3 Time-saving Tools To Streamline Your Business Life
As your entrepreneurial life takes off, you'll find your business slowly getting
cluttered with repetitive, frustrating (and often time-wasting) tasks. It's all too easy to lose hours a week - or hours a DAY - getting stuck on inefficient things, instead of pouring your energy into profit-producing activities.
Which means, it's critical you recognize the "time vampires", as Dan Kennedy calls them, and put an end to them once and for all. Streamline your business before they start cluttering your day.
That's why I'm a *huge* fan of outsourcing these tasks to different tools and systems so you can have more fun (and time) in your life. So with "Organize Your Home Office Day" being celebrated again this week, I thought it would be the perfect time to share 3 more of my favorite kick-butt, time-saving tools with you.
Streamlining Tool #1: Go Paperless with Your Own Virtual "Box"
Last year when my Dad's cancer popped up, we quickly had a growing pile of doctors' reports, test results, audio recordings from each appointment, pictures from each cycle, Flip videos and more.
The problem was, how the heck do we centralize everything? Enter Box.net!
Instead of passing around thumb drives, emails and making endless copies of paper, I simply set up a family Box account. Everything got centralized online, with secure, controlled access. In fact, I now scan everything and 'file' it away online for easy reference. Then just shred the hardcopy...and viola! Less clutter!
Need to send a link to just one file? That's easy. Want to share a whole directory? No problem. What about embedding pictures in a webpage that stream from Box.net. Super-simple. In fact I now use it to collaborate with Yanik Silver on MaverickBusinessInsiders.com as well as my own internal company projects.
It's hard to quickly describe how powerful and easy Box.net is for collaboration, but I highly encourage you to get an account and check it out yourself. I use and recommend the "Individual" Box.net account, but a totally free "Lite" account gives you 1GB of storage to get started.
Streamlining Tool #2: Set-it-and-Forget-it Painless Backups
Let's be honest, if you are truly running a business, you can't afford to lose your data, emails, client records and more. Plus you probably don't want to lose any of your family photos, videos or personal memories.
For the longest time, I used external backup drives to create copies of all my files in case my main computer locked up or crashed. But it was a pain in the butt to remember to backup! Plus what happens if I had a fire, flood or theft? I'd still end up losing everything. Ouch!
That's why I decided to go with a secure off-site backup solution that automatically backs up ALL my files, hard-drives and more...without me having to lift a finger.
I spent quite a while researching solutions and settled on Mozy. Just install the small little program (PC or Mac - doesn't matter), and follow the setup instructions and you're good to go. It runs quietly in the background while you work or sleep.
If you ever need to restore anything, just call up Mozy to get DVDs with your files overnighted to you or hop online and you can instantly access any of your files.
Like the other tools I'm recommending, Mozy has a free level of service, but I recommend you get the yearly plan. Heck - 2 years of UNLIMITED off-site storage for your computer is only around $100. Well worth it to have all your files and data constantly backed up so you can sleep soundly each night!
Streamlining Tool #3: Down and Dirty 'Getting Started' Time-Saver: ShortKeys
Do you find yourself repeating the same things over and over again in emails?
Do the math and you'll see you're losing days, if not weeks, each year typing the same thing. 10 emails a day x 2 minutes typing up a response x 5 days a week x 50 work weeks a year = over 83 hours spent typing up similar responses to customers, team members, vendors and more each year. That's at least two FULL work weeks totally lost to email!
No doubt, you can find a better use of your time as a business owner than to be constantly repeating yourself. Fortunately there's a way to stop typing the same thing over and over again...with predefined responses.
There are a few different ways to implement a predefined response system. If you're just starting out - you can simply use templates or stationary in your email program. In my email client, Eudora, my first year online I used stationary templates to handle seminar follow-ups, login details, bonuses, etc. As soon as I got an assistant, I handed the templates over to her.
Now that's the 'ghetto' version.
If you want a slicker, faster method I recommend a program called ShortKeys. Essentially it's a text replacement tool. You create ShortKeys (phrases, words, etc.) in the program, along with the full response you want associated with them.
Then whenever you type the ShortKey *anywhere* in Windows, the program will instantly replace it with the full block of text associated with it. So ".refund" could get replaced with your standard longer response. There's a free lite version of the software worth checking out.
(BONUS Tip: Once your business gets cranking, as soon as possible you'll want to institute a web-based help desk and funnel every customer contact through there. Not only can you set it up with predefined responses, but you can have a big team collaborating, provide a knowledgebase for your clients and provide much better service all around. Check out our help desk at instantmlmsupport.com -- the software I recommend to run it is at Kayako.com)
So there you have it - three (well four) new tools to streamline your life. Give them a try so you can spend less time bogged down in clutter and time-wasters, and more time making the $$$ and having fun in your business and life!
Copyright (c) 2009 Chris Zavadowski
by: Chris Zavadowski
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