the cost was $0! We were surprised and happy enough to let you know!
Head over to TermsFeed to get your site legal!
Rating: 4.9 Stars (according to reviews on their website)
The Best Online Accounting Service
FreshBooks
If you are doing your own accounting, making your own invoices, or otherwise spending time on financial matters that you would rather be spending on creating/growing/marketing your small business, you need to check out FreshBooks.
FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting service that allows you to:
- Create professional-looking invoices in seconds
- Record, track, and organize your expenses
- Log your billable hours (and automatically add them to your invoice)
- Communicate with your team (remotely) with project-oriented messaging
- Accept credit card payments directly through FreshBooks
- Generate reports
- Benefit from easy-to-use double-entry accounting
You can try FreshBooks for free for 30 days (no credit card required). After that, it’s $15 per month.
Rated 4.46 / 5 stars by GetApp Reviews (3,300 reviews as of this writing)
The Best Scheduling Service
Homebase
Homebase is a cloud-based scheduling and time-tracking service. If you have a staff or otherwise need to track workable hours, Homebase is worth a peek.
They give a great deal away for free (enough for many small businesses to handle everything, our businesses included.)
Free features include:
- Scheduling/Availability
- Time tracking/punch cards / Attendance
- Team messaging
- Hiring / Job posting/applicant tracking
- Point of sale integration
- Payroll integrations
- Live support via phone, email, or chat
The software itself is extremely simple to use for both you and your employees. “Ease-of-use” is one of the most often repeated comments we found when first researching these guys.
The live chat has been extremely friendly and helpful. They have really gone over and above to reach out and make sure I’ve got what I need (and I’m not even paying them!)
Oh, and if you do decide to pay, they charge by location, not per employee like a lot of the other guys in this space.
Homebase’s paid features include:
- Health and safety screening
- Budgeting and costs controls
- Human Resource advisors and training
- Performance Management
- Remote work
- Document storage
- Job postings
- And much more I can’t fit on this page
Homebase currently boasts over 100,000 small businesses using their software. See the full list of features on homebase.com.
Rated 4.6 / 5 stars by Capterra
Homebase Mobile App rated 4.8 / 5 by the Apple App Store
The Best Way To Leverage Social Media
Tailwind
Tailwind is simple to use and understand. It will schedule your Instagram or Pinterest posts for you.
Basically, if your business is in any way connected to social media, you need Tailwind. On average Tailwind users nearly double their Instagram ‘likes’ and get nearly 700% more re-pins on Pinterest.
Here’s some data from Tailwind.com:
On average, if you start Tailwind with less than 100 Pinterest followers, you can:
- expect to increase Repins 10-fold (about 6,300 Repins for subscribers vs about 640 for non-subscribers)
- expect to increase your number of followers 6-fold (about 300 for subscribers vs about 50 for non-subscribers)
- expect to increase the number of Pins you publish by 6-fold (about 2,700 for subscribers vs 410 for non-subscribers)
And you get those results for around $10 per month. My Hulu subscription certainly has never been that helpful.
Tailwind also offers an Instagram service. It, too, costs $10 per month.
On average, if you start Tailwind with less than 100 Instagram followers, you can:
- expect to increase Likes nearly 5-fold (about 5,400 Likes for subscribers vs about 1,100 for non-subscribers)
- expect to increase your number of followers 2.5-fold (about 420 for subscribers vs about 160 for non-subscribers)
- expect to increase the number of Posts you publish by more than 2-fold (about 90 for subscribers vs 40 for non-subscribers)
*Please remember these are averages and not guarantees. You are just as likely to grow more than these numbers as less.
**Also note: The numbers on this site were current at the time of publication. For the most up-to-date data from Tailwind click here for Pinterest data and here for Instagram data
The Best Hosting Services
I wish hosting was as cut-and-dry as our social media section, but… hosting can be a little tricky.
We own websites hosted by both Bluehost and SiteGround and have built sites using both Weebly and Wix (one we no longer own and one we built for another owner).
