Evernote

I am a big fan of keeping a ‘swipe’ file, which is basically when you grab someone else’s information in some form, and save it so you can model* something on it later on.

That could be a website page layout, a format of a program or service package, or even some wording from an email campaign.

Whatever it is, you liked the way it was presented and you want to be able to do something of your own that is put together the same way.

Evernote helps you organize that type of thing easily. You ‘clip’ web page addresses or other bits of information into your Evernote notebook, and then you can assign keywords to it to easily retrieve it later.

So when I was doing some copywriting, I went to my Evernote notebook and search ‘copywriting’ for the things I had saved and tagged as such. I was able to find the bits that I had saved for this project and was able to pull together my sales page much more quickly because I had the information easily at hand.

The neat thing is that you install it on your computer and then you can save things to your notebook with a simple click! Check Evernote out – I think you might like it!

*note that by model I do not mean to copy – please don’t steal other people’s work!

You can set up as many ‘queues’ as you like, and add as many tasks to each queue as you need. It’s also got some great features, like sharing queues with others, tagging and much more.

There is a free version, but the paid version is only $25/year and is more dynamic than the free version.

If you are like me, and you like a simple to-do list to keep yourself organized, try GQueues.

I use it to keep track of all of my client work and my business tasks, and it’s simply all I need!

One of the things that ‘busy’ people often lament is the lack of time. Well there is only so much time available. If you find yourself wishing you had more time, it would be a good exercise to look at exactly where you are spending yours.

Here are 6 places that you can focus on to help ‘find more time’ in your day.

Set office hours. Whether you are working part-time or full-time, it’s important to select some office hours and set them. By setting hours, you are telling people when they will be able to reach you. Your family and your clients will be happier knowing exactly when you are working and when you are not. Some virtual professionals work around their family activities. And while this is doable, and even encouraged, it’s important to still figure out what that looks like on a regular basis (confusing your clients and partners with odd hours and last minute days away is not the way to build your business). For instance if you often help at your child’s school, try to figure out a regular routine for that and set your business hours around that. If your children come home from school and ‘need you’ starting at 3 pm every day, be sure to end your business hours by the time they get home. If you are transitioning from a full time job to your new virtual business, set some time aside during the business day to return calls and emails (once is plenty). When your office is ‘closed’, be sure not to be working, as well. You owe it to yourself.

Set boundaries. By setting time that you will be ‘in your office’, you are effectively setting boundaries – for your clients, for your family, and for yourself. Boundaries are important, because there is nothing worse than having your clients or partners expecting to hear back from you within an hour of a call or an email… and not getting back to them during that time. Boundaries are important from the very beginning of any client relationship. Let them know your response times, and how to reach you in an emergency. Also be sure to indicate what constitutes an emergency! Planning regular production calls with support personnel each week can help with boundaries, because everyone is on the same page with what work will be done over the coming week, and you can let them know any scheduling issues while on the phone. And it goes without saying that your family will be happier if you are not checking email every five minutes when you’re supposed to be watching your son or daughter in the school play or on the hockey rink!

Schedule time and get organized. Getting and staying organized is sometimes a challenge when you are trying to balance work and family life. I start every morning by putting together a task list for the day. I figure out when I will do each item and then I set my day up to take care of everything. I am lucky to have a full time virtual business, so my business hours for clients are 10 to 4 from Monday to Friday. I go into my office each day by 9 and leave at 5, and try to shut the door when I am finished for the day. So any household things typically get done outside of those hours. I try to disrupt my family as little as possible, so if I have extra work to do, I start earlier or work after they have gone to bed (which actually isn’t that often at all!), but their routines are disrupted as little as possible. The extra hour on either side of my business hours lets me organize my own business things. It’s not perfect every day, but it’s a good system and it works well. Knowing what is going to get done, and when, is one of the most important parts of my business.

Manage email, the phone and meetings. Email can be the biggest drain on your time during the day. However, phone calls and meetings can be equally disruptive. I have regularly scheduled phone calls with my clients each week, which mainly take about 15 minutes. Other than that, I don’t take phone calls unless they are scheduled. If my clients need me they know to email me or to leave me a voicemail and I’ll get back to them when I have some free time. Of course there are exceptions… but this is my boundary and all of my clients respect it. It helps me to keep on task with whatever I am doing for the day. Meetings are the same – if they are to be a half hour, then I leave the meeting after a half hour to go on with my day. Keeping this policy in place helps me to keep my day organized and helps me from falling behind on what I have planned to do for the day.

