You're a Busy Entrepreneur and Frankly Don't Have the Time, Money or Team to Get Everything Done in a Timely Fashion!
Anytime you want to get yourself ahead in business you know you need to better project manage everything. As a business owner we have a lot of people relying on us at all times, so getting this right is important. The technique I am giving you here should stand you in good stead for pretty much anything you've got in mind!
Visit the link at the bottom of the page if you want to learn to Get Stuff Done in a Business Strategy Pod!
Right now you just want to get yourself organised better after either a break or a busy period and you just need to consolidate where you are and make the most of it. So first things first:
Goals
Your business goals can be personal as well as professional. Over the years mine have included getting some accounts package training, buying a new networking outfit all the way up to watching YouTube videos on podcasting! No matter what your goals are they need to cover at least 4 areas. What worked in the past, what you anticipate working in the future, what you can do to improve yourself and service and how you can overcome any issues.
1. Business Goals
· Do you want to have a certain amount of Likes or Followers on your social pages?
· Do you have a minimum sales level that keeps you in the black?
· Do you want to add staff or outsource in the next quarter?
· Do you need to add or replace equipment?
· What content do you want to work on this year?
· Have you defined your best on and offline platforms for business?
· How much money do you want to earn this year?
Now add a time limit to achieve these, explain in writing how you're going to make them happen and which audiences you need to target as well.(SMART).
2. Project Manage
Whatever your goals are, your best bet is to put them into a tool similar to Asana. This is a project management tool that helps you stay on top of what needs doing. Over the years I've done checklists, excel spreadsheets and even whiteboards and yes they definitely help but they all need updating! With a tool like Asana you put it in once and then change where it is in the progress section from Lead / New to in Progress all the way to Completed. It also helps you because you can assign to others, diary ahead or indeed collaborate with.
I have been using a SWOT for about 6 years now and update mine at a minimum every 6 months, I try to do it quarterly. This gives me accountability and helps me better tweak my ongoing strategy
Add it to your diary as a recurring item!
3. SWOT
· What are you damn good at! (strengths)
· What do you need to work on? (weaknesses)
· Who do you need to speak to and see or organise? (opportunities)
· What do you need to be watchful off? (threats)
4. Diary
· Book off Holidays (Personal) and (GP's Hospitals) appointments
· Book off time for conferences and events (travel / hotels?)
· Book off Bank Holidays
· Book time in for Business Development every week
· Book time off to create all types of content
· What from your SWOT do you need to book in?
"Great, now I have even less time to do things!"
I'm sure you're now thinking, with all this time booked off how am I going to get everything done? You're right, it's not possible to get all of this done without a little bit of help. Now you need to look to outsourcing things where you can. I personally found this extremely hard to start doing this, I genuinely did. Now I wish I started doing this so much earlier!
It has freed up so much of my time. I do the things I enjoy and outsource the stuff I don't like or know how to do. Naturally you will have to pay someone to do it but these people are incredibly skilled technicians (virtual assistants – VA’s) who seem to pick things up by osmosis. This isn't the case all the time of course but I've gotten exceptionally lucky with Diana and Haron.
I did have to spend time showing them some of the tools I use but they mostly had experience with most of them.
Creating Processes / Procedures
This is a very useful exercise to perform. In order to better manage your time and to train these VA’s I had to look at what I was doing and see what I can hand over.
They can respond to emails and calls, make calls, do emails, update your website, create social media posts, create graphics, do SEO, write blogs, setup automation, move your email list from one provider to another, provide customer service and so much more.
The best way to start doing this is to “pretend” to train someone in all the things you’re doing. Make sure to explain how they can find it, how to update it, who to ask if they have a query, when they can ask and how. Then layout a structure (or a to-do) of what needs to be done and in what order.
Out of doing this for myself, I created an onboarding sheet and realised I needed to get a Customer Relationship Management Tool like Hubspot and then created numerous checklists that I use and pass on to clients as well.
Need some help with Accountability?
If you’re a solopreneur you’ll likely struggle with this at times. I certainly did when I first started. What helped was getting an accountability buddy. You can most likely find one yourself through your own network. It is better to work with some one who is at the same stage as you, however. So if you’re a startup, find another startup. If you’re a scaleup, find another business who wants to scaleup. You don’t need to be in the same type of business. I’ve matched up a florist with a carpenter, a café owner with a hairdresser. Then commit to speaking to each other daily, weekly or fortnightly. Any longer than that it just won’t work or likely happen.
If you’re struggling to find someone to help you with this, you might be interested in my G.S.D. in a BS Pod.
If you need any other support or guidance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
.png)