What you are about to read is our personal opinion of these companies. And as you will see, that might put us (at least a little) at odds with much of the hosting boilerplate you see around the internet.
We will try to balance out subjective opinions with objective data (the actual amount you will pay in dollars) but you should treat the following costs as estimates.
Each of these companies offers a whole slew of ‘add-on’ services that you may or may not need for your personal situation. The costs below represent the absolute cheapest price we could manage to find by shuffling domain purchases and turning off extra features.
Please also note: the price you see here may not actually be the price they advertise. Each of these companies advertises one price, but by the time you actually enter your credit card info, you’re staring at a new price. Such is the world of hosting.
This is our attempt to get you the most accurate, no advertising BS price so you can make the best decision for your business.
Bluehost (cheapest, best for beginning a blog)
Who’s it for? New bloggers.
Bluehost tends to be the most recommended hosting service around the web. And, to the best of our knowledge, it is the cheapest way to get a website up and running. You’ll see ‘special offers’ around that promise any number of prices. (The lowest I think I’ve seen is $2.75 per year).
The truth is, no matter what special you click, you will probably end up spending the same amount once you get all the add-ons you need, and it sure as heck won’t average out to $2.75 per month.
Now, we own sites hosted by Bluehost. In fact, the site you are reading right now began its life on Bluehost.
And we have had no issues whatsoever. Bluehost has been great to us. It is still our first recommendation for anyone who wants to start a blog.
But.
You won’t walk away with that $2.75 per month deal. The best we could come up with (even after clicking that $2.75 promo) was:
$142.20 for 36 months, domain included. Before taxes.
That comes out to just under $4 per month.
This is by no means a bad deal! It’s fantastic. You (probably) won’t find a better deal! We just want you to have a realistic picture of the cost going in. We fell for the ‘deals’ and it stung when the final total popped up on our screen.
We don’t want you to get stung.
So why aren’t we tripping over ourselves to sell you on Bluehost?
It’s not right for everybody.
If your goal is to blog for profit, Bluehost is where you want to start. Hands down. It’s the cheapest. It’s (nearly) the easiest. It has great support and there are a million guides out there on how to get up and running in no time.
But if your goal is to blog for a tiny audience (instead of profit) or to just share your thoughts and opinions as a hobby, Bluehost is overkill. Go with a freebie site. They will put a ‘powered by’ stamp on your page, but what do you care? You’re doing you and you don’t need an ounce of professionalism.
If your goal is to build a website that is informative first (and maybe a blog as a distant second), Bluehost might not be the best solution either.
What do we mean?
We own a (different, separate from the one you are reading) website that is meant to inform customers of the products and services we provide. We reach out to these customers directly. We have no blog. We do one thing: we inform.
That means we do not need a flexible site that can handle ad clients or frequent blog posts. We want steady. We want dependability. We want fast load times. So for our other business, we went with SiteGround.
But!
If what you want is to get a blog up and running in the absolute shortest amount of time, while spending absolutely the least money possible, then Bluehost is what you need.
SiteGround (best all-around self-managed hosting)
Who’s it for? eCommerce sites, professional/informative sites, and businesses that have non-blogging goals.
SiteGround is not the easiest or the cheapest, but of the low-cost hosting options, we feel it is the most robust and the most dependable.
Again, we use our SiteGround site only to inform potential customers about the services we offer. There are no ads. There are no blog posts. There is just one beautiful, fast, and professional site.
So why is SiteGround faster and more reliable than Bluehost?
Everything your website uses is stored on solid-state drives, the fastest, most reliable drives out there. The hardware they use was built, and is maintained, by Google’s infrastructure, and uses Google’s networks.
For our other business site, professionalism is the goal. Site speed = professional. Therefore, SiteGround was the better match.
In short, they have some top-of-the-line stuff going on behind the scenes.
*Fun Fact: SiteGround has partnered with Google’s Renewable Energy program. 100% of their energy demands are met by renewable energy sources. If that matters to you, bonus!
