Tag: Home Business Academy

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

 

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The Only Action That Matters

The only action that matters is action.  Action constitutes the work, the steps, the “action” necessary to reach your goals and aspirations. While planning and creating your vision is a vital step that many fail to account for, it’s hard to fix it.

 

People often create new plans and ideas repeatedly but never take the necessary first step or action to make it happen. As long as you create a realistic action plan for your business goals, you won’t fall into this trap.

setting goal

Here’s how to create a realistic action plan for your small business:

 

Start with A Main Objective

What is your company mission or goal in life? Highlight 3 to 5 main objectives and why they are needed to be successful.

 

Break It Down

Then take each main goal and break it down into two to five smaller actionable steps. This means you should have a different to-do list for each main objective you created earlier. If you started with three main objectives, you now have three new to-do lists.

 

Put Them In Proper Order

Next, you must put them in a timely order. Start with the most relevant or urgent tasks. Keep in mind your daily schedule or any critical meetings.

 

Create Hard Deadlines

For each goal, set a hard deadline and don’t give yourself any more time. Please add the steps and tasks you need to do to complete that goal in your calendar and let yourself and other important people know about it. This way, you are sure to follow it and get it done.

 

Understand Your Limits and Be Focused

While the saying “the sky is your limit” may sound motivational, it can be unrealistic when running a successful business. You need to be laser-focused on your overall goal, and if you believe you can get everything, you may lose focus on what truly matters for your specific business and goals.

Benefits of Creating Processes and Systems

In other words, it’s the difference between staying on a clear road or always scrummaging to “shiny object” syndrome. Shiny objects are leading you down a path of uncertainty and disorganization. Each task you do needs to support your main objective; otherwise, you are putting in more input than is productive for the amount of output generated.

 

Lower Your Expectations

Especially if you are new to this business or anything, expect less from yourself and others. If you lower your expectations about everything you do in life, you’ll be less frustrated, but you will also know to schedule more time throughout your day in case you need a little extra time as you make mistakes and learn.

 

Lastly, don’t fear the first step. Stop planning and just get going. Take the first step. Make it so easy that you can’t avoid it. Get your first customer or create an LLC. As you get going, the momentum will give you the confidence and desire to keep going.

 

 

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What is Business Continuity Planning?

To build resilience into your business, you’ll need to understand that your business continuity plan will provide the resilience necessary to overcome setbacks and disruptions in essence. Business continuity planning consists of examining your business for weaknesses based on known threats that may affect your ability to do business on any given day.

 

You’ll have to go through your processes, systems and examine what you do each day along with the resources you use (human and otherwise) to help you mitigate problems and issues. Business continuity planning includes:

 

  • Determining and listing possible types of distributions – You need to set up a plan for every eventuality that you can think up. Illness, lousy weather, destroyed technology, government regulations, and so forth are already known issues. Listing them out will help you figure out what you’re going to do for each of them automatically.

 

  • Studying your workflows – Part of the process includes having standardized workflows to identify bottlenecks and note the software and other resources you regularly use so that you can develop a plan if something within that system and process goes wrong. For example, if you outsource blog writing to one person and uploading the posts to another person, you can eliminate the problem of relying only on one person for everything.

 

  • Establishing key performance indicators – As you study your processes and workflow, you can also establish a few important indicators to track that can signal a problem or lead to a solution.

 

  • Setting up benchmarking – One key to overcoming a setback is to live by your data more than your gut. A combo of the gut with data is always better than just doing things without any idea of the metrics. For example, if you set up an emergency budget for your business that allows you to keep going during hard times, what is the number you need to meet? Do you know what your break-even point is?

 

  • Including redundancies – As you set up your processes and systems and examine your workflows, you can identify areas to create redundancies. For example, instead of using only one server space for your website, you can set up two, which will enable you to switch if one goes down quickly.

 

  • Developing plans – Using all the information you derive from a thorough study of your business and enabling you to keep going during hard times, you can use that information to develop concrete plans that you simply implement during a hard time instead of creating it from scratch.

 

When it comes to crisis management, having a plan in place before anything happens is essential. A proper continuity plan will include actual plans in place for the things you know will occur, such as illness, whether governmental or other issues. While you cannot plan for everything, any of these ideas can be adapted to unknown emergencies when needed. The act of planning and putting in place this plan will make your business more resilient and even eliminate many of the pitfalls that cause more than half of all businesses to fail in their first three years.

 

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Free and Low-Cost Automation Tools You Can Implement Today

Now that you’ve read a lot about automation, you may want to give some a try. The good news is you can test out a few options for free. This list is not comprehensive. There are free trials for most software these days, mostly cloud-based, so do try out the free options for the solutions you want to try before investing your money.

 

  • Google Docs – Even if you are using the free Gmail and Google and not the paid business version, you can use Google Docs to keep your documents organized and easily accessible and shareable via the cloud.

 

  • Trello.com – You can use Trello.com for free to organize your business and manage your employees or contractors. Set it up so that your clients can assign work for you and set up projects.

 

  • Join. me – If you want to host online meetings, this solution might work for you. It will work great for discovery calls and onboarding new customers, and it’s free.

 

  • Zapier.com – This works on the “if this, then that” process just like the next offering. Combine them both so that you can take advantage of using the free zaps to get more done each day.

