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Time management is one of the biggest obstacles we face in life, but that skill is even more critical when you run your own business.  This is one of the biggest obstacles that many entrepreneurs face and if not properly managed can increase your stress level and decrease your productivity level and ultimately your income.  Below are some tips to help you better manage your most precious resource:  Time.  Here are some tips that have been helpful to me.

Finding Time.  The first step in good time management is finding time.  Time is a finite resource and it has to come from somewhere.  Try to find time in your lunch break, your daily commute, early in the morning before everyone wakes up or late at night.   For example, when I first started this podcast, I had to find a way to work it into my schedule.  So, for the first 4 months, I woke up every morning at 5:00 a.m. (I usually wake up at 7:00 a.m. to get my son ready to drop him off to day care) and dedicated those two hours to nothing but developing the podcast.  So it was easy for me to manage everything else I was doing because it wasn’t really taking any time from my daily schedule.  

Use your weekends.  Use your weekends to build your company and your wealth!  I know, I know, after a long week at work, you just want to decompress.  But when you’re running a business, that’s not what the ENTIRE weekend is for.  Sure you can take an hour or two to rejuvenate, but you should plan on spending the bulk of your time planning for the week, doing administrative work, networking, and building your brand.  Also, when you stay in and focus on a project or a task, you don’t spend money!  So not only are you using your weekend to build your company, you’re building wealth by saving money. 

Planning.  Planning, Planning, Planning.  When you don’t plan your time, OTHERS DICTATE YOUR SCHEDULE.  There are two problems with that (1) you are always reacting (on the defensive instead of offensive) to what work drops in your lap and (2) you don’t shape how you want your day to look.  I made this mistake a few times and would have weeks where I felt like all I was doing was putting out fires.  These are some planning tips I implemented:
Plan for the week and month.  Make monthly to-do list and a weekly one. This way you know everything you NEED to complete by the end of the week.  Use a daily planner to plan every single hour of each day a week in advance.  This way, you can see where you can fit in new work that comes up.
Do your toughest tasks first thing in the morning.  This tip changed my life!  According to a study, humans have the most will power in the morning.  So, do your toughest, most tedious task firsts.  Furthermore, take advantage of that time before everybody starts blowing up social media, or clients are emailing or calling you. 
Keep track of your time.  This is difficult to do when you have no one to answer to.  But keeping track of your time is KEY to time management.  First, it lets you know HOW you’re spending your time and how long each task is taking you.  The other reason to keep track of your time is so that you can see what type of tasks (i.e., administrative, running errands, writing content, making graphics, client work, networking, etc.) you are spending most of your time on.  The reason this is important is because everything you do doesn’t make you money.  While administrative work is necessary (unless you are sending out bills), it doesn’t bring in income; client work does. Keeping track of your time will force you to add more client work to your schedule.

You’ll always have a tension between too much to do and not enough time, but these tips will help you get a better handle on your time management and increase your productivity.

Setting goals is the easy part, meeting them . . . that’s a different thing.  In my opinion, there are two reasons to set goals (1) to have a direction to move into and (2) to challenge yourself and grow.  That’s what I’m planning on doing this year, I want my goals to force me to grow.  But most importantly, I’m posting them here because I want YOU to hold me accountable.  Accountability is one of the most important factors in accomplishing goals.  With that said, here goes!

Podcast (Weekly Episodes)
Right now, I’m posting a new podcast episode about once every two weeks, which considering the time it takes to edit – is plenty.  I knew with my current workload, I would be able to keep that commitment and it was important to me that I be consistent with how often I publish new episodes.  However, after releasing three episodes, I feel like every couple of weeks is not enough of an interaction with my audience.  I’m always so pumped up when I get your feedback and it gives me even more ideas.  So, my goal is to move to a weekly podcast by the end of March.