SiteGround also offers regular hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and managed WooCommerce hosting, all for the same cost. We went with the Managed WordPress plan (WordPress is the gold standard for websites, in our opinion).
So what’ll it cost you?
We found the best deal (at the time of this writing) was to buy your domain from Namecheap, then purchase the Managed WordPress plan from SiteGround (or the Managed WooCommerce plan if you want to build an online store). Doing so would cost:
$377.64 for 36 months
+$34.84 domain for 36 mos (from Namecheap)
Yes, it was more expensive. But if you’re planning to start a business that is not a blog at its core, we feel SiteGround is where you want to start. If all you want is a blog, go Bluehost. If you want to use blogging as a marketing tool for another business (like an online store or b2b service provider) go SiteGround to start.
WPEngine (Most Pro and Powerful)
Who’s it for? Well-planned and well-funded businesses that can afford to outsource.
WPEngine is what you want to hit the ground running. You have a proven concept. You have the capital to spend. Maybe you’ve been in business for a while and are ready to make a splash in the online world.
WPEngine is truly a ‘next level’ for hosting. Bluehost and SiteGround are great when you want to test the waters or build without over-extending. But if what you need is to go straight to Pro, straight to a substantial number of visitors per month, then WPEngine is what you want.
WPEngine is all about unlocking the true potential of WordPress and connecting you to some of the top WP developers. They integrate with some major players in the online space (think Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, and HubSpot) to give you massive flexibility and potential.
You also get access to the Genesis Framework and StudioPress Themes, included in the price. The Genesis Framework is the world’s most popular theme framework (if you’ve ever seen a site you might describe as ‘breathtaking’ you’ve probably seen the Genesis Framework.). StudioPress makes themes that are ready to use ‘out of the box’. They are beautiful, constantly updated, and most importantly, highly user-friendly.
But all this gloriousness doesn’t come cheap.
So what’s the damage?
$900 for 36 months
+$34.84 domain (again from Namecheap)
This is the price for the ‘stater’ plan. Your cost per month will scale as you bank more page visits per month. When you hit 100k visitors per month, the cost will rise from $25/mo to $95/mo. Then again, once you have 100k visitors per month, $95 will be but a drop in the bucket.
To check out what WPEngine can do for you, click here.
You can also check out the Genesis Framework.
And while you’re at it, take a look at some StudioPress themes.
Weebly (easiest)
UPDATE: Weebly has started offering a series of free training courses for small businesses. Even if you’re not interested in Weebly, they are worth checking out!
Weebly is hands down the easiest website builder we’ve used. If you can drag, then drop, you can make a website.
Now, Weebly is technically designed around building eCommerce sites, but that hasn’t stopped us from using it to build a website for a nonprofit organization.
There has been a bit of confusion around that last point lately. I’ve seen a few sources saying that Weebly can only make eCommerce sites. This simply isn’t true.
Yes, you can blog with Weebly.
Yes, you can make static sites with Weebly.
Yes, you can do anything you want with Weebly.
But there are two main downsides. And one of those downsides is actually an upside in disguise.
Downside #1 (The good downside): Weebly has less design freedom than other drag-and-drop builders, namely Wix.
How is that a good thing? Freedom brings complexity. And confusion. And frustration. Weebly’s main competitor, Wix, offers more freedom, but also tends to cause more problems. Weebly’s limits do an excellent job of preventing headaches without hurting the end design (If I hadn’t used both in the past, I would never have realized that Weebly was missing anything at all.)
Downside #2 (the bad downside): Cost. You are paying for convenience here. You will pay more than Bluehost or SiteGround, and you will get fewer ‘behind-the-scenes’ powers. Weebly is a design company first, and a hosting service second. Bluehost and SiteGround focus on hosting above all else.
So what will it cost?
If you go for the cheapest package that doesn’t plaster ads or ‘powered by square’ branding all over your site…
$432 for 36 mos
+34.84 for a domain from Namecheap (Weebly offers domains in-house, but Namecheap is still cheaper)
*Weebly does offer a free plan, but it will be branded by Weebly. Remember, if you’re just blogging for fun or building websites for practice, ‘free’ is a great option! But for anything requiring the least bit of professionalism, you’ll want the $12/month plan.
