administration

What Do You Do With All Your Emails?

MOMENTUM Business Support PA
A laptop displaying an email inbox, lying on a bed in the dark

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Let’s set the scene:

You’ve set up your business and it’s starting to grow. It feels amazing that all your hard work and effort is paying off. Enquiries are coming in, your network and contacts are growing and everything is moving in an upwards direction … including your emails!

You try your best to deal with them all and sift through the junk to get to the most important ones on time, but somehow there’s still a couple that slip through the net. You really want to send a quick ‘hi’ and ‘thank you’ to the person you met at the event yesterday, and acknowledge the holding reply you have from the person you sent a proposal to last week. You also want to read through those subscription emails, take a look at your supplier’s latest offers and send a quick note to confirm a meeting next week. But of course, none of those are as important as the new orders, enquiries and existing customer queries that need resolving. So they get left to the way side.

The problem is, you don’t have time to do them today as you need to get the actual work done and you can’t catch up on them this evening either because you have a family engagement. This weekend is also out due to other (non-work related) commitments.

So, what do you do with all your emails?

What if you could just focus on the significant few emails and keep on top of your responses and junk? With our help you can. Our Virtual PA and Admin services can help you as you grow enabling you to keep your focus on what brings in the money and pass your time consuming (non-profit making) tasks to us! Get in touch today. Give us a call 01903 688789, or send us an email to makeithappen@mbsmih.com – We look forward to hearing from you.

How To Keep On Top Of Your Admin

MOMENTUM Business Support Administration
A scrunched up piece of blue paper on a notebook with a drawn light bulb on it

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We haven’t come across many small business owners that enjoy doing the day to day admin required to keep their business running, in-fact most of the owners we speak to frequently feel overwhelmed with the amount that needs to be kept on top of. We understand how difficult it can be to take care of everything yourself, so we thought we’d share some top tips on how you can effectively keep on top of your business administration.

Lists
Starting your day with a list of what you want to achieve will make you much more productive, and ensure you don’t spend half of your day thinking “Right, what’s next?”. A ‘list’ can take many forms, whichever works best for you. You could schedule times for specific tasks into your calendar, type up lists on a calendar ‘to do’ program or any other digital platform, or you might just stick to good old fashioned pen and paper. Whichever you choose, the important thing is to remember to have it ready before you start work – or even better, create tomorrow’s to do list today, allowing you to get straight on with your day.

“People now feel time accelerating. Lists allow them to feel some sense of accomplishment.” – David Viscott

Prioritise
You can’t just pick the best bits of your list, or the easy tasks or the ‘quick wins’. You need to think strategically about which tasks you should prioritise for the benefit of your business. Know what your goals (and ultimately your strategy) are and ensure that you progress through your daily admin duties with this in mind. Making sure the margins are perfectly symmetrical on your Invoice is considerably less important than actually sending the Invoice out!

“You need to prioritise. If you can’t get to everything or do everything, that’s okay.” – Julie Chen

Make The Time
Whether you choose to use your calendar for creating your list of tasks or not, the important thing to do is ensure that you make time every day/week/month to get your admin done. We all use a diary or calendar of some sort to organise ourselves on a daily basis, but it doesn’t just have to be for meetings. Block out realistic slots of time to get your admin done – and make sure you stick to them.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

Stop Offering
Do you always make the notes in meetings, do the research for shared industry reports or gather attendee information at networking events and much more…? Just because you’ve taken the time to do those things it doesn’t mean you should also be the one to add the admin task of pulling it all together to your list. Learn to say no, or share the load by asking others to help (if it’s a regular task, you could also suggest taking turns for who does it each time). Remember, you are just as busy running your business and dealing with daily administration as everybody else.

“We have to establish time boundaries and learn how to say no.” – Alexandra Stoddard

Delegate
So obvious but still something that just isn’t done by many business owners. “They’ll take too long.”, “They won’t do it right.”, “It’s easier if I do it myself.”, are all very common reasons we hear from business owners about why they choose not to delegate. The truth is, they are often so busy doing it all themselves that the tasks take days (even weeks) to be completed, or are completed on time at the expense of their personal life. It might take a little extra effort initially to delegate a new task, explaining exactly how you’d like it completed etc., but once it’s done, it can be delegated permanently.

“I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.” – James Altucher

Eat That Frog!
If you leave the admin task you dread the most to the bottom of your list there’s a danger that it’ll never get done, or at best will be completed at the last minute when you no longer have a choice. Often, the idea of the task is much worse than actually doing it, and once it’s done, it’s done! Delaying the inevitable will only make you feel stressed and frustrated. Make the time and commit to getting it done, you’ll feel so much better when it is.

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” – Mark Twain

Looking for new and better ways to efficiently take care of your day to day admin is definitely a large part of what we do at MOMENTUM. If you’d like us to support you with your admin or just want to chat through what you currently do, we’re always happy to help. Call us on 01903 688789 or send us an email to makeithappen@mbsmih.com.

