When you’re a small-business owner, you’re likely doing all you can to manage your schedule, stay on top of your to-do list and handle other vital tasks. Especially if you have a small team or a limited budget, you may be trying to tackle all these different tasks at once, wearing as many hats as you can to ensure your business has what it needs to be successful.
But one person simply doesn’t have the time to do everything a thriving business requires, which is why leveraging technology in the right ways can greatly improve the day-to-day operations of your business as well as your own peace of mind. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss eight ways small-business owners can better leverage tech to manage their busy lives and schedules and get better control of their time.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. To Take Back Your Personal Time
Planning is everything if you want to be productive with work and have a harmonious home life. When you plan the week ahead on a Sunday, and plan the following day every night before, your time goes by much more smoothly and, most importantly, it’s spent on what matters. I use Google Calendar to block time for my work and personal life and even color-code the hours to clearly see what they are assigned to. I also block off certain hours in the evening when I spend quality time with my family, whereas I used to agree to meetings at any hour. This would result in my being overworked and less present for my family. Now to save myself from myself, when scheduling a meeting, I simply ask others to choose a time from my Calendly link, which has my personal time blocked off as not even an option. – David Henzel, TaskDrive
2. To Organize Priorities
Leaders and upper management can use cloud-shared calendars as well as task lists to organize priorities. Especially when working remote, it can become easy for individuals to focus on different projects and fail to align. A cloud server with task lists that people can update every week can ensure that the team stays on track and you can meet important deadlines. My team uses these servers and has weekly meetings via Zoom, which also helps with onboarding new managers. – Duran Inci, Optimum7
3. To Focus On One Task Without Distraction
Every successful business leader can use tech to automate and streamline their workloads. But what makes the best leaders stand out? It’s their ability to think and communicate clearly, and that can only happen when they aren’t distracted by everything around them. That’s why I’m such a big fan of the Freewrite Traveler. It’s a simple, distraction-free writing tool that I personally use to draft everything from emails to newsletters to social media posts and other content for my business. Why? Because it allows me to focus on just one thing at a time: writing. For me, writing is one of the ways that I do my best thinking because it helps me clarify what’s in my head and makes it concrete so I can share it with my team or potential customers. This tech gadget is worthwhile in our digital age. – Nathalie Lussier, AccessAlly
4. To Set Goals And Give Yourself Direction
An important application of technology for business owners is using goal-setting software to give direction to their personal and business lives. These software provide a convenient platform for defining, organizing and prioritizing goals. This helps set, track and achieve business goals (like sales and growth) and personal goals (like health and wellness). Some key features of a good goals management software include goal-setting templates, progress tracking, data analysis and collaboration tools. It should also integrate with project management systems to help create plans, monitor progress and measure the results of the teams. Above all, an effective goals management software will support planning for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals. – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz
5. To Remind You Of Deadlines
Set alarms. Give yourself deadlines for completing specific tasks or ending meetings throughout the day. This will ensure that you don’t end up overthinking simple problems or turning quick conversations into multi-hour discussions. An alarm gives you a firm reminder that you need to wrap up soon and move onto the next thing so that you aren’t overwhelmed when the day ends and your task list is only halfway done. Sticking to a schedule allows you to predetermine the amount of time and energy you’ll invest in a particular project so that you can better manage your time and prioritize the highest-impact activities. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
6. To Automate As Much As Possible
Using tech to automate as much of your day as possible is key for small-business owners trying to juggle all their responsibilities. If there’s a task you do regularly, like creating and sending out employee schedules, posting on social media or emailing appointment reminders to customers, look for software that allows you to automate or batch these tasks—it’s out there. Business automation software could save you hours a week. For small teams or solopreneurs, it opens up incredible opportunities to focus on growing the business, improving customer service or simply reclaiming your free time! – Diana Goodwin, MarketBox
7. To Better Manage Customer Interactions
Customer relationship management is integral to every business, and tech tools can help small-business owners manage productively. In most cases, small-business owners can be overwhelmed by the number of applications and platforms they have to handle regarding customer interactions (e.g., email, phone, live chats, social media interactions, apps, website contact forms and more). With customer management platforms like Genesys, all these varied interactions can happen from a single point of contact, saving time and resources. Additionally, companies can save on operation costs, improve customer service, maintain data flow and streamline processes that help companies improve their profitability. – Brian David Crane, Spread Great Ideas
8. To Optimize Your Meetings
When you’re a small-business owner, it’s important to make the most of your time, and one way to do that is to leverage technology to organize and streamline your tasks. One of the best tools out there is Otter.ai. It’s a voice recognition and transcription service that helps you capture, organize and search your meetings, interviews and conversations. It can save you time by transcribing and organizing your audio into text so you can quickly search for important topics and quotes for later use. With Otter, you can also access powerful analytics to see how conversations and meetings move forward, giving you valuable insights into how to optimize business strategies. So, if you want to be a more organized and productive business owner, look into tools like this one. – Abhijeet Kaldate, Astra WordPress Theme