264 – Set Yourself Up NOW for a Better Life in the Future with Elaine Quinn – The Solopreneur Specialist

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped,

episode 264 you're looking for something to organize,

organize your life.

Where can I see your schedule?

Organize your days,

Attention. Gifters,

bakers, crafters,

and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there Sue,

and thanks for joining me.

I have a confession for you right off the bat today,

but I also have a valid excuse.

At least I feel that it's valid so you can be

the judge.

So here it is.

I have not done what a lot of you have.

While we've been social distancing and I'm a little embarrassed about

it once we were all sent home,

I've heard from unseen,

the majority of you start organizing your closet,

kitchen, garage,

and work rooms.

I get it.

You're surrounded by all of your things and cleaning them out

and rearranging makes your environment nicer for sure,

and it also gives you a sense of control.

I'm actually really jealous of you.

You see,

I haven't been organizing because of my broken wrist,

an accident from earlier this year.

I'm getting my mobility back,

but it's not quite there,

so feel bad for me.

I missed out on the great organizational crusade that is now

come and is almost gone,

but I'll catch up with you this summer.

That's a pinky promise because in truth,

I do like my life organized.

Anyway, this whole concept of organizing got me to thinking about

how to take it to a deeper level,

so I called in a professional to help us learn more

about organization.

Complete with tips you might not have already incorporated and how

to get yourself in order in your business over and above

your physical surroundings.

As we all eventually open the doors and enter back out

into the world,

here's a conversation on organizing that leads to advanced skills you'll

definitely want to know about for your business for the future.

We get to that at the end of our conversation,

so make sure to listen all the way through.

Today. I am thrilled to introduce you to Elaine Quinn.

Elaine is the solo preneur specialist,

a consultant,

coach, author and speaker in Chicago who works with solo preneurs.

These are small business owners who create and grow a business

that they run themselves.

Solopreneurs have unique challenges since they usually work from home.

When work where you live,

you need to manage your business and personal matters separately,

but simultaneously Elaine's work focuses on helping clients become more effective,

meaning doing the right things and at the same time become

more efficient,

meaning doing them in a way that doesn't waste time.

She's authored two popular books.

There's no place like working from home,

which addresses the work from home challenges we're all familiar with

and escape the to do list trap,

which lays out an easy way to finally tame your,

to do lists.

Oh my gosh.

Elaine, we need you so much.

Welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Thank you.

So it's great to be with you today.

I am so excited to hear you.

I know you're going to just share some gems with us,

but before we get started,

I do want you to join in on a tradition we

have here on the show and that is just describe yourself

by way of a motivational candle.

So if you were to share with us what a candle

would look like that resonates with you by coloring quote,

what would your candle look like?

Well, there's something about candles isn't there?

I see mine being red probably,

and maybe a nice long taper and I would want it

to have markings by our intervals to remind me the time

is passing because I tend to drift off and daydream when

even when I'm working,

my mind is other places too.

So maybe even I would have this candle infused with some

essential oils to keep me energized.

And the quote that I think of would be that actually

it's a quote by Benjamin Franklin,

Franklin as in Franklin planner.

So this is right on topic and he says lost time

is never found again.

And that's so true.

When it's gone,

there's just no getting it back.

It's so true.

And I think we unconsciously just let time slip by thinking

we have more of it and more of it and more

of it,

and then when we encounter the reality that we don't,

then we recognize how precious it is so much better to

recognize it earlier.

So I think a candle would keep me focused on that

and as I see it going down,

marking the hours going by what keeps me focused.

Right. Not in a stressful way,

but just in a productive or like a more conscious way

I'd guess I'd say.

Right. Gives me a visual reminder.

Yeah. Okay.

We'll share with us before we dive into all the goods

here, share with us how you got interested in organizing and

structuring as you do Since many of your listeners are working

from home.

That's kind of my story.

Probably a lot of them used to do something else before

they started doing what they're doing now and that's also my

story. I spent my life in corporate America and unexpectedly got

downsized and found myself probably too old for someone else to

hire me and not very clear on what it is.

I would do exactly,

but one of the things I realized is that working from

home is totally different from a traditional work experience.

And as I found my way through what worked for me

and also found myself talking with other people who had the

same situation occurred to them.

This was,

Well not a lot of people were losing jobs or just

out of work for one reason or another.

I realized we all had these common problems about how to

structure your day,

how to get things done,

how to have that balance between feeling committed to your work,

whatever that was going to be.

And also wanting to have some off time downtime too.

So all these things coalesced into time management.

So I started really focusing on that.

And also just in general,

all the problems that solo preneurs have,

people who are working by themselves for themselves at home,

maybe they have a virtual assistant,

but usually not employees.

And so they're doing everything themselves and I need to figure

out how to do that.

So needed.

I will tell you that one of my groups that I

have, it's a maker's MBA VIP group.

We were trying to tackle this whole issue,

ah, the end of last year,

so December early January,

2020 and we came up with some great ideas,

but I'm really looking at adding to our information here so

I'm thrilled to do that and I just want to share

with everybody.

One of the reasons I reached out to Elaine is that

I'm noticing we're all still hunkered at home,

hopefully shortly coming out like opening the doors and breathing fresh

air and walking back out into our communities again shortly.

But one of the things that everyone is talking about doing

is now that they're sequestered at home is cleaning and organizing,

emptying cabinets,

dusting off shelves,

cleaning out their closets,

all of that.

And I find it so interesting,

I guess because we're around it all the time,

we were deciding that it needs to be cleaned up,

but I think it's also healing.

Yeah, I would agree.

When you're busy with a life that's a little bit more

varied than the one we're all living now.

It's easy to overlook things you make do with the way

things are.

They may not be the most functional,

but they work well enough to keep going.

But now that we're sitting around looking at things,

we notice,

no, this never has work.

Exactly right.

Or every time I look for something it's I have to

move this and that.

And so he finally decided I'm going to fix this once

and for all.

So when your life,

when the world is chaotic,

you want to take some control of your own life and

then easy way to start that is to doing the things

that you physically can see.

And that is very healing.

It gives some sense of order.

