I declare today a ME Day. I am sure you are asking yourself, "what in the world is a ME Day?" Well, let's start here. Most small business owners spend a lot of time taking care of others. I mean you have clients/customers and you have to bring in the money. You have to service your customer base. They are the most important to your bottom line. Right? Well I call a foul on that. Your success is just that, yours. You cannot fully give your best to your clients unless you have your ducks in a row.
If you are like me -- we spend so much time working for our clients that when we look around our own business is a mess. The website is out of date. We haven't adequately balanced our books. Most importantly we have not strategized and looked to our future. I understand -- been there myself. So I came up with something to help me along - and I hope it helps you as well. Here is what I do. I declare a ME DAY!!!!
While I try to schedule some Me time during my days -- I declare a day usually once a month to do nothing but work on my business. I schedule it on a work day and I make myself the client. If I have to, I sometimes pay myself my hourly rate for the day. Sounds crazy, but I want to eliminate any internal struggles I have with closing for a day to work on myself.
A Me day usually looks like this -
1. Website cleanup- I go through each website -- page by page and make changes or corrections. I check links. I use a free service (http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/). On a recent look, I found that my youtube url had been changed. On another occasion I found that a contact form didn't work. Potentially losing a ton of business.
2. Social Networks - I go through all of my social networks - making sure all of the branding is in place. Are they all using the right profile photo. Is my password folder up to date -- I use a plugin called (lastPass.com) to save all of my passwords. On some occasions these password get out of whack -this helps a lot to keep things in order.
3. Update Contacts and Emails - Over the years I have gotten much better at managing emails (check out http://PeggyDuncan.com, if you are serious about email overload) - But I have a lot of email accounts - so I have to run triage on them. I also input contacts using different devices and while they are all supposed to sync, many times I will get duplicates and need to cleanup my contacts.
4. Purchases/Funnel Procedures - I take a walk through my sales funnels, email lists, and e-commerce platforms. The goal is to make sure the process has no clogs in the pipes. I will sometimes purchase a product from myself. I want to know what my clients are experiencing.
5. Business and Financial Planning, and Calendaring -- My business Life blood is cash flow. I have to know when revenues are coming in versus expenses going out in order to survive. In many cases that requires precise planning on product launches, staffing, and projects. I sit with a huge calendar, a cup of coffee, spreadsheets, and a calculator. Plan Plan Plan.
6. Staff/Vendor Meetings -- I meet with my staff and my vendors -- This is where I ask what can I do to make life easier for them. Where am I in the middle, where am I out of my lane? These meetings have proven invaluable, especially as we have relaunched our brand. With my vendors, we discuss my calendar and where we can create business synergies, improve communication, and fine tune projects. I specifically do not talk about present projects during this time, because it will more than likely send one of us into "fireman mode", ie. putting out a fire. I only want to look at the future during these conversations.
There you have it -- this is My ME Day -- and I urge you to try it and then let me know below how it turned out for you. Also if you use something different, please post it below as well.