Seven Underrated Tools That Quietly Changed How I Run My Business

Every founder has a core stack - the CRM, the project manager, the Slack channel, the accounting software. These are the obvious ones that everyone writes about. This article is not about those.

This is about the tools that sit in the background, doing unglamorous work that I did not even realise needed doing until they started doing it. Some are software. Some are services. One is not digital at all. Together they have saved me more time and prevented more problems than any single headline product.

1. Loom (Async Video Messaging)

I know Loom is not exactly obscure, but the way most founders use it is. They record product demos and onboarding videos. Fine. What changed my workflow was using Loom as a replacement for about 60 percent of my meetings.

Instead of scheduling a 30-minute call to explain a strategy change, I record a 4-minute Loom, share the link, and let people watch it when they are actually in a position to pay attention. The analytics show who watched and when, which is more useful than pretending everyone was engaged during a Thursday afternoon Zoom.

The compounding effect is real. I save roughly 5-6 hours per week on meetings that did not need to be synchronous. Over a year, that is the equivalent of an extra month of productive time.

2. Wise Business (Multi-Currency Banking)

If your business invoices in more than one currency or pays contractors internationally, you have probably lost money on exchange rates and transfer fees without realising it. Traditional banks are remarkably good at hiding these costs.

Wise Business holds balances in multiple currencies, converts at the mid-market rate (not the bank's inflated rate), and sends international payments at a fraction of the cost of a SWIFT transfer. For a business that pays contractors in three currencies, the savings are meaningful - around 1.5 to 2 percent per transaction compared to our previous bank, which adds up to several thousand dollars per year.

The multi-currency invoicing feature means we can bill clients in their local currency without taking the conversion hit. Small thing. Big difference to cash flow.

3. Notion (as a Company Wiki, Not a Project Manager)

Everyone uses Notion differently, and most of the ways are wrong. As a task manager it is mediocre. As a Slack replacement it is terrible. As a company wiki - a single source of truth for how things work - it is excellent.

Every process in our business is documented in Notion. New hire onboarding, client communication protocols, content approval workflows, vendor contact lists, password management procedures. When someone asks "how do we do X?", the answer is always "check Notion."

The discipline of documenting processes forces you to think about whether they make sense. We have eliminated or simplified dozens of workflows simply because writing them down made their inefficiency obvious.

4. Jurisdictional Optionality Planning

This is not a software tool - it is a strategic exercise that most founders skip until they need it urgently. The concept is simple: map out the jurisdictions that matter to your business (where your clients are, where your team is, where your money flows) and ensure you have legal standing or access in the ones that are critical.

For some founders this means establishing a holding company in a second jurisdiction. For others it means understanding which countries offer accessible pathways for residency or nationality that align with their business geography. For most, it means at minimum having banking relationships and legal counsel pre-established in the markets that matter.

The point is not to create complex structures. It is to remove single points of failure. If your entire business depends on your legal standing in one country, you have a concentration risk that most risk frameworks would flag immediately if it appeared on a corporate balance sheet.

5. Descript (Audio and Video Editing)

I am not a video editor. I do not want to be a video editor. What I want is to record a podcast episode or a video update, cut out the parts where I said "um" forty times and the bit where my dog barked for thirty seconds, and publish something that sounds competent.

Descript lets you edit audio and video by editing the transcript. You delete the words, it deletes the audio. It feels like cheating. It probably is. The filler word removal feature alone saves 20-30 minutes per episode of post-production time that I would otherwise spend in an audio editor I barely understand.

6. Cal.com (Open-Source Scheduling)

I used Calendly for years. It was fine. Cal.com is better in ways that matter for a business rather than an individual. Team scheduling, round-robin routing to different team members, workflows triggered by bookings (automatic Loom links, pre-meeting questionnaires, follow-up emails), and self-hosted options for businesses that care about data sovereignty.

The pricing is also simpler. Calendly's team plan costs add up quickly once you have multiple users. Cal.com's pricing scales more sensibly.

The underrated feature is the booking workflows - automatic sequences triggered when someone books a specific meeting type. We use these to send pre-meeting context documents, reducing the "can you bring me up to speed?" problem that wastes the first 10 minutes of most calls.

7. 1Password Business (Team Password Management)

If you are sharing passwords via Slack, email, or a shared Google Doc (and I know some of you are), stop. The average data breach costs a small business around USD 120,000 in direct costs and considerably more in reputation damage.

1Password Business creates shared vaults for team credentials, enforces two-factor authentication, and provides audit logs showing who accessed what and when. The travel mode feature - which removes sensitive vaults from devices when crossing borders - is relevant for any founder who travels internationally with client data on their devices.

Setup takes an afternoon. The peace of mind is permanent.

The Common Thread

None of these tools are revolutionary on their own. What they share is the ability to eliminate low-level friction that compounds over time. A meeting that did not need to happen. A currency conversion fee that did not need to be paid. A password that did not need to be shared insecurely.

The best business tools are the ones you forget you are using - because they have made the problem they solve disappear entirely.