Streamlining Business Operations With Tools

Tonya D. Harrison 0:00

Running the day-to-day business operations of your business can be exhausting , but it doesn't have to be , and it doesn't require a bunch of expensive tools that you won't use and it doesn't require all of your time . In today's episode , I am going to share with you the tools that I use and love and how you can implement them into your business to start running your business with more ease . Welcome to the Operations Toolbox Podcast . I'm your host , Tonya D Harrison . Let's create version 2.0 of your business , and this is the version that is called Growth Without Burnout . So let's talk about these tools .

Tonya D. Harrison 0:48

When I first started out in my business , I thought that I had to have every software under the sun . I was listening to all of these system gurus telling me that I needed all of these different systems in order to run my business . Well , after wasting time trying a bunch of different platforms and realizing that I wasn't really saving time and I wasn't getting what I needed and I was still feeling like a hamster on a wheel I realized that something has to change . I just cannot continue to waste all of this valuable time and energy that I could not get back , and , besides that , I love technology . So for me , it created even a bigger issue because I would go down these rabbit holes with all of these different platforms and just trying them out and learning them because , again , I love technology . The truth of the matter is they were not helping me in my business . It was just me doing something that I like to do that did not contribute to the growth of my business , which is a problem . So finally , I was like I'm spending my wills , I'm wasting all of this time . Go back to the basics . I basically went back to the beginning basics and I apply some of the things that I learned from my corporate life in my business because , for some reason , I thought they were extremely different in the beginning and I realized it's like no . So you'll realize that a lot of the techniques I use , I have modified them from corporate , and this is one of them . So if you are trying different tools or you have tools in your business that you are not using because I know this is true I've had people that have reached out to me and say I have , you know , a honey boats or dubsodo or whatever this tool is and I'm really not using it in my business . If that is you , or you have shied away from technology within your business because you just don't want to go down that rabbit hole , but you know you need some things . Then I want you to keep listening as I share with you some of the technology that I use in my business and why I use it within my business .

Tonya D. Harrison 3:40

Let's go ahead and get started . First things first . We need to take a step back and we need to do a quick assessment , and I'm not talking about the long drawn out assessment . I really want you , as the CEO of your business , to think about a couple of things . The first thing I want you to ask yourself is what do you need to know in order to make decisions ?

Tonya D. Harrison 4:10

Remember , our biggest responsibility as CEO of our business is to make decisions , to grow or to take our business to the next level . What is it that you need to know ? Because , once you understand what it is that you need to know , that is going to help you determine what tools you need to run your day to day operations . So think about it . What do you need to know in order to make decisions ? An example could be and there's many things you need to know , but an example could be you may need to know how many visitors come to your website . You may need to know how many convert . You may need to know where your team is with a process or with a project . Think about it . What do you need to know in order to make the best decisions within your business ? If we're talking about goals , you need to know where you are in relation to that goal , so you know if you're on track or not . If you have a strategy in place , how do you know if that strategy is working ? So I just want you to take a step back , think about your business and think about what are the things that you need to know in order to make decisions .

Tonya D. Harrison 5:32

The second thing I want you to do is think about what your team needs . If you have a team , if you don't have a team yet , keep listening , because you still want to know this at some point . So what does your team need from a day to day perspective ? If you have a marketing assistant , I'm not talking about the actual tools that they need to post on social media and things like that . I'm talking about day to day operational tools . They need to be able to communicate . They need to be able to indicate where they are on a project . So those are some of the things that they're going to need to know , regardless of the position they're in . The third thing is think about what can make your business flow easier . You look across your business and there may be some things that you're like , oh my gosh , this really grinds me . It causes an issue every time or I feel that this could be better .

