By Dara Klatt
Want to be ‘like a boss’? Use these essential apps of YGL power players.
DJ Neekola connects with people via Instagram.
Let’s face it, having success, brains and personality requires some good apps. When young people set out to change the world and leave a formidable mark in their field, they’ve got a trusted set of apps to help along the way. Communicating securely with the office team — check. Organizing contacts and staying on task — check. Even managing reflection or making time to meditate — check. We took a look at some of the essential apps utilized by a few of this year’s YGL honorees. Your next powerful tale of achievement might depend on a click to the app store.
To Conquer Work
All hail Google for its many apps that make chaotic work life more manageable, including Google Keep, for “jotting down notes on the fly,” Google Calendar and Google Docs. For real time internal messaging, food entrepreneurs Phil Wong and Ann Yang swear by Slack. It’s “an awesome communication tool for our team,” says Wong, who co-founded Misfit Juicery with Yang.
Misfit Juicery co-founders Phil Wong and Ann Yang swear by Slack for internal messaging.
Fellow start-up head and frequent business traveler Jen Mellon, CoFounder and President of Trustify, has added Service to her app stack. It scans your email inboxes for flights and files claims with airlines on your behalf for cancellations or delays.
Trustify co-founder Jen Mellon says Jesus Calling helps her focus on her faith even on the craziest of days.
While Armor Text founder and CEO Navroop Mitter uses his own app for securely messaging his team and clients, he also counts on the “really clever” Evernote app to help organize his contacts. And when it comes to marketing, DJ Neekola, an international DJ and the mind behind entertainment planning company Pelonkey Inc., looks to Squarespace, Instagram and Snapchat. “It’s amazing how many people you can connect with …[and] get so much business,” Neekola says.
Navroop Mitter uses his own app, Armor Text, to message clients.
To Rejuvenate
Being so accomplished and influential is hard work. Burnout isn’t an option. Yang looks to Headspace, which provides guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training for a few minutes every day. For Mellon, whose day starts before dawn and ends often after midnight, Jesus Calling is a way to focus on her faith with a 365-day devotional that builds in time to reflect and pray. Whether you’re into Mozart or Moon Taxi between meetings, music is also a great escape. To find new tunes that’s aren’t necessarily on Spotify, Wong goes to SoundCloud.
Quinn Bradlee, author, filmmaker and founder of a social network for young adults with learning differences, is a fan of Shazam which records and identifies music playing around you. If you want to brush up on Portuguese in your limited free time, there’s Duolingo, which Neekola says makes learning languages easy using a gaming system. For a different kind of brain game, Chess.com counts millions of players around the world, including Wong. How do these movers and shakers discover the latest and greatest apps? In Mitter’s case, “My days are spent conversing with some really curious and talented people. We share ideas, book recommendations, tech finds, etc. It’s just what we do.” Well, of course it is. You didn’t think they Googled it, did you?
Author and filmmaker Quinn Bradlee relies on Shazam for song indentification.
This story first appeared in the March 2018 issue of Washington Life Magazine.