I may not be able to control everything,

but I can surely control my classes.

I can finally get rid of the things that I don't

wear, don't love,

don't fit,

and move the things that I really like that make me

feel good,

move them to the forefront and get rid of those things

that are kind of weighing me down and whether that's your

closet or your kitchen or the basement that you've put off

for a long time.

All those things are very,

I think they're very logical things to do and very self-affirming

things to do.

Yes, I can make things better And we are all looking

for a little bit of control right now and what do

we have that normally we never have time.

Time? Yeah.

Some of us more than others.

I ruined situation like it's a little bit different because if

people, maybe they're furloughed so they don't have a job right

now, but they know they'll be able to go back to

it. They have time.

They have lot of time.

Some of us who have always been working at home,

I don't know.

I've been busier now than ever because I've been trying to

support everybody.

I'm trying to do the podcast in a little bit of

a different way.

So everyone is a little bit different in terms of the

amount of time they have.

But what I'm really hoping we all do with this,

this control and this activity of rearranging and organizing is that

as we look out four to six months,

the activities that we've done now will serve us well.

We'll be more productive.

We'll have focused on topics that have already been challenging and

learned a better way of doing things so that it's not

just for the moment in time when we're learning or cleaning,

it's to set us up for a better,

easier, more efficient life in the future.

Well, I think that's true and particularly for people who are

creative, there's a subliminal distraction when your surroundings are disorderly and

not functioning well,

and I find that especially creative people,

they don't function very well in a environment that's not cleared

out, that doesn't free them.

If they're quite things on their mind,

if they're concerned about things,

they feel like they should be doing something else,

they're just not at their best.

And so if those things are all taken care of now

when things ease up again,

everybody will really be free of all those distractions and kind

of nagging thoughts about what they should be doing.

That'll all be done.

And then they really go back to being the creative person

they are.

I love that.

And I'm thinking that's what we're wanting to do here with

all of this.

So I think Elaine,

you and I talked before the show about exactly how we'd

approach the topic.

Maybe you can give us some tips of the actual house

organizing, physical organizing,

but then we're going to dive into also business organizing time

management, which I guess is business and personal.

Right? And as you said in the intro,

they run into each other quite a bit.

And then also customer information management.

So those are things give biz listeners we're going to be

getting to,

but staying with the physical organization of your environment.

Just for a moment,

I always feel like when I've rearranged something cleaned out the

garage, maybe it's my closet,

whatever. I feel lighter,

like I feel physically lighter and I know that doesn't correlate,

but it's just a psychological sense.

So I'm just thinking,

I'm wondering if you have any tips for us,

if people are still in that phase where they're doing some

of the physical organizing now,

how do you get started?

Cause I think a lot of people want to try or

do it,

but the overwhelming like they look at a closet that is

heaping with clothes.

How do you ever begin whether it's a closet or garage

or basement,

whatever. Well anytime you're thinking about a big project,

that's often what keeps people from starting is cause they don't

know where to start.

The task seems overwhelming.

So it's good to try and break things down if there's

some way to do that.

So let's say that it's a closet because everybody has one

And most everybody has things in that class that they don't

need. Don't want,

don't love,

Can't fit.

Yeah, unfortunately.

And so I would say what the classic organizers will tell

you, take everything out of your closet,

lay it on the bed,

and only put back those things that you love,

that you wear,

that make you feel great,

that make you look great.

No, that's an all day project at least.

So if you've got an all day,

that's fine.

If you've got a bed that nobody's jumping on,

that's fine,

but you may to go at it in a different way.

When you can start moving things around in your closet that

are the same color and then you've discovered that you have

10 black t-shirts and then you say,

well, all right,

I don't need 10 which are the ones that the best

look the best.

Don't look like they've been washed forever.

Or you can arrange things by the type of clothing.

You can talk about things you would only wear at home,

things you would wear in a casual setting,

things that you would wear and a little bit of a

dress casual.

You know,

if you were meeting some people at a nice restaurant but

not fancy,

then you can go to the next level up.

If there's something that you would wear in a business orientation

or somethings that are just playing sort of on the,

on the really dress up plam side.

So there's a lot of different ways you can do that.

You can also put all the things that you absolutely love

near the front and then push all the ones that you

don't live in the back and deal with them some other

time. I find that,

in fact I went through this fairly recently because I moved

and there's nothing like a move to make you realize what

you have that you don't need and what is not organized

that you need to organize.

So I think it's good if you're going to work in

your closet or actually any place where you are willing to

get rid of some things is to have a couple of

large bags handy.

And all the donation places that I've found don't expect you

to have things on hangers.

They don't expect them to be folded neatly.

So I think one of those contractors bags that are huge,

they work just fine.

And what I do is I fold it down around the

edges and just start piling things in there.

I do tend to fold things simply because I feel bad

about just taking a heap of clothes to places I like

them to look like I've taken some care.

But it's a visual place to put things so that you

can get some space to do some of these other things,

to move things around and to decide what goes and what

stays. So that's one way of kind of breaking it down

into smaller blocks.

We'll give you a place to start.

I think about my closet and when I have organized,

once we were painting and I had the great idea that

I wanted to paint the insides of the closet as well

as the bedroom walls.

And luckily my husband was out of town so I had

to do that dump of all the clothes out.

And as I was putting them back,

perfect time,

right to organize everything.

And I noticed exactly what you said like just with the

white tee shirts for example,

that I had so many.

But before I did my organizing I had this whole closet

and I felt like I had nothing to wear but it's

cause I couldn't find anything.

And then I would find things and I know everybody's been

this, the price tag is still on.

You totally forgot you had it because you bought it for

some occasion you'd knew you'd need in the future and then

you forget you have it,

the tags still on and you love it and it's beautiful.

But it was hidden wave in the back of the closet

cause it got pushed aside,

pushed aside,

pushed aside.

So I almost feel like when you do a project like

that, you end up having more versus less cause you can

see it and use everything.

Well that's true.

And same thing is true in the kitchen,

right? How many times have we bought something and like we

didn't use it right away and it got pushed in the

back of some cabinet and let me rediscover it later and

Oh, I meant to use that and now I will.

