Business Building Archives - Page 13 of 25

July 6, 2021July 6, 2021

How Sleep Impacts Your Productivity

American businesses lose an estimated $60 billion of revenue yearly simply due to poor sleep. A Baltimore sleep study in 2018 found that those who received less than a whole night’s rest of 7 to 8 hours of sleep regularly had significant productivity loss.

Anywhere from 19 percent less for those who got five hours of sleep and up to 39 percent for those who got even less sleep – showing just how important even one to two hours of sleep can make.

The numbers got worse if the employee experienced insomnia, snored, or have sleep apnea. Poor sleep and other factors contributing to your health affect every part of your body and your business. It compromises your memory, decision-making and problem-solving skills, mood, performance, bone, organ health, and more.

Proper sleep as well as adopting a good diet and exercise routine prevents:

Burnout – Sleep deprivation is the number one cause of burnout. You must rest to expect your body to work at its best.
Lowering Your Life Expectancy – Being sedentary, not getting enough or getting too much sleep, and getting the wrong foods can ultimately lower life expectancy. You can significantly increase your life expectancy by fueling your body appropriately, exercising at least thirty minutes a day, and getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep per night.
Memory Loss – When you get the right amount of sleep, you can improve your ability to remember things and learn. Sleeping well gives you the mental clarity to make better decisions and perform at your best.
Mistakes or Injuries – Sleep deprivation leads to mental and physical impairments that can cause poor decision-making and accidents that create significant consequences like lost revenue or, worse, your life.

Three Tips to Help You Get More Sleep:

Exercise and Diet – As annoying as it is, always to hear this, exercise and diet are the most important if you want to get a whole night’s rest or live a healthy life. Most problems stem from a poor diet and exercise routine.
Avoid Stimulants – You may be drinking too many cups of coffee in your morning, which is easily crossing over into your sleep time. Start reducing your coffee intake; no more than 2 cups a day or less.
Stay Consistent – Pick a nighttime routine and set a time and stick to it. Eventually, your body acclimates, and you’ll soon want to go to bed without you even trying.

The Areas of Life You Need to Design for Success

If you want to live your most productive life, feel better about yourself, your body, mental and physical well-being, you must sleep. Your business success and health depend on it.

July 2, 2021

Get Your Goals into Your Calendar

Accomplishing your goals requires action. Stop waiting for the perfect time. You can create the perfect time. Pick a time relatively soon and realistic to your goal needs and put that goal into your calendar.

This means you need to:

Pick a start date and time for your ultimate goal
Set proper and realistic deadlines
Fully understand the tasks needed to reach your goal
Then schedule times and deadlines for each task required to reach your ultimate goal.

Adding your goals to your calendar forms a sense of commitment and re-establishes your sense of purpose or direction. It develops healthy routines and habits that inspire you to stay on track and keep you working towards your goals. It’s a great way to create instant motivation. When you can see it, you are more likely to want to get it done.

Essential Things to Keep in Mind When Goal Setting:

What is the end or ultimate goal?
How much time do you need? Have you timed yourself doing these tasks before? What if you don’t get as much sleep?
Are there things that could protentional go wrong or get in your way?
Who needs to do it? Can you complete each task or do some things that require help from others?
Group similar tasks and utilize technology to work more productively and save you time.
Get the most crucial items out of your way but keep in mind that little tasks add up over time.
Once you set a time, stick to it and don’t permit yourself to change it.

These are important questions and tips to keep in mind so you can pick the right deadline for your goal. You don’t want to create the opposite reaction and turn your goal into a nightmare because you took on too much work too fast. Slower is better than rushing it and pushing out shoddy quality work or products.

Research shows that more time is better for creativity anyways; however, just like too little time can have the opposite reaction, so can too much time. You must be realistic and take the time to evaluate. On the other hand, get going. Don’t wait or sabotage yourself any longer.

What Methods Work Best to Ensure You Make Your Goals?

The most productive and successful people utilize their calendar any moment they can.

Overall, the number one tip to achieving your goals and improving your time management skill and productivity is setting deadlines, adding them to your calendar, and then sticking to them. The more you schedule, the more you will achieve.

July 1, 2021

Learn to Create Realistic Schedules

Take a look at your schedule right now. Are your goals listed yet? Do you even use one? If not, you should be. They improve your productivity, organization and help you achieve your goals both personally and professionally. However, adding them to your calendar is only the first step, you must think realistically too to be successful.

