Others find that their focus is pulled in other directions. Laundry needs to get done, they don’t want to miss Oprah, they spend an hour talking with the neighbor who was outside walking the dog… Next thing they know, the day is almost over and little work was done to grow their business or assist their clients to the best of their ability.

If you have difficulty with time management, chunk your day. Schedule your day so you complete what is needed. If you need to spend time following up with new business leads, schedule it on your calendar for an hour chunk. Need to complete a project for one of your clients? Add a 90 minute chunk to your calendar. This works for fitting in workouts and other personal time as well as business items. If it’s scheduled on a calendar, most people will commit to doing that activity at the scheduled time.

Commit to focusing on the tasks you schedule and not letting phone calls, emails, or anything else interrupt you. Chances are you will find yourself much more productive, you will have more to show for your workday, and you will have more free time.

What are other time management tricks you use in your day?

• Computer with high speed internet

• MS Office software

• Printer

• Fax capabilities (either e-fax capability or a physical fax machine will do)

• Unlimited long distance calling, preferably from a dedicated home phone line

• Hands-free devise for your phone to make it easy to talk and type

• Anti virus program for your computer

• A backup storage system for electronic files (external hard drive, or my favorite – an automatic backup program like mozy.com, ibackup.com, or carbonite.com)

• A quiet and comfortable place to work

Anything else will depend on the services you are offering and the clients you will be assisting. The basics listed above should be enough to get you started.

We’ve heard good feedback about freebinar.com, yugma.com, and of course, gotomeeting.com. What are your favorite services to use?

1.     The forms are easy to create

2.     They look professional and have themes and question types you can use

3.     The results get automatically put into a spreadsheet for you

4.     You can easily create charts and graphs with the data collected

5.     It’s part of the Google Docs offerings, so if you already use Google Docs, the forms are a natural progression

Try it for yourself: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/forms/

If you are currently less productive than you’d like to be, it can affect you in a variety of ways – lost opportunities, frustration, overwhelm, and embarrassment, just to name a few. Most importantly it can keep you from spending time with family and friends and result in significant lost revenue.

There is a FR*EE live telesummit September 20-24 where 5 experts will all be sharing their areas of expertise to help you be more productive immediately.

DATES: September 20-24, 2010

TIME: 1:00-2:00pm Pacific / 4:00-5:00pm Eastern

WHERE: From the comfort of your home or office

Register Now …

www.productivebusinessowner.com

On these calls, you will learn real tips and solutions including:

• How to FINALLY make your email work for you – no more out of control inboxes
• What free or cheap programs can help you go paperless and run a more effective business
• Specific ways working with a virtual assistant has made a very successful business owner even more productive and successful
• How to master your energy throughout the day with a couple simple daily exercises
• How to easily delegate work to others and get the results you want

Plus, all speakers are giving away extra bonuses to help you be more productive immediately.

If you want different results in your business and life, you have to take different action! Without a doubt, being more productive will dramatically affect the type of opportunities you attract and how successful you can be in business and in life, and this telesummit will help you get there.

Go to this link right now to learn more and register before all the spots on the bridge lines are taken.

www.productivebusinessowner.com

   Poof – and it’s done

Today, having a web presence is important. Even if a potential client meets you at a networking event or hears about you through a referral, chances are they will want to visit your website before deciding to work with you. You are a business owner and need a professional business presence.

So what are easy, cost effective options for building a website? There are many, but let’s look at two.

WordPress allows you to build a website with little to no HTML knowledge. There are templates you can choose – some free, some for a fee – and you can make the websites as fancy or basic as you want. The backend gives you a lot of website statistics (how many visitors per day, who has linked to your site, etc.). 

Yola is a template site and unlike the ones that usually give templates a bad name, Yola is professional looking and easy to use. You can choose the look and feel that you want, and the can just cut and paste text into the website. The backend looks like Word, and you can easily add photos, maps, columns, and just about anything else you want.  The basic Yola package is free and you can purchase a domain name through them if you don’t already have one.

How did you build your website and what do you recommend to VAs who don’t have one yet?

http://www.yousendit.com

http://www.mailbigfile.com 

The recipient is emailed a link where they can download the file. If you are sending sensitive data, it is worth upgrading to a pay account for encrypted services.

 Think for a minute about what would happen if you had to be without your computer or physical work space without warning. Do you feel panic rising to the surface? Are you worried how you will be able to assist your clients? There are many free and easy programs that will help you do that.

 Here’s a quick and easy checklist of the absolute basics you should have available to you virtually.

• Email. If you rely on Outlook, look into how you can access your email from a web-based portal. If you don’t know, contact the company that hosts your email/website and ask them.
• Contacts. Not many people can remember phone numbers of family members without the help of a cell phone. I’m sure having the email and phone info of clients and business contacts will not be at top of mind either. Be sure you have your contact database available to you online or through an external storage device.
• Calendar.  If you don’t have a way to access your computer through your phone or online, sign up with Google calendar. It’s free and it syncs with Outlook, iCal, etc., and reads easily on iPhones and Blackberries.
• Documents. I’ve heard stories of people losing thousands of dollars in business because they couldn’t access documents customers and clients need, or worse yet, they lost the files all together.  A simple online document storage area (like Dropbox.com, Box.net or Google docs) allows you to access them from anywhere. For complete protection, use an online backup system for your computer so every single file from your computer gets backed up regularly and can be accessed online. Check out mozy.com or ibackup.com for low-cost options.
• Bookmarked websites. If you rely on certain websites everyday and their domain names are not easy to remember, have that information available to you someway other than clicking on your bookmarks tab. I had to ask one of my VAs to send the link to a website that I use on a regular basis. Could I have found it without her help? Probably, but it was much faster with her help.

I hope this quick checklist will help you think of other areas of your life and business that should be made accessible to you at anytime and from anywhere. As I was just reminded, computers don’t always give us warning that they are going to call it quits.

If you are not sure the best online programs to use, do some research or ask others, but be sure you take action to be as prepared as possible for your business and your clients. And recommend that your clients have the same safeguards in place.