Time Management

Made for This

July 21, 2020 by Kristin Cobbs Leave a Comment

Hi! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kristin. I joined the EtterOps team about a year ago. I consider the fact that I found EtterOps to be quite serendipitous.

Although I’m not an entrepreneur myself, I find myself drawn to the entrepreneurial spirit. Growing up, I watched my family run a small business of their own. I spent my summers in the warehouse playing, and you guessed it, I worked.

I counted and packaged inventory, folded letters, stuffed envelopes, and sometimes my mom would let me help her enter invoices. This was all while I was in elementary school, so child labor laws might come into question here!

When I was older, my mom stopped working for the business, but I eventually took on a bigger role while in college. There, I saw firsthand as my father struggled to do everything on his own.

I understand what it’s like to run a small business by yourself. You do a little bit of everything; sales and deals by day, invoices and paperwork on nights and weekends. And as the expression goes, while you are doing a little of everything you are mastering none. In addition to what your business does, you might also be doing your bookkeeping, marketing, updating your website or some other must-dos you may not be strong at. This can be exhausting.

When I interviewed for my position with EtterOps, I was asked if there was a certain task I could do. I said, “Yeah, I can do that.” Then I was asked, and this question sticks in my mind, “But does it exhaust you?”

Wow! I’ve never been asked that question in an interview before. The more I thought about it, the more it sank in. What an excellent question. One that we should ask ourselves for every responsibility we take on. You can do this or that, but does it exhaust you?

The best part of the EtterOps team dynamic is that we all work at recognizing each other’s strengths and we’re assigned the projects that energize us. This has been a great success for our team. It allows us to feel fulfilled in our careers and invigorated by what we do. We enjoy taking tasks off our client’s hands, knowing that they’re exhausted by them.

I can’t help but think of my parents’ business and how much they could have benefited from an EtterOps. How much better off financially and in their personal well-being would they have been if they had had a team to help? I can see now that it was too much for one business owner to take on alone.

You have no idea how excited I am to have found EtterOps, and I’m not exhausted by my tasks. I’m energized knowing I get to help each and every one of you, our clients.

The Remote Workplace and Why it Works for Me

May 9, 2020 by Amber Jillard Leave a Comment

The modern woman wants it all – a career, a family, the domestic duties of homelife. Is that even realistic in a modern world where the pressures for perfection are a just scroll away, portrayed in every fuzzy, filtered Instagram post? Time is the enemy of every woman, who dreams of sitting on the PTA board and in the boardroom. I regret having to make a choice, especially when the choice is between my children and a career.

After college, I worked in the traditional corporate world for a decade; my career was my “baby.” I got married and had three children in short succession. With the birth of my first child, I was grateful for the time to be at home with my son. I had twins shortly after, went back to work, and that’s when life as a working mom got really hectic! I wanted to continue working for the financial security it provided the family and the ability it gave me to sharpen my skills. However, a traditional job outside of the home no longer met my needs.

The desire for work/life balance was the driver of my employment objectives, and some experiences have been better than others. However, as the newest associate at EtterOps, I have finally found that happy balance between parent and professional. It is so refreshing to experience a culture that values client satisfaction as much as personal fulfillment. I settled into my new role as a “virtual” employee long before COVID-19 changed the face of employment around the world.

Gallup recently surveyed employers about their remote work preferences and policies since the COVID-19 outbreak. The recent article, How Coronavirus Will Change the ‘Next Normal’ Workplace, explores the new face of employment, specifically the change from on-site to remote work. More than half of at-home workers say they would prefer to continue working remotely as much as possible once business and school occupancy restrictions are lifted. The fact that many working parents are also now full-time caregivers and homeschoolers shapes opinions about virtual employment.

The bottom line is that opinions are shifting, and businesses are listening. For many employers, this pandemic has led to an enlightening experiment. Both employees and managers have experienced the positive benefits of working from home and say that more remote work options will be available once the quarantine is lifted.

I can relate to that shift in opinion, given my own experience of blending parenting and working from home. With my children in school, my pre-quarantine work schedule was predictable and manageable. But child-rearing is often neither. Now that they’re home, my success now depends on a great deal of flexibility to meet the needs of my clients and my children. I am very fortunate that I work for a family-centered organization that gives me the resources and opportunity to be successful at both.

We have all had a unique experience adapting to a worldwide pandemic; one we may never see again in our lifetime. The impacts of this pandemic could produce long-term change for each of us. Now that I have lived the benefits of remote working, I personally applaud the companies that choose to offer a variety of working options in the future.

It turns out the modern woman CAN have it all.

To view the entire article from Gallup, click here:

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/309620/coronavirus-change-next-normal-workplace.aspx

Can You Bottle Focus?

