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Tips And Tools To Prepare Your Business For The Holidays

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Filed Under: Christmas & New Year, Entrepreneur Life, Living, Organizing For The Holidays & Gift Guides

Prepare your business for the holidays with these tips to get your business running on autopilot with tools, processes, and systems.

While we are busy during the holidays with shopping, cooking, traveling, and company, we need to do ourselves a favor and think ahead to prepare our business for the holidays.

To successfully keep your business running and profiting during a high-traffic and a holiday season, you’ll want to put a plan in place now for getting your business to run on autopilot with as little intervention from you as possible.

Preparing Your Business For The Holidays. Prepare your business for the holidays with these tips on how to get your business running on autopilot with tools, processes, and systems.
Preparing Your Business For The Holidays.

Here are our best tips on how to automate your business, so it runs itself during those busy seasons of life.

1. Start with the simplest tasks to automate

These are often the tasks that involve the least amount of human interaction, to begin with, like social media posts, blog posts, and weekly newsletters.

 

 

2. Delegate

For those tasks that can’t be automated, ask yourself which tasks you can delegate to someone else.

If you already have an assistant, you may be able to hand off some of those daily to-dos of your business to them.

If you are a solopreneur, you can check out a spot like Fiverr for a person who has the skills you need that you can hire on a short-term basis. Consider having a writer plan and write a month’s worth of blog posts for you, or a social media manager to create a month’s worth of content for you to schedule.

 

 

3. Plan ahead

If you have an online presence for your business like social media profiles and a website, one of the best ways to prepare your business for the holiday season is to schedule your social media posts and your blog posts ahead of time.

For example, to be able to enjoy my summer vacation fully, I scheduled every post and social media message months in advance.

Once these tasks are scheduled, automated, or delegated, you will be able to dedicate your time at work to tasks that need your attention.

 

 

5. Plan big moves for other times of the year

The middle of the holiday season is not the time to make a colossal growth move or try out something new in your business.

If you want to take advantage of the holiday as a time for sales or growing awareness, be sure to get your promotional campaign set up ahead of time.

Use a tool like Asana or Trello to map the processes you’ll have to work on and get everything scheduled, planned, and services hired before the end of September or October. This way, when Black Friday or Cyber Monday comes around, you’ll have everything you need in place to rock those sales!

 

 

6. Automate your messaging

During the holiday season, you may find that you need to reduce the amount of time that you spend each day checking your emails and social profile messages.

Prepare your business for the holidays by setting aside a specific time each day for this, or delegate someone to do it for you. Write templated responses in advance and program an automated greeting for your email and messengers.

People who are trying to get in touch with you will know when is the best time to reach you. You can also let them know that you are working on an abbreviated schedule if that is the case.

 

 

Bonus: Favorite tools for automating business tasks

Convert kit– schedule all of your newsletters in advance, so you don’t lose touch with your customers over the holidays. This is also a great way to boost holiday sales with minimal hands-on work on your end.

Planoly – schedule all of your Instagram posts. Planoly lets you plan all of your posts and stories ahead of time, so even if you are not on the platform as often during the busy holiday season, Planoly will be posting for you.

Tailwind – schedule all of your Pins to keep driving traffic to your website and blog. With Tailwind, you can create smart loops that regularly share different categories of content. You can also add in individual posts as well.

Task management tools– schedule out tasks so anyone working with you can easily see what needs to be done. You can do this on Google sheets or with an application like Trello for those who prefer a more visual approach to organizing.

Conclusion

Of course, there are some things you can’t automate or delegate in your business. However, every task that you can off-load will shorten your to-do list every day without letting your business slip through the cracks. Having these systems in place will reduce your stress and let you enjoy your holiday with family and friends.

What are your biggest challenges with running your business during the holiday season? Share with me in the comments!

Be Less Busy! 5 Essential Tools For Running A Pro Organizing Business

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Filed Under: Become a PRO Organizer, Entrepreneur Life

5 tools for entrepreneurs that will make running your business easier and more productive every day.

I’ve never met an entrepreneur who would turn down the chance to learn about a tool that might help them run their business more efficiently, complete tasks with more ease, and be generally more organized and more on-task with their projects. That’s what this post is all about. In the sea of hundreds of tools and apps marketed towards entrepreneurs, there are some that simply stand out and shine like pure gold.

Be less busy! 5 must-have tools for entrepreneurs that will make running your business easier and more productive every day.

Here is my essential list of top 5 tools for entrepreneurs.

1. DropBox

An invaluable tool for any small business owner. Transfer and store large files with complete ease without using up massive amounts of storage on your computer. The Dropbox organization is also key to find everything you need in a flash. Crete and organizes files by client, project, date, or any other way that makes sense for your particular business.

