Here at RocketGirl headquarters, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is generally pretty slow. Most of my clients take that time off to be with family and friends, so this year I planned ahead and decided to make the most of my downtime.
I sat down one evening (glass of wine in hand) and thought about the ways I could make my business run even more smoothly in the coming year.
I came up with a number of terrific ideas and wanted to share three really good ones with you; I suggest you consider doing them, too.
1. Get your contacts in order. If your business is anything like mine, I’m guessing that most (and certainly, the best) business comes from referrals.
If that’s the case, then it makes sense to get a good handle on the people you know, and develop an approach for staying in touch with them.
Last month I began using a new contact management system called Contactually (this is my affiliate link: http://www.contactually.com/i/yfrlnxho). I love it.
With Contactually, I can quickly divide my contacts into “buckets” of clients, prospects, people I want to keep in touch with, etc., and decide how often I want to be in contact with each group. Once that’s set up, Contactually reminds me every day (via email) of the people it’s time to get in touch with.
It’s like having a part-time assistant.
I integrated Contactually with my Gmail account, so now it tracks all my email correspondence and places notes in a person’s record whenever we exchange messages. It even keeps their contact information up-to-date by “scraping” their email signature and also tracking their social media accounts, (Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter) so I always have current information.
2. Get your finances in order. I admit it; the year-end “get my receipts and expenses in order for the accountant” struggle is something I have personally experienced. This prompted me to look for a way to automate things and make staying up-to-date as simple as possible.
I did some homework and discovered a “cloud-based” service (meaning that you log into the service rather than keep everything on your computer) called Xero. It was exactly what I was looking for. I was able to link my PayPal account, credit cards and bank accounts (both business and personal) to Xero, which automatically syncs all my transactions every day.
Even better, Xero learns as it goes. What I mean is that once a transaction from a vendor like Mobil Oil comes through and I classify it as “Auto: Fuel,” Xero will automatically classify it that way in the future. So fabulous.
Also, since it’s in the cloud, my bookkeeper can easily log in with his own username and password (I can restrict what he can see and do if I like) to reconcile my accounts, send me invoices to approve and pay my bills, even though he lives thousands of miles away.
3. Get your routine in order. Finding better services to use is great, but without a routine and a checklist to work from, it’s difficult to create lasting habits. So the most important thing I did to get ready for the New Year was to get a new notebook and make a list of the things I need to commit to every day, without fail.
The things on this list include:
- tracking mileage
- reconciling expenses
- responding to emails within 24 hours
- reading a business-related book for at least 30 minutes each day
- get together in person with at least one colleague each week
These are the kinds of things that, while important for long-term success, are easily avoided if not set as part of a routine. Every day, I simply turn to a new page and make notes about what I need to do on that day and check them off as I go.
So that’s it. Three simple things all focused on helping my business-and yours-to run more smoothly in the coming year. (I won’t even tell you the great ideas that came to mind after the second glass of wine. That’s a subject for a future newsletter!)
All the best for a wonderful, profitable, fabulous 2013!
Excellent ideas, right on! 🙂
Thanks Kelsey – and thanks for reading!