Ever feel like you spend most of your day putting out fires in your business with a never ending to-do list looming in the background? Running a business isn’t easy, but sometimes as CEOs we make things more complicated than they need to be. Most of the time it stems from a desire to make a bigger impact or offer an elevated client experience, but in reality, learning how to simplify is what can really improve your client experience. 

As a marketing and operations assistant, my job is to help my clients identify inefficiencies in their business and create a simple solution. At least one of these four things have affected every single one of my clients’ productivity at one point or another in their business, and today I’m going to show you how to fix all four so you can increase your productivity and improve your client experience at the same time.

1. Your To-Do List

Let’s just call a spade a spade here, making lists on sticky notes or inside the Notes app on your phone just isn’t cutting it. You might be thinking, a list is as simple as it gets, how can keeping a list be overcomplicating task management? Well, sometimes too simple can do more harm than good. 

Without proper prioritization, deadlines with due date trigger reminders, and outlined processes in place it’s easy to end up wasting time and energy on tasks that don’t move the needle forward. And relying solely on your memory for how something should be done, inevitably leading to missed steps and a stream of additional fires to put out as a result.

Solution: Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) & Clickup

Why SOPs? 

Whether you have a team or not, SOPs are essential for maintaining accuracy and consistency in your processes. This is especially important for tasks you only perform a few times a year. With an SOP in place, you’re able to quickly pull up a step by step checklist on how to do the task with 100% confidence that it’s done correctly instead of taking additional time to remember how to do something or triple checking your work to ensure it’s correct. Simply put, humans make errors (including you), so if the process involves a person it needs an SOP. 

Not to mention, SOP’s eliminate the mental load of having to remember each step in the process. Your brain is similar to a computer, if you’re constantly performing tasks from memory it’s like having 100s of tabs open in your brain 24/7 which will slow you down. 

Why ClickUp? 

With a project management tool like ClickUp, you can set due dates with reminder notifications, easily prioritize tasks for your daily schedule, and break down larger projects into smaller subtasks for better clarity and focus. You’ll be able to view your tasks in any format that works best for you (in a list, on a calendar, on a board, etc.) and you’ll be able to much more accurately and sustainably predict your workload and avoid all nighters because a project deadline snuck up on you.

And yes, there are more project management systems out there, but Clickup is my top recommendation because of how customizable it is and how much you can automate!

2. Booking New Clients

Booking new clients is exciting – but it also has the potential to be overwhelming. Implementing a CRM might sound complicated until you realize that the hodgepodge way you’ve been doing things takes three times as much effort. 

Tell me if this sounds familiar: collecting new leads through a contact form on your website that clutters up your inbox, you use one platform to send/sign contracts, another to send invoices, manually sending invoices each month, you’re constantly emailing back and forth scheduling and rescheduling calls, and feeling like you spend 90% of your day doing admin work instead of working on your business.

Solution: Honeybook

By implementing a client relationship management (CRM) system the process of booking and onboarding a new client becomes so much simpler. With my favorite CRM, Honeybook, any leads that submit the contact form on your website are instantly uploaded into your dashboard and stored as a lead, where you can easily track any communication from that point on within one organized project portal. Not to mention being able to automate repetitive tasks like scheduling calls, responding to leads with a breakdown of your services, and monthly invoicing. 

The short version? Using a client management system will keep you more organized and save you hours of time! 

3. Content Creation

Content creation – it’s both the bread and butter of our businesses and the bane of our existence. Too often, we strive for flawlessness in every word, every graphic, and every video. But in our pursuit of perfection, we end up stuck in an endless cycle of editing, refining, and second-guessing. 

Not to mention, the demand for increased quantity of content only continues to increase year after year. In 2024, the “recommended” amount of content that a brand should be publishing online is 1 long form video (youtube), 1 podcast, 1 blog, 2 emails, 7 tik toks, 27 instagram stories, 4-7 IG posts, and 7 Pinterest pins per week (and that doesn’t even include Linked In, Threads, or X.) Just reading that list is overwhelming when you think of each of those platforms as a separate task, and it can make an omnichannel marketing approach feel impossible.

Solution: Repurposing Strategy

Every single business owner needs a repurposing strategy. By creating one long form piece of content per week (i.e. Blog, Linkedin Articles, Podcast, etc.) and breaking that content into smaller bite size pieces of content for two short form content platforms (i.e. Instagram, Email, Pinterest, etc.) you’re able to focus on creating just one extremely valuable piece of content each week and divide that value up across multiple platforms. Repurposing is a rinse and repeat strategy that has the potential to skyrocket your visibility with minimal effort.

4. Marketing Strategy

We all know that online marketing is essential. It’s how we increase our visibility and authority and can involve any combination of advertising, organic content marketing, and/or public relations. But it’s easy to overcomplicate the strategy. 

Especially when you consider the differing opinions of experts claiming to know what the best method for everyone is, and promising that their method will get you the most visibility in the shortest amount of time? It’s easy to get lured into fixating on the latest social media algorithms and trends, constantly chasing likes, shares, and followers, falling into the trap of short-term thinking, and prioritizing quick wins over long-term growth. But, all that leads to is a cycle of constant content creation and burnout.

Solution: SEO

SEO is undeniably the most sustainable marketing strategy when it comes to delivering long-term results with minimal ongoing effort, cost-effectiveness, and targeted traffic generation. No, it’s not the fastest – you won’t jump to page one of google overnight after writing one blog. But with consistency over time, compared to other avenues it has the least demands and is the most reliable. Unlike paid advertising, which stops generating results once you stop investing money, SEO enables you to increase organic traffic for months or even years to come without additional cost. 

By optimizing your website and regularly sharing long form content, like blogs, you can attract large amounts of organic traffic over time, establish credibility with your audience, and target specific keywords to reach your ideal clients. 

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In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Michaela – a content marketer, systems architect, and chaos coordinator (aka the virgo energy to your creative spirit).

If you liked this post and are craving more, here’s how I can help:

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