If you’re not planning and adhering to your schedule, you’ll find yourself allowing fires and other things to derail your plan. Pick a regularly scheduled day and time of the week to review your upcoming week and ensure that you’ve got everything scheduled that is needed. I recommend building in admin time to give yourself time to conduct those tasks M so that they don’t interfere with your productive work that must be performed in order for you to be profitable. If you work with an administrative assistant, feel free to utilize my free guide to help you maximize that partnership and leverage them to protect your time.

Say goodbye to that stack of business cards that you keep in your car, your purse/wallet or on your desk once and for all with digital business cards! I recommend the free app www.hihello.me. As long as you’ve got your phone with you, you can share your digital card with others via QR code, airdrop, text or email. It’s just as easy for them to share their info with you and once they do, it can simply be downloaded and input it into the CRM of your choice.

Take advantage of adding your logo into the center of a QR code to brand it. I use the free site https://www.qrcode-monkey.com to generate customized QR codes with logos and brand colors. Click the button below for a how-to in less than 10 steps!

Create a note called brain dump and use it as a space to make notes of things you don’t want to forget. It helps to get it out of the free rent place it’s taking up inside of your brain and now you’ll have an easy-to-find location where you can find those ideas when you’re ready to use them later! Here are a few other helpful notes that I keep in my notes app:

a. Networking (keep track of people I meet, something memorable about our conversation so that I can follow-up with them later).

b. Appointments to schedule

c. Shopping Lists

d. Inspirations

If you really want to step up your game and you’re an ipad user, I highly recommend the notability app! It allows you to organize your notes by subjects. And if you’re like me and like to write your notes down, you can use the apple pencil to write in your notes.

Categorize your tasks by level of urgency and importance with the Eisenhower Matrix tool. With the help of this tool, you’ll bucket your tasks into four categories: Eliminate (not urgent and not important), Delegate (urgent, not important), Schedule (not urgent, important) and Do (both urgent and important) and better know which ones to focus your time on.

Any repeatable process should have a documented standard operating procedure or checklist of steps to complete the process. Leverage ChatGPT or Google’s Bard to get yourself started. You can also use loom to record a how-to video to accompany your SOP and/or use scribe to screen record the steps you take on your computer to accomplish a task. The key to success with this is in your prompt. The stronger the prompt, the better the output!

Create templates for all communication media that you utilize more than once (FAQs, common email responses flyers, newsletters, social media posts, chatgpt prompts etc).

Use time blocks to be more efficient with your tasks and allow your creativity to flow. Leverage the times in your day when you’re most productive/creative or vice versa and schedule yourself to perform those tasks during the most effective times of the day. Green time = typically business hours & time to sell to clients; red time = when we perform administrative tedious tasks. Reward yourself when you hit short time or goal milestones. goes here

Create a Google form (that links to a Google sheet) to collect and keep your client testimonials. Repurpose this for social media and other marketing content. (Remember to use those templates you’ve created… just change out the verbiage from various testimonials and boom! You’ve got your ready to go social proof!).

Know your numbers and break them down to understand the daily, weekly, monthly activity levels you need to maintain in order to hit your goals. If you know your conversion rates, then you’ll have a clear understanding for the number of conversations that you need to have in order to hit your sales goals. Be sure to account for vacations and holidays to accurately plan your activity. Use a tracking tool to ensure that you’re following up with leads/prospects. Studies show it takes 8-12 touches before a person will buy from you. And, most people don’t follow-up (especially that many times). When you have a tracking tool to help, it makes it easier to do the follow-up.

Collaborate with others who provide a different service but serve the same or similar audience/clientele as you. Swap email freebies, co-host an event, share your offers on their thank you page & you share theirs on your Thank You page. It’s a win/win!

Use a scheduling tool such as Calendly or Acuity (if your CRM doesn’t have a native scheduling tool) to eliminate back-and-forth emails to schedule a time to meet with someone. The tool should be synced to your calendar to accurately display the times when you’re available to avoid scheduling conflicts. These tools can send automatic email reminders to the meeting attendees and allow the person to add the meeting to their personal calendar as well. Doodle polls also help when attempting to schedule multiple people together at the same time.

Utilize do-not disturb on your phone, log out of social media and email apps, close your office door and let your team/family members etc. know that you’re not available during this next two-hour window so that you can focus your time on uninterrupted, deep work. Set a timer and be disciplined about not allowing yourself to be distracted. When you’ve finished, reward yourself by doing something you enjoy (a quick 15-minute walk, play a game, get a coffee etc.)

Email filters help keep most important emails at the top of your inbox. Utilize your templates for replies to FAQs. Each email service provider has their own way of setting up filters and rules. Use your friend Google if you need to search for a help document to show you how to set these up.

Do a time study to understand what non-essential tasks are taking up too much of your time and utilize that information to create a list of Not To-Do’s. goes here

Pick a friend or colleague and help each other stay accountable to the top priority work you’re both committed to do. Schedule a regular check in time to help ensure you’re both staying on track.

If you’d like to share a copy of a Google doc or sheet template that you’ve created for your audience. Rather than writing out directions on how to create a copy of the shared item, you can edit the URL to automatically take them to the prompt to make a copy. Click the How to Video below to see it in action!

Hire someone to do the work that isn’t aligned with your skillset or that isn’t a good use of your time.

Interested in having a strategic partner work with you in your business? Consider hiring a certified online business manager like myself!