Get support and delegate. If you are planning to have a successful virtual business that will allow you to work less and make more money, you will at some point need to get support to help you process client work. So start early! If you do a lot of one thing for your clients, then find someone who you can start to work with you help you with work overflow. You will be able to take on new clients more easily if you already have someone in place to help you when necessary. Alternately, you can get someone to work with who does things that you do not do (ie for me it’s client liaison work and graphics) so you can offer your clients a full service experience. As you start to work with a client, develop procedures for the things you do for them. Get them on paper, and then when you need to delegate the work to one of your support people, you will already have your procedures in place. This creates better flow and a lot less supervision. You can work with VAs or other virtual professionals, depending on what kind of help you need.

Avoid multitasking. I used to be really proud to say I could handle more than one task at a time. I don’t think I worded that correctly. I can certainly juggle a lot of different things in a morning, but I only actually do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is only effective when one item has your full attention. If you try to do three different things simultaneously, you will end up spending more time on each of them because your attention is divided. I break my work up into 15 minute segments. If I am working on one client’s work, I put everyone else’s away for that length of time. I get it done faster, I can schedule the next task for that client, and then I move onto the next. So that’s what I consider to be multitasking – doing many things during the course of the day, and juggling the time to get them all done when they need to be done. But never doing more than one thing at a time. Concentration is key, and when you are billing clients by the time you work on their task, it’s important to give their work your undivided attention.

If you really look at each of these areas, and write down where you are spending your time, you will see that you can buy back a lot of wasted time. Why do I know that fixing these areas will ‘find you more time’? Because I’ve been guilty of all of them at one time or another, and I have seen the difference it can make to get them in order. See for yourself… try just one (like the email one or the phone calls!) and see how much more productive and organized you will be.

Anyone who owns a small business realizes that there are ebbs and flows of business, and there are also ebbs and flows of overwhelm as a result of that.

But a little bit of planning can go a very long way when you are working with your Virtual Assistant or other support professionals.

There will always be times that something has been ‘forgotten’ or is scheduled to do last minute, but in order to build a successful working relationship with someone, it’s important to keep the last minute requests to a minimum.

Most VAs work with multiple clients, and as such they work with many different schedules. It’s important to honor the time and schedule boundaries that are set when you start working together, so that you can both be productive and get the most amount of work done when needed.

Here are a few tips on how to manage your time regularly in terms of your support requirements.

1. Set deadlines to complete time-sensitive work. When you have a project or a task, be sure you set a realistic deadline for the work to be turned around. When you need something done, ask when you will get it back. Respect the scheduling of your VA, and if something needs to be turned around more quickly than they initially tell you, let them know. Work together to make sure your project gets done on time, and be sure to identify issues that can be corrected for the next project to make sure more time is allowed for the implementation or production part. For instance, if you couldn’t get registration started for an event because the graphics person you used was swamped, get a new graphics person or allow more time the next time.

2. Develop an editorial calendar. For ongoing tasks such as newsletters or broadcasts, set up a Google calendar that you can use to plan your writing, so you are not doing things last minute. By determining what you are going to write about each week you can get ahead and make your writing process smoother. For instance, if Thanksgiving is coming up, you have an idea what your personal note will be about. If you have a product launch coming up or a colleague is having an event, you have an idea what your ‘recommends’ section could be about. And if you develop a regular routine of what you will write to your audience about (ie week 1 marketing, week 2 business tips, etc.) then your articles will practically write themselves.

3. Plan product or service launches properly. This is one thing that a lot of people make mistakes with. It’s important to have enough ‘lead’ time to properly launch a new product or service to your audience. By trying to do things too quickly, you can often sabotage yourself in terms of sales. Decide what you want to do, when you want to do it, and then step back from your calendar to set up the launch process properly. Never rush something that you want to do well, and be sure you have enough time to set things up properly so you can make the connections with your audience as part of your launch. If you don’t allow yourself enough time to set up a group program, for instance, you could find that you have low enrolment because you start to panic when you begin to run out of time to promote. Or worse, you send multiple emails to your list in a short period of time because you didn’t plan correctly. By allowing enough time for your launch, your support team will be able to help you build momentum instead of panic!

4. Use checklists so nothing gets missed. Whether you are working with one team member or several, it’s a good idea to set up a checklist of things that need to be done (or have your VA set it up) so that you make sure nothing gets missed in the planning, production or launch phase. You can make an actual checklist or use a Google calendar that will track the tasks and deadlines for each piece. By determining deadlines for each part, you will know at a glance what needs to be taken care of during a given day, week or month. It’s a really simple planning tool that can work for so many applications, and it helps to keep everyone on task.

There are so many ways that you can keep yourself organized so that your team can best support you. These are just a few, but they are really easy to implement and will be sure to help you work well with your support team.

I’d love to hear your comments on this article.

This sounds good, but I was, in fact, lamenting that although I do all of these things for my clients, I do not do pay enough attention to them for my own business.  Do you know what they said?

Stop Putting Yourself At The Bottom Of Your List!

They were right. The fact is that I constantly tell my clients how important it is to keep their service offerings current, their clients and their ‘tribe’ informed and in touch, and their networking contacts fresh. I tell them these things because they are TRUE! But I always let this area of my own business lapse. I focus on it for a while and then I get too busy and let it go again. Instead of keeping on top of it, I am always playing catch up.

I have decided that it’s time to take my own advice, and so as you know I am building my very first team of subcontractors, after working alone for about 13 years. I have decided that my business is just as important as my clients’ businesses. We are not apples and oranges (now you get it!). We all deserve the same attention.

The fact is, my client load right now is full. I have a waiting list for work in June and July. So really the attention needs to turn to my own business in order for me to be able to grow, and for me to be able to grow with my clients too!

Look for an exciting announcement from me early next week about a new program I am launching. It’s going to be great, and finally I am looking after my own business the way it deserves! (and thanks to my wonderful team members, it will get the TLC that I show my clients!)

I have already shopped for a new office chair, which I have needed for way too long. I have already set up my music selection which I love!

I have a great filing system for my email, computer files and paper files, but I am looking forward to purging, purging, purging much of this that is no longer necessary to keep on file. I’ll give my recycle bin and my shredder a workout, that’s for sure!

I will clear the clutter that has accumulated in my office. I have two desks in my office and one of them is a catch-all for all kinds of paper. I clean it off occasionally, but now I will want to work at that desk, so I will have to make sure that I have a better way of managing the stuff that ends up there now!

Of course as I purge, I am finding all kinds of gems that I have printed or saved over the last several months ‘to read when I have time’.  The collection of free ebooks and reports and mp3s is really mind-boggling. Luckily my computer filing system is good and I am having no trouble going through them, picking out the important pieces, and purging the rest. I will probably share some of these with you as I weed through them!

I always thought that electronic copies of things were more environmentally friendly, but my computer hard drive disagrees! I have recently done the same with email lists that I belonged to that were not serving me. It’s important to keep the flow of information that comes in front of you relevant and pertinent, in order to maintain your focus and clarity.

As I brighten the space around me by clearing the clutter in all of these areas, I am making really tidy room for the client work that is on the horizon! Looking forward to it!

Picture this: it’s Monday and you set up your task list for the week. Looks good, you have fit everything in and you know you can deliver it all on time.  But what happens if something goes wrong? Do you have a ‘plan b’ in place so that you can still manage when something goes wrong?

Say on Tuesday one or more of the following situations comes up and threatens to mess up your tidy task list.

• you get sick or injured
• your child or a family members gets ill and requires your care
• a great client calls with a last minute project that they need you to find time for
• you have technical difficulty with a task that you only allowed a set amount of time to do
• you lose your internet connection for a prolonged period of time
• you get more than one referral or prospects call needing proposals

Do you have a backup plan?

If you haven’t thought about what you would do in any of these situations, now is the time to do so! By the time you need to have a contingency plan in place, it will be too late. The time to get your plan in place is when you don’t need it!

Your contingency plan doesn’t have to be complicated – just put together the basics when you have time:

• find someone (or more than one someone!)  who can help you out when you need it
• put together procedures for the tasks you take care of on a daily basis
• set up an intake process for new clients
• develop a project management protocol

Don’t wait until it’s too late!

As a solopreneur,you can sometimes go from 0-60 in no time flat. Make sure you are prepared for that before it happens by going through the steps above and developing your contingency plan.