Systems and Planning Help Your Business Manage Itself

Last week in my newsletter*, I was talking about how to manage yourself and what process and systems can help you.

Personally, I love the project management system Asana** – it has the right blend of practical and fun, with a visual layout that makes sense to my brain, and the free version is so robust that I only occasionally upgrade to the paid version.

There are other systems too – Click up, Notion, Monday, Trello, heck I even used to use Microsoft Access to track my inventory and materials back in the day (hello, I am an old). 

I have also had clients who manage almost everything in Excel or Google Sheets. This is a good system that works for some folks. 

Building a system for managing your business is an individual process

It can and should be tailored to your needs right now, and your goals for where you want take your business in the future. I always tell my business students that the system that you can and will use is better than having no system at all.

How do you choose the right project management system for you?

Start with a list of your needs and bottlenecks.

Needs

• Custom work

• Trade show prep

• physical product production management

• Self-management

• Social media and email marketing planning and strategizing

• Website redesign

• Vision board

• All of the above

Bottlenecks

• Writing a custom proposal

• Pricing

• Photographing

• Mapping out your marketing strategy

The idea behind making these systems is to take those bottlenecks off of your hands while addressing your core needs. 

What your business system could look like

For instance, if you always struggle with what to say in a custom proposal, it helps you to have a standardized proposal form that you fill in with the custom jewelry details and pricing and then just hit send.

If you struggle to remember what you brought with you for display for each craft show or trade show, this is a good time to make lists and take photos and keep this information somewhere central.

If each product upload to your website has you wanting to gouge your eyes out, turn this into a system that you don’t need to think about as much. Have lists, standardize your photography and photo editing to make this easier. Or better yet, outsource it!

How do you manage your work and yourself? What’s one thing you could do to ease your process?

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**I am not a paid affiliate of Asana, I just really really like it.