Keep Your Business Cool This Summer
By: Christa Murray + WISE Team
Summer is here and let’s be honest—we’re already tired just thinking about the weeks to come. The kids are out of school for the summer, family is coming to visit, and PCS season is here. It is easy to become overworked and exhausted during the most chaotic months of the year. However, there is nothing cooler than a healthy mindset as we welcome the summer months! Here at WISE we’ve learned that the best way to fight summer stress is with a positive outlook and some helpful productivity hacks for your business.
Whether you’re working outside of the home or running your own small business from your home office, here are some quick tips to help lighten your load.
Delegate
If you’re trying to do everything, you’re doing it all wrong. Entrepreneurs are typically accustomed to doing things on their own. However, handing over responsibilities can be very wise for small business owners.
Remember, time is money. Ask yourself the following questions about each task that fills up your work day.
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Do I enjoy doing this?
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Does this have to be done by me?
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Am I good at this?
If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” consider delegating that responsibility to someone else on your team. Find someone who specializes in that particular functional area and give them ownership of the project.
Use a Time Audit to determine exactly where your time is going. WISE’s Get Your Time Back Audit Workbook will walk you through a week-long audit to help you stop wasting valuable time and find areas that you can streamline.
Organize
A great way to combat stress is by organizing your business. Even simple tasks, such as clearing off your desk, can aide tremendously with a healthy outlook this summer. Tidy up, declutter the office, and try out some new software to streamline your systems. Here are a couple of WISE’s favorite organization tools.
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Create To-Do lists for both yourself and others.
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Inbox Management Systems
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Keep your inbox organized with a software such as Sortd, a Gmail extension for Google Chrome.
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Declutter your inbox and update your to-do lists with new tasks. This will help you to stop living within your inbox.
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Pick specific times to check your inbox each day and STAY OUT during all other hours. This will win you back large sums of your time.
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Financial Management
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When you are on the go, it can be very difficult to keep track of the financial situation in your businesses.
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To keep invoices straight, you can use bookkeeping software to keep up to date on the go.
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Scan in your receipts when you are traveling so you can put your expenses in right away.
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The WISE team uses Quickbooks Self Employed for the team to keep track of quarterly taxes.
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Outsource
Don’t have the capacity to delegate? Are your to-do lists growing faster than you can check items off? Deadlines are approaching and you’re missing tasks. You’re becoming stressed and are dreading the busy summer months ahead. Rather than trying to do everything yourself, take a deep breath and hire help.
If you’re ready to take the plunge this summer, reach out to see how a WISE virtual assistant can help you get your time back. It may be your wisest choice yet!
Wise Advise + Assist Team, is an all virtual team of military spouses, veteran spouses, and veterans that help businesses grow by leveraging their team’s expertise. Eighty-seven percent of military spouses are unemployed or underemployed. Many business want to grow but do not want to hire another full-time or part-time employee or maybe the business does not need someone full-time for a specific task. WISE solves both of these problems by working with businesses to determine their needs and finding the right virtual assistants to help them.
