Tag Archives: project management

5 online tools you must have in your online business

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

◊This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.◊

Today I am sharing 5 tools that I absolutely can’t live without as a virtual assistant. These are tools that I use in my business on a daily basis and that I think will be great to be recommended as well, these tools will help you to make your work life so much easier for you to manage.

◊This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.◊

My favorite tools that I recommend you have in your online business!

These are a breakdown of the 5 tools that I will be talking about:

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

5 must have free online tools

LastPass is the online tool you must have in your online business!

I was introduced to this tool when I attended a webinar and was so amazed by this software because as the name suggests, it’s a tool that manages and stores all your passwords.

I have to work on numerous clients’ case sensitive information and I really appreciate the invention of using this tool, because I loved it so much I started to use it in my business.

Now you can use it to store strong passwords for your emails, websites that you visit frequently as well as banking information. Use LastPass to help you create strong passwords, and it automatically lets you log in when you visit a saved site from the LastPass vault.

Asana is the online tool you must have in your online business!

Asana does it best! You can use this platform to schedule a specific task. This can cover the week or for the whole month.

Now how can you use Asana in your business? You can manage your personal projects for the day, the week or month, and it does come in handy when you need to have a reminder to do specific tasks for each hour of the day.

Asana is also useful in creating projects and also allows you to collaborate with team members and track the progress of a client’s work, it’s beneficial to use depending if you use it as a personal reminder to keep track of tasks you want to accomplish or to allow your clients to see the progress of their task, when you are completing it.

I highly recommend it, because I know you are living a busy life and you want tools in place to make your life simpler throughout the day.

I should point out that I just really love seeing the unicorn icon when I complete a task, hope you do too.

Grammarly is the online tool you must have in your online business!

Get your Grammar in check with Grammarly From the moment your computer starts, you want to make sure that Grammarly is in place to help you as a second pair of eyes for when you need to send off those email messages, even when you are creating content for your blog.

The #1 Writing Tool

Now I am not eliminating the fact that you should outsource this task if it’s not a strong point for you, I still get a third opinion from another human being. I do recommend Grammarly because it does check and keep your grammar in place if you are a LadyPreneur on a budget!

Evernote is the online tool you must have in your online business!

You might be wondering what Evernote is and why it will be beneficial to use in your business every day or on a need basis.

Yes, Evernote is a little life savior you can say goodbye to bookmarking when you visit pages in the past and tag pages by search or even label them by notes.

You might be saying how can this come in handy, well back then when you use to bookmark a page, the only way you could search for a page is if you visit that page often or even remember the name!

When using numerous pages per day or even the week, how can you keep track of such pages? This is where Evernote comes in and the beauty is when you do tag and clip a page it stays forever.

Dropbox is the online tool you must have in your online business!

I use Dropbox to save all my clients’ work and information. It’s simple; you can create numerous folders and all Dropbox does is automatically sync and update your clients’ information once you save it in the Dropbox folder on your computer or when you sign into the site.

You will have to create an account with the site in order to save your clients’ information. You can also use Dropbox for even your personal files. This tool will be useful for you because you can, at any time store all your documents, invoices, blog content ideas in Dropbox.

This can also be used to store and back up information on your site if it needs to be saved somewhere. Thought that was hard? Now go through all those information that you have been using for yourself such as files, content, you can even suggest to your clients’ to store their information via this software, and the beauty of it is if you do not need to download such information it can be easily shared via a link.

Now that you have seen my 5 everyday tools that I cannot live without, share in the comments below your must-have tools, and let’s see how these tools can help increase productivity in your business and benefit your clients’ lives.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asana: How to love using & managing a project in seconds!

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

You might be wondering to yourself, what is it and how can it help your business improve productivity? I blogged earlier about scheduling your days, you can check this out HERE

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

managing your project

When scheduling your days, Asana will come in handy, and did I tell you that I love using it and it does help manage my personal task for the week. Asana also sends me reminders when I need to complete a project/task. A little bit more about that later.

Say what now! What is Asana?

Asana is a project based software and, as stated on their website, it keeps track of teamwork, as well as projects that each individual member is assigned to complete.

When you first go on the site, the visuals and how it is laid out is what caught my eyes to use this beautiful tool. Even though it’s beautiful, it’s even more effective than what meets the eye.

When you create your account, you will first get a step by step guide on what you need to do to fill out your business information, such as your company name, your teams information if you have any, as well as uploading files, sharing specific tasks with others via email and access to certain tasks, depending on how your settings are set. You also have the option on how you would prefer to see each task to be completed.

Why you should love Asana too!

Now, why do I love it? First of all, when I log in my dashboard, I have the option of creating my list of tasks for each day of the week. This is where I start first. I add a task and set the date that I want to have it completed. I also have a reminder that can be set for a week notice, to let me know that I have until a week to complete such a task, or I can set this to be a periodic task that will be happening every week or monthly.