Yeah, so I meant to wear that and now I will.

Yeah, and unfortunately what happens in some both of those cases

is I thought I would use this,

but my goodness,

it's way too much trouble.

It'll never fit.

I don't really like it anyway.

What was I thinking of?

And so the output goes to somebody else who will enjoy

it. You're not using it.

Why keep it,

give it to somebody who will use it and needs it

and wants it and will love it.

Agreed. Any other organizing tips or should we move on and

get into some of our other topics?

Well, the classic organizing formula,

your listeners may already know this,

is that you group things because it like with like,

right. Do group things that are alike and they could be

alike in all the different ways we've been discussing.

Good for them together.

Sort through the ones that are,

how many are reasonable to have,

choose the best of those,

organize them in some way that you can be reminded of

which ones you like and for what reasons.

Get rid of the rest and then be prepared to turn

up because sometimes what occurs to you one day when you

do something you realize that's not quite right either.

I'm going to do it a little bit differently.

So it's true that organizing your belongings is kind of an

ongoing project.

There's always something that needs to be fine tuned and so

that's the way to look at it.

At organizing,

it's not an event.

It's kind of an ongoing process.

Yeah, I agree.

You kind of just by nature of working in your closet,

your kitchen,

whatever, you start to mess things up anyway a little bit.

So you got to,

you know,

I heard something and boy I want to say this was

on Oprah,

but I'm not sure they were talking about,

I'm going back to the closet just for one more second.

They were saying,

the big fear is,

and this is so true,

is you have an outfit,

you love it,

you've never worn it,

but you think it's so cute.

You're either going to lose the weight or someday heaven and

for it or you know,

like whatever.

And you can't part with it because it's just,

you just can't in your heart,

you can't part with it.

So they said on Oprah,

they said any of those types of things,

you haven't worn them for the last two years,

maybe even a year.

It's something that that doesn't fit like whatever the reason,

but you're not ready to give them away again.

Put them in a bag,

put the bag in your basement,

and if you've never gone and reached for them in another

year, don't even open that bag.

Just pass it on.

That's a really good advice.

And sometimes you think you can't live without it,

but then you put it out of sight and you never

think of it again.

And that's good to know.

I can live without this.

In fact,

I'm not even thinking about it.

Yeah. And then it's out of mine.

But the trick is not opening that bag later.

Right. Cause then you're back.

Yeah. Although I'm willing to forgive myself if there's something I

absolutely must keep hoping that I'm going to turn into an

entirely different person and that will fit in someday in the

future. I have a few of those in the back of

my closet.

I have a jacket that I won't even tell you what

decade. I probably bought it in.

I have let it go now,

but it sat in my closet for ever.

I just loved the pattern,

but it was very patterny like very florally,

very patterny,

bright pastel colors.

I don't wear those types of things.

I just love that fabric.

So I love to looking at it and so I just

gave myself permission.

Like this is never something I'm actually going to wear,

but it makes me happy when I look at it.

So it gets to stay.

Yeah, You're allowed to make irrational decisions from time to time.

Okay. Thank you for saying that.

Okay, so let's move on to a big challenge for all

of us time.

We kind of have a lot of time now,

but we may or may not be doing well with it.

But as we get back into,

I'm going to call it real life.

Well, we've got family,

we've got work,

we've got clients.

Feels like you do business 24 seven now,

right? People feel like they can access you any time.

How do we manage all of this?

That's a challenge that everyone has because everybody has the same

amount of time.

And that's actually one of the things that I like to

work with people about because it is such a universal problem

and I like to try and find simpler ways to handle

time. So where do you begin with something like this?

The classic way that people tend to approach time management is

they make a to do list,

right? We all have one,

but we've all had them in the past because even as

a child,

your parents may have had to make some kind of a

to do list of what you were going to do,

what do you want to do?

Whatever. So we're used to list and that becomes a part

of everybody's pattern is to create,

to do lists.

The problem with to do lists,

one of the many problems with to do lists is that

they tend to never to get done right and why is

that? So we're writing things on our list but not getting

to them and that's where the time management comes in because

lists are all about what you need to do,

but they don't help you figure out when you're going to

do that.

And the fact is that just because it's on the list

doesn't really move the ball forward.

It's still not done.

Sooner or later you have to figure out a way to

get things done.

And what I like to suggest is that people start thinking

more about the when,

and I have a way that has worked for many of

my clients and let me just throw this out.

Maybe some of you are already doing this.

Maybe this won't work for you,

but it does work for a lot of people.

Take all the items on your to do list and transfer

them into time slots on your calendar.

How does that strike you too?

I, in fact,

I have a planner and a whole system that I use

and I'm actually pretty good at this.

I have to say I'm a big doer,

but I agree with you.

The funny thing though is to me like those lists,

a lot of times we make the list and transfer them

to the calendar and they're already done.

We just do that cause then we get to check them

off. Well I'm talking about,

yeah, actually planning your life this way.

So all of us have kind of ongoing events,

whether it's a show or a meeting or a phone call

or an event that you do on a regular basis.

Maybe you're part of a group that meets,

maybe there's obligations that you have,

bills to pay,

everything that happens,

ongoing basis.

Those things tend to get put on a calendar because we

know we're going to do them.

We've got to,

we have set time aside.

We've reserved time in the calendar to do those things.

If you've got a meeting that you know is going to

last a couple of hours,

you don't schedule something else.

It's all those little things that we need to get to

organize the closet or let's see what else could,

well, it could be anything.

Those things never get put on a calendar.

And we sort of say,

well, when everything else is done,

I'll turn to those.

But when does that ever happen?

So you need to actually put those things on the calendar

or they will never happen.

So what I recommend is that you first,

and this is a bit of a commitment,

if you're looking for something to organize,

I'd say organize your life.

Or can I see your schedule?

Organize your days.

Because the way you spend your days is the way you

spend your life.

And who was to have nagging things,

hanging over them all the time that they haven't done.

And every time you look at that list of things to

do, you just feel bad because it reminds you of all

the things you haven't done.

So what I say is a process like this.