2. LastPass

How many hours a month do you think you spend looking for and trying to remember lost passwords? Search no more!

LastPass keeps all your passwords in one place so you never have to try and remember the name of the second street you lived on in your childhood.

Another great feature is that LastPass lets you send access to your password info for particular accounts safely and securely to other people on your team.

3. Slack

Communication is key to successfully running a small business. Slack makes team communication a breeze. With search features to find that conversation and link share from a month ago, to the ability to sign in to your account and manage several feeds at once, Slack is a must-have if you have even one other team member working with you in your business. You can even set up a thread to chat and keep in contact with people who are working

4. Grammarly

Nothing has the potential to destroy the legitimacy of your business like consistently bad grammar and spelling. That said, there will always be something here and there that sneaks by you, but Grammarly is an indispensable tool for staying on top of your spelling and grammar from web text and blog post, to social media captions and newsletters.

PS: Is English your second language like it is for me? Don’t think twice and sign up for it!

5. The Contract Shop

Not quite a legal eagle? The Contract Shop is here to help. With a huge selection of contracts for the entrepreneur and small business owner, contract shop is a great tool to have in your business. You’ll find a contract for every need here, because no one wants to try to create a legal document from scratch and stress over wondering if they covered all of the bases.

Bonus Business Tool

Fiverr

If you are an entrepreneur who runs a business solo, or with only one of two people on your team, there will come a time when you need a task completed for a project that is out of your wheelhouse. Great at writing but need some video work done? Adept at marketing but not so great at creating graphics? Head to Fiverr and grab some talent from their pool of skilled bloggers, writers, photographers, graphic designers, and video editors. With people working in every budget you are sure to find a match for your task or project.

Conclusion

There is a sea of apps and tools on the market today that are helpful for entrepreneurs running a small business. Some are great for large project completion, tracking progress on projects, and some are great for running the day to day things, like communicating with team members and scheduling social media posts. This list does not exhaust your options, but these are tools that I use constantly in my business that make my job as an entrepreneur so much simpler, more organized, and more manageable.

Do you have any favorite tools that you use in your small business that make your job easier? I’d love for you to share them in the comments below! Have questions about a tool in this post? Ask me! Let’s chat about our favorite biz tools we can’t do without!

5 Must Read Books For Entrepreneurs – The Summer List

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Filed Under: Entrepreneur Life, Marketing for Professional Organizers

Refresh, reshape, and grow your business with these inspiring Summer reads for entrepreneurs.

As the Summer days warm up and the days move a bit more slowly,  you may have noticed the pace of your business slowing down as well. On a positive note, the “Summer slump” provides business owners a great opportunity to delve into personal and business growth, get inspired, try out a few new systems, and work out any kinks that may pop up so that you and your business are ready when things get busy again in the Fall.

One of my favorite ways to spend the slower Summer months is reading books that help me to look at my entrepreneur life and my business in a different way. There is more time to mull over new ideas and think of how I might positively transform different parts of my business.

5 Must Read Books For Entrepreneurs - The Summer List.
5 Must Read Books For Entrepreneurs – The Summer List.

Here are some of my favorite books to dive into during the slow Summer months that will have you ready to get back at it with fresh inspiration and new ideas in the Fall.

1. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

An absolute personal favorite, I have it in audio (Audible – affiliate link) and paperback for all my notes. I read it thinking of my kids and the level of interruption they have in their lives due to all the electronics and social media, but it had a huge impact on me. I reviewed my relationship with time, the use of social media and of anything that could compromise the work I’ve set out to do in the world.

Cal Newport writes beautifully and is very compelling on his case for more focused time and less interruption in our lives, giving us easy to implement strategies to achieve it.

I can say it is a must for those who feel they are always busy but struggle to accomplish as much as they set out to during all of that “busy time.”

“Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide a sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.”- Amazon Books

2. Breaking the Habit of Being You by Dr. Joe Dispenza

I truly believe this book can change your life. At least that’s what I feel it did for me.

Dr. Dispenza explains the science behind becoming who we are and how to create lasting change in any area of your life. If you’re ready for a big, bold move, this book will be your best friend.


Audible version (affiliate link)

Fans of this book love the actionable steps that Dispenza offers to really help you put into practice what you learn in the book and I can attest to that.

“In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, renowned author, speaker, researcher, and chiropractor Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible. Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change any aspect of yourself, but you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in order to make measurable changes in any area of your life.” – Amazon Books

3. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message so Customers will Listen by Donald Miller

An absolute diamond when it comes to clarifying your brand message and growing your customer base by giving your audience what they want. People have problems. You want to be the one to offer them the clearest and best solution.

“Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides listeners with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services. Building a StoryBrand will forever transform the way you talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers.”- Amazon Books

4. Free to Focus- A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt

This book is a must-read for anyone who has ever felt like there are not possibly enough hours in the day to finish their work, let alone the truly important things in life, like family, friendships, our own personal health, relationships, and hobbies.


“In Free to Focus, New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt reveals to readers nine proven ways to win at work so they are finally free to succeed at the rest of life–their health, relationships, hobbies, and more. He helps readers redefine their goals, evaluate what’s working, cut out the non-essentials, focus on the most important tasks, manage their time and energy, and build momentum for a lifetime of success.”- Google Books

5. Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Busy Moms by Kate Northrup

One of my favorite new releases, Do Less will transform the way women think about how they manage their time, but how they think about time in general. From natural cycles to the cyclical nature of time itself, Kate Northrup gives practical solutions for women who want to successfully and joyfully combine business and motherhood. I love the experiments that are included in this book that encourage you to work through the book.


“The addiction to busyness and the obsession with always trying to do more leads women, especially working mothers, to feel like they’re always failing their families, their careers, their spouses, and themselves. This book will give women the permission and tools to change the way they approach their lives and allow them to embrace living in tune with the cyclical nature of the feminine, cutting out the extraneous busyness from their lives so they have more satisfaction and joy, and letting themselves be more often instead of doing all the time.”

These books are gems in so many different ways. Some will inspire you to change your daily habits and some will give you amazing ideas to transform your brand and grow your business.

Have you read any of these titles? If you have let me know in the comments below! What titles are must-reads for you that I should check out? I’d love for you to share!

5 Tips For A Successful Branding Photo Shoot

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Filed Under: Entrepreneur Life, Marketing for Professional Organizers, Organizing

A brand is made up of many elements, all of which come together to tell a cohesive and consistent visual story to your audience. By creating and communicating a clear brand message, you will be building trust, which is a key element for converting followers into customers. One of the best ways to create a consistent brand message is with a branding photo shoot.

Here are 5 tips that you can use to make your Branding Photo shoot a success

Every business needs a clear brand message. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a branding photoshoot. Use these 5 tips to make your branding photoshoot a success!

1. Hire or DIY

When you are getting ready to do a branding photo shoot, the first thing you will want to decide on is whether you are going to do the photo shoot yourself or you are going to hire a professional. If you do want to hire a photographer for your photo shoot, check out fiverr for a great pool of talent available in price ranges for every budget. Here Are a few things to consider when you are deciding:

You are a good candidate to DIY your Branding Photo shoot if:

  • You are comfortable with a DSLR camera. While iPhones take amazing photos, you will want to use an actual camera for your branding photo shoot to get the most professional looking results.
  • You are comfortable creating backgrounds, flat lays, and setting up the subjects in your photos
  • You are comfortable with editing photos
  • You are on a tight budget. When considering budget, remember to keep in mind how much time and how much energy you will spend trying to do the photo shoot yourself in order to figure out the true cost of going with DIY.

You should hire a professional for your Branding Photo shoot if:

  • You do not own or are unfamiliar with using a DSLR came
  • You want help with creating the composition and layouts for your brand photos
  • You are not familiar with, or adept at photo editing
  • You can invest a little money to have your photos done by a professional

Every business needs a clear brand message. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a branding photoshoot. Use these 5 tips to make your branding photoshoot a success!

2. Be consistent across the board

Before you do any of the next steps to prepare for your branding photo shoot, you need to have a clear vision of what you want your photos to look like and achieve, and have a path and a plan to get you there.

We are always talking about consistency when it comes to branding and there’s a reason: people buy from businesses and people they know and trust. The best way to make that kind of connection with an audience or customer base is to deliver a clear and consistent message.

When you are getting ready to start your photo shoot you will want to have a very clear idea of the things that make up your brand. These can include things like your brand’s colors, fonts, images, taglines, headings, image formatting, logo, target audience, and packaging.

Depending on the type of business you are branding, what you include in your brand kit might be slightly different.

3. Know your end goal before you begin

Ask yourself what you want to achieve with your brand photo shoot. Is this photo shoot for a specific campaign, or are the photos intended to be used as a general stock of photos you will use in multiple situations for your brand? You will also want to think about where you will be using these photos.

Some popular uses for brand photos are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Websites or blogs, print, and/or video. It is so important to think of where you will be using the pictures from your branding photo shoot so that you will be creating images in the correct sizes, as well as photos that speak to the users of specific platforms.

