Tag: graditude

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The Secrets to Time Management and Why You Need It

The most successful entrepreneurs have this key skill down to a science: time management.

It’s time to get the cold, hard and ugly truth out of the way. If you have not realized your goals and dreams yet, it’s likely your time management skills, or lack thereof, are to blame. As with any skill, there are things you can do and implement to improve it.

 

The following are the secrets to time management and why it’s a must-have skill to run a successful online business: 

 

Proper Time Management Is A Choice and A Skill You Can Practice

You can make a choice and commit to get things done on time and not procrastinate. Poor time management always stems from something, and as a responsible and successful adult, you must make the conscious choice to understand why and develop strategies to overcome it.

Scheduling to Avoid Burnout: Learn to Take More Breaks

Increases Creativity and Makes Innovation Easier

Proper time management means you have the right amount of time for the tasks and areas that matter the most. It means you are no longer wasting too much time on mundane and tedious things that don’t get you to where you need to be—freeing your time and allowing you to be more creative and innovative in your industry.

 

Take Full Responsibility and Understand Your Value

You know why you didn’t get something done on time or what is causing you to procrastinate more times than not. Please take responsibility for your actions and realize the value you bring to yourself, your business, and the world to overcome it.  

 

Schedule and Implement in Order of Importance and Urgency

This way, you can be sure to give yourself enough time for each task required. If you plan a task that needs your total concentration, knowing you will be interrupted quite a few times or need to leave soon, you simply won’t finish it. Don’t ignore reality, or you’ll set yourself up to fail before you even get started.

 

Be Aware of Your Main Objective

Always keep your main objective for the day at the top of your mind. Unfortunately, you won’t always be able to plan for everything. There will be distractions in work and life, but if you train yourself to keep your main objective on your mind at all times, you will know when and how to snap back easier.

 

Be Comfortable with Abnormality

In other words, in order to establish proper time management, you will probably have to go against what your peers or co-workers are currently doing. You have to say no to longer lunch breaks or any other activities you know will only further distract you.

 

Overall proper time management starts with taking responsibility, creating a daily to-do list, sticking to your schedule, and remove unnecessary distractions to ensure you always stay on track.

 

 

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What Does Productivity Mean to You?

When you think of being productive, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Before you continue reading, briefly write it down in your journal or a notepad. Really think about your own definition before you continue. This way, you can be sure your perspective is really where it needs to be to run a productive business.

work space

Productivity has a variable definition and affects every aspect of your life, both business and personal. When you think about it, every decision you make and action you take affects your productivity somehow. Your health, creativity, journey in life, or direction of your business all depends on the type of productivity you produce.

 

In business, reaching the tasks required to achieve specific sales goals, gaining more subscribers or followers, or being the next innovator within your industry are a few examples of being productive. In your personal life, a few examples could include following a daily or weekly budget to buy a big purchase, paying bills on time or setting up auto-pay, or following a healthy exercise and diet routine such as meal planning and weightlifting.

 

While productivity can have variable perspectives and definitions depending on who you ask, it is vital to make sure that the procedures and strategies you implement lead to high rewards for your business or goal. At the same time, the effort you put into it is worth it when the results show it is worth it. This is the basic definition of productivity and can be measured with a simple math equation.

 

Productivity is equal to your output divided by your input.

 

If your effort is greater than the reward, it may not be worth it in the end. If you’ve determined the reward is good enough, then it is. All of this is really up to you to decide. However, you should use the math equation above in real life to be sure you are realistic.

 

For example, if you are a writer and you wrote six articles this morning in three hours, your productivity would be calculated as two articles per hour. You could further compare this number to your overall writing goal to see where you need to improve or work harder.

 

Another way to be sure you are the most productive is to create a list of all the activities you did each day and compare them to the goals you wish to accomplish. How do they compare? Do the tasks that you’ve chosen to do get you closer to your destination, goal, or job, support you in any way? Don’t be too shocked if many of the tasks you do end up getting you nowhere. It is easy to equate being busy to being productive.

