There’s a saying in the business world, and it’s “Keep a Schedule; don’t let the schedule keep you.” So in all respects, our business scheduling as a business owner is what will keep us operating without pulling our hair out, or what forces us to throw in the towel. Now granted some of us are gifted with photographic memories, and can circle dates on their calendar and see them in their head, and just magically remember that they have meetings at certain times during the week. In the real world though, most of us have to write the majority of things down in order for us to remember them. If we don’t right down every detail of our busy day, chances are something is going to fall to the wayside. Then we will lose customers, lose money, and ultimately lose our cool for blowing important meetings.
Electronic Schedules are Awesome
I know you guys have seen those big desk calendars that was necessary when electronics included a flip phone, a pager, and a 20 pound laptop. Well really they are un-necessary now, unless you use it to doodle on, when your placing important phone calls to your favorite Chinese food restaurant. Just kidding, though they might still have some use, we walk out the door with our schedule in hand. Thanks to companies like google, who have captured the market for every digital avenue that exist or has ever been thought of. They own the android operating system, so when you get your new cell phone that is android operated, it forces you to sign up for a google account if you don’t already have one. (What an awesome marketing tool.) Anyways, once you’re logged in to your new google account, you now have access to google calendars, to where you can set up dates, reminders, multiple daily meetings, and share these same things with the people that this meeting involves, even if they don’t have google, which most likely they do. So your google calendar will help you keep track of all your daily, weekly and monthly activities, if you set your reminders up correctly.
Daily Operation Checklist
Secondly, though you have already scheduled everything in your google calendar on your phone, the next best thing to do, is to create a daily operation checklist. This checklist is a simple list created in word with your logo on it, with “DAILY OPERATION CHECKLIST” written in big bold letters up top, and about 15 lines with check boxes besides them, and a place for the date at the end of each line. Each day will vary, so if you only have 3 things to do that day, date them for that day, and then save this sheet for the next couple of days until it’s filled up. This is why the date is necessary. Sometimes you might have 15 things to get done, and you would love to get them done all in one day, but realistically, it probably will take 3 to 4 days to get these things done. So the best thing to do is to make sure you start with a fresh daily checklist, and then prioritize each item by the date that you would like to finish it by. This will give you a great start in controlling the things that you need to get done. Also, say that a customer calls you, and you need to add something to the list that has to get done for the day, now you can add it on the list, but you can still prioritize it by date. This makes life a whole lot easier when you know what needs to be done, and when it needs to be done by.
Controlling Your Business Scheduling
One of the great practices that I learned is to always control your schedule, and always try to plan a week or two ahead. This will allow you to book customers on your time, rather than on their time. Most likely if they called you, then they need you, and if you make it seem that you’re desperate for their call, then they might take advantage of you. Let the customer know that you can meet with them or start their project as soon as possible, even if that means a week from now. Try not to make it seem that you are too busy to do the work, but help the customer realize that you are a valuable piece to their overall success, and they will greatly appreciate you getting to them as soon as humanly possible. Granted if you are a one person show, this helps a lot, but if you are operating with multiple helpers, and you can respond to the project within 24 hours do so. Honestly, I tend to respond rather quickly because I know my capacity, what I can handle and what I can’t. The biggest thing is, don’t let the customer control you, if they call you, and tell you that they need something by tomorrow, don’t forget to charge a rush charge, this is important. If you have to stop what you’re doing to take care of something immediately, then you have pushed someone else’s project off to attend to theirs, so let them know that this will cost them. If a customer calls you on Friday, and wants something by Sunday, but you don’t work on weekends, let them know, that you can have it by Monday afternoon, or early Tuesday. You don’t have to kill yourself to make the customer happy, you just have to respond to them in a timely manner, and then let them know your expectations and requirements for finishing their project.
Conclusion
Ultimately, our time is valuable. A good friend once told me, “If it takes away from your family, then you better charge them.” I have lived by this comment for the last 4 years, and it has made a great difference in my overall scheduling and my overall success. Our lives shouldn’t just consist of scheduling our work, schedule your lunch breaks, keep your scheduled time off to spend with your family, and schedule in your fun time. All of these things are important to having a balanced life as a business owner and entrepreneur. Don’t forget that if you fail to use your schedule, then you are creating an orderless-life, an most likely creating chaos and headaches around you. I hope these things help you in your overall work process, and remember if you have any questions, let’s discuss it.
