CLIP's Tips

Effective management (of a business, life, or even a garden) is boring.  I say this for two reasons:

1.  Consistently doing the right things is a major factor in accomplishing your goals.

2.  Most people consider that doing the same things, the same way, day after day is boring.

While I sincerely believe that our work can and should be meaningful, fulfilling, and fun, I have also learned that “boring” routines are imperative for productivity in work and life.  Without routines, important responsibilities are left undone, commitments are broken and stress-free control over our lives is sacrificed.

Routines can take many forms.  You probably already have many routines established in your life.  Think about what you do after you wake up every day.  Most of us have some kind of pattern that we follow everyday after we wake (i.e. stumble into the shower, put on a pot of coffee, feed the dog, etc.).  These kinds of routines often fall into place without much effort on our part because of the external pressure to get them done.  For example, your brain doesn’t function until you get your coffee, or the dog is whines your ears off until you feed her.

Take more effort to think about and establish routines for responsibilities that are easily forgotten or ignored if a reminder is not set in place.  Here is an example of my morning routine at work:

Trying to remember to do all of these items everyday without a written routine, would be impossible.

Having this list in place benefits me in several ways:

• By reviewing all of my inboxes daily, I am able to make better decisions about my priorities. If I did not review them, there might be something sitting there that I didn’t know about that would be important for today.
• By reviewing my Calendar (usually about a week out) I am reminded of any appointments I have for that day and/or of things that I need to prepare for appointments on upcoming days.
• By reviewing my entire action lists (to-do lists) I am able to pick out the things that are most important rather than just “flying by the seat of my pants.”
• I am reminded to do things that are important but may not be staring me in the face (i.e. think about business growth goal and how I can move toward it today)

While they may sometimes be boring, I am sure that if you apply this principle, your life and work will be better off for it.

Application Action: Create a daily routine.

Suggestions for creation:

• Brainstorm ALL of the responsibilities that you need to perform daily.
• Write it down.  Don’t trust your brain to remember the routine.
• Test it for a week, see how it goes and change it at the end of the week if necessary.
• Stick with it.  This is the important part and sometimes, the boring part.  Oftentimes, when you least feel like doing it is when you most should do it.
• Add or remove items as necessary.
• Create routines for wherever you have things you would like to get done consistently(exercise, end of day, school, etc.).

Let me know how this works for you in the comments.

We’ve already learned about Pareto’s Principle (the 80/20 rule)—Now I would like to share  another productivity principle to eliminate wasted time:

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

What does this mean?  It means that although you normally take 8 hours per day to accomplish your work, you probably could get it done in 6 on a regular basis, or even 4 if you were really pressed.

Most people drag out their 9-5 days with paper shuffling, constant email checking, and unnecessary meetings rather than focusing on the most important tasks and getting them done.

Consider the following example from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss about when he learned this lesson at Princeton:

I had arrived to class nervous and unable to concentrate.  The final paper, worth a full 25% of the semester’s grade, was due in 24 hours.  One of the options, and that which I had chosen, was to interview the top executives of a start-up and provide an in-depth analysis of their business model.  The corporate powers that be had decided last minute that I couldn’t interview two key figures or use their information due to confidentiality issues and pre-IPO precautions.  Game over.

I approached [my professor] after class to deliver the bad news.

“Ed, I think I’m going to need an extension on the paper.”  I explained the situation, and Ed smiled before he replied without so much as a hint of concern.

“I think you’ll be OK.  Entrepreneurs are those who make things happen, right?”

Twenty four hours later and one minute before the deadline, as his assistant was locking the office, I handed in a 30-page final paper, dissected with an intense all-nighter and enough caffeine to get an entire Olympic track team disqualified.  It ended up being one of the best papers I’d written in four years, and I received and A.

Before I left the classroom the previous day, Ed had given me some parting advice:  Parkinson’s Law.

Use aggressive time limits to force your focus on important tasks.  For example, if you have a proposal to put together for a big commercial client, set yourself an aggressive deadline.  The deadline will provide you with an intense focus that will allow you to finish sooner and produce superior results.

Application Action: If you have the freedom to make this decision, work two hours less per day for the next week.  You will see that you can accomplish the same amount of work in less time.  If you don’t have the freedom to take off work two hours per day, set a goal to be done with all of your normal responsibilities two hours early.  When you are done, invest that time in learning a valuable skill that will help your company.

People on the industry forum Lawnsite.com are discussing laptops in their vehicles and what other mobile technologies they use (i.e. wireless data plan, printer, etc.).

For those of you who spend time in the field:

 Loading ...