 

Once you take a moment to evaluate your actions, you can change your plans and daily to-do lists to do what needs to be done to accomplish your business goals. Starting each day with a primary goal and to-do list, implementing proper time management strategies, and taking advantage of tools and technology are a few tips to improve your productivity throughout the day.  Remember, if you want to run a successful online business or achieve any goal, improving your productivity is a must.

 

 

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10 Ways Small Business Benefits from Smart Automation

All businesses benefit from smart automation. Automation today is not expensive. You can implement much different productivity-improving automation free and inexpensively that will not just save time but will save money and increase your revenue exponentially.

 

  1. Increased Scalability – When you automate, even if you’re just one person, if you choose what to automate wisely, you’ll be able to scale your business in ways you may not have thought possible.

 

  1. Reduced Errors – There is no way around it, but machines, once set up properly, make fewer errors than humans. If you can set up an automaton that works, you’re going to reduce the errors you’re used to making and letting by. It’s not about perfection, though. It’s just about being able to do something simple without having to worry about the errors once it’s set up.

 

  1. Better Customer Satisfaction – When customers get service fast like they want, and it’s accurate and timely, they are always happier with you—today’s customers like using self-service automation and don’t mind using chatbots at all.

 

  1. Reduced Labor Costs – When you can automate instead of outsourcing, this is always a good thing because technology is cheaper than a human being. Your time is also worth way more than your chatbot’s time.

 

  1. Better Work-Life Balance – Automating things even that take you five minutes a day can add up and save you so much time that you start experiencing that elusive work-life balance people love to talk about.

 

  1. Use Resources More Efficiently – When you set up automation, it is always more efficient than human resources. Not only does it work more accurately, but it also costs less to start with than hiring a person.

 

  1. Decreased Operating Costs – When you use technology to increase productivity, you can keep your operating costs lower because you’re not using extra human resources or your time, which is always more expensive than tech.

 

  1. Improved Decision Making – If you have an accurate picture of the research involved, which using automation can help you with, you’re going to make better business decisions. Imagine if you set up a Zap to send reports generated in Google Analytics to a Dropbox for you to view every Friday – so much more straightforward than having to get the reports yourself.

 

  1. Boost Productivity – When you have to do fewer steps to get to the deliverable, you will become super productive. Remember that there is a lot more to being productive than movement or being busy. Finishing projects and tasks makes you productive.

 

  1. Increased Competitiveness – When you can get more done in less time and done accurately, you’re going to please customers more, and that’s going to make you more competitive.

 

When you decide to implement automation in your small business, choose from the things you do right now, already, that are repetitive in nature, and you can’t go wrong—no need to invent new things to do until you automate what you already do every single day.

 

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

While we are so busy talking about business automation, remember that you can boost your efficiency by also automating and outsourcing your home management too. The time saved will allow you to get more done that you really want to do for yourself, your family, and your business.

 

  • Lights – With a smart house set up, you can fix your lighting so that it stays at a specific level of natural light. For example, if you close the shade and the light has reduced, the lighting in the room automatically compensates. You can also turn on lights via a motion sensor at night when people are using the toilet and so forth.

 

  • Door Locks –Using automated door locking is a great feature and helps you get in your home with packages. You can also lock your front and back doors or garage using your smartphone instead of checking physically.

 

  • Security Cameras – Setting up security in your home with cameras can also be automated once it’s set up. You can film the parts of the house you want based on motion, lighting, sound, and other criteria.

 

  • Blinds – Close your blinds based on how dark or light it is outside. Even if you’re not home, the blinds will close, which can make your home less likely to be broken into but also reduces the time you must take to raise and lower the blinds on your own.

 

  • Heating and Cooling –Setting up your heating and cooling to be based on the ideal temperature for you based on the room and time of year will not just save time but money too.

 

  • Filling Your Tub – Newer smart homes come featured with a smart bathtub that can be programmed to fill up at the right time without you ever going in there using your smartphone or the control dial. Set up a hot bath when you’re outside sledding with the kids to save time and get warm faster.