Keep in mind the tips and tricks when creating realistic schedules:

Define Your Goals and The Resources

For every goal and main objective, there are little tasks or to-do lists needed to get there. Highlight each one and then list the resources required to complete the work. For example, do you need to purchase specific equipment, or can it all be done from home?

Always Include Breaks and Vacations

Schedule your breaks, or you won’t take them and cause yourself to burnout. Burnout, fatigue, and lack of motivation won’t allow you to work efficiently no matter how much time you schedule yourself to work. It’s a myth that breaks are only for lazy people. The most highly productive people take breaks, and they take long ones too.

Avoid Burnout: How to Exercise and Sleep More

Schedule Extra Time

Add around ten to fifteen more minutes to any scheduled task for things you can’t predict. Over time, little tasks you weren’t aware you were even doing, but are required to survive – like go to the bathroom – will add up and steal you away from doing the important tasks. To keep you on track and still complete what is required, expect to use a little more time than you believe you need, just like showing up to work fifteen minutes early, for example.

Be Aware of Shortfalls and Potential Snags

Each task you need to get done will likely have different variables or expectations, such as driving time to various onsite meetings or working with clients with different time zones. These examples can cause different kinds of delays that you are not used to or even aware of.

Commit to Distraction-Free Work

When you schedule tasks, you need to commit to the work time. If you don’t, you will only permit yourself to work over your breaks or other essential duties. If you commit to distraction-free work, you can ensure you get your job done on time every time.

Expect Change and Variability

Planning is only there to support you and guide you. It is not full proof. Don’t expect it to be.

Reevaluate for Accuracy

To improve any systems, you must schedule a time to review where things go wrong and where they went right to do even better next time.

Don’t Forget About the Little Things

Little tasks build-up, even five minutes or two minutes here and there, which could affect your schedule.

Don’t let the best productivity tool lead you down the wrong path. Use these tips and tricks and take the time now to rethink your schedule so you can achieve all your goals and aspirations quickly and productively.

June 28, 2021

Learn to Say No to Be More Productive

Fear of conflict, disappointment, social awkwardness, or dealing with any negative consequences is a few of many reasons why many people can’t say no.

However, saying no more often can lead to more productivity and isn’t as scary as you may think once you get started.

Here are four ways to learn how to say no to live a more productive life:

Take Control of Your Life

Instead of saying no, directly offer a different time or day that better suits your schedule. However, only offer this if it’s something that will provide you benefit or something you can genuinely offer. Helping people is great for your health and growth, but just because you are busy doesn’t mean it is valuable to your goals. Remember, you’re not selfish to take care of yourself first. You are the only one who can provide or offer your time. Don’t allow other people to control you.

Provide an Alternative

The best way to say no to anyone is by suggesting who will do a better job. This way, you don’t need to feel any pressure saying no. You can simply explain why you are not best for the job and who will be better—giving the other person good reasons to move on without you feeling guilty or pressured to do the job.

Look at It from A Different Perspective

Saying no is also saying yes to another opportunity and vice versa. If you keep saying yes to opportunities you don’t want to do, you also say no to things that you would enjoy or get value from. While helping people is healthy and beneficial to the world, it can’t overshadow your dreams and aspirations twenty-four seven. If you skip your self-care, you will not provide value to them either-even if they think you will be better for the task.

Be Honest and Clear

Overall, the best policy is honesty. If you can’t do something because you don’t have the time or have other important things to get done, explain it to them. Even if you have no reason other than you don’t want to, they will appreciate the honesty and won’t take up your time in the future asking again. It’s essential always to be yourself, even if there is a little awkwardness in between. It only saves you time and frustration in the long run.

Avoid Burnout: Reassess Your Goals

Saying no can seem harsh and uncomfortable at first, but you won’t want to stop once you get started. Just because you are saying no now doesn’t mean you can’t come back later either. If you’d like to get more stuff done, try saying “no” more often.

June 25, 2021June 25, 2021

How to Use the Right Tools and Technology for Your Business

Around 77% of all small businesses in American use technology for personal and professional purposes. There is no surprise or shock to this as technology provides many incredible and different benefits.