Some of the common applications for this mobile technology are: looking up client information, printing contracts, accepting credit card payments, and calculating property areas.

Do you have any creative uses for mobile technology?  Please share in the comments.

I will post the results of the poll in the near future.

Postscript:  If you, like me, use a laptop on the go but don’t want to pay for an expensive laptop mount, check out this do-it-yourself mount for a Toyota truck.

DIY Laptop Truck Mount

Photo: Q4RadioGuy

Looking for more ways to “bring home the bacon?” Here are some more ideas for how to apply the 80/20 principle in your business:

• After finding your top 20% most profitable customers, visit their properties and suggest any improvements you see.  You are likely to get a high return on investment.
  • Example: I joined a mowing crew for a day last week.  While on the job, I noticed three customers with various things that could be improved on their properties (i.e. apply fertilizer and weed control, trim bushes, etc.).  I spent 10 minutes calling them and have one new job lined up already.
• Think about what 20% of your job produces 80% of your unhappiness at work.   Brainstorm for 15 minutes about how you could automate, eliminate, delegate, or outsource these responsibilities.
  • Example: Although I can do it, I realized that doing equipment repairs in the Spring myself is a real drag on my momentum.  I have decided to outsource this to a mechanic for at least the months of April-May.  I would rather spend the time selling or training.
• For the next two days, keep a log of what you do.  Update this log every hour with what you accomplished during the previous hour.  After the two days, pick out 3 activities that were most effective toward reaching your goals (greater customer satisfaction, working less hours, more sales, etc.).  Write down what these activities are and increase the time you spend on them.  Why waste your time on the least effective things?
  • Example: I found that by tracking my actions for the last two days that one of the most effective things I did was to mind-map (more on this to come) about this blog to generate new ideas.  Within thirty minutes, I generated dozens of ideas which will help achieve my goal of helping you, the readers.

  Do you have any ideas about how to apply the 80/20 rule?  Please share by clicking on the comments icon on the top right hand side of this post.

Happy dog picture by: waimeastyle

You’re sick.  You’re tired.  You came in to work and find that the hard drive on your computer is fried (and you don’t have a backup).  Your voicemail is overflowing, including a complaint from one of your most profitable customers.  And to top it all off you got in a fender bender on your way out to lunch.

Sometimes life is like riding a bike up a steep hill—very difficult. Using this analogy, business blogger Seth Godin gives us encouragement for those kinds of days:

Interesting business lesson learned on a bicycle: it’s very difficult to improve your performance on the downhills.

I used to dread the uphill parts of my ride…Now, I look forward to the uphill parts, because that’s where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.

Check this next part out…it’s very instructive:

The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn’t just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn’t work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you’re hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy.

Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn’t.

Thank you Seth for the good reminder.

Application Action:  Take a sticky note or index card and write on it, “I win on the uphills!”  Put this in a place where you will see it often (i.e. on your computer screen, dashboard, etc.).  It is amazing what a little trick like this can do to align your focus.

Read the whole post.

Over the weekend, I decided to post a link to one of my favorite blog posts.  Do you ever feel like you need a nap but know that you should be getting things done instead?  Try some of these tips for increasing your energy throughout the work day.

Here’s a sampling of the ideas posted on Leo Babauta’s site.  Click the link at the bottom for all 55.

1. Change your socks for refreshment.

It’s an amazing trick. Bring a change of socks to work, and change your socks midway through the day (say, after lunch). You’ll be amazed at how much fresher you’ll feel. This trick is especially handy on days with lots of walking — like during a hike or family outing to the amusement park.

8. Eat lots of berries.

Especially berries that are blue, red, or purple. The color comes from anthocyanins, a powerful antioxidant, that boosts energy. Any kind of berry will contain tons.

9. Wear brighter colors.

This trick is related to the mood you project to people, and the reciprocating mood they project towards you. If you wear dark, somber colors, you project a dark, somber attitude, and people will respond to you with a somber attitude. If you wear bright, happy colors, you’ll get that attitude projected towards you, which will boost your own mood and energy levels.

32. Choose protein over fat or carbs.

Foods with lean (low fat) protein help you feel fuller for longer. It also prevents blood sugar spikes, giving you more steady energy. Lean protein foods include fish and other seafood, lean pork, or chicken breasts (”white meat”).

(Personally, I have been trying #32 for 20 days now and my energy has skyrocketed.)