So go through your calendar and you can do this with

a digital calendar or a paper calendar.

There are pros and cons of both.

I actually use both in slightly different ways,

but in terms of planning what's going on,

You might be surprised,

Elaine, here in our community because people make and they use

their hands.

I did a little bit of a study way back,

I guess sometime last year.

Most people use paper calendars here.

I'm not surprised.

So, well let me address that because I don't want to

forget it.

I found a solution to this because I've run into this

before and I personally use a digital calendar for this kind

of thing that I'm talking about simply because it's so easy

to move tasks around.

If you didn't get to it today and it's not all

that important.

All right,

I'll move that digitally from one day to the next.

But if you're using a paper calendar,

you don't want to be writing things over and over and

over every day.

Why? I didn't do it yesterday.

I'm going to write it again on today's calendar and not

do it today.

And I will do it tomorrow.

Oh, I didn't do it then.

I'm rewriting it again.

What I have run across,

because I hang out in the office products stores and probably

everyone has seen those translucent post-it flags that they have.

You know what I'm talking about.

So they come in different colors and they're translucent and they

come in different.

So what I like to recommend for my clients who actually

prefer paper,

there are a lot of people who do find a flag

that fits your paper calendar or the hour slots in your

paper calendar and write your intended task that you're going to

do on that flag and stick it in the calendar.

And if you don't get to it today,

you can unstick it from today and move it wherever you

need to and you can do that as often as you

need to without wasting time.

That's a great idea.

I love that.

What I thought you were going to say was you get

so tired of rewriting it,

you just end up doing it so you don't have to

write. That would work too.

In fact,

what happens when you,

because this requires prioritizing,

right? Because there are certain things you've got to do today

because something's due.

Somebody who's expecting the delivery.

It's just not to be done today,

but then there's those other things that,

yeah, they could be done sometime and they just keep getting

moved further and further into the future.

I know in my own pace,

I finally acknowledged,

you know what?

This has been moved so many times.

I'm clearly never going to do it.

I'm just going to cross this off the list.

I'm never going to worry about it again.

Well, and it might now not even be necessary if it

was something that needed to have been done and now that

time has passed.

Well, yeah.

What I find is that the things that really need to

be done that are time dependent,

those things I tend to get done this way.

It does those things when you look at your day and

see, all right,

here's my new day.

Here's the things that I intended to do.

The key of this is to estimate how long each of

these tests will take to do so that you only plan

in a day as much to do as you can fit

physically on that page.

Right? Or wouldn't you also say that you can fit on

the page but also leaving some buffer time because inevitably other

things come up in your day,

like you can't fully plan hour to hour your whole day

because that just can't work day after day.

No. In real life.

That's right.

I say plant about 60 75% of the day and some

of those things that you have planned are not that critical.

Yes, you plan to do it if you can,

if you get the time,

but if you can't,

that's fine.

You just want it to another day further out.

But I do find for me it's motivational to try and

clear out that day and so I will do the things

that I can do.

Let's say I have four or five big things that are

going to take an hour each,

but there's a lot of little things that are going to

take maybe 15 minutes,

20 minutes,

whatever, group those together and put them in one of those

hour slots,

and when you discover you have a free hour,

it may not be at the time you originally thought you

would do it,

but if you're coming the rest of the day and you're,

Oh, you realize you have a little time,

maybe whatever else you plan to do didn't take quite as

long or meeting was canceled.

All of a sudden you have some free time.

Then you can do those things.

You're always free to move them,

but the fact that they're there,

especially if you've moved them,

like you said several times,

you feel right.

I'm just going to do this and be done with it.

Yeah, that's motivational.

So I try and clear out the calendar each day.

I try to clear out everything that was on that day.

I either did it or I moved it to sometime.

That's acceptable.

Now, if it's a deadline that you're willing to let pass,

you don't really care about it anyway.

Okay, that's fine.

But I don't put things on the calendar that need to

be done on that day unless they need to be done

on that day.

I do a lot of time for things that take longer

than I that they're going to take,

but I pretty much fill up the day with doing something.

Some of those things are not chores,

they're just things I want to do.

Yeah, no,

the one I was thinking of specifically,

like the time has passed,

there were a pair of pants that I needed to have

them for a certain event and I didn't get to it,

so I had to just wear a different outfit,

so now I don't need them.

Am those pants.

That's one of those things that yes,

you realize,

yeah, I didn't really intend to do that.

People tend to do what is important to them and obviously

something else was more important and we lived through that day

without those pants.

Yeah. But I really like them.

So I keep a little parking lot list of things because

I'll be working through my day.

And to your point,

you know when things are scheduled that have to get done,

like all the steps to a podcast have to get done

or an episode isn't going to go.

Right. So there's like no option,

no choice.

I don't like all the steps.

I don't do all the steps,

but I also don't like some of my steps,

but they just have to get done.

Right. But so then other things,

while you're going through the course of the day,

other things come up and you think,

Oh my gosh,

this is something I really want to do sometime.

So I have like a little parking lot list on the

side that has a whole bunch of things that are different

types of things that I want to do eventually.

But I captured the idea.

I don't necessarily slot it into a time yet,

but I've got the list of all the ideas.

That's a great idea.

You can either just make a list or you can write

those on those little flags like I'm talking about and stick

them in the back of your planner so that when you

do have time,

you know where they are and you can find them.

Yeah, I'm really liking those flags.

Elaine, that's a great idea.

It was a like one of those aha moments when I

looked at that,

I thought,

Oh, you know what?

Because it comes up a lot that people like a paper

planner. It depends on the environment you're working in.

You know,

a lot of us that are out all the time.

I like the convenience and the size of having everything in

your phone and the fact is that,

you know,

a phone will be back to you and remind you to

go do things,

which I personally need,

but that doesn't work for everybody.

And so I was actually searching for what kind of solution

would sort of be a compromise to be written but easily

movable. Yeah,

I actually,

I guess I really use both because I put a lot

of my meetings in my digital calendar.

You know Google,

but then my two dues are in hard copy but also

I'm writing down.

I am doubling but it works for me.

I'm doubling.