As a small business, you should always take advantage of tools and technology for the following reasons:

To earn twice the revenue or more.
To save time, energy, and other resources.
To have more energy, momentum, and focus on producing higher quality work.
Provides you the opportunity to improve or be the leader in your industry.
Ensures proper communication between your customers, you, and your business team or both depending on your company’s size.
To make your life and business more manageable, more organized, and productive.

This is only a shortlist of the many benefits that technology can bring to your business. However, to reap these rewards, you must find the right tools and technology for your business and needs. Just because a tip works for everyone else doesn’t mean it will benefit you too.

The following are a few things to keep in mind when using and choosing the right tools and technology for your business:

Be Mindful of Your Pain Points or Frustrations

What areas of your business provide you the most pain and discomfort? When having trouble organizing all your projects, customer information, or delegating tasks, for example, project management systems such as Trello or Basecamp, will keep you and your team on track.

What Is Taking Up All Your Time

Are there tasks that need three hours or more of your focus at a time? Accounting and other administrative tasks are the first spots to look at in this case. These tasks are often time-consuming and require a lot of concentration and understand to get done correctly. QuickBooks helps keep track of your inventory, invoices, projects, customers, bills, and more.

Benefits of Creating Processes and Systems

Be Aware of Your Workspace and Workplace Requirements

While there are many tools and technology that can benefit you, they may not be best suited for your workspace or environment.

What Are Your Weaknesses and Strengths?

Your lack of skills can be made up for with proper use of technology—freeing you from stress, frustration, or taking away your time trying to learn something you don’t want to or care to know. Just because you own or run a business doesn’t mean you have to be a mastermind or an expert at every and all skills.

Ask Your Customers or Employers

The best information to help is directly from the source. Your customers and employers want to use technology that makes their life easier too. Opening up this line of communication also shows your audience that you care and want to provide value.

As you can see, tools and technology can increase your productivity and provide many benefits. Find your weaknesses, pain points, and frustrations, and let technology do the work for you.

June 23, 2021June 23, 2021

How to Create an Effective To-Do List

To-do lists are the most popular and widely used time management strategy and essential productivity technique adopted by many successful entrepreneurs and business owners.

Lists

It is even a great way to achieve your own personal goals. However, not just any to-do list will do. Each to-do list you make must be designed appropriately and strategically to be successful.

Here are six tips and tricks to implement when developing an effective to-do list:

Tip #1: Choose the Right Medium

Choose the proper medium you enjoy, such as paper, a phone application, or simply a word document. What you pick doesn’t matter as long as you understand it and enjoy the process to inspire your creativity and get you working. The medium you choose only frustrates you or has a high learning curve. It won’t be helpful.

Tip #2: Use Your Schedule to Guide Your Day

Before you make a list, look at your schedule. Do you have any important meetings or assignments that must get done first? For your to-do list to be effective, use these times or important objectives to guide you. Therefore, don’t make a to-do list for a goal that requires more of your time if you know you will be interrupted.

Tip #3: Make It Clear and Precise

Don’t use too many words or go overboard with the tasks. While breaking it down is necessary to highlight the actions required, you can go overboard and overwhelm yourself. Be a realist and make it scannable.

Tip #4: Make Deadline or Time Limits

For each task on your to-do list, make time requirements or schedule deadlines and add it to your calendar. This way, it becomes a commitment, and you won’t forget about it either.

Tip #5: Limit Your Daily Tasks

Remember being busy doesn’t mean you are productive. In other words, you don’t want to break it down so much that each and every little task is highlighted. This can overwhelm you and require too much time to set up in the first place. Highlight the most important information such as times and what exactly needs to be done. You don’t need to include every time you might go to the bathroom, for example.

Tip #6: Add Ways to Keep Track of Your Progress

Seeing the work that you finished is a great way to motivate yourself to get even more done. This way, you can get yourself back on track if you notice you are not getting the work done.

As long as you make your list clear, direct, time-driven, and aligned with your goals, you’ll improve your productivity exponentially.

Hope you are having a very productive Day!

Here is a Great Speech from Art Williams. Very inspirational.

You must be Tough and Never Quit!

Just Do It Speech….

June 22, 2021June 22, 2021

Yes! You Can Automate That

Automation can simplify your life and provide you more time to focus on the things that truly matter to you. It leads to better communication, higher productivity, and overall success in your business and life. The secrete to gaining more free time or time to accomplish more tasks is automation.