November 5, 2018 by Todd Etter Leave a Comment

There are many factors that lead to scattered thoughts, some internal and some external.

Some people possess wonderful talents that allow them to see and explore the potential in every thought, idea, and opinion in front of them. There are still others who simply get lost in the land of ideas.

And for small business owners it’s easy to lose focus within the various demands of running all aspects of your business. Often this reveals itself as multitasking.

Multitasking takes its toll on all of us, no matter how well we execute. It constantly shifts our thoughts between tasks. Worse, it often keeps us from contributing our best work.

If you’ve found your focus has suffered for any reason, the best thing you can do is use a planner! Physical or virtual, it doesn’t matter.

I know what you’re thinking, “That’s not how I do things!” I understand. I have a love/hate relationship with planners. I resent that I’m a bound by a schedule. But when I didn’t have a planner, I found that I often underutilized my time. I got sidetracked by calls and emails. But mostly I got caught up in the moment and didn’t write things down. I’ve had to admit lately that I’m more focused when I do write things down and cross them off.

Not using a planner properly is a habit. But it’s one you can break. Here are the three most important things you need to do to break the habit of planner non-use and enter into a more focused work day.

1. Every day, before you start working, look at your planner. And don’t just scan it and move along. Look at the day you’re in. Look at the last couple of days and make sure you got everything done. If you need to, schedule “Planner Time.”

If it helps you, use a physical planner and transcribe the information to a phone or web-based calendar system. Or vice-versa.

All of this will keep you aware of what needs to be done and when. And if you just force yourself to do it each morning, you’ll soon find a new habit has been formed.

2. The second thing to do is to actually schedule time to think. For at least one or two 15-minute sessions each week you should set aside time to study, read, or research whatever it is that distracts you from the tasks at hand. This planned time will help satisfy your natural curiosity, and keep you feeling informed.

For me, this works best as an evening or weekend activity. But some may enjoy it more as a transitional task from ending your work day to your personal time.

My personal suggestion on what to ponder for your first think session: evaluate how you spend your time on a daily basis.

3. Plan when you will make time to review your emails, your phone calls, and your meetings. You can even go so far as to (gasp) turn off your phone! When I am at my desk, I only use my phone as a phone.

Remember my suggested think session above? Review whether you constantly interrupt your tasks with checking your phone for texts or updates. If you field every notification that comes in, evaluate how often it is an immediate and essential task.

With all of that input, it’s no wonder you’re multitasking and putting out so many fires at once.

I don’t know if you can bottle focus, but planners can certainly help you retain it. They’re not full-proof. Planners are for planning, not doing. That’s still up to you.

Wellness is Doing What You Love

August 24, 2018 by The EtterOps Team Leave a Comment

Wellness is a word that is bandied about quite a bit these days. I think we all agree that a healthy body is important, and many of us take the steps to make sure we are eating well or exercising on a semi-regular basis.

But wellness doesn’t encompass only the body. It implies that the mind must be healthy. And to tend to your wellness on both fronts requires a deliberate effort.

Many of the clients we work with have taken a huge leap into gaining balance in their lives. They are small business owners, entrepreneurs, and sole-proprietors. Independence is a large part of how they define themselves and a major step to their overall wellness.

The other major contributor to their wellness is the passion they have for their companies and their work. Doing what you love means working at what energizes you. That energy, that passion, is another crucial factor of going into business for yourself. It’s been said that if you love what you do, then you never work a day in your life. There is some truth in that.

But the reality of running your own small business is that you have to wear many hats. And parents, if you are a micro business or sole-proprietor, running your business from your home, you wear ALL OF THE HATS (and then some). You are every position in a large corporation, from the CEO to the janitor, plus the caregiver to your children. It’s too much.

Your wellness depends on you to consciously maintain a healthy body and a healthy mind. Work with that, expand that. Outsource those energy-draining tasks, or the tasks that interfere with you doing even more of what you love. Remove from your plate those time-suckers that interfere with you being the face of your business and growing your passion, your business, and your wellness.

The equation is simple:

Figure out what your time is worth.
How much time do you spend doing the tasks that exhaust you, OR how much time would you spend if you had the time?
What would your cost be to outsource that time? Remember, if a task is essential to your client’s business, work it into your pricing.
Put a cap on your monthly outsourcing budget.
Set a timeline for a trial run. Reassess the value of services at the end of that trial, and adjust accordingly.

If outsourcing boosts your energy, and your productivity gains better long-term results for your business, make it an annual or quarterly necessity to reassess your budget, evaluate your time, and catalogue the tasks you’d love to take off of your plate.

Doing what you love feeds your wellness. Cultivating the time to tend those tasks will grow your business, your body, and your mind.