How to streamline your admin to lower stress and still gain success.
I think it's fair to say we all want to make the admin in our business as quick and easy as possible after all it's providing services or making products to sell that is the real reason you set up your business. All the other tasks that make that happen are necessities just not always fun.
Streamlining anything in your business even the fun bits is going to be a benefit, if you can do a job more quickly and easily it will free up time that you can use on something else. If it’s a better work life balance you want, then being more efficient at work will help you gain back time for you!
When the cogs fit together nicely, the wheels turn more smoothly!
If you are a sole trader you are your business, you have so many plates to spin and it can be hard to see the wood for the trees as to how to make life easier. It is easy to get caught in the trap of thinking.
“I’m so busy I don’t have time to think about making changes, let alone implement them. I just have to keep going so I can stay on top of my to-do list.”
Sound familiar? I get it I really do, but think of it this way, if you don’t stop and make assessing your working processes a priority then how will things ever change?
To go back to the idea that your business is like a tree, how will the trunk- your money-earning tasks, grow strong if you don’t trim out any unneeded branches that are taking energy away from the strength.
Let your main business mission have the space to grow and flourish and the rest of the tasks become supporting parts of the habitat.
How long can you sustainably work as you are? No-one wants you to burn out or for your business to stall so it's time to look at how you can work smarter not harder.
If you do work alone and any of what I have mentioned feels familiar, then it can be very useful to ask someone you trust to help you brainstorm all the things you do and how you could streamline.
My top four tips for ways you can streamline your admin are:
#1 Get in good habits
Create a set routine, do regular tasks in set time slots, whenever possible so that these jobs always get done and don’t build up and become daunting.
The second part of this is any task that gets chunked up be sure to complete it to the same point each time so that when you pick it up again you have the complete picture and don’t have to go around filling in gaps. For example, If you open an email don’t leave it sat there in your inbox either file it in the relevant place or delete it. Don’t leave it sat making your inbox, keep your inbox tidy and you won’t lose time searching for messages and become daunted by your inbox.
#2 Repurpose your big content pieces
Blogs, Newsletters, vlogs, podcasts all these big pieces of content you have prepared can be used in bitesize chunks to help you with your social media and online presence meaning you don’t have to spend hours finding extra content to share. After all, you have taken the time to create these bigger pieces you want to maximize the exposure to them to maximize the results for your efforts. I especially like Pinterest for helping my blogs keep working for me long after I have written them.
You bake a whole cake but you usually need to slice it up into bite-size portions.(although we all know we sometimes eat them in one go!)
Pinterest loves blogs they want to take viewers from looking at a visual pin to viewing the content on a website. As images are an important element of a blog anyway I take each blog Image and create pins from them so that the blog can be found time and time again when someone searches the keywords on the pin. Pinterest helps SEO without needing to understand complicated SEO jargon, extra bonus.
See one blog working four ways, as its glorious self, as Pinterest pins, increasing your website SEO and repurposed for social media. Already working smarter not harder.
#3 Plan as much as you can in one place.
There is no getting around the fact that even with streamlining there is still a lot to do in running a business. Finding a system where you can pan as much of your work in one place as possible has two benefits.
Firstly, we all have millions of log-ins and passwords these days, and getting many apps and pages loaded and working takes time and can be glitchy, not to mention the time lost when passwords need resetting (It’s inevitable). Having one go to place for a wealth of your activities means you are up and going really quickly. With a good system, you can also set up automation making your job even more efficient. Personally, I have discovered Trello and found it a game-changer. I have different boards for different elements of my work and lists and cards within the board to organise and breakdown tasks and track what’s been done. There are also great automation features on Trello so I can ask it to recreate previous features to roll on again to new lists for recurrent tasks. It can be used to store attachments and you can even email the cards to keep all relevant info on a job together. Meaning you really can build it to show you the overall picture of your business as you need to.
#4 Don’t lose track of your leads
When you have made the effort to go networking or had a useful conversation with someone about why you do, don’t let that time and effort go to waste. Keep track of people you meet who have shown interest in what you do or who spark an idea in you. Also, try and note the details of what you discussed. This memory aid helps you show you care and build connections next time you interact with your leads, building relationships faster and following up should help you guide your leads into sales. If Trello doesn’t float your boat another easy to use drag and drop tool to help you organise your communications is Hubspot! This one acts more like a diary and Customer Relations Management system, in the free account there is no place for planning and storing content.
Following up and keeping on the radar for interested leads means you will get more conversions and therefore make your networking more efficient for generating work, meaning you could potentially allocate less time to networking for new leads and give yourself that time back to use elsewhere.
If this blog has been helpful and you would like to get a better grasp on the tips then do check out the dates for my brainstorming series to find the topics to help you. If you would like a more 1-1 discussion then maybe a Business Buzz Session could prove useful to you. To arrange one of these click here.