You have two options to see your scheduled tasks; the list version, which I prefer, as well as the calendar version. I do love that the layout shows out each list of tasks to be completed, which is under the new task option, you also see the upcoming tasks for the week and later tasks are also shown.

How to make Asana work for you?

Now, for putting this project management tool to work. I know you are busy with your days, so reminders do come in handy when you have to remember a task to be completed.

Each time a new task is added automatically. When it’s set, a reminder is sent to the email provider that you have signed with to remind you to complete a task. You also have the option of delegating such a task to a member of your team.

This can be done by allowing, them access to that task and keeping track of what is being done for such a task. This includes inviting that team member by email for that team member to access the task to be completed, and this is where uploading a file will come in handy.

Status updates anyone?

Team conversations are a benefit because you can post what you need to be done, review what’s been happening with such a task and see for yourself the progress of your task.

You choose what the team member is able to see and what should be done, and this can be in the form of sharing a project with that team member who is assigned to complete that task.

So why not try Asana for yourself? You know you want to because it will make such a huge difference in your business and team members do not physically have to be there for you to see the progress of a task to be completed.

Try it out and share with me how Asana has helped you with managing your task better in the comments below. I look forward to seeing your wins until next time.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a quick way to manage your 24 hours

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

◊This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.◊

So I am a Virtual Assistant and before I was working on a freelancing platform. I was planning on the side to get my business out there and create my website.

How are you managing your 24 hours?

I was doing everything. I was scheduling posts for my social media pages, I was showing up in groups for my ideal clients, and I was even writing my blogs, in addition to also doing clients’ work on a freelancing platform.

OMG, I was heading for a burnout and as a trained Guidance Counsellor who should know better, I knew I should not be doing this because this was going to impact the growth of my business. This was heading towards impacting my clients negatively and them not getting the best services from me.

So I slowed down and with the experience, I learned from some of my clients who were leading busy lives and needed to schedule their time more wisely, I literally stopped and follow suit.

We are each given 24 hours in a day, and how we use it determines if we will be wise with our time or let things we spend most of our time with dictate to us.

Why you MUST invest in a planner or project based platform.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Manage your 24 hours

I strongly recommend that if we are online business owners, that you invest in a cloud planner or project management based software to manage your tasks. No disrespect to those book planners. My favorite is Asana and because it saves tasks automatically.

I also like using Passion planner for my planning as well; it can be used from your computer or be printed if you so desire. I also think if you like to use a physical planner to schedule your days, this comes in handy too. I will talk some more on what I mean by this.

I mentioned earlier that I was trying to do everything myself; this does not eliminate hiring out help, but this blog also helps with managing your time as well on a daily basis.

I started out using sticky notes before I was even aware of an online planner. Each day I would dedicate to doing a single task; it does not have to be the same time, but I will do mine on various times depending on what the day is like. You can time yourself if you don’t mind mentally doing it on your own.

I will show you how to theme your days for the week.

Each day, I schedule a specific task. So let’s say for Monday, I will dedicate 2-4 hours on scheduling my content. This means that I will use a scheduling platform for the day to schedule my tasks for the week, or for the month. You can time yourself using a platform such as Toggl or using your phone or a reminder that you have on your computer.

For Tuesday, I focus on my business. This can entail hiring out for additional help or keeping track of what needs to be done, such as keeping track of my VA, doing my website or it depends on what you need to be done, which will be a focus for your business.

For Wednesday, remember I said in earlier posts that I signed up for every webinar that I could think of; luckily for me, most of them fell on a Wednesday or Thursday, or sometimes on a Saturday. If I had no webinar on those days, I did courses that I thought would benefit my personal growth and my business. I did courses on Udemy and Alison and when I had signed up for these individuals’ webinars, some also offered courses that I did take.

For Friday, I focused on creating my content. This is the time I did research on what my ideal clients were talking about and I saved them in a spreadsheet for future blog posts. I even used Canva for creating images that would be great to go along with my content.

On Saturday, I had another day for a task. Yes, I know this was funny. This was the day that I used to insert new stuff into my scheduling platform. This was the easy part because this did not take much effort on focusing on my tasks for each day. You might not need this day because as each time your progress is achieved, you can tick it off or even add in what needs to be done. You don’t have to wait for Saturday to do this.

I rest on Sunday. You do not necessarily have to set your days specific to what I choose; you can even start on Sunday and choose the days that suit you best to manage your time.

But, remember, as a business owner, you have the same 24 hours as everyone else. Use your time wisely and don’t do everything yourself; there is a difference between being self-employed when you do everything, and being a business owner.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock