As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates, with the resulting economic impact, startup’s and smaller business owners are facing serious challenges. The pace of decision making can seem relentless as you navigate the best way forward.
To help support small business owners we are planning to launch our COVID STARTUP BUNDLE next week. We can help you think through important business launch issues, providing an external, experienced business consultant when you most need it.
Relevant areas that a brand strategy consultation can help with at this time include:
- pivoting your business model
- reviewing and updating strategic plans
- dealing with rapid change
- preparing for recovery
We have also outlined our top 10 tips below on how to stay focused and productive whilst building your COVID STARTUP.
PRODUCTIVITY, PLANS AND TRACKING STATISTICS
Being organised is about more than the tools and apps you use. It’s about how productive you are. But listen up: “busy” is not the same as “productive”. If you’re busy spending time on the wrong tasks – tasks that are not growing your business – you’re just wasting time. Create yearly, quarterly and weekly plans to outline the money-making tasks in your business so you’re always focused on the right things.
You can’t get your business where you want it to go if you don’t know where you are or how fast you’re growing. So you don’t only need plans, you need to track your growth! Tracking your numbers will also help you understand what is and isn’t working in your business and help you make decisions based on facts, not emotions.
INBOX MANAGEMENT
Dread opening your inbox? Feel a lump of anxiety in your chest every time you open your clients emails? Spend 2 hours drafting a reply to a negative message? Organise and automate your inbox to turn it from a thing you dread to a thing you’re excited to open each day.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
It’s time to stop managing your projects through hundreds of emails across dozens of threads and use a project management tool with your clients instead. A project management tool is a secure page online where you can share files, send messages, create to-do lists, due dates, deadlines and more!
CLIENT ONBOARDING
This is the process you take a potential client through when they go from “initial inquiry” to “booked client”. How organised this is determines how professional your clients see you. If they see you as messy and unprofessional, they won’t want to hire you. Period.
PROJECT HANDOFF
If you end your projects but your clients keep sending you millions of questions… Or you can never seem to get testimonials from your clients when their project is over… This is one area you need to organise – like yesterday! Put systems in place to cut down on questions, capture killer testimonials, and get your clients excited to refer others to you!
SOCIAL MEDIA
It’s time to stop manually posting to your Instagram stories (when you actually remember to do them), or spending an hour writing one caption. Automate your social media so you can free up time to take on more clients, launch an ebook, or… just watch more Netflix. Money Heist, anyone?
CONTENT CREATION
Streamline and speed up your content creation process so you can free up time to actually promote the epic content you’ve made! After all, what’s the point in spending all this time creating content nobody reads?
FILE ORGANISATION
Organise your desktop files, Google Drive/Dropbox files and client folders so it doesn’t take you forever to find the files you need.
TEAM
If you don’t have a team, you should consider hiring a virtual assistant, even if it’s just for 5 hours each month. (They could schedule your social media in that time!) If you do have a team, organise them. Find a tool where you’ll all communicate easily (like Slack). Set up monthly team meetings. Set up a team “Strike” system so you can keep on top of low and high performers and understand exactly when to let someone go or give them a bonus.
ODD BITS + BOBS
You’re not quite done yet. Step 1 – 9 will organise the main parts of your business. To tie things up, think about organising your desktop files, you’re tagging system inside your email list, bookkeeping process, passwords and your physical workspace.
MISTAKES TO AVOID:
HUNTING FOR THE PERFECT TOOLS
Many entrepreneurs get so caught up trying lots of different tools that all do the same thing , they end up so overwhelmed that they don’t use any of them.
I’ll let you in on a secret: it doesn’t matter what tools you use. What matters is that you choose your tools fast, master them, and move on to more important tasks – like finding clients and making money!
TAKING TOO LONG TO ORGANISE YOUR BUSINESS
It shouldn’t take any longer than two weeks to organise your business (on the side of your regular routine). If it’s taking you longer than two weeks, you’re probably falling into the trap of perfectionism. Don’t worry, it’s a mistake most entrepreneurs make when organising their business. They try to find the perfect tools, get caught up in all the little details, and start over-complicating their processes.
Just remember: you’re organising your business to save time and create peace of mind, not waste time and make yourself even more stressed. Every extra, unnecessary minute you spend trying to get organised is a minute you could have spent on marketing.
** Offer no longer available