Somehow we are in the last week of 2020.

And whether you had a great 2020, really used everything that happened this year to your advantage and made the best of it or if this year was just a total shitstorm and not what you were expecting at all — that's okay. We don't have to judge ourselves on whether or not we accomplished what we wanted to this year. But, we should recognize what happened, what we did, and how we reacted to it so that we can use that as a learning experience to improve the next time life throws us a curveball.

I think that is the biggest lesson that we can take from this year. It's not nothing is your fault. It's all about how you react to things. And what you can make of situations! But it's just okay, that's fine. That happened. Now we're moving on. And how can we really productively move on from this. So definitely, if you're feeling some sort of way, about the end of this year, keep that in mind for yourself. Just don't forget that.

If you started a new business this year, if you pivoted your business, if you're growing your business — I have some strategies and tools that can help you to continue to make the best of your business and to continue to grow and scale your business and allow you to build a business that really makes you feel supported.

And so if you're really looking in 2021 to build a business that makes you feel super, super supported. These are some strategies and some tools that are going to help you to get there:

1. Task and project management.

It is so important to use an online task management tool for your business, and to get in the habit of doing that now, because paper lists are not sustainable!

When you start to grow your business, they're not going to be consistent, you're not going to be able to keep track of everything you need to be doing for clients, and you're not going to be able to keep track of everything that you need to do on the back end of your business to continue growing and improving. Keeping everything on paper is going to lead you to have things slipping through the cracks, and there's going to be issues. So you need to get on a task and project management system. My preference ClickUp, but I don't care what it is. It might be Asana. Trello is another one that a lot of people like, there's Monday, there's so many of them out there, just start using one! Just getting into that habit of, “Okay, this thing just popped into my head, now it needs to go into the task management system”, is key, because just that transition is going to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

A task management system serves as a central place for you to keep all the information in your business. For you to keep the tasks you need to get done, the priorities of those items, and who is responsible for each task. When you start to have a team where multiple team members are collaborating with each other, this becomes super important. Because at any given moment, anybody can pop in and see the status of any task. That's what gets so important. Because then if you need to go on vacation — your team has all of that information right there for you. If one person on your team leaves, that's okay. Because all of that stuff, all the tasks they were responsible for, are living in that task management system. It makes everything so much easier. Like I cannot stress this enough, start using a task management system immediately.

2. Systems, Processes, & Workflows

Systems, processes, and workflows are what are going to allow you to continue to grow and scale your business without even having to hire a team. As a solopreneur, you should be recording everything about how everything is done, so that when you do hire a team, if you do ever hire a team, everything is documented for them right there. This way, they they can do their own onboarding and training.

Additionally, if you're thinking about whether or not you are ready to hire a team, I really encourage you to take a look at what you're doing. Take a look at your new beautiful task management system that has all the things that you need to do every day, every week, and every month. And review.

What of these things that I'm doing consistently can be automated, systematised, or have a process set up around it?

That is going to be so key for you! Because a lot of people outsource for things and activities that can actually be automated. And by automating something, a lot of times, that's going to be cheaper for you. One of my favourite automation pieces that we have in our business is Dubsado. Dubsado basically acts as a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). It allows us to set up these great workflows. So if we have someone come to the website, and they want to book a digital strategy intensive with me — they go to the website, fill out the form on the website, and Dubsado immediately sends them the invoice to pay. As soon as they pay their invoice, they immediately get sent a questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaire is going to give me all the information that I need in order to effectively support them during the digital strategy intensive. As soon as that questionnaire is filled out, they get their link to schedule their call. That link is connected to my calendar. So it sees where I have availability, and they can choose from my availability, and then they get on my calendar. And then I'm able to review their form, I get an automated email that says that they've completed the form. Here you go, here's the link. So now I have booked in as digital strategy intensive, the call is booked, I have all the information I need from them ahead of time, and I didn't do shit, I didn't do anything.

We had this happen a couple of times while I was on vacation, and it was the most amazing thing to see! Because it was so simple. And it didn't require any work from me or from my team. And that is an example of automation, that can really save you a lot of time in your business. So we're not manually creating those invoices, we're not manually sending those questionnaires, or calendar invites. I don't have to pay my team to be doing those things, because we now have a tool that does that for us. So if you are looking for something like that for this year, I definitely recommend looking into Dubsado.

Another system we have set up is templates for everything. We have templates for everything that we're doing with Facebook groups, how we're responding, what Facebook groups are we in with links, what keywords are researching for in those Facebook groups. This all lives in documents in Google Drive, so that nobody has to remember those things or search through Facebook for them. They're all documented right there. And this is one thing that I think a lot of solopreneurs forget to do because it all lives in your brain! But just trying to remember, “Okay, now I need to do this. Now I need to do this. Now I need to do this”, is taking up brain space for you. And then when we hire someone to do those things, when we outsource those things, it's all right there for them in these templates. It doesn't require me walking them through how to do all these things. It's right there. And that's what's so important when you're trying to grow and scale your business.

A lot of people get into a place where they know they need to outsource because they need help, but they don't have time to go and look for someone and then train that person. So they get caught in this like vicious cycle. And they don't they don't know how to get off the frickin merry go round. And so being super conscious about that, and just documenting things as you go is really setting you up for success. Because you might have time right now to be doing all those things, but as you start to get more clients or as you start to get more sales, your time is going to be taken up by those new things. And so even if you're not looking outsource, you're still going to have less time and less brain space to do all the things that you're doing right now.

I think this is something that really allowed us to scale the agency as quickly and as kind of seamlessly as we did, because we did already have a lot of systems and processes set up. So that when I was ready to start hiring a team, I was able to do that super, super quickly and pretty easily.

3. Time Tracking

If you're not tracking your time, you're fooling yourself, because it is impossible to figure out how long something is going to take you if you haven't tracked it.

A perfect example of this is if you're doing a project around the house and you're like, “Okay, great. It'll just take me like 20 minutes”, and then somehow it takes you an hour, right? Because you're not tracking your time.

How do you know how much time you're actually spending on your marketing each week? How do you know how much time you're actually spending on lead generation each week? If you're not tracking your time, and this is something that I run into so much. People are like, “Oh, well, I spend so much time on social media, I spent so much time creating content.” But once they start tracking their time, they're like, “Oh, I'm actually consuming content for a lot of time during the week. But I'm only spending 30 minutes a week creating content”. And a lot of people don't want to do that because it's kind of holding a mirror up to yourself and being like, “Ooh, that's not really what I thought it was.” Tracking your time is going to help you to make really strategic business decisions in the future.

If you're tracking how much time you're spending on clients, that's going to be able to show you, “Okay, I'm making X amount from this client, but they're taking up a lot of my time. And this client over here. Yes, I'm making less from them, but they are taking a fraction of my time and attention and energy on something.”

So that is a great way to figure out do I need to fire that client? Or do I need to raise that client's prices?

Super similarly, if you are shipping products, if you're packaging and shipping your products yourself, and you really want to start outsourcing to a fulfilment centre, you're going to be able to really show this is how much time I'm spending on tracking and fulfilling, right? This is actually that cost of outsourcing that to a fulfilment centre. It's x cost, but it's gonna save me y amount of time.

Again, if you're trying to look at what should I outsource? What do I need to outsource most? If you're tracking your time, you can look at what are the activities that I'm spending the bulk of my time on? And then from those, what can I automate? And what can I outsource? Because those are going to make the biggest impact in your business.

So those are my top 3 tips for CRUSHING it next year. You CAN build a successful business — anybody can. But using these tools, and these strategies are going to help you build a successful business that makes you feel supported. And that is the key to longevity in business.