39. Purge low-value tasks from your todo list.

If you have a ridiculously long todo list that is impossible to get all the way through, you’ll feel tired just thinking about the todo list. If you want to actually cross off tasks from your todo list, you’ll need to throw out the crap tasks that you don’t want/need to deal with. Either delegate those tasks, move them into a second “nice but not critical” list, or just admit that they’re probably never going to get done and move them to the “maybe/someday” list. Shortening your todo list to just the most critical, must-do tasks will give you the “energy” to start knocking out those tasks.

Here’s all 55: http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/55-ways-to-get-more-energy/

Feel free to comment below if you have any other energy boosting ideas.

As I stated in my last post, systems are essential to growing a successful business whether your goal is beach management or company growth growth.  One type of system that we have implemented in both CLIP Software and CLIP Lawn Care is creating our own manuals for in-house procedures.  Some examples of manuals that we use are:

- How to add a new customer into CLIP and how to schedule their job.

- How to record work using CLIP2GO (in Spanish, for our crew members).

- How to do monthly billing.

- How to change the oil on each of our trucks.

These manuals enable anyone in our company to do these processes with minimal to zero training.

All you need to make a manual is Microsoft Word and possibly a digital camera.

Click Here to Open or Download the Instructions: How to create simple manual using Microsoft Word

Remember, it will be tempting just to go about the normal way of doing things and not create these manuals simply because they take some time initially.  For the sake of working on your business and not just in it, invest the time to create some good manuals that will be used over and over again.

Here are some samples:

How to Add Postage to CLIP Lawn Care Mail

Daily Procedure for Using CLIP2GO (Spanish)

How to Schedule a $35 Special

Application Action:  Within the next 24 hours after you read this, when someone asks you for instructions on how to do something that takes less than five minutes, do not show or tell them how to do it.  Take the time necessary to create a short manual for how to do this process.  Give it to them and say, “I’m trying something new.  Try following these directions and let me know how it turns out.  I appreciate it!”

Photo: svilen001

We here at CLIP often refer to something we call Beach Management.  In essence, Beach Management means getting your business to the point where you can step away from the business for an extended period of time (imagine a hammock, white sand, blue water, and an umbrella in your drink) and the business can continue to run well.

The principles that flow out of a desire for “beach management” also directly apply to a business that wants to grow in volume.  One key to beach management and/or company growth is systems.  In order to grow your company from the size it is now, it is vital that you create a system-dependent company rather than a people-dependent company.

Consider the following questions:

Do you have people coming to you constantly asking questions about everyday business processes?

Are you having to train people over and over again on the same procedures?

If your office manager or receptionist quit, would your office become chaos?

Do you have different employees doing the same task yet getting very different results in terms of quality?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have room for improvement in your systems.  By systems, I mean a technology or a documented way of doing things that allows your company, as easily as possible, to get successful results every time.  Some examples of systems could be:

-  A software program such as CLIP that allows you to schedule your jobs once and have the program take care of the weekly scheduling.  (You’ve got this one covered!)

-  A set step by step process for doing a Spring Cleanup

            For example:  First trim bushes, then remove all leaves, then weed, then…).

-  A manual explaining all of the steps to complete your monthly billing. 

In an upcoming post, I will teach you to create a simple but effective manual for doing almost anything in your business.

Application Action:  Next time you walk into a successful business, think about all of the systems they have in place.  Take one idea from that business and apply it to yours.

P.S.  We don’t support CLIP on that computer anymore.

One of the key responsibilities of a leader or manager is to communicate clearly.  This season has been a learning experience for me when it comes to communicating clearly and forthrightly with the team members I manage. 

Too often, months will go by without clearly stating where I would like an employee to change. This past failure on my part has led to frustration on both sides. This year, I resolved to change that for the good of my employees, my company, and myself.

The payoff became evident early on. We had a brand new team member with zero experience. He had been distributing door hangers for a about a week.  I told him that as a company we try to average about 100 flyers per hour.  He did well the first day but the second day ended up working out a little bit slower. At the end of the week he only put out about 75-80 an hour.

So rather than waiting weeks to “see if things change,” the next morning I sat down with him and talked with him about the job. I asked him how he was feeling about the work so far, etc. Then I did what I am usually reluctant to do. I bluntly asked him to improve his speed. His productivity surpassed my expectations. That day, he increased his productivity by over 50%, putting out 810 door hangers in 6.5 hours, averaging 124 per hour! He called me this afternoon and was obviously very proud to report his numbers.

This has occurred numerous times when I have applied what I learned and set clear expectations.

Today, when you are tempted to beat around the bush or speak in vague generalities, be clear and see the results.  I would love to hear your stories in the comments below.

Photo by Unhindered by Talent