 

  • IFTTT.com – You can use this solution to set up applets or little programs to perform repetitive tasks for you. For each account, you’ll get a few free options, but you may have to pay to get more. It’s not expensive, though, and it’s more than worth it to automate those tedious tasks.

 

  • PayPal and PayPal Invoicing – Most online business owners must get a Paypal.com business account anyway these days. It’s the number one payment method, and it’s free for anyone to set up. They have impressive invoicing capabilities, too, including recurring invoicing.

 

  • Invoicely.com – It’s free and allows you to manage more than one business using this amazing platform. You can see all your finances in one place, making it a lot easier to keep track. Not only that, you can track time, expenses, and so forth while also accepting online payments from anywhere.

 

  • Apptivo.com – This all-in-one solution offers CRM, project management, invoicing, and more for your small business. They offer a free starter account for up to 3 users, with a more advanced lite version opening up to more members soon.

 

  • Mybrightbook.com – This 100 percent free accounting software is made for non-accountants, so it’s easy to set up. You don’t have to know what you’re doing, and you can automate your entries and more. Free.

 

  • Salesautopilot.com – While not free, you can use this system for less than 100 dollars a month, and it has a lot of amazing features such as dynamic landing pages, scheduled campaigns, behavior-oriented triggers, and so much more.

 

  • Recurpost.com – This app will automatically share any post that you want on a recurring basis. You already know that if you want people to read your content, you must promote it multiple times. This system can be set up to share on a schedule you choose automatically.

 

  • Hubspot.com (CRM) – You can use HubSpot CRM free with an easy-to-understand view of your entire sales pipeline. It even has unlimited users, and there is no time limit. You can use this system for free if you’re alone or have a large team.

 

  • Metigy.oglecom – This platform will help you plan and collaborate on your marketing calendar, content and assets, account management, and more. It has lots of learning resources to help you learn more about online marketing too. They have a limited free plan that you can use for up to 3 social profiles. You can stay free forever, but for about $25 a month, you can upgrade to the professional version.

 

If you use any of these solutions or another one, please comment below on what you use and why you like it. Sharing solutions that work for you is good for the entire community because there is so much out there to try that no one person can really find it all.

 

 

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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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Tools to Help You Automate Competitor Research

As you start and run your business, one of the most important ways you can improve your offers is to study your competition. But competitor research can be time-consuming. That might not be as big a deal for a giant corporation, but for a mom-and-pop business or a sole proprietor, it’s a lot. You still need to do it because learning about your competition will help you differentiate yourself.

 

  • Google Alerts – This is a free and simple way to start your competitor research. Simply set up your Google Alerts to search for product names, content type, search terms, and type of update. Set up separate alerts for each. You can also use Zapier.com to automatically pull the information from email and put your results in a document for you to review when you’re ready.

 

  • IFTTT.com – This stands for “if this, then that,” which defines the parameters of a task process. First, you do this. Then you do that, and so forth. You can make these as straightforward or as complicated as you desire.

 

  • Zapier.com – This is really just another “if this, then that” option that creates little programs they call zaps to automate a process. For example, you can set up an appellate or a Zap to automatically create documents for you to review later.

 

  • Ubotstudio.com – You can set up UBot Studio to do a lot of tasks for you that will amaze you. For example, you can use Ubot to create and manage blogs, open accounts on social networks, post status updates and blog posts, and more. You can even make it upload videos to every single video site on the web with a touch of a button.

 

  • Rivaliq.com – Use this platform to audit competitive communications, identify trending topics and content, and even study your competition’s data. Compare your competition’s top content against yours so you can find a way to stand out. You can set up automation that causes your account to follow specific hashtags and even create a report about it.

 

  • Sproutsocial.com – Use this platform to perform a social media competitive analysis. They even provide a free template for your use. Truly understanding your numbers is an important part, and Sprout Social helps you do that.

 

  • Semrush.com – This is a fully-featured marketing system more than a platform. You’ll get training and tools to use in all aspects of your marketing, including competition research. Determine what your competition is doing so that you can find gaps in their coverage, which will give you a door to stand out from the competition.

 

  • Screaming Frog SEO Spider – This platform can allow you to observe what competitors are doing, who their customers are, and what resources they are investing in. You can find out a lot of information from this bot crawling a competitor’s site, but you can also use it to crawl yours and get advice.

 

  • Similarweb.com – This is a great platform to use to search your competitor’s website so that you can learn about trends, gain insight into their traffic so you can learn where to distribute content and information. It gives you a 360-degree view of any company you want to study.

 

  • Kompyte.com – This competitor analysis software will capture the changes your competition makes to their website so that you can find out what they’re doing in real-time to attract and please customers. Knowing this gives you insight into what you need to be doing too.

 

  • RPA (Robotic Process Automation) – Much of what we’ve mentioned really is already RPA. All RPA involves is training bots to perform the tasks that you used to do manually, such as saving files, wait for and alert you when a specific email comes in, processes orders within a certain monetary perimeter. If you do it on a computer, the bot can do it when programmed.

 

To choose the right tools to help you research your competitors, figure out what you want to know, and the process involved in determining it. Then you can find the right software to help you make light of the job.

 

 

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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.