Here are five things you can automate in your business and at home:

#1: Grocery Shopping

Companies like Shipt, Instacart, and Cornershop by Uber have created a business model to shop and deliver your groceries for you. Grocery shopping can take hours and sometimes be stressful. Let others do it for you. Pick the items you want and the time you wish to deliver, and you’re all set.

shopping

#2: Inventory Management

Keeping up with inventory is costly and time-consuming, even if you have a small business or just buying groceries at home. Setting up a proper inventory management system right away is crucial. Software like NetSuite and Shopify will do this for you after the initial setup.

To combat this at home, create laminated lists for each category and mark the items off as soon as you throw them away. This way, you know exactly which items to buy again when you create your next grocery order on Shipt.

#3: Budget and Expense Management

Keeping track of everything on paper isn’t needed anymore, and in fact, you are only opening yourself up for mistakes if you insist on staying old school for everything. Accounting software such as Wave Accounting or QuickBooks provides the tools you need to set up a budget, generate sales or other business reports or pay your bills or taxes on time in an instant.

#4: Task Delegation or Chore Assignments

Trello, Basecamp, and other project management systems are an easy way to streamline your task delegation. These systems have many different tools and widgets that make it fast and easy to communicate and send or share resources to different or the same people. Chorebuster.net is another excellent resource that automatically assigns, schedules, and sends printable chore lists to the whole family.

#5: Contact Forms, Autoresponders, or Other Online Marketing Materials

Pop-up forms or other plugins should be downloaded to your websites or blogs to make email collection almost automatic. If someone has a question, contact forms are a great way to keep it organized too. Other programs like Zapier can help automate your social media campaigns by scheduling the posts for you.

Free and Low-Cost Automation Tools You Can Implement Today

Thankfully as technology advances, your life gets easier with automation, so you can spend your energy and time where it’s needed. One reason you want to work for yourself is to gain free time. You might as well set yourself up to achieve time freedom.

June 18, 2021June 18, 2021

How And Why You Must Remove Distractions

The key difference between a successful entrepreneur and an unsuccessful entrepreneur is action. In order to take action, you must remove the distractions preventing you from doing the work to achieve your goals.

Successful entrepreneurs understand they must remove distractions for three key reasons:

For Better Time Management and Productivity

Distractions only take up your time and resources, therefore, reducing your productivity. Removing distractions prevents you from wasting this time on things that ultimately don’t matter.

For Better Creativity and Quality Work or Products

Zero distractions mean you gain more time to develop a deeper focus and concentration that allows you to work better and produce higher quality work. It fuels creativity and inspiration.

For Proper Business and Personal Organization

Removing distractions means removing possible frustrations, stress, and constant confusion of wondering where you left off last. Keeping your personal and business life organized. Organization allows you to stay focused and on track to accomplish your goals. When you have a clear path and understanding of what needs to get done, it’s easier to achieve it.

Follow these four tips to help remove distractions to achieve your goals faster and easier:

Establish Realistic Work Hours

If you can create your own schedule and work hours, take advantage of it and be realistic and honest. If you know you are a night owl, for example, then don’t expect yourself to work by 6 AM.

If this isn’t a good time for you, no matter how good you are at getting up on time, you won’t be working at your best or produce your best work. Schedule your work hours during times you know you will be fully rested and ultimately distraction-free.

Understand Your Limits and Willpower

In other words, if you know you won’t stop looking at your phone, then you must put your phone in a separate room. Create strategies that work with your weaknesses to ensure you don’t limit your success. If you want it, you will find a way to work around your downfalls.

Stop Multitasking

Believe it or not, multitasking is a distraction. Every time you switch between a different task, your brain needs time to reset even if you don’t notice it.

Let Others Know Your Goals and Needs

The more you inform people upfront about your intentions, the less likely they will keep you from them. If they do, then they are not there to support you, and best to keep them out of your life.

How to Identify Over the Top Goals to Make Them Reasonable

If you aspire to be a mover or shaker or achieve your dreams at all, you need to be the one creating the distractions, not entertaining them. Implement these tips and tricks into your daily routine to keep distractions from interfering with your dreams.

June 17, 2021

5 Household Management Tips for Parent Business Owners

Battling the household and running an online business at the same time is hard work. A business requires just as much of your time, if not more, as do your children. Both will create more work and stress, but you can manage.