 

  • Starting Your Coffee – If you like to drink coffee in the morning or at any time, set up your coffee maker to automatically brew your coffee for you. When you get out of bed, you will eliminate a few steps from your day.

 

  • Paying Your Bills – Just like you can set up your business bills to be paid automatically, you can do the same with your household bills. Setting up automation for saving, bill paying, and so forth not only saves time but will help you stick to your budget better.

 

  • Sending Birthday or Holiday Cards – Do you like to send your friends, family, and perhaps business partners cards in the mail? You can use a service like Send Out Cards or Postable.com to automate this process by setting up an account and the criteria.

 

  • Yard and Housekeeping – It’s not hard to hire people to help you keep your home clean and organized, from landscaping to basic lawn care to keeping your home clean and shiny without lifting a finger. You can find what you need through sites like Thumbtack.com and Care.com.

yard and housekeeping

  • Childcare – Even a work at home mom needs time away from the kids. You can find a mommy’s helper, or you can hire a childcare worker or teenager to help you with your kids using Care.com or other online sites.

 

  • Grocery Shopping – Using a service like Instacart.com to get your groceries delivered can save hours of your time and help you avoid last-minute purchases, thus actually saving money over shopping yourself.

 

If you have a voice assistant like Google or Alexa, you may already have the ability to automate some of your home life. Take a look at what’s available with your particular assistant and the tools you have. When you eliminate personal steps in a process and turn it over to a bot, you save time and generate an opportunity to do more with that time.

 

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How to Use Automation for Boosting Efficiency

One of the main reasons people like to use automation in their business is because it boosts efficiency. If you can automate any task that is repeatable such as invoicing, creating files, saving files, and so forth, you can save many hours of time in your workday and work year. Those are hours you can use to create even more awesome products and solutions for your ideal audience.

 

  • Sort and Respond to Emails – Your email software has many features that you may not be implementing fully. Apps like Boomerang for Gmail or Sales Handy for Outlook will help you sort and respond to emails using automation features.

 

  • Manage Projects – This is especially important if you are working with a team. Set up a project management software that allows you to know when each part of your team is done because they check it off, make a note, or otherwise use the system to ensure smoother collaboration and avoid bottlenecks.

 

  • Improve Your Sales Funnel – Using software to automate your sales funnels is a no-brainer today. There are numerous options for you to implement, such as Leadpages.net and Instapage.com, but also many email marketing solutions come with sales funnel automation options.

 

  • Enhance Your Workflows – Software like Monday.com, Kissflow.com, and others can help you automate your workflows whether you work alone or with a team. Improving and enhancing your workflows will ensure that when you do automate something, it’s done most efficiently.

 

  • Optimize Your Online Presence – Use an all-in-one platform that enables you to use all your social media in one spot, such as Hootsuite.com or sproutsocial.com. When you use one of these social tools to automate sharing, engagement, and relationship building, you’ll really realize the power of social media marketing.

 

  • Drop the Dead Weight – You don’t need to keep doing tasks that are not working. For that reason, you want to always check your metrics to ensure that when you act, the result is what you’re looking for. If it’s not, stop doing it and move on to something else.

 

  • Automate Every Possible Task – Make a list of any tasks you do each day that are repeated. For example, perhaps each morning, you walk into your office, turn on your computer, and check email. What can you automate? You can automate turning on the light in your office as well as turning on the computer. You can even automate organizing emails using tags and other features so that it’s faster to get to the emails you need to respond to.

 

The best way to determine what you want to automate is to track what you do each day, week, month, and year. Anything that repeats, do a little research about how other people automate that task. You may be shocked to learn how simple automating your business really is. Automation is not nearly as expensive or complicated as you may think before actually finding the right solutions.

 

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Tools and Tips for Automating Your Sales and Inventory Process

Whether you sell physical products or hours and services, automating as much as you can of your entire sales process and inventory, if needed, will save you tons of time. When you save time, you’re saving your most valuable and irreplaceable resource, but more than likely, automation will also save money.

