How do you manage your business?
I have a combination of things—a word document grid that I swear by and fill in every Monday. It breaks the day into 15-minute intervals—with time allotted daily for client work, business development and administration. I just about exploded when I read a missive to only schedule your day to 60%, to allow for the unexpected. I now have slots designated “free” so when my husband or son pops by (yay #officingathome) I can stop and chat (check-off “love your family” from your to-do list).
Then there are the task reminders on Google Calendar breaking down bigger monthly and going projects into their interim deadlines. Finally, there’s a huge (six foot by four foot) dry erase board on my wall with annual vision, goals, strategy and tactics, that I check in with periodically.
There’s a reason why “crying” is one of the 5 Stages of Learning New Technology
If you are a “non-digital native” aka did not grow up with technology, there’s deep consideration when contemplating new technology-based systems (and a reason why “crying” is the third in the Five Stages of Learning a New Technology). It seems intuitive to know that you need technology-based communications to market your business. But what about for running your business?
I get prospects all the time from platforms that promise to make my business run itself. What I often find is that it’s like sending an ambulance to fix a paper cut. They are designed for enterprise-sized organizations. The input of data often is substantially larger and more time-consuming than the original work.
However, this is changing.
More and more platforms are scaling smaller, rather than larger. Prices are coming down and the needs of smaller small businesses are being considered. Monday.com, Trello and Asana are a few. Some prioritize collaborating work among remote team members at the core and have task and project management as a sidebar to that. I’d love to see something that allows for an overlay of annual vision and goals not only for my own company but for each client as well. And something that works seamlessly both on a phone App and desktop.
The bottom line is, will it save you time and money?
Will it allow you to increase your overall productivity? And (and this is a big consideration, as the workforce welcomes yet a new generation of workers who expect to communicate digitally) will it allow you to communicate with your team (no matter how small) so that you are all on the same page?