Blogging (two posts per week)
When I started the Shingle Life Podcast, I had no intention of blogging.  But, the feedback from the podcast has motivated me to share more about my experience and my journey.  I was surprised at how many people had a real need for information on this subject.  I’ve been posting some tidbits on Instagram, but the blog provides a better medium for more in-depth discussions.

My goal when I started the podcast was to offer resources to someone embarking on their entrepreneurial journey with little resources.  The more information I make available on the internet, it is more likely that someone will come across my content.  So, I plan to publish a new post at least twice a week.  With everything else I have going on, posting twice a week is really stretching myself.  But, what’s the point of a goal if it doesn’t stretch you to the last drop.

Leverage my legal training
It’s scary to think what this process would be like without my legal training.  When I looked for business plans, I found nothing that was less than 15 pages, but because of my type A personality, I was able to complete the entire thing in one setting – I told myself I wouldn’t move until it was done.  And it wasn’t even that helpful! 

That brings me to another reason I started this podcast: to allow my audience to benefit from my legal training.  Hiring a lawyer is not an option for many small business owners, so while I can’t give legal advice freely on this platform (it could be considered the unauthorized practice of law because I’m not barred in every state in the country), there are some tips and issues I can draw your attention to to make the legal process easier.

Written products
I’ve been working on a simpler more effective business plan; one that I’ve modified over the years and that has helped me really hone in effective ways to grow my business.  And because I’m a tax lawyer and that is a very foreign subject for many new entrepreneurs, I am working on a tax planning guide for small, startup and micro-businesses.  This guide will be your go-to resource for tax and accounting questions that will help you save money through and give you ideas for thoughtful tax planning year-round.

New Business Venture
For some time now (almost 4 years), I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a small skin care business.  I talked myself out of it every time I met an obstacle I didn’t want to deal with (i.e. marketing, branding, packaging, distribution, etc.).  But, for the past year, it has kept coming to the forefront of my mind.  It’s something I enjoy doing and I’ve gotten great feedback from family and friends.  I’ve been conducting research for the past 4-5 months in preparing to take the next steps.  I plan to document each step of this journey on my blog.  I think I’m crazy for doing this because I’m not sure of how successful this venture will be.   But, I think this is the best way to practice what I preach and learn from my prior mistakes. 

Blogging/Podcast Stats and Annual Report
It’s hard for me to formulate this type of goal because I had no intention of turning this into a “thing” when I started the podcast.  But there’s one thing I’ve come to realize, you have to treat everything you do, whether for pay or not for pay, as a business.  That means treating it as if your life depended on it.  I could have the greatest podcast that offers the best free legal and tax planning advice, but if no one listens to it or if no one knows about it, then I might as well be doing nothing.  If I want to bring in more dedicated listeners, I have to be purposeful with how I proceed.  One of my favorite bloggers Ijeoma of Klassy Kinks, publishes a blog report at the end of each year.  It’s a great accountability tool because you can look at your goals and use the blog report to determine if you’ve met them.  So, I would like to do the same thing at the end of the year and I would like to have at least 3000 downloads by the end of the year.  And I’ll go ahead and throw in $1,000 in income from the blog and the podcast.  LOL I have no idea where it will come from, ads?  We’ll see!  I’m putting it out into the universe.

What kind of person do I have to grow into?
The current Art will not be able to meet these goals.  I will have to grow into a completely new person, actually, two or three iterations of that new person.  I will have to revamp my organizational skills, my focus, and time management in order to be able to accomplish just half the goals I’ve set out to accomplish.  But, I want to grow into this person, this person is way more productive than I’ve ever been in my life! I’m up for the challenge and you all get to join me for the ride. 

Happy Goal Digging!

If you’re like me, your New Year is off to a slower start than expected.  I had a lot of plans ready for the New Year, but, my son, who is 21 months old came down with a fever and had to stay out of day care all of last week.  Taking care of a toddler is challenging enough, let alone a sick one.  But that’s okay, it’s still January we have got plenty of time to get our act together. 