Then if I have like our interview is both places,

it's on my Google calendar but it's also on my paper

planner calendar.

You know my hard copy calendar and that works for me

and I think what's so funny and I'm wondering what you'll

about this and what you think the hurdle is here is

I feel like everybody looks for a new planner,

whether it's an app on your phone or you're at the

bookstore, the time management aisle,

because you find this new beautiful planner and they think that

the planner is the means to them getting organized,

but then a couple months in it's still not happening,

so I'm feeling like it's the system.

It's not what you use.

I see that all the time and especially when you mentioned

apps, because there are people who think that there's something magic

about where you put these tasks.

Bullet journals have gotten very popular and people think,

Oh well here's what I need to do.

I need to use a bullet journal.

I need to use a new app,

I need to do.

At some point you actually have to do the thing if

you can like the feel of writing the list and looking

at the list and looking at the planner,

but if you don't do the task,

it doesn't work.

However, I will say that I haven't yet found anything that

works for everybody so everybody of course has the instinct about

what's going to work for them and it's often true that

there's multiple ways of addressing it.

Like you described,

you do some things digitally and somethings paper.

I do too.

I put everything in my calendar including every little task including

travel time.

If I'm going to need to go someplace,

I do everything in my digital calendar,

on my phone.

However, I also have a paper calendar that I write everything

that I'm going to have to go someplace else and meet

with somebody because I use that one.

What I need to figure out what my mileage is or

something or when I need to refer back to when was

that meeting because I discovered that if I kept everything I

put in my phone,

I kept it there.

Not so much now,

but in the past my phone would run out of space

and I couldn't put anything in it,

so I started deleting everything.

Once I accomplished it,

I deleted it and that made for,

you know,

a nice clean page of whatever had been accomplished that day.

But then I couldn't really refer back to it.

So that's when I started doing this paper thing.

But it's a very minimal calendar.

It's one of those 30 day paper calendars where all I

need is just a few things.

I don't have 20 things in a day that are like

that. I have maybe one or two that are like that

where I'm meeting with somebody or have to be someplace for

a certain reason.

Those are the only things that go on that and that's

easy because I can scan that and say,

now when was that?

And I can look at a month,

two or three months ago and instantly spot,

Oh yeah,

that was the day I did that.

Yeah. You know,

and it's coming to mind.

To me as you're talking,

it's having a process and sticking with the process because you

have, when you were describing it,

you have very specific things that you put in very specific

places and if it's a similar event,

like you're saying,

you're face to face meetings,

it always goes in the same place regardless of what that

place is.

So it's the process and then actually following the process that

you've created,

You brought up a good point because the only way that

any of these chore lists or task lists will work is

if you trust them to remind you of the things that

you need to do and want to do.

And that brings up an issue that I've run across and

I'd be interested in your take on this.

Some people keep a full business calendar and a personal calendar

that are separate.

That scares me to death because I just know that if

I didn't have everything in one calendar,

I would either double book myself someplace or would totally forget

someplace. I wouldn't look at it.

I completely agree with you.

There's not a chance my brain could handle that.

Not a chance.

And if people insist on doing that,

and I think that's just asking for trouble,

I think whatever you do,

do it all in one calendar.

Now maybe you want to use different color ink or whatever,

if that's important to you to be able to separate or

maybe you can put those little colored dots next to it

or use a different color flags like I'm talking about.

For some reason you need to make a distinction.

I personally haven't found that's important,

but people with families where kids are doing things and spouses

are doing things and maybe that's important to be able to

look at an instant one glance picture of who's doing what

and when.

And then I could see having different colored flags if you

want to do that Well,

and then maybe you have a shared online calendar that everybody

can access and see.

But let's say,

you know,

you're in charge of carpooling to soccer and so then you

also put that on your calendar so you've blocked off that

time for that and you know,

something like that.

But I think it goes back to having a system and

having a plan and then doing it.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, and I was going to say something else about this,

like I think for me,

I'm glad that I'm pretty good at this,

but it's because of some of the work that I do.

Like I was mentioning the podcast,

right? But let's say there's another project I'm doing,

I've decided I'm writing a blog article or something that maybe

isn't necessarily timely.

Like if I didn't do it today,

I could do it tomorrow,

but I really don't like to write,

so maybe I'll do it the next day.

No, you keep going like that.

Right. That was the way,

well nevermind,

I'm not going to go there.

But if you put it in that you say,

okay, I am reserving one to three next Wednesday afternoon to

finish this article period.

I've put it in a time restraint and I've put it

in my calendar and I'm not allowing anything else to be

in that time.

Well then it takes,

I don't know whether you call it willpower or determination or

what, but when it comes to that time,

you got to sit down and do it.

Yeah. So ideally you don't wait till the last minute in

case something does come up that's unexpected,

but one thing you can do is reward yourself for doing

that. You can say,

Oh, I know I'm going to do that on time,

and just to make sure I do that on time,

I'm going to do X afterwards,

or I will finish early so that I can have dinner

with my friends,

or whatever you're going to do.

You can build in a reward to encourage yourself to do

that, But you only get the reward if you actually do

it. Oh yeah.

Well, yeah.

There's a point at which some self discipline,

I know my audience lane,

We're all like that,

right? I mean this is what I do.

I do this all the time and I do the same

thing everybody does.

I put things off.

But what I don't do anymore,

what I used to do is I really do not wait

till the last minute to do things because it's just too

stressful. I have decided that lowering stress level is a priority

in my life.

And so if there's two things I don't want to do

and one of them is gonna raise my stress level,

that's the one I don't do.

The one that's going to lower my stress level is the

one I will do.

And usually that means planning ahead.

And when you're talking about projects like writing a blog or

something that maybe multi-step,

maybe you need to do a little thinking first,

a little research first,

you wouldn't write a first draft and then you want to

let it sit for a day or two and look at

it again.

So I will build in those separate steps,

Break it into steps and put it in the calendar.

Absolutely. I know from my own habits and we all get

to know ourselves pretty well,

but at the time we were adults,

you know?

Well, if you're paying attention and I know that my first

draft is not going to be as good as it could

be and so I no longer just sit down and write

it and send it.

