Guess what? Today is the 29th of February! It’s leap year! In honor of this special day that happens only once every 4 years, we’re going to share with you some very valuable resources we’ve recently been using, that can undoubtedly make running your business, and even your life, more effectively and efficiently.
This will boost your productivity and give you more creative freedom to effectively market your business and do more things that matter. For all you solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and small business owners out there who are stuck, these tools are sure to help you out!
Today's episode of Social Media Marketing Happy Hour is about utilizing the right kind of resources that can make such a difference in getting you and your business more organized and productive. We want to talk about this since it’s something that has personally, in one way or another, affected us and we’ve actually been struggling just to get things done right and on time. We hope that you, our dear listeners, can also benefit the same way we have with these wicked awesome tools!
Conserving Your Energy
First of all, let’s talk about your energy. In Episode 352, we shared with you what happens when you forget to take care of yourself because you’re too focused on being the kick-ass entrepreneur that you are. We sometimes don't realize how things are hurting us… how we are doing too much.
Working non-stop sometimes seems like a good idea, but it will ultimately lead to burn out. Yes, it is HARD to stay afloat most of the time, especially when you’re doing it solo. If you're not looking after yourself, if you're not using the resources available to you, then you can't perform at your top level. When your energy is down it affects every part of your life, including your relationships and your business. That’s why you have to find ways to conserve it.
You have to protect your energy as an entrepreneur, as a creator, at all costs, so that you can use it for more important things that matter and so that you can be powerful and not lose your creative spark. “Slow down to speed up,” as they say. Take this as a very important reminder: Just because you can, it doesn't mean you should!
Tapping Useful Resources
Now we’d like to talk about the things that have made us more powerful and have proven to be very beneficial in the way we’ve been going about recently. You might have known this, or not. Or you might have been trying to resist it. But remember, in order for something to change, you have to do something differently.
One of the things we realized is that we’ve been so swamped with work and yet we took it on ourselves to do everything. There are also things we don’t really feel like doing, so they get tossed aside even though they really needed to be done too. You have to learn to step back and look at the things that are not getting done, or things that are sucking the life out of you, for whatever reason.
Adding Essential Team Members
After making a list and seeing where we needed help, what did we do? We brought new team members onboard. It’s gratifying to know that we can tap into somebody who enjoys and is good at doing some of the things we don’t really care for or are too busy to get to.
We’d like to mention our super awesome podcast editor and sound engineer, Daniel, who has invaluably helped our podcast sound amazing and made making it a breeze. We’ve also added a new team member, Mara, who’s going to be doing many things that can help free our hands and minds to do other more creative and innovative stuff.
And oh, one piece of advice, start documenting your processes and the things you do. Use screenshots, videos, recordings (tools like Jing) so that by the time you're ready to have someone do them for you, you'll have enough teaching materials and training for them.
Employing Useful Tools
-
Trello
Trello is useful for streamlining processes and communicating across teams… the good news? It's totally free! Click here to open your free account
It is also useful for creating lists for your social media posting strategies, steps to set up your website, and whatnot. In our last episode, we interviewed Dana Malstaff and she put together an amazing training on how to effectively use Trello. To get access to her Trello training, visit https://happyhourhangouts.com/boss. Once you’ve set it up and you have checklists, regardless of what it's for, you’ll easily know what you have to get done and you'll be so much more productive.
-
Scrivener
Another helpful tool that’s got rave reviews is Scrivener. It's a word processor that chops up all of your chapters into its own sections that make it very organized. It’d useful for those who are having trouble writing content, email auto-responders, blogs.. any kind of writing, actually. It works like a storyboard that you can drag and drop around and rearrange. Any document format can be imported into it. Say goodbye to wasting your time scrolling down that very lengthy document since it will divide all your chapters into concise, organized, sections.
-
Zoom
Zoom is a phenomenal way of having meetings online. What’s awesome about it is you can take over somebody else's screen and control his/her mouse. Yes, we’re not joking!
If you are somebody who would love to be surrounded with that kind of energy and information, join our inner circle which we will be doing on Zoom! Yay! We can sit together and share experiences and help each other out. You can get access to many things that will make it easier for you to run your business. If you are interested in being part of our inner circle, with our twice a month trainings, and get access to our marketing vault, check out https://happyhourhangouts.com/innercircle.
If there's a topic you want us to cover, we'd love to hear from you. You can tweet us at @smmhappyhour or email us at info@happyhourhangouts.com.