A couple of weeks ago, I came across 4 Things Every Entrepreneur Should The First Week of the New Year.  It makes sense though, it’s a great way to start the year and I changed the article for obvious reasons.  This is one of the few short lists I’ve seen going around and actually pretty effective and give some good practical advice.

I still had to modify it a bit to apply to my life, my business and to be very realistic about my expectations.  The whole point of this blog is to give it to you straight and to keep things real.  Everything you read may not apply directly, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be somewhat instructional.  Below is how I applied each of the suggestions in this articles.

1. 100-Day Plan
Okay, I’ll be honest, coming up with 100 tasks will take about two weeks and then I’ll spend another two weeks thinking about how to get them done.  Plus, 100 days is almost 1/3 of the year, I’m not exactly sure how much I would stick to a plan that would map out that much of the year.  However, there is much value in looking ahead and setting out some important tasks to accomplish in the first few months of the year.  So, I decided I would try out a 60-Day Plan.  I came up with 30 tasks that I would complete in the next 60 days.  That’s still not 100 tasks but it did give me a pretty clear idea of how I want to shape the year and exactly what I need to do to get there.  Again, don’t throw out the baby with the bath water, always challenge yourself to look deeper and see how any advice you come across apply to you, your business and your goals.

2. Declutter
This one is a no brainer, the beginning of the year is a great time to declutter your work space.  Having a decluttered workspace is energizing and increase productivity.  But another way to look at decluttering is to get rid of things you don’t use – in all aspects of your life.  One example is revisit your spending; more specifically, paid subscriptions.  That’s something I do at the beginning of the year as I set the budget for my law firm.  What monthly subscriptions am I paying for and how (if at all) am I using them.  What about your inbox?  Do you read every blog you get a notification for?  Maybe you have your favorite ones (present company included J) that you read every day.  You don’t need to keep the subscription to the 10 other ones you don’t even open in your inbox, let alone visit the blog page.  Try to think of all the different ways in which you can declutter your surroundings.

3. Fire the Person You Have to Fire
Ummm, this is a tricky one, right?  Most of us are running our businesses solo and don’t have any full-time, or even part-time employees.  However, don’t dismiss this thought so fast.  Let’s think outside the box.  Even though most of us don’t have employees, many of us, as a result, outsource work that we either can’t do or don’t have the time to do.  Some of those people include: the web designer, accountant, photographer, virtual assistant, etc.  This is a good time to look at those people and see if there is anyone in there who has to go.  I had to do that recently, after two years, I decided to change accountants and I still kinda sorta like . . . haven’t let the former accountant know that they got the boot.  I’m doing it slowly, but it was a decision I made toward the end of last year, that starting this year, I was going with a new guy – who’s great and we work better together.

4. Get High or Higher
I really like this one.  Because it’s giving us permission to do what we’ve been wanting to do all year – raise prices!  Now, raising prices can be tricky for a couple of reasons.  First, we’re afraid that our clients are going to bulk when they see the new prices and possibly look elsewhere.  Second, it’s hard enough getting clients in the door with the prices we’ve set, and now to raise them creates another level of stress.  But deep down inside you know you deserve more, and you probably do.  So how do you go about increasing your prices.  The most helpful tip I can give you is to make sure you can explain the added value your services bring to your clients.  There are a few people who can do what you can do, why should they pick you, why are your services better than the next person’s?  When your clients acknowledge your value, it will be easier for them to accept your new price.

So there you have it.  It’s not too late to implement any of these four things.  I like to think of the first week of January as the whole month of January.  It’s never too late to start and sometimes life happens – especially when you’re a small business owner.

I’d like to hear from you.

What are some of the things you do at the beginning every year?

• First, it forces you to see your idea as more than just a thought or a hobby and you have to come up with a name and claim it.

• Second, for tax reasons, it makes it easier for you to start tracking and claiming your expenses if you have a business set up. There are tax rules around when you can start deducting business expenses and there are limits on how much you can attribute to start-up costs before you start your business.