 

  • Understand Your Buyer’s Journey – Every business type who has a buyer can learn what they do to make a business decision. Most buyers go through a process from awareness to delight, and it’s your job to know what the buyer’s intent is so that you can deliver just the right information at the right time to advance sales.

 

  • Stop Doing Repetitive Work Manually – If it can be automated, stop doing it yourself. There are too many ways you can automate things today that fit any budget for you to keep doing everything like file creation, backups, and inventory tracking. If you continually need to transfer customer information to another system, find a way to automate using Zapier.com or another option.

 

  • Provide the Right Information to Your Stakeholders – Ensure that anyone who is interested receives information that they need to make decisions in a self-serve manner. This can be via internal documentation that you provide access to based on their place, such as Trello.com or Basecamp.com. You can assign access based on who they are. For example, the customer of product A gets access to information, groups, and help about product A.

 

  • Empower Customer Care – If you hire customer service personnel or use a chatbot, empower your customer care to make sales when it seems like the right thing to do, depending on the conversation. You can even set up your chatbots to do it.

 

  • Empower Your Customers – Let your customers care for themselves with self-serve information and AI chatbots so that you don’t have to answer repetitive questions, and they can help themselves.

 

  • Create the Right Email Messages – Every product that you create needs certain email messages set up right away. You’ll need a series for all stages of the buying journey, from awareness to delight.

 

  • Get the Right Software – It depends on the types of products you sell, but many shopping carts have inventory management included in the system. The most crucial factor is to get the right software for your needs and not try to make bad software work for you.

 

Automating your sales process may only involve setting up a landing page, a freebie, and moving them to your email list so that you can teach them information, make offers, and move them through their buying journey faster. But if you sell physical products, you probably want to keep track of how many you have available to buy—the same thing with the hours you sell for your VA business. If you’re a service provider, keeping track of what you’ve sold will ensure you don’t oversell but also ensure that you meet your goals.

 

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Sales Automation Tools and Tips

When it comes to automating sales, you’re in a great time to be involved in selling anything. Selling online is fun and exciting because you have access to so much data from your efforts. You can perfect your sales process to the point that it produces tremendous results for you if you’re paying attention to the metrics.

 

  • Capturing Leads – You can automate your entire lead capturing process by using the right software. For example, you’ll need autoresponder software and a landing page to deliver a freebie. Just set up the autoresponder to deliver the link to the download page after they sign up. You can make this work even better if you use software for your landing pages, such as leadpages.net or Instapage.com, to set up a dynamic lead capturing system.

 

  • List Building – Building your list is an important thing to do if you want to be successful in marketing online. When you build a list of hungry buyers, you can give yourself a raise anytime you want by making them an offer. Using systems like Aweber.com, Drip.com, or any autoresponder system that enables you to set up automated messaging, tagging, and segmenting is essential.

 

  • Communicating – To automate your communication process, use templates to get the work done faster. Once you set up a template, you can use it for all your communication needs, only changing what needs to be changed each time.

 

  • Qualifying Leads – You can use automated systems to help qualify your leads. Once you capture a lead and they sign up for your list, you can send more information automatically to them via your autoresponder system. Then, based on their behavior, you can tag them all automatically, depending on their behavior.

 

  • Nurturing Leads – For most people, the easiest thing to understand about automation is the autoresponder, which sends out messages that you loaded in the system in the order you determined was best based on the exact customer’s needs.

 

  • Following Up – Most transactional and follow up emails can be designed in advance and then delivered right away as soon as the customer needs them. For example, if your customer buys widget A, you’ll send information about widget A and how to use it right away. Only later will you follow up with a recommendation that they buy widget B.

 

  • Scheduling Meetings and Calls – The other important thing you can automate when it comes to sales is calls and meetings. Let your potential customer fill out a questionnaire and sign up for the exact time they prefer to go to the meeting or participate in the call. When the customer feels in control, they’re more likely to show up, and you can close the sale.