If your goal is to blog, I still feel Bluehost or SiteGround are better options. They are more challenging to use, but even with Weebly, you will eventually have to solve some sort of technical problem that is far more complicated than just making a pretty site. If you’ve got the brains and determination to solve those kinds of problems, you don’t really need Weebly anyway.
But if your project needs to catch the eye the moment the page loads…
Or if you want to set up an online store…
Or if you need a beautiful and professional static site (like we did for our work on the non-profit)…
Then you want to give Weebly a try.
The Best Place to Buy Domain Names
Namecheap
We’ve mentioned Namecheap a few times in this list, and for good reason. Time and again, Namecheap lives up to… well, its name.
Namecheap promises cheap domains, and it delivers.
We’ve used other domain providers in the past (GoDaddy) included, but as we’ve gotten better at finding the most cost-effective ways of doing business, Namecheap has become our go-to provider.
Back when we first started, we got suckered in by GoDaddy. They advertise on TV. They have specials and deals and bells and whistles.
But when you cut through all that noise and look at your actual costs over a multi-year period, Namecheap’s simple, transparent pricing wins every time.
As a quick comparison, we went to both GoDaddy and Namecheap and got pricing data for ‘dachshundpottytraining.com’ (don’t ask). We set our term for three years (just like we did for our hosting reviews above). We purchased no extras, options, or add-ons. This is a best-case lowest possible price example. Prices include all ICANN fees.
Three years of GoDaddy: $47.97
Three years of Namecheap: $27.18
Keep in mind that these are price-competitive businesses. That means that the only real difference between the two is the price. (For example, a domain is a domain no matter who you bought it from.)
When you do your own research, don’t be fooled by marketing gimmicks or fancy-sounding features. All domain services offer the same thing (even if they make up exciting names for them). It’s up to you to research what they sell, what you need, and what it will actually cost you over time.
When shouldn’t you use Namecheap?
Maybe if you use Bluehost. Bluehost offers free domain names for one year as part of the lowest priced package. Based on Bluehost’s current domain prices beyond that first year, it might be slightly cheaper to use Bluehost’s domain service. As of this writing, and using our three-year standard, Namecheap is slightly cheaper. But a Bluehost domain would be easier.
One last thought: you might be tempted to save a buck or two by buying a domain suffix other than “.com”.
Please don’t.
The loss of apparent professionalism when going with “.xyz” of “.biz” is simply not worth it. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but for 99% of you, stick with “.com”!
Just click here, type in the domain name you want, and you are on your way!
4.7 / 5 stars (according to ShopperApproved.com)
More From 3MM
Our goal here at Three Month Millionaire is to help you achieve freedom, both financially and in your working life. The dream is to build a million-dollar business that can be run in three months or less per year.
We believe that the key to freedom is business ownership and we believe that you can start a business from your home that will change your life.
We believe it because it happened to us.
We want to share our story and help you on your own path to financial freedom. That’s why wrote this guide: to share with you the best tools we’ve figured out along the way.
We’ve also compiled the lessons we’ve learned into three main guides:
- Our Ultimate Productivity Guide
- Our Ultimate Guide to Building a Business
- Our Ultimate Guide to Investing
We also publish unbiased reviews of business tools and software. To see some of our top review posts, Check out:
- Our reviews of the Best Online Course Creation Software
- Our reviews of the Best Books For Following the Three-Month Millionaire Journey
- Our reviews of the Best Social Media Management Tools
- Our Review of the Best Email Marketing Services
And there you have it…
Some of the tools we’ve used/wish we’d used through our business journey. We made this page because this is exactly what we needed back in the day. We sincerely hope this helps you out.
One last suggestion before you go: bookmark this page.
This is an ongoing project. As we use/research/can vouch for new tools and services, we will add them to this list. So bookmark and check back every now and then!
Until then, have a good one!