Canva is a great tool to use as you are preparing for your branding photo shoot as it has all of the sizes you will need for both digital and print media as templates. Using templates to create different images from your photo shoot will save you loads and time and stress if you are not a pro at photoshop or other similar photo editing applications.

4. Collect inspiration

Before the day of your branding photo shoot begin collecting inspiration. Start this as early as you can to give yourself time to pull from creative sources and be open to inspiration in unexpected spaces.

You can keep all of your ideas together on a paper vision board, or on an app like Pinterest which makes gathering digital inspiration super simple and organized.

Gather a wide variety of inspiration from photos or specific items you want to include as well as photos that exemplify the theme you are going for. You can also gather inspiration from video, quotes, and messaging styles.

As your shoot gets closer, go through and tighten up what your vision for the shoot is and make sure your design is cohesive with what you want your photos to achieve as an end result.

5. Gather your tools and schedule your Branded Photo Shoot

Once you feel like you have everything together to create a clear and consistent branding photo shoot, you should schedule your shoot. If you are doing the photo shoot yourself, pick one date, or pick a few different dates for mini sessions.

You may also want to think about scheduling a refresher branding photo shoot once or twice a year to add seasonal, or specifically themed photos to your stock of images.

If you are having a photographer do your photo shoot, you can see if there are any special offers for mini sessions, or if it is a better deal to shoot everything all at once, and then maybe shoot the refresher pictures yourself to fill in.

Every business needs a clear brand message. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a branding photoshoot. Use these 5 tips to make your branding photoshoot a success!

Conclusion

One of the best investments of time or money that you can make in your business is to do a branding photo shoot. Your overall goal for your branding photo shoot should be to create a recognizable story through images that your customers can easily attach to your business.

When your audience sees your images they should immediately know they are yours. The consistent and high-quality photos created with a well-prepped and executed branding photo shoot will give you images that will elevate your brand and grow your business.

Grow Your List With These Email Subscriber Ideas

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Filed Under: Entrepreneur Life, Marketing for Professional Organizers

Now that you have taken the first, essential steps to growing your email list, you’ll want to keep them coming back for more and continue to gain new subscribers with some awesome free content.

And, one of the best ways to get new subscribers for your growing email list is to create and offer valuable materials to provide in exchange for the right to get into their inbox.

By offering your readers or potential subscribers valuable information for free, you will be establishing trust and authority in your niche so when the time comes to sell a product or service, your subscribers will be on board with what you are offering because they have already had a sampling f the high-quality things you have to offer.

So let’s get started today by first looking at five different kinds of freebies that you can create for your subscribers:

  1. Checklists
  2. Planners
  3. Quick-guides
  4. Short video tutorials
  5. Free email training series

Now let’s look at what types of free content might be best suited for your business or brand.

1. Product-based business freebies

If you offer a product or products through your business, certain types of content are best suited to your brand and will be most useful for your customers. The best free content you can offer your customers as a products-based business are:

  • Quick- guides – Quick -guides can be used to talk about how you would use your product to solve different types of problems that your subscribers might have.
  • Short video tutorials – Again, you can offer your customers free video tutorials to show your product in action. If customers like what they see, they will be excited to buy from you.
  • How –to’s – Downloadable how-to’s in the form of a checklist on how to solve a specific problem or achieve a goal that features your product as one of the essential steps that save time, energy, and or money along the way is an excellent piece of free content to offer.

2. Service-Based Business Freebies

If you own a service-based business, you will want to focus on giving your potential customers free snippets that offer them ”quick wins” in the niche that you are working.

  • Checklists and planners – Say, for example, you run an organizing business, like me. You may be offering your organizing service or be offering a planner or downloadable home management binder for sale. You could provide a single room or routine organizing checklist as a freebie so your readers can see the value and expertise you offer.
  • Free email training series – you can also offer a meatier freebie in the form of a free e-course designed to further give great value for free to your readers. The more you share freely of your knowledge, the more people will trust that you are confident you have much more to teach them in the services and products you are offering.

Of course, you can and should mix and match these kinds of freebies up as offers in your business, depending on what your subscribers respond to, whether you have a  product or service based.

Grow your list fast with these email subscriber freebie ideas! Helena Alkhas | Online Training And Marketing For Pro Organizers

Finally, you will want to make a plan for creating and implementing the sharing of this free content.

Once you have decided what kind of free content you want to create, you will want to approach it in a three-step process similar to this.

1. Plan and Design With The End Result In Mind

When you are planning and designing your free content, make sure you start with the end goal in mind. Think about where you would like this free content to lead your subscribers. What are they interested in most that is related to a product you are charging for?