Tonya D. Harrison 6:40

I'll give you an example of something that I used to do and I'm like things have got to change . I really like planners . At the first of the year , I'm buying all of these planners . Anytime I go to Marshalls or TJ Maxx or anything , and you know , at the front they have all of these little cute planners and things like that . I would always buy them . So I had a bunch of planners and what I would do is I would write my ideas and my to-do list and everything in a planner , but there was no rhyme or reason to it . It wasn't like I had the planner labeled and this is for ideas and this is for to-do lists and all of that . Basically , what would happen is whatever planner was next to me was the one that I would start writing it . So what that means is I had a bunch of planners with a bunch of information . There was no centralized place with all of my stuff , which presented a problem because I lost track of ideas . I didn't keep up with what it was that I was supposed to do . All of these things caused a problem . So I knew that if I had a centralized place to house all of this , then my business would flow easier .

Tonya D. Harrison 7:58

Those are the kind of things that I want you to think about , and it doesn't have to be your planner . It could be anything within your business , within your day-to-day operations . It could be something as simple as you know what . I realized that I don't know what's coming in my business and what's going out . I realized that things are coming out of my account and I'm not tracking it . I realized I got receipts all over the place . It can be all of these different things that you really think about and you're like there has to be an easier way . You may not know what that way is in the beginning , but you know enough to know that there has to be a better way . That is going to start you on your journey of looking for the right tools within your business

Business Tools and Implementation Strategies

Tonya D. Harrison 8:52

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Tonya D. Harrison 8:52

Now I want to share with you some of my tools that I use within my day-to-day operations , and I also want to share with you why I pick this specific type of tool . Not the actual tool itself , not the actual name of it . Don't get stuck on the actual vendor that I use or the name of the tool . I want you to really think about the type of tool that I use and the reason I use it , the reason why I implemented this specific tool in my business , and that is going to help you to be able to see how you can implement a tool within your business , even if you need to implement this tool in your business to help you run your day-to-day .

Tonya D. Harrison 9:42

The very first tool I had was a project management software . Now , at the time I implemented a project management software , I did not have an assistant . It was me . I still knew I needed it . Remember the example that I gave you , where I had all of these planners with all of these to-do lists and all of these ideas and all of this stuff all over the place . This is one of the reasons why I knew I had to have a project management software . Now I have a place , a centralized place , where I have my to-do lists , I have my ideas , I have my strategy for my content . My virtual assistant and I communicate back and forth . I know where she is on a project without having to pick up the phone or send her an email , because I can go right in the project management software and see that . So I use it for all of these things . I also use it to manage my client projects . There are some projects that I have that are longer term engagements and I use it to manage that . I also use it to share with them where I am within a project , so it's like a project update . It's a part of my report . These are just some of the ways that I use my project management software , but it started because I needed to be able to keep track of my to-do list . I needed to be able to keep track of my ideas that I hadn't implemented yet . That's where it started . Today , the tool that I use , the name is ClickUp . I have used Trello , asana , basecamp , I've used a couple and I landed on ClickUp because it best soups my needs .

Tonya D. Harrison 11:49

So , as I'm telling you these different platforms , one of the things that I want you to really think about before you decide , beyond the fact that you want a project management software , but now which one I want ? You definitely want to do a needs assessment . What are the things that you need and what features do you need it to have ? And you'll see that there's a lot of similarities , but there are some differences that could potentially make a difference in what you decide . Alright , so do your needs assessment . Why do you need it ? Is it just for you ? Is it for you and the team ? Do you want to be able to share things with your client ? Just kind of let the juices flow and go out and compare different tools and look at what some of the features are . Are you going to realistically use some of the features ? Do you need some of them ? I caution you from getting in a tool that's too robust , because it could be confusing and you may not use it , and these tools only work if you work them . Okay . So that's number one .

Tonya D. Harrison 13:02

The very first one is a project management software . The second one is an accounting software , and I'm saying software because that's what I have , but it could be an Excel spreadsheet . The main thing is do you know what's coming into your business in terms of revenue ? Do you know what's going out in terms of expenses . I like the accounting software because now I can also run reports . That is the biggest benefit to me and it makes my life easier because it makes my accountant's life easier . So anytime her life is easier , my life is easier . Okay so , but I use Wave accounting and this is an accounting software . It allows you to , like I said , you can track your revenue , you can track your expenses , you can categorize your revenue and your expenses . You can do your basic reports . You know your cash flow reports , your profit and loss statements . You can do you know a lot of that stuff in there . So it's a really basic accounting software .