I absolutely build in time to look at it again in

a couple of days.

Right. Okay,

so let's move now from time management to customer information management,

and I love the words.

It's all about management,

which means you're creating control and structure.

That's what management means.

You're making a plan and then you're doing it.

Let's continue on with this conversation right after a quick break

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It really,

for almost all of these things mentioned,

implies a certain orderliness so that you can find what you're

looking for in the future.

I'm not necessarily being an organizing for organizing sake,

but if I need to be able to refer to information

which you would want to do on a customer,

especially if they're likely to be a repeat customer already,

our repeat customer,

I want to know that information and I want to know

how to find it and I want to find it all

and I want to find it easily.

It's important to me to be able to find whatever it

is I'm looking for easily and that means it's all in

the same place.

So Even though my business is not quite as complicated,

probably as some of your community because they're dealing with physical

things. No,

I'm thinking of just my days and also because I have

a physical product and the coaching business,

the coaching and training business,

et cetera.

For me,

I just find such a challenge in the fact that in

this day and age,

technology and all communication,

I guess I would say is tough because I'm getting information

from everywhere,

like people email.

Then I've got Facebook messages and someone will include a link

from there.

Maybe it's an Instagram message.

People will,

I don't know,

like it feels like it's coming from everywhere and it's hard

to capture everything.

So it's very stressful.

Well, and I do find just for that reason,

I know I've either written something and I can't remember if

that was in an email or if I wrote it in

a blog or what happened or I heard something and I

captured it and put it somewhere,

but I don't know whether it's in my computer,

in our driver,

did I?

Where is it now?

How can I find it?

Do you have a solution for this?

I found something that works for me and like time management,

not the same thing as going to work for everybody,

but personally I have discovered that Evernote works for me and

I don't know if some people have tried it and never

really found how it fit in their business.

Actually, that was my experience.

So we had told me about Evernote a long time ago

and I could never really figure out how to use it.

But now I use it all the time.

So this is what you use and you find that it

works really well,

right? I do.

The reason it works well for me is because it's easy.

That's a big selling point for me.

If it's something easy.

So the thing that I like about Evernote,

one of the many things I like about Evernote is that

it will accept any kind of input that you want to

put in there and it will keep it in one place

where you can find it again.

So let's say that you wanted to keep track of all

your customers and all your suppliers and everything related to each

of them.

What are you going to do that you've got texts,

you've got emails,

maybe there's photos involved,

there's product that you used here or there,

there's a supplier that you used here or there.

Maybe there's a backup supplier.

Maybe there's certain components of whatever you've done that you think

about using in the future or want to do something slightly

different. How do you keep track of all that?

That's why I like Evernote.

You can put emails,

texts, photos,

if you want to take a picture of everything that you

have created and sent to you so that you can either

duplicate it or not duplicated.

If it's for the same client,

you can therefore keep track of the colors and exactly what

is in each creation that you've put together.

If you see a new idea on someplace like Pinterest or

in a website,

you can clip that off the internet and send it directly

to Evernote and it will keep it for you.

And if you have created notebooks for each client and each

supplier, then it automatically gives you a list of all the

notebooks you've created.

So you can just with one place,

one thing to capture it in one flip to put it

where you want in Evernote,

and you can have the same item in several different notebooks

so that if you have created a gift for some client,

but there are different components you might want to use.

Again, you can either tag those in two different notebooks of

supplier note within a customer notebook you can search by key

words that might actually be in the item because Evernote will

take an image and can OCR recognize the text in that

image. So even if you take a picture of something and

it has writing Evernote,

we'll find it.

If you put the writing that you saw,

it will find it in there.

If you write a handwritten note,

it can read the text in that note and you can

find that by writing a keyword.

Just typing in one of the key words that was in

that note.

So quick question on Evernote.

So I tried using it three or four years ago and

I had a huge struggle trying to find anything that I

put in there because is it true or did I just

not know how to use it?

All I understood you could do is find things by tagging.

Like each little thing is its own individual piece and I

don't recall there being folders before.

Is that new?

I don't think it's any more recent than several years ago.

I've been using Evernote regularly for at least five years I

would say.

But the terminology is a little different and it was a

little off putting to me when I first started trying to

figure it out.

And that might be what happened with you.

It's the same structure as your file tree.

On your computer there's folders and there's files,

but in Evernote there are notebooks and there's notes.

So if you have random notebook,

let's say for every customer it will automatically arrange them alphabetically

in a list.

So if you clip something,

let's say there's some new thing you've seen on Pinterest and

you think,

Oh, I might like to do something like that.

And I have a particular customer who would like that.

You can with one click on the Pinterest image,

you can save it to Evernote and Evernote will then present

you all those notebooks and you could just click on the

customer you have in mind.

And there it is and it stays there.

So later on when that customer calls and says,

you know,

I want to do something,

but I'm not sure what,

you can go right to that notebook and say,

Oh well you know,

I've thought about something like this that you might like,

Can you put notebooks into notebooks?

Yes, you can have some notebooks so that you can have

broad categories.

So that would be like folders,

files and documents.

Okay. So you'd have notebooks,

sub notebooks and notes,

and you can put an,

all the notes just flow one after the other.

They all stack up.

So let's say that there's an extra thing that you can

do with Evernote.

Like you said,

you can tag it so that if you thought of let's

say anniversaries.

All right,

so maybe wedding anniversaries as a topic.

You can also write that once and when you are capturing

a note and you're getting the list of notebooks from Evernote,

it will also show you all the tax breaks that you

could apply across the top.

It'll be a banner and you can click,

Oh yeah,

this might be good for this.

So it's automatically in one click here.

And there and it'll put it in all these different notebooks.

So if you have not only a notebook for a customer,

but also a notebook for events,

let's say wedding adverse should have a notebook.

Then when you go to,

I wonder what I have collected for wedding anniversaries.

You go to that notebook and that will show you all

the things that you may have used for all those different

customers that were for wedding anniversary.

So it'll cross reference based on your notebooks or how you

tag both.

Okay. I think the notebook is the easiest.

That's the biggest,

broadest category.