This way, when you ask them to purchase a product or service from you will know it is at least it is close to something they would need and want because they accepted a free offer that was very similar.

2. Share and Promote

Once your freebie is designed, you will want to share and promote it. You can add your freebie as a header email grab for people to leave their email in exchange for free download or link.

Place this above the fold on your website for the most significant impact.

You can also send out your freebie to your current email list. You will also want to promote your freebie offer on social media.

3. Follow Up

In the first two posts where we talked about email lists for your business, we wrote a lot about consistency and its popping up again here. Once people have given you their email in exchange for free content, you need to do something with those emails.

This is a simple way to use the new emails you have to convert subscribers to customers. Create a segmented list in your email marketing service like convert kit. (affiliate link)

Send out an email asking people how they like d the free content and did they have any questions. Then offer them your product or service that you are selling that is related to the free offer they accepted.

Grow your list fast with these email subscriber freebie ideas! Helena Alkhas | Online Training And Marketing For Pro Organizers

4. Conclusion

Providing free content in the form of ebooks, checklists, planners, video training, and more is a great way to build trust and confidence between you and your current and potential subscribers.

When people buy products or services, they buy from people they know, like, and trust.

By sharing content that is both valuable and free, you will be well on your way to achieving all three.

Shop organizing products on this post

Why You Need An Email List For Your Business

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Filed Under: Entrepreneur Life, Marketing for Professional Organizers

Why you need an email list to grow your business and your brand.

If you have been thinking about starting a business or are trying to grow your current business, you may be wondering why you need an email list for your business. For starters, an engaged email list is the fastest way to grow your business.

An email list converts more readers into customers than social media convert followers into customers.

And while social media is a great tool to increase your brand awareness and make a stronger connection with existing customers, an email list still comes out on top when it comes to attracting new customers.

Let’s look at why every business owner needs an email list, what makes a good email list, as well as some of the things that you should do to get started growing yours.

1. Benefits of an email list:

  1. One of the most significant benefits of creating and growing an email list for your business is that you are creating a list of potential customers that belongs to you, unlike the followers you gain on social media. Imagine if tomorrow you woke up and Facebook was gone.  Or if your Facebook page or Instagram account were hacked just like mine. How many hours did you spend growing your page only to have it disappear and lose all of those potential customers? Too many to count, I am sure. When you have your email list, this is not an issue.
  2. An email list allows you to speak directly and specifically to your readers. Each time you publish a post, put out a new video, create a new freebie, or launch a new product, you will have a list of eager readers to receive your news.
  3. You can segment your email list by using tags, offering customized topics of interest and personalize your message to your readers. By focusing the content that you put out to your email list, you grow your connection to your readers and build trust. People buy from those they know, like and trust. An engaged email list converts to more sales than ads or shop posts on social media put together.

2. What makes a great email list

When you first get started growing your email list, your head may be spinning with all of the things you want to accomplish with it.

In the beginning, you should focus on the things that make a great email list. In other words, focus on the parts of an email list that will turn readers into customers, and content into conversions.

Here are the major players when it comes to what makes a great email list.

  1. Engagement – When we talk about engagement and email lists we are referring to an email list that opens your emails, clicks on your links, and as the magnum opus, buys the product or service you are selling. We also want to keep track of which emails get more or less engagement and apply what we learn to future campaigns.
  2. Conversion – Our email list serves our businesses by giving us a captive audience who is interested in what we are saying and what we are selling. The best email campaigns turn interested readers into customers. We can increase the conversion of our email list by creating content that creates trust with our customers and shows them that we are creating products and services based on what their problems are.
  3. Consistency – An email list also serves our business by putting our brand and our brand’s message in front of the readers of our email list on a weekly (or more) basis. When we consistently keep in touch with our readers, show them a consistent brand message, and continually develop products and services based on their feedback, we are creating a long-term relationship.

3. The 3 first things you should do to start growing your list

  • Be sure you have an opt-in at the top of your website. Don’t be shy about this. Some sites will overshare before they ever even show you where to sign up. Make sure your subscription area is right there, and readers can’t miss it. Other important spots are your sidebar and the area right below the blog post.
  • Offer opt-ins or freebies for subscribers. Offering freebies to readers is a great way to provide your knowledge in exchange for an email address. If you have different categories on your website for your business, create an opt-in for each of them.
  • Segment your list. If you use email marketing software like convertkit, you can create different groups or segments of subscribers. This allows you to send very personalized messages to your readers. The more personally you connect with your audience, the more your emails will convert into sales.

The Next Step

Next week we will be talking about what to do with your email list once you start to gain subscribers. With a few simple implementations, you will begin to see your email list, and your sales, grow.