The following are five household management tips for parent business owners:

#1: Work in Batches and Block Schedules

Keep similar work together and schedule work time in batches. If you know your kids need to get to school at a certain time, for example, schedule a block of time around that. If you can get two hours of work in before they need to get ready, then find similar activities you know you can do in that time, like checking email or creating your daily to-do lists. Block these times out in your schedule and let your household know when you plan to work. Put the schedule somewhere they can all see it and treat it no differently than you would if you were to clock in for a shift somewhere else.

#2: Designate Workspaces and Keep Them Out

Create an area in your house that everyone knows is only for working. Please don’t allow them to come in at any point. It may sound harsh or brutal to do at first, but over time everyone will understand that this area is not for fun, only business.

Establishing appropriate boundaries like this is crucial to create a distraction-free workspace. When you are in this space, you work. When you leave this space, you get to take a break or have free time and stop working. Likewise, you won’t need to work when you’re in your other spaces.

#3: Schedule Special Time with Your Kids Away from Business

Always add in time with your kids and put it in your schedule. This way, you know you always have time to be with them. Don’t expect yourself to use after work or school hours to do it.

basketball

If you don’t schedule it, you will give yourself permission to be distracted. You don’t have a boss to tell you to stop working. You have to set those boundaries yourself. Scheduling your personal time and time with your family is a way to ensure you stick to your work hours.

#4: Create Daily To-Do and Expectation Lists for You and The Household

To ensure you have the time you need to get work done, make daily to-do lists for you and the household. Include chores or fun activities they can do while you need to work. Set up timers and don’t allow them to finish until it’s done. Make sure the tasks you do can be done within these times. Don’t use this time for any critical tasks that require more of your attention.

Don’t Forget That You Can Automate and Outsource Your Home Management Too

#5: Communicate as Much as Possible and Expect to Make Compromises

Most importantly, you must communicate. You can’t expect others to know what to do just because you work from home. Creating your own home business comes with compromises from you and the entire family. While it provides you the freedom to be a parent and make money, it can also be disrupting. As a carefree space of their home is now for business. Proper communication and not expecting perfection will go a long way to ensuring your success.

As you can see, running a business and your household as a parent is possible. However, you must know what it takes to set yourself up for success realistically.

June 15, 2021

The Importance Of “Why”

Before you start any business or goal in life, you should get to know and truly understand your “why” first. Knowing why you’re doing anything in life is a crucial step as it can easily make or break your business or goal before you even get started. When you know why you want to do something, you can better understand the actions and resources needed to get there.

Your why is the determination, focus, inspiration, and motivation you need to keep working towards your goals each and every day. As uncomfortable as it may feel to accept your daily actions are the direct results of what you want in life and have already achieved.

If you don’t achieve something even if you want it, it’s likely because you didn’t take the necessary action to get there. Your “why” to get there either wasn’t clear enough, or you simply weren’t true to yourself.

The following tips and tricks help discover your true “why” and how to use it to your advantage:

List Your Values and Aspirations

Start by listing your values and aspirations for all areas of life. List the most important thing you would like to achieve. The first value or aspiration that comes to mind is likely the one that you value the most.

Are There Consequences to Not Getting There?

Ask, “What will happen if I never do it?” Take notice of your emotions and write down precisely what you are thinking and feeling. Then evaluate what you wrote down—your true why is likely within these words.

Be Sure It’s for The Right Reasons

Why do you want to achieve what you want in your life? Whether it’s money, fame, or happiness, make sure it aligns with you, your values, and your morals; no one else’s. Even if everyone else is doing it, it may not be for you, and that’s okay.

Passion Doesn’t Always Equal Business Success

While this may be hard to hear, it can also be a great and beautiful thing. Just because you love something or are very passionate about it doesn’t mean it can be a viable business opportunity. You must make this realization before you get started and fail. Use it as a hobby and a great way to de-stress instead.

Be Aware: Money Won’t Ever Be Enough

While money unlocks some freedoms and can reduce stress, money by itself won’t be enough. If you didn’t need money, would you still want to do it? If the answer is no, then start somewhere else.

As you can see, your “why” is what empowers you to get things done. Your “why” helps you become successful. If it’s not realistic, you likely won’t get there no matter why you do what you do.