The most comfortable actually.

Yeah, and that's what I do too.

Not only will it put it in a notebook,

but it also puts it in a running list of every

note you've ever created.

You can,

if you want to go through the notes you've done in

the last day or two and make sure that they've all

got the right tags on.

The more you want to add something to that.

Maybe at the time you didn't think about,

Oh you know,

I need to go to that supplier if I want that

kind of look.

And then you could add that supplier's name to one of

the tags and the next time you're thinking of placing an

order you can go,

what were all those things I wanted to order from them.

Okay, here's the question.

I understand this by theory.

Let's go to email since that's,

I know a big challenge for a lot of people and

you know how they say go get to inbox zero and

all that.

And the way you do it,

kind of like the old fashioned way of tackling paper on

your desk.

Touch a piece of paper once that whole concept.

But in an email like let's say I get an email

and I need to keep it because it's a trade show

I'm going to,

okay, so my first let's follow through with this.

Okay, so my first question is how do I get that

email into Evernote?

Evernote will give you a personal email address in Evernote so

that when you get your email from wherever in Gmail you

can say it'll gives you an option send to Evernote.

Now some of these features are not available at the most

basic level in Evernote,

which is free,

but the most expensive level is only $15 a month and

that's the one I have and it lets you do that

kind of thing to just send emails and to do all

kinds of other little fancy things.

Is it unlimited storage at that point too?

I think it's pretty generous,

although I couldn't swear to it,

but I've never been told I'm out of space.

I use all the time.

I used it a lot when I was writing my books,

so I would come across an article that I kind of

liked the point that they made,

but I realized that there was something in there that they

missed and I would put that in Evernote.

Just important one click and then I would add a little

but they didn't mention such and such.

And then when I went back to write on that particular

topic, all the notes I collected from everywhere,

whether it was from a newspaper article or something off the

internet or a thought I had or previous blow that I

had written,

all of that was in that one notebook on that topic

and I was reminded,

Oh yeah,

I forgot.

Totally forgotten about that.

So that's a good point,

But I need to mention that if you do this then

you need to do that.

So that's the way I wrote my books.

And so were you able to put that note right on

the same document of the article or was that then a

separate note?

As I recall,

I was able to just add a little comment.

Ooh, you can also highlight things And you can do photos,

You can do everything.

It sounds like something to play around with an investigate while

we have some time.

That's not a bad way to spend your time.

I really think a lot of Evernote,

some people use one note,

which they say is similar.

I am not as familiar with that.

I know that there are articles,

if you go online and say Evernote versus one note,

Microsoft product,

you'll get a really good analysis of which benefits each of

them offers,

what the pros and cons are of each.

But like anything,

the one you become most familiar with is the one that

will work best for you.

Right? And you have to,

it's going to feel awkward in the beginning until you get

down to the system and get comfortable with it.

It did.

And I'm sure that there are still features of Evernote I

don't use,

but everything that I have discovered that I need,

I can find in Evernote.

Okay. So I've got asked this question or I will forget.

So let's go back to the email.

So I sent a copy of the email to Evernote and

this whole idea of keeping your emails clean,

your inbox.

So I delete that email.

Now I decide I need to reply to it,

then what do I do?

So what I do is I have Gmail and when I

finished with a note,

I automatically archive everything.

I never delete anything because you never know what you might

need So you're not saving then into a whole hierarchy of

folders in Gmail.

Cause when you want to save it,

you put it into Evernote and if it's an email you

just archive it so you know it's there somewhere but you

don't need it in your inbox forever.

The reason I don't spend time filing that in a series

of email folders is that first of all,

that seems like a lot of work.

And second,

I can always find it in the archives file by simply

typing in a key word or two or better yet a

phrase that's going to be pretty unique to that email.

Got it.

Or by the name personnel,

bring up all the emails from that person.

So there's a lot of ways that I can get what

I need without spending a second on worrying about how to

file it in an email.

Our practice file,

I just automatically,

in fact in Gmail is tendon archive and that's what I

do. I send it and it automatically gets out of my

list and into the archives and I can always find it

there. Well I say always,

I mean I can go back years.

I suppose there's a limit to how long they would keep

them. But every so often somebody says no,

that's different from what I remember.

And I can go back and see exactly what was said.

I can really see this as coming to light to me

about why Evernote could be so valuable.

Because I'm thinking like all the different types of things that

I have stored that I access and use all the time.

Right? Like I use images,

like photo shoots and all of that.

Well that stored in a file on my computer or maybe

it's over in a Dropbox or something.

And then I also have emails.

So those are in my Google archive and then I have

invoices. So those will be in QuickBooks or Shopify.

Then what else?

Like, I have so many things and I'm not even saving

any text messages unless I'm screen capturing and emailing it to

myself for,

I don't know what reason cause I will lose it.

Well, if you screen capture and put it in Evernote,

it will read the content.

It's optical character recognition.

It'll recognize the content.

You don't even have to remember what notebook you put it

in. It'll find it.

Yeah. So I'm getting really excited about this.

I'm also thinking like when I'm out at conferences,

I'm not one who opens my computer and is typing in

the notes.

I like that handwriting.

I retained information I follow along better than I could just

take a picture of that and put it into Evernote.

Yes. Now I'm not entirely sure how well it reads handwriting.

They say it does.

I suppose it's gotta be legible to some degree,

but I don't use it in that particular way.

But I know it's supposed to do that.

What I have done is when I'm at a conference,

I will take a photo of an entire slide of information

that I'm looking at and it'll read the content.

It'll read the content of that slide and find it for

me. Yeah.

Like if I had a,

what do you call them again?

Oh yeah,

notebook. So if I had a notebook that just was the

title of the conference,

then it could be a mixture of my notes,

pictures of slides and,

gosh, all the selfies you take with people.

Yes, yes.

And some of those selfies that you take at the event

could be in the event folder and also in a customer

folder or a supplier folder or whatever.

And they'd be in both places at once.

Oh my gosh,

yes. Yes.

That's what I'm saying about Evernote.

Yeah. I get excited about it too.

So happy to share this with you because I know a

lot of people have heard of Evernote.