 

  • Webinars – Webinars are often used in the sales process. You can do one of them live, then automate the remaining ones and run them “as live” to build your list and get more followers. You can run these automatically and pop on at the very end if you want to make that part live and more interactive. An excellent tool to check out if you’re interested in running live and recorded “as live” webinars are Demio.com.

 

When it comes to automating sales, you can’t go wrong with investing in a good autoresponder service, a webinar service, and/or a funnel-based system like Clickfunnels.com to build your business by capturing leads, building your list, and nurturing your list members with appropriate content every single day.

 

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9 Tips for Choosing Awesome Contractors for Your Business Needs

When you decide to outsource to others using contractors, you must understand how to find good ones and keep them before you get started. Nothing is worse than finally deciding to pay someone else to do something and making a bad choice.

communication

  1. Know What You Want – If you don’t know exactly what you need, it’ll be hard to hire the right person or team to help you. If you cannot write a detailed job or project description highlighting the expected deliverables and timetable, and budget, you are not ready to find a contractor.

 

  1. One Thing Per Contractor – When it comes to your small home business, you don’t want to hire one person to be in charge of an entire project because it can cause problems. For example, if you hire one writer to write, edit, format, and do every part of a project for you and they get sick, you may end up without a project. But if you hire someone just to do the writing, someone else to do the editing, and yet someone else to make it pretty, you’re more likely to get a better product in the end. Plus, it’s a lot easier to replace someone only responsible for editing since each skillset is specific.

 

  1. Know Your Budget – You need to know the range you’re willing to pay for the projects you’re trying to outsource. To generate the number, you need to find out what the going rate is for that particular expertise. Don’t try to get a rocket scientist on a minimum wage budget.

 

  1. Check References – Even if your friend recommends a person or company for your project, always check up on them to be sure they are who they say they are. You’d do this if you were hiring someone to come to your storefront, do it when you are going to work with someone in your company every single time.

 

  1. Start Small – When you first work with someone, don’t hire them for a long-term project. Instead, hire them for a short-term project with a faster turn around time so that you can find out if they are right for you for future or more critical projects.

 

  1. Respect the Laws – When you hire a contractor, they are not your employee. How they produce your deliverables is not any of your concern. The important part is to answer the question: Did they deliver the results you paid for? You don’t control their time because they are not your employee. For this reason, pay by project or task and not hourly.

 

  1. Use a Project Management System – Some independent contractors have their own system and want you to sign up for their project management system. This is important because it helps establish that they are not employees. But if they don’t use their own, set up a system for them to use with you as it’ll keep everything more organized and on task.

 

  1. Communicate Regularly and Quickly – When your contractors have a question, get back to them as quickly as possible with the answers. They have their own timeline, and if you’re not fast with responses, you can end up being really hard to work with.

 

  1. Pay on Time – Don’t mess with someone’s pay. If you promise to pay them a certain amount of money for the work, then pay them when you said you would. Don’t hire people if you don’t have the funds to pay at that moment.

 

Remember that the old saying that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Always check up on anyone you plan to work with, whether you are going to pay them, share private information with them, or have them associated with your business name in any way. There are lots of great people who want to work virtually as a contractor, so if you know what you want and do your due diligence, you will find them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Where to Find Contractors for Outsourcing

No automation plan is complete without an outsourcing plan. Outsourcing means that you find other experts to do tasks for you. If you outsource to a contractor, they are not employees because you can only make requirements on the deliverables but not on how they use their time creating and making the deliverables. Combined with automation, outsourcing is very powerful.

 

  • Your Network – When you want to work with someone, the first thing you should do is survey your network to find out if you already know someone who is an expert, uses experts or knows who you can use. The person recommended by trusted sources will almost always perform better than if you hire a total stranger.

