Challenges

Do You Have Systems for Your Business?

I am in the middle of organizing my home business office, as well as my virtual office (desktop, email, etc.) and realize that even if you organize from time to time, unless you create systems, you’ll soon be back in your old habits and get disorganized.

I am speaking form experience. For example, I started by working on my inbox which had over 1500 unread messages, and managed to get through & remove several hundreds of unread emails. But in the past few days, my unread email is climbing back up. I don’t yet have a good system for my email, and I desperately need one.

As entrepreneurs, our systems are the processes and procedures by which everything in our business runs. When our systems work, everything runs smoothly, or as smoothly as possible when running a business!

Systems are essentially a step-by-step process written out for each aspect of your business. They help you stay on track, they make you more efficient, they streamline your business and they help you see where you can improve and where your business is excelling. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly. When they don’t work, however, all heck can break loose.

Here are some of the systems you could create:

* Customer service
* Marketing
* Sales
* Product creation
* Product development
* Purchasing
* Production
* Producing a newsletter
* Billing
* Invoicing
* Outsourcing

Systems are particularly useful when you’re outsourcing a task or if you’ve hired an intern or an employee. Then, you’ll have everything written down from the very first step to the very last step, and your contractor or employee will know exactly what is expected of them.

Creating your systems

The first step to creating systems is to realize what processes your business uses. Simply make a list of the processes you go through on a daily or weekly basis. Once you have your list, it’s time to actually create your systems. They’re created initially by simply writing down the steps to accomplish a task. As new processes are added to your business, you’ll simply create a new system for that process.

Once your systems are created, the processes can be fine-tuned by using several steps. Firstly, you may want to simply evaluate the process you’ve written to see if it works and if there are any loopholes or steps you’ve missed. Secondly, you may want to include goals and measurements to determine whether the system is a success.

For example, if you have a customer service system and your goal is to have 100% customer satisfaction, and you end up losing 20% of your customers due to an inadequate customer service policy, then you know the system needs to be tweaked.

Storing your systems

Because you’re an internet marketer, you’re probably on your computer at least 50% of the working day, and more than likely you’re on it 100% of the working day. This means it makes sense to organize your systems on your computer. A simple file with the date and the name of the system will make them easy to access. You’ll also want to organize your goals and how you’re going to measure the goals.

Systems are a business owner’s best friend. They’ll help keep you on track and running smoothly today, tomorrow and for years to come.

What has worked for you? And what hasn’t. I’d love to hear your thoughts, while I am working on getting myself better organized.

Organize Your Home Office Challenge

desktop clutter

No matter how big or small your home business office is,you’ll benefit from an organized space.

I am finally joining the challenge Lynn Terry challenged her Elite Forum Members to do in January.

Here is what Lynn said:

Whatever your space, both virtual and physical, it’s time to get things in order for productivity & efficiency!

Yes, that means BOTH desktops – your hard drive and your desk/space!

Let’s have some before pictures. You can take a screenshot of your desktop, and pictures of your workspace. And when you complete the challenge, pictures again!

I’ve talked about the mess on my computer desktop when I first started this blog: you can see a picture of my desktop above, taken in October last year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look any better today, so I really need to work hard this month.

As for my office desk, I’d like to think it a little bit better: you can see it below:

computer desk mess

I am confident that 1 hour of attention will do wonders for this desk, so that’s the plan for tomorrow. The problem will be keeping it clean afterwards, as my husband is using this same desk when needed.

My bookshelf with DVDs is looking really good: probably because I don’t use it that often. Here is a peek at it:

bookshelf with DVDs

My biggest problems by far are my hard drive and email, but I’ve been working slowly on both of them. For example, in just 1 week, I went from over 1500 unread emails in my in-box to less than 900. The plan was to have it all cleared by tonight, and I know it’s not going to happen, but I am happy that I’ve made progress.

I also removed several GB of old “stuff” from my hard drive: not nearly enough, but a good first step. And that’s what’s really important: take small, consistent steps towards your goals.

If you are taking your business seriously, Lynn’s Elite Forum is one of the best places to get help. Give it a try. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Is Your Hard Drive an Information Cemetery?

information cemetery

As I am slowly getting rid of distractions, removing myself from newsletters I never read, deleting files that I acquired years ago and are no longer pertinent to my business model, I realize my computer has become an information cemetery. No wonder I have a hard time finding what I need.

I’ve been an information pack-rat: saving this, adding that, making plans for this other offer, etc. In the end, all this saving of information had done was to derail me from my original plan.

So, today, I unsubscribed from several newsletters I haven’t opened in more than 6 months and canceled 3 PLR memberships (since I sold a few of my sites, I no longer need these memberships, which were specific to the sites I sold.)

The challenge now is to take inventory of what I have on my hard drive, and use the content I purchased. So, over the next few days/weeks, I am going to find uses for the content from my hard drive, and get rid of the content that doesn’t align with my business.

For example,  I have several articles specific to popular toys, and I’ll be using those to create Squidoo lenses. I have many resale rights products,  and I want to pick at least one and start promoting it.

So what’s on my drive? Here is just a small example: PLR articles, PLR ebooks, software demos, lots of reports, case studies, thousands of articles I saved for one reason or another, and more…

What is taking space on YOUR hard drive, and what are you doing with it? I challenge you to go and assess your own information needs, and free yourself of unnecessary distractions.

1 2 3