My Organized Biz

At Home Biz Notes, I wrote about, Plan an Open House to Generate Interest in Your Business, possibly between the holidays or right after the new year.  What steps do you take to organize one of these?

Decide on a date and time.
What will you emphasize…new services, products, reintroduction of current ones (see list on Home Biz Notes post).
Put up notice in your place of business.
Tuck notices into purchases.
Send out cards/announcements which you can make on the computer.
Possibly plan a program.
Do you need someone to help?
Will you have special decorations?
Whatwill you give as door prizes or hand-outs (keeping them within a …read more

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The challenge – organizing your work so you’re productive when the weather outside lures you away from the keyboard, sewing machine, easel, billing, bookkeeping…or other necessary tasks to keep your business on track.
How can you take advantage of everything?

Get up extra early so that you can get the absolutely necessary work done before breakfast.
Organize your “to do” list so that the priority items are on top.  When those are done, you can play, then get to the not so important items afterward.
Before being lured away from work, make a commitment to stay up later that evening to make sure everything …read more

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As I was glancing through an office supply catalog, I came across an interesting telephone stand for a desk phone.  The telephone sat on the top.  Under this was a space to store the phone book.  There was a pocket on the right side for storing pens, pencils and small note pads.
It seems so compact and handy and would keep everything regarding the phone and messages at your fingertips and organized.  Saves you time searching for the phone book and materials for taking messages.
If you have a phone on the wall, you’ll need to find some other compact method for …read more

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Learning from the suggestions and experiences of others can aid you in your own organizing.  Frequently you’ll find online lists, suggestions, and advice that will prove helpful.  You don’t have to take everything you see and read about, only that which you can adapt to your own business to work more efficiently, productively and profitably.
Check out some of these suggestions for a start:
To-Do Lists: 12 Online Tools for Organizing Your Tasks by Alyssa Gregory
Must-Have Organizing Tools for home and office
Organizing Products
What have you found that’s particularly helpful?
(Image:sxc.hu)

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Do you have favorite colors you use in your orginazional techniques?  Are these colors that you like?  Are they traditional colors for specific topics?  Do you designate categories with colors, groups of people with colors, different topics with colors, specific years with colors, etc.?  Or do you use the same color for everything?  Do certain people in your office/business have their own color?
Here are items that often come into play with color coding in organizing:

Paper clips
File folders
Hanging folders
Sticky notes
Notepaper
Memo sheets
3 x 5 and other file cards
Photocopy paper
In/out files
Filing cabinets

I like to organize with different colors.  Now just to get everything …read more

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“Mary, finish one task before starting another,” a co-worker remarked at my outside-the-home job.  “If we jump around too much we never finish anything.”
Good advice, I realized, as long as we don’t get interrupted.  I do have a habit of going from one task to another without finishing it and that may keep me from being as organized as I could be.  However, sometimes, life or family or another task interferes with my efforts to finish the first.
I am trying to do better, though, in keeping at a task until it’s finished, particularly if it’s not one that  requires several …read more

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How do you organize or keep track of your promotions, so that you don’t forget or delay too long the events that you can utilize?

Some business people like to use the computer calendars that pop up when they open their screen.
Others find programs they where they can develop something like a spread sheet for the year, one which carries over into coming years.
Still others put these occasions into a Blackberry or iPhone type of planning program.  One friend has everything at her fingertips on her iPhone.
You also can utilize a notebook planner or schedule book, something like a  Franklin Planner.
Some …read more

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With so many online and e-mail newsletters available, many of us subscribe to numerous ones, thinking they’ll be interesting to read, as well as furnish information valuable to our research and/or business.  We also may subscribe to print publications.
However, have you begun to be distracted by trying to read all of these items?  Do you spend far too much time even just browsing through them when you should concentrate on being more productive in your business?
“But I’m just doing research, learning more about my business or my product.  I’m not wasting time,” you justify.
Nevertheless, you find yourself spending time reading …read more

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I have a real problem with delegating. I don’t like to ask for help, so I just don’t most of the time. I am really trying to do better at this and realize that I am not a robot and that I can not possibly do everything by myself.
I am learning that for me to be successful in life, whether it’s in business or at home, I need to focus on the things I am good at. For example, I love to cook. This is something I am trying to make more time for and I couldn’t imagine having someone …read more

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This is a post I did over at Declutter It! that I thought you would find useful:
There are so many things in our lives that can steal our time away. I’ve had many days where I have asked “What in the world did I accomplish today?” Some time wasters are completely out of our control and we just have to learn to go with the flow.
Do you find yourself thinking or saying some of these phrases:

“I need more time!”

“Maybe I can survive off of 4 hours of sleep tonight.”

“Oh man, I’m late again. This is getting old!”

“Where did my day …read more

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