Tonya D. Harrison 14:19

Think about what it is that you need . Think about if you need some integrations . Mine integrates with Stripe . So if somebody makes a Stripe payment , that information comes over . It integrates with my bank account . Think about those type of things . But the main thing is I got this platform initially because I needed to know where my money was at all times , what was coming in , what was going out . The added features , like I said , is the reporting , the fact that I can communicate with my accountant easily via the platform . So kind of think about those things . But at the core , in order for me a CEO to run my business . I didn't know where the money was Right , so it's kind of like show me the money . I need to know what's going on .

Tonya D. Harrison 15:11

The next one this is mainly because I am a service based business , not saying that product based businesses don't use this platform , because some of them do , especially when they sell more expensive products . But it is a CRM Customer Relationship Management software and initially I was using initially I use my project management software to track this information . So initially I was using Trello and I would track my potential clients Right . So this is one of the things that this does . So let's talk about what a CRM does and how it impacts service based businesses . It allows me to keep track of my potential clients , inbound or outbound , but it allows me to keep track of my clients . I know when we first initiated contact what we talked about . I understand the value of each deal . It helps me when I am doing goal setting and planning

Business Tools for Efficiency and Success

Tonya D. Harrison 16:19

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Tonya D. Harrison 16:19

But having a CRM the reason why I went from a project management software to a CRM is because it has additional . I can do invoicing out of there . I can send them an invoice , they can pay and it comes into the software . I can do proposals in there , I can do estimates in there . I can also do if I can set up workflows . So maybe I have this outbound process where I initiate contact on day one and then , based on the response or lack of response , I mean want to have another email go out , you know , in a couple of days . These are things that I can kind of set up . Even if I'm manually doing it , I can set up templates that automatically go out . The other thing that I like is that it tracks if someone opens a message . So if they opened it and read it , I'll know if it was opened or not , because I may have a different flow for people that opened versus people that did not open . So customer relationship management it helps you manage the customers relationship , even for the people that are current clients , right , I am able to manage that , that relationship as well . So it's not just potential clients but it's current clients as well .

Tonya D. Harrison 17:40

The one that I use is client joy and it has all of the features that I talked about and it also has a client portal , which I found to be extremely helpful . A lot of the engagements that I do , like my 90 day ops experience where I'm working directly with CEOs for a couple of months . There are times that they need to upload information and I need to upload and share information with them . I can do this via the client portal . They can go in , they can upload information , they can upload documents . They can have their assistant upload documents . I can upload documents to share with them . It shows them their proposal , their invoices , all of the documents that we've shared . So I don't have to depend on Google Drive Not that that's a problem , because that's where I started , but I just like the client portal better , and it doesn't mean that I don't save things in Google Drive because I do , which we'll get to that . So that is the CRM and that is why I use it .

Tonya D. Harrison 18:50

You may have , you know , gained some ideas about if you need one and how you can use it within your business . I really love templates . Anybody that is in the savvy operations society my membership can tell you . I love templates because I don't like reinventing the wheel and for me , a big part of operations is being efficient . We have templates that we could use and you can set up within your CRM . That is awesome .

Tonya D. Harrison 19:22

The next tool that I use is my metrics tracker . Now my metric tracker is a Google spreadsheet , so everything is in this big platform right . It's a Google spreadsheet that I set up and what I do is there are metrics and KPIs that I track on a weekly basis . I go in there and I track them . All of this I'm thinking about from a CEO perspective and what makes my business flow better . When I'm talking about my metrics tracker , it's kind of like a dashboard if I'm on target , if I'm not on target , if I'm behind , it shows the red , yellow and Green . I know if there are some things I'm like , oh , we really need to pick that up or I'm doing extremely well in a specific area . That's one of the things that the tracker tells , but I can actually see when I am in relation to my goal , where I am in relation to some of the metrics that I decided that I wanted to track within my business . So it's a metrics tracker , is something that I created , is in Google sheets and that's what we use it for , and on a weekly basis , I go in , I review my numbers and it helps me to make decisions for the next week and it helps me to make overall decisions is my strategy working or not , and how things are going All right . So that is another one that I use .