 

  • Your Customers – When you have fleshed out the tasks you want someone else to do for you, send out a message to your current customers and audience who have signed up for your list already. You never know who is already in love with your offerings that can make them even better for you.
  • Fiverr.com – Don’t be fooled by the name. Most of the time, if you want someone who is an expert, you’re not really going to get it done for five bucks. However, there are some amazing people who use Fiverr.com as their storefront that you can hire to do various jobs, from editing video to coding. The sky is the limit.

 

  • Upwork.com – This is a job board where, for a fee, you can place an advertisement for your position. Ensure that you figure out everything you want the contractor to do so that you are clear about your deliverables.

 

  • Ziprecruiter.com – This is another worksite much like Upwork.com, but it’s also an excellent place to find contractors for your needs. You can hire all kinds of people for any virtual position or project that you have open.

 

  • Advertising on Your Website – Once you know what you need, you can put your job right on your website. Using the same promotional methods, you use for blog posts and other content, you can get the word out about your openings.

 

  • Thumbtack.com – This is a great site that enables you to list your needs or go through and find someone offering what you need already.

 

  • Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk.com) – This has been around a long time and is still working great. People list the work they do and make offers on the system. You just need to search for what you want.

 

  • PeoplePerHour.com – If you want to hire people to do a task in person or virtually, PPH is an excellent resource for you. Workers list their offers, and people who need projects done also list their needs.

 

 

Outsourcing, like automation, saves money and time because it takes things off your plate that you aren’t an expert at doing, so you can focus elsewhere. Using a combination of experts and automation in your business will boost your productivity exponentially.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Ultimate Boost in Productivity: Automation and Outsourcing

Being productive is an essential element in any business owner’s life. Business owners are busy and need to use every moment given to them as fruitfully as possible. Most business owners continually research ideas that will boost their productivity. They research organizing so that they can be more productive, but the truth is the ultimate boost in productivity will come from a combination of automation and outsourcing.

 

  • Inexpensive – Automation is very inexpensive, and outsourcing is less expensive than hiring someone in house to do the same thing. Using automation where you can, and outsourcing everywhere else is inexpensive and offers an amazing ROI.

 

  • Easy to Get Started – It’s not as hard as you might think to get started with either automation or outsourcing. Learn how it works by reading the software website and the manuals. For example, if you join Zapier.com, you can learn about applets, or zaps, that other people have already created and simply copy theirs. When you outsource today, you can go to a platform like upwork.com or even Fiverr.com to find qualified people.

 

  • Increases Capabilities – Even if you don’t have a skill, you can find it in software or find it in an individual or company. This means that a one-person business can perform like a larger business due to increased capabilities.

 

  • Better Quality – Believe it or not, the work you produce will be much better when you work with technology and contractors to see your vision come to reality.

 

  • Contributes to Lean Practices – Most businesses these days need to run as lean as possible, whether it’s the busy season or not. Automation and outsourcing give you flexibility when it comes to your budget.

 

  • Get More Done – You’re simply going to get more done when you have more help. If you can automate most things, outsource the few remaining tasks, that means you have that much more time to do more of what matters to you.

 

  • Reduce Mistakes – If you don’t know how to do something, you’re going to make mistakes as you learn. But if you hire an expert, they’re going to make fewer mistakes. If you use technology and set it up right, there will be no mistakes.

 

  • Develop Improvable Business Processes – When you want to outsource or automate something, you will need to write down the process so that you can visualize every single step, including the impact of the steps. This is going to create a situation where you improve every single process you have.

 

  • Make Better Decisions – When you have better facts, you can make better choices and decisions for your business needs. Setting up automatic reports that appear in your Dropbox the moment you need to review them will blow your mind, but it will help you make better decisions since you won’t be fishing for the info at the last minute.

 

  • Creates New Opportunities – When you have more time to judge how your business is performing, and you’ve developed each process to be the most efficient possible, you’re going to have more doors open for you just when you need them.

 

To set up more outsourcing and automation, you’ll need to know what your business goals are, understand your core business, audit your internal processes, and learn how you can integrate what you already own with new technology that can help you with automation and outsourcing.