Productivity Tips that Small Business Owners NEED to Know

Emails, answering customers, setting up your next appointments, advertising.

Your list of tasks seem to never go down.

We all wish to have a second pair of hands along with more time to get everything done

like managing your business effectively and doing things better to make more money!

When running a small business, be prepared to work more than 40 hours a week

depending on the nature of your business and how much growth you’re planning for.

The single thing you can start doing today to make your business easier to manage is writing stuff down on a notebook or whiteboard and becoming a task manager!

Grab a whiteboard or notebook and begin jotting down all of the goals and tasks you’re responsible for in your business and what you’re working towards.

Not only does writing these items down help you organize the chaos going through your mind but it truly does help manifest the kind of life you’re aiming for.

The process of writing down your tasks and thoughts is an accountability pack with yourself.

You are your own boss and no one will force you to get those tasks done.

Once you have your list of tasks completed it’s time to prioritize and determine what’s most important to focus on first!

Look at your list and identify two to three tasks that either give you the most anxiety or headaches or that you know it’s going to take a long time and energy to focus on.

Now circle those two to three tasks and make a commitment to yourself that you will complete these tasks no matter what today.

This helps you set a clear and defined goal for you to work towards every day!

When you are done with your tasks cross them off your list and give yourself a pat out the back for everything you accomplish for your business.

Since the nature of being a business owner is to constantly evolve and overcome the next set of challenges in front of you, you will find your whiteboard or notebook will always have new tasks and goals for you to work on.

Become a task manager!

Remember to circle two to three tasks daily and you will go really far with this one tip!

Now that you have your tasks ready for the day set up a routine and stick with it!

Determine the ideal time each morning to start your work day and work until a designated time each night.

Put the tasks that you dread the most earlier in the day so you have the most amount of energy and patience to get it done.

When you impose these kinds of limits on yourself you’d be amazed night and it empowers me to get more work done while my competition is resting.

Speaking of distractions, whenever you are in work mode or boss mode please remember to minimize distractions by silencing notifications on your phones or turning it off completely.

We live in the digital age and with the whole world connected to us via our phones, we constantly have to fight distractions and other things or people that want to rip our attention away from us.

It can take up to 25 minutes for your brain to fully get back on track and for you to flow through your business tasks effectively.

If you want to schedule a distraction break in your routine do it after you finish at least one or two of your daily tasks.

Distract yourself temporarily by skadooshing the like button on this blog so we can share this message with as many people as possible:

That they too can scoop their way to financial freedom!

Just as technology can suck up your time it can equally free up a lot of your time with proper use.

Automate as much of your business processes that you can through technology as long as it doesn’t impact your customer experience.

Do you find yourself repeating the same questions or responses whenever you interact with a customer?

Using apps like Evernote or facebook business, you can create canned responses of your most commonly asked questions and phrases.

For my pet waste removal business i always ask the same three questions when providing a quote:

What town are you located in?

How many dogs do you have?

And has it been more than one month since the last cleaning?

Even though typing out these questions may take 30 to 45 seconds each time, you will eventually reach a point with your small business that having to take up up to a minute with each client is not a scalable solution.

Identify which processes in your business you do regularly and use whatever automation tool you have available to simplify your workflow.

With my facebook business page i have canned responses for commonly asked questions so

any potential customer can get the information they need as fast as possible while also freeing my own time to focus on growing my business!

Facebook business also has automated notifications you can send to clients to remind them of an upcoming appointment or to follow up on new business.

The most useful tool i leveraged on my facebook business page was linking up my facebook calendar to my google calendar!

Once i set up an appointment on facebook, it will automatically set up that appointment within my google calendar and i could set up my calendar to send me notifications whenever i have an appointment that day!

I use the google calendar widget on my phone so i can quickly see at a glance all of the appointments i have scheduled for the next coming days.

Google calendar can also create tasks that you set up which you can use to plan out your two to three goals when being a task manager.

This will help you keep track of your business responsibilities and manage your busy schedule.

With all of the extra time you will find from planning out your days what will you get to focus on?

Focus on making your customer experience as good as it can be by clicking on the next blog to learn more of my best practices!

And if you want more content like this, let me know down below!

And i’ll see you on the next scoop!

And as Always, Acknowledge The Now! Bye!