Thank you and God Bless!
When I first went into business for myself, I was a year into my Associate’s degree, and we began to talk about contract protection in my project management class. We were given a stack of contracts, and were told to create a contract using these as a template. My final contract was about half a page long. I thought this contract was the best contract in the world, and I was now protected from all the unnecessary evils of the business world. Boy was I wrong. I had a lawyer read over it for me. Now granted he wasn’t a contract lawyer, he was an immigration lawyer, but even he said, “You might want to beef it up.” Throughout the years, I have beefed up that contract, but only because I’ve had bad experiences. If it wasn’t for those bad experiences, I would have never knew that there were cracks in my armor.
When business is slow, we have the tendency to panic and want to retreat, but the truth is this is where we need to strive more. It’s time to press in and stay consistent with the business practices that you developed when you first started your business. When business is slow, this is the time to make yourself busy, by reevaluating your prices, your policies, your website, and current advertisement. Let me give you the best possible solutions when business is slow.
I’m sure you guys have heard that faith without works is dead, well business without networking is dead. This saying is true. Yes, it probably took faith for you to step out and start running your own business, Leaving the comfort of knowing that there’s always a paycheck coming when working a steady 9 to 5 job. You are now your own boss, you are responsible for paying your own salary. You no longer have benefits so you have to provide your own. What a headache! In order to do this, you have to have a strong client base and a steady income. Steady incomes don’t come on their own; you will spend the bulk of your time networking with like minded businesses, so that you can share resources, and also build with them to catch their overflow, this is called contracting.
Did you know that most businesses though they promise, fail to have valid customer communication? I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced this as a buyer. You’ve purchased something from a company only to deal with an automated teller or operator, and find yourself to be frustrated with the experience because you can’t talk to someone that’s human. How many times are you going to go back to this company if you never have any human interaction with them, especially if you have some technical issues with the product or service? It’s absolutely ludicrous to try to run a business with customers not having human interaction with the company.
It’s inevitable to know that bad websites will create an invisible audience. Most people believe that if they can just get a website online, then their business will start to bloom. Well chances are, that if your website is not giving the potential customer a call to action, then you won’t earn customers. If your website is horrendous, it’s going to serve as a direct representative of your actual work. Don’t be a victim of bad websites, you want to have a website that not only looks good, but has a healthy conversion rate. Let me explain.
How do you bridge the gap between being a consumer vs. a business owner? Well ask yourself, which one are you? If you are out in public shopping for your household, technically you are a consumer, but no matter where you are, you are still a business owner as well. As a business owner, you can’t write off your household groceries to feed your family, but you do pay your salary. So how do you separate the two? Prayerfully, I can help give you an understanding what the difference looks like being and acting like a consumer and operating as a business owner.
Print Advertisement is Good Advertisement, You know why? It puts something physical into the customers’ hands that tell them about your product or services. I’m sure you know this, but do you know that most of the time your print advertising goes into the trash without being looked at. Matter of fact, to see any results from your printing efforts you want to circulate your printed material 3 times to the same audience. These are things I want to make sure you know as business owners that your money is valuable, and to know that it’s almost valuable enough to spend it, just to throw it away. Let me explain!
Warning: To anyone searching for free websites, you will find what you are looking for, and you will get what you pay for. In my years of developing websites, I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity of scrapping many free templates for a more effective website. Though I’ve made money on these ventures, which is always a plus, but it burdens me, that companies will sell a hosting service to a customer, and then give them a free website builder. It’s criminal because most customers don’t know what they are doing, so when they’re done, the website will be horrendous. Secondly, they are stuck to that layout, which stifles their creativity. Thirdly, the company will then charge the consumer for layout changes and separate themes. So my point is, that if you are serious about your business, then you should be serious about avenues that you take to advertise it as well. If you have a template builder that you just plug your information into, chances are, there is probably 100 other people with that same free website template within your demographic.
In order to have Social Media Gridlock that means there has to be some kind of workflow stoppage. Is social media working for you? Are you seeing an increase in page hits on your website because of Social Media? If the answer is “No”, let’s identify the problem. There are probably going to be 5 Main Reasons that Social Media Gridlock occurs, let’s discuss them!