Maybe they've even tried it a little bit,

but I know from my own experience,

I didn't get it right away,

but once you start using it,

you start realizing how convenient and easy it is.

Yeah. You know,

I had someone on a while ago,

Steve Dotto of Datto tech and he covered Evernote entirely and

maybe I just missed it at the time,

but I did not understand about the notebooks at all.

We were talking about a lot of the tags and that's

why I was asking you if notebooks were a newer thing

and I tried using Evernote really,

really hard after that because Steve's adorable and he's just a

fun guy and he knows his stuff,

but it just wasn't working for me,

so I gave up on it.

But now I'm going to look at it again.

Yeah. What'd you discover?

There's a whole community of Evernote users.

So if you get in the middle of something and aren't

sure how to do it or can't seem to figure out

what the purpose of this or that is,

you can go online and say,

how do you do such and such in Evernote and Oh,

it's amazing what you can find.

Yeah. I'm so sure that that's true.

So virtually,

and I love this,

your single source solution for customer information management is Evernote period.

I think.

I haven't found anything that I needed to keep of that

I couldn't put in there.

Okay. I'm really excited.

I love new things.

And this is not new,

but it is.

I like simple things.

I like simple things.

I like them to be easy.

Now I also believe there's a Chrome tool that you can

put it in your toolbar that is Evernote,

so that if you're on a screen you can just click

it and it captures the page for you right there.

Exactly. They call it the Evernote web clipper.

Okay. And what's nice about that is that when you see

something on a website,

it's going to have ads interspersed in there and a sidebar

and all that stuff.

Evernote gives you the opportunity to either capture it exactly as

is or to get what they call it,

modify or clean up or whatever,

but it removes all that extraneous stuff.

So all you have is stuff in text.

Yeah, it just strips out all that stuff that you don't

want. Nice.

And can you download from Evernote and print if you need

to and things like that?

Yes. Oh my gosh.

Okay. And one final question on Evernote.

I'm trying to remember from the past.

Is there a desktop version and a cloud version or do

you use them together or what's that about?

I remember being confused about this in the beginning.

What you want is the web version.

They do have a desktop version.

If you're doing something that's super highly confidential,

you might want something that just resides on your own computer.

But we're all living lives.

There's some risk involved in living.

Right. So I think the desktop is the way to go.

It has more functions.

And you mean the web?

Yes. Sorry.

I mean the web version,

it will automatically sync to all your other devices so that

even if you entered it in your laptop at home,

it's there on your phone.

Yeah. And I think the other advantage is you're not using

up all the storage on your computer.

Cause I could imagine over time that gets pretty big.

Yeah, it seems like it would.

And like I said,

I've never run into a stop sign that says you're full

nobody. I mean if you were on your desktop,

well it might.

Yeah, it might.

I don't know either these days.

Even the smallest laptops have huge storage these days.

Yeah, that's true.

Alright, this is so exciting.

And the final word on Evernote,

before we close up here with this,

I would just say give it a try and if somebody

has some trouble,

I would actually go online and just tutorials.

That'll take you through all this.

The one thing that I finally got over was this terminology.

It was the notebooks,

some notebooks,

notes versus folders.

So folders,

documents. Yeah,

that's good.

That's really valuable.

And there's a free version so you can just play around

and see what you think of it.

And then if you decide that you like it,

$15 a month isn't a bad investment for sanity.

Oh my gosh.

No. The hours you take looking for a job,

you've already paid yourself back for the one month.

Not only the time you save,

but the better equipped you are to do what you want

to do because you can get all the information that you

want to have when you make a decision.

True. At the snap of a finger.

It's so easy and on your phone for having sex on

your phone so you can always have it with you.

Even if you don't have your computer or your,

it'll do a tablet or whatever,

however many devices you have,

it will sync to all of them.

Oh my gosh.

So great.

So I know what I'm going to be doing when I,

I'm going to have to pencil in.

No, I'm not even penciling in.

I'm heading in some time to look at this and review

it and it doesn't get to get bumped from it to

a different page and it won't cause I'm really excited about

it now.

I'm glad that I was able to tell you about Evernote.

Yeah, I'm really excited about it.

So we have covered tips on organizing your physical space.

We've talked about time management and how to coordinate in a

calendar and lots of good examples there.

And then we've talked about customer information management and Evernote.

So awesome stuff here,

Elaine. I am so thrilled.

Thank you so much for joining me and sharing with the

community. I so appreciate it.

Where would you have people go to learn more about your

books and other things that you have to offer?

Well my website is solo preneur,

specialist.com and my email is Elaine at solo preneur specialist.

Wonderful. And give biz listeners,

you know that all this information will be attached with links

on the show notes page so you can go and access

that anytime.

And just as a final kind of projection for the future,

where do you see all of organizing and time management going

in the future?

I think that these are skills that everybody needs to learn

because the pace of life has gotten to the point where

you just can't afford to waste time and time is too

valuable to waste.

Do you want to get things done and have some time

left over for yourself?

So getting organized,

whether it's physical or mental,

mentally organized or business organized.

Yeah. You want to be organized.

I agree with you cause it seems to me it's only

getting faster.

Yes. This is not slowing down.

We have to be more efficient and not make it be

a stressor in our life,

but use it to our advantages.

I'm just my thinking so.

Right. Absolutely.

Wonderful. Okay,

well Elaine,

thank you so,

so much for being here.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate your sharing how your using these tools.

You've given me some great tips personally and I know our

audience has picked up a lot of value from this as

well, so appreciate your time today.

So it was my pleasure.

Thanks very much.

Okay, I'm committing to try Evernote again.

How about you?

Do you already use it?

Are you motivated to check it out?

I'm actually really excited to give it another go.

On another note,

if you're listening to this,

right as the show is released,

so this is the week of May 4th,

2020 you're in luck.

The expand online summit has just started and it's not too

late to grab a seat.

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After a few days,

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But for now as my gift to you,

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That's a wrap.

Give biz listeners be safe.

Stay well and I'll catch you next week.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

I've got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week I have to say where

I invite all of you to share what you're doing,

to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week,

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