You Need A PA – Here’s Why

MOMENTUM Business Support PA
A calendar notebook layed out on a table

A Personal Assistant, or Virtual Assistant (the same thing – just not taking up extra space in your office!) is an invaluable resource for exponentially increasing your productivity.

A bold statement I know, but let me explain.

Let’s take last Monday as an example.

Prelude: The previous week was a fantastic week for business, everyone was back into the swing of things, there were a ton of enquiries and existing customers were focusing on the big plans for 2016. Friday came round crazy fast and before you could say 6 o’clock it was time to head off to get ready to travel to Wales for the weekend – family wedding! The packing was done (well… mostly!), but the Hotel wasn’t confirmed and nor was the suit hire. The car needed refueling and there were no plans for dinner. An absolute stressful nightmare – but it all got resolved with some last minute organising and a slight delay in arriving at the Church on Saturday! The rest of the weekend was brilliant, catching up with family and lots of celebrating. Back home late Sunday night, (check a few emails) and thoughts turn to everything that needs to be done on Monday…

So, last Monday. First things first – create a ‘to do’ list.

# Vet appointment for Archie
# Meet Dave re Website enhancements (+lunch) 10 – 1pm
# Get time booked in with Rachel this week – Thurs?
# Send Quotes – Forum Ltd / Harry D / Exom / Mark / Sarah H
# Chase flyer prints
# Organise team meeting for tomorrow – minutes from previous / actions!! / lunch??
# Dinner out this evening!!!
# Send Invs – Sam / Grover PH
# Emails!!
# Airport parking

By the time the ‘to do’ list was created, there’d been a couple of urgent emails and two phone calls. It’s already 9.15am and time to start thinking about travelling to the meeting with Dave. No real prep done for the meeting – there hasn’t been time! And need to call Dave to see where the meeting is.

10 – 1pm     Meeting and lunch finished with lots of actions to take away regarding content gathering for Website enhancements. Now it’s time to get back to the office and take action on the rest of the ‘to do’ tasks.

1.30pm         First things first, review emails and respond to urgent ones.

2.00pm        Create and send quotes – can’t send Mark’s or Forum’s as need additional information, emails sent to request info.

2.50pm        Call several venues looking for a suitable meeting room for tomorrow, lunch booked (a little more expensive than preferred). Actions from the previous meeting reviewed, several actions require others’ input – have not heard from them so it’s likely they have not been done either. Will select the most urgent and discuss / defer the rest for the following meeting.

(Several calls received in between)

4.30pm        Booked restaurant for this evening, only early tables available as such short notice! Action several urgent emails. Finally make Vet appointment for Archie – this Thursday.

5.10pm        Type up minutes and actions from previous team meeting, ready for tomorrow.

6.00pm        Get ready and head out to dinner.

9.45pm        Finish and send minutes and actions for team meeting tomorrow. Review and reply to a handful of non-urgent emails.

So, by the end of the day the ‘to do’ list looks a little like this ..

# Get time booked in with Rachel this week – Thurs?
# Send Quotes – Forum Ltd / Harry D / Exom / Mark / Sarah H
# Chase flyer prints
# Send Invs – Sam / Grover PH
# Emails!!
# Airport parking

.. with plenty more to add into the mix from today’s activities.

Does this sound familiar? Even a little bit? Long days no-where near as productive as you had hoped. It’s not a bad thing though, busy means business is going well right?

Unfortunately, no – we can all be extremely busy being ‘busy’. There’s a perpetual cycle here, with each day feeding the next with more disorganisation and personal disappointment at the tasks that have not been done. Having a Personal Assistant to delegate your key (but not necessarily highly skilled or bottom line increasing) tasks is a fundamental requirement for any business owner looking to grow their company.

If we go right back to the weekend away, even before the Monday ‘to do’ list was created, there’s a significant number of small daily tasks a PA can support you with, ensuring your personal as well as business plans run smoothly:
# Confirm the Hotel
# Confirm the suit hire
# Book a table for dinner
# Organise meeting venue with Dave
# Action and research majority of content gathering / requirements for website enhancements
# Respond to email enquiries and obtain additional information as required
# Organise venue, lunch and participants for team meeting
# Type up meeting minutes and actions straight after meetings – ensuring they are sent with plenty of time to for everyone to complete the actions
# Book restaurant for evening meal
# Book Vet appointment
# Reply to non-urgent emails and simple enquiries on your behalf

Not to mention the additional tasks on your ‘to do’ list that would have also been completed:

# Get time booked in with Rachel this week – Thurs?
# Chase flyer prints
# Send Invs – Sam / Grover PH
# Airport parking

When it comes to your business, nothing is more valuable than your time. A Personal (Virtual) Assistant will help ensure you stay focussed and on track by taking care of the day to day tasks that take you away from running your business.

If this is you and you’d like to find out more about how a Virtual PA can help you, then please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you. Our Virtual Assistant services are extremely flexible. You can have daily support or make ad-hoc requests as and when the need arises.