Every business, big or small, needs processes. You can't manage the day-to-day workings of any business without them.

You may think you don't have processes in your small business but you do. We all follow certain steps when we carry out administrative tasks even if we don't realise it. Just because those procedures aren't written down doesn't mean they're not there.

If you don't have any easily identifiable processes in your business then you are almost certainly not working as efficiently as you could be.

Here are 4 key reasons why your small business needs to have processes in place.

Sick of losing your to-do list? Fed up with going from meeting to meeting with no break? Never sure if you’re working on the latest version of a file?
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There are many ways to make running your small business easier. This month’s blog looks at five areas where online tools can help to make your business more efficient and increase productivity.

OK, it’s not the sexiest headline in the world but stick with me. If you run a business, even a small one where you’re the only person in it, you need to be using templates. If you’re not you’re almost certainly wasting huge amounts of time and energy every time you onboard a new client or send out quotes or invoices, not to mention creating all the other documents that businesses need on a regular basis.

Creating templates is a key thing that I undertake for lots of my clients and it benefits them hugely.

​Here’s why…

April is stress awareness month. With most of us having just lived through the most stressful 12 months of our lives I imagine we’re all feeling the strain right now. As a VA my professional purpose is to reduce stress for my clients by taking on a myriad of tasks so that their day-to-day lives are easier. It’s not possible for everyone to hire a VA though so this month I’m sharing my main tips on how to reduce stress whether you’re a small business owner, corporate CEO or a swamped employee.

“I must get more organised next year.” Needing to get more organised is a common theme among many small business owners and never more so than when we’re heading into a new year. The good intentions and resolutions that we make in January are the perfect context to start putting those systems and processes in place to make our businesses run more smoothly and efficiently. And there’s no better place to begin than your inbox.

It’s the first thing we look at in the morning and most of us dip in and out of our inbox throughout the day. An overfull, disorganised inbox can create feelings of overwhelm more quickly than almost any other area of a small business and the time wasted trying to find past emails is immense – you can waste up to half an hour each day re-reading old emails while trying to find the one you’re looking for.
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Luckily there are some very simple, quick fixes that can help you to break your old email habits and create a beautiful, streamlined inbox (and get you back all that lost time).

For small business owners the art of juggling is one we have to learn early on. We start off being CEO, Finance Director, Administrator, Customer Service, Marketing department – every time something new gets thrown at us we add it to the act, find the time, and keep on going. Since lockdown started many of us have had to deal with extra challenges, whether that has been in the shape of homeschooling, moving a face-to-face business online, or both.
 
But there comes a point for all of us when it gets too much and we can’t keep everything going. For me, it all fell apart last week – I was trying to keep too many balls in the air and ended up dropping all of them.
 
At first I felt awful – I’m a professional multi-tasker, how had I let this happen? Well, it’s simple really, I’d forgotten the golden rule - planning. I had become so tangled up in what I had to do that I hadn’t stopped to think about how to go about doing it.
 
So I dusted off my trusty VA rulebook and created a helpful infographic for all of us who are struggling with the juggling act right now.

April is stress awareness month, very apt given the stressful situation we all find ourselves in at the moment. Our generation has never had to deal with anything like this and every day I see posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram from people trying to make sense of it.
With this in mind I’ve put together a cheeky infographic aimed at helping those people who are finding working from home and the increased juggling of tasks is raising the blood pressure more than they would like. I’m not an expert but I am someone accustomed to working remotely and who spins lots of different plates for a living and all these things have helped me at one time or another.

We are ten days into a brand new year and decade, and resolutions are being made and broken left, right and centre. I’ve heard many friends and colleagues over the years resolve to be more organised in the new year, having come out of the Christmas madness more than a little dishevelled. But if you’re not a naturally organised person this is one resolution it can be difficult to stick to. Did you to know that it takes around two months to break old habits and form new ones? No wonder it’s tricky!
To give you a hand I’m sharing my 5 top tips for getting yourself organised.
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