Tonya D. Harrison 20:55

Last tool that I want to talk about is Google Drive , and when we're talking about from a day-to-day operations perspective . A lot of times we are housing information and we want to make sure that we are doing it in an organized way . We want it to be organized because if you're always hunting for documents , where did I store this , where did I put this ? That's a waste of time and that's a waste of energy . I have my Google Drive and it is organized in a way that I can understand it and thankfully , my sister understands it too . But it is organized like , for instance , I have an operations folder and then , within the operations folder , I have a subfolder for my standard operating procedures Right , so all of that is in there . I have a folding for all of my planning . So every year when I go through my planning and even my weekly metrics , all of that is in my planning folder For the year for 2024 , my SWAT analysis everything is stored in a folder .

Tonya D. Harrison 22:05

Having a Google Drive , dropbox , some type of place that you store all of your information , you definitely want to make sure it is secure . You want to make sure that you are able to limit access . So if you do have a team , everyone doesn't need access to everything is underneath the no basis . You can kind of share information as you need it . But for me , I use Google Drive . It is something that I use in my day-to-day because I'm always in there looking for something . I house my , my contracts in there . You know a folder for that . All , all of the stuff , all of the stuff . But you want to make sure that it is like I said , it is organized , and I have that on the list because , as the CEO , that's something that I use , that's something that your team would use , that's something that helps my business flow easier , and I want to give you one bonus tool . So those are the five tools that I wanted to share with you , but I want to give one bonus tool with you , and this is Google Analytics . Google Analytics is a free tool and , if you set it up right , it is a wealth of information . Not only can you see who's coming to your website or hitting different landing pages or how a specific campaign is working because you can do all of that but you can set up goals Conversion goals so you can track conversion of certain things . If you have a freebie that you're using , you could set up a goal and every time somebody signs up for that freebie , you can count it as a conversion , so you can see how you know it is converting . So there are different things that you could do with Google Analytics and for you , my CEOs , that is definitely something that you probably want to look into .

Tonya D. Harrison 23:58

Okay , so , before we wrap up today's episode , I'm gonna take a moment to share those five tools , plus the bonus , with you again . The first one is project management software . I Use click up , but , like I said , there are many . Asana Trello Basecamp, Kanban there are several . Accounting software is number two , so you can use tools like Wave QuickBooks, Xero . Number three is a CRM . This is a customer relationship management software . I use client joy . I have used others like the side-o and honey boats as well . A Metrics tracker is number four .

Tonya D. Harrison 24:48

So making sure that you have a way to track what's going on in your business , to track the performance , and if you want to learn more about that , you can listen to our last episode where I talked about Performance management from the business perspective . But you're gonna have , you need to have something to track and there there are platforms , there is software out there that you can go and you can use as well . I find it easy to use a Google document as my metrics tracker . Number five is Google Drive , so my workspace . That is where I house all of my documents , where I share documents with people . I have folders . There's a system to how I stored things and it works . It saves time and again , it saves energy .

Tonya D. Harrison 25:39

The bonus tool I mentioned is Google Analytics , again a free tool . There are others out there that you could use . I Recommend you get started with this one . But If you want a way to be able to track your traffic , to track to see if your campaigns are working , to track some of your conversions , google Analytics is a great place to get started . So those are the tools that I use in my business to run my day-to-day Operations .

Tonya D. Harrison 26:09

Now do I have other platforms and software in my business ? Absolutely . I have some tools that I use to help me post on social media and things like that . And , of course , like , I have the Canva and Like how do you not ? I have Canva that is one of the ones that I use , but it's not one of the ones that I use to run my day-to-day business operations . It does help me when it comes to my marketing when I'm creating posts and things like that , but definitely, a big one that I use a lot within my business . So that concludes another episode of the operations toolbox . I'm Tonya D Harrison , your host , reminding you that with the right tools and the right mindset , you can build Version 2.0 of your business . Until next time , keep building and growing .