It’s hard work juggling all the tasks of a CEO! Today I’m sharing the workflow and systems I’ve learned over the past eight years, and what I use to help me work efficiently as a small business owner. I also share the products I use to help automate my sales and how I schedule my days as a work-from-home mom and CEO.

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Workflow

Establish a Schedule

For my schedule, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are the best days for me to get work done because those are the days that my three children are all in school. Also on Tuesdays my youngest has an adventure with Grandma so I’m also able to get some work done on Tuesdays as well. So first narrow down what time you have to be working on your business.

I do have an episode coming up about balancing parenthood and working from home. Check out Episode Five.

Plan Your Routine

Once you have the times that you’re going to be working, you need to prioritize and plan what you’re going to be doing during those times. For Example:

• Everyday Items: check my emails, reply to customers, ship orders, etc.
• Mondays: Product development
• Wednesdays: Planning and scheduling social media
• Fridays: Write email newsletters

You get the idea, whatever items you need to do on a weekly basis, schedule them for a certain day of the week. And you’re much more likely to complete those items if you have time designated for them.

Batch Your Work

Whatever category of work you have, do a bunch of it all at once. For example:

Creating Reels or Tik Toks

Instead of creating one, it’s a great idea to make five or six in a day. You have all the tools that you need, and you’re already dressed and ready to go for that day, so you’re able to be more effective in the work that you’re doing. That way you don’t have to regroup later, get back into the app, and think again about what you’re going to create.

Shipping Orders

If you have one order, wait a day or two and ship when you have more orders to put together. There’s a statistic that says you’re 40% more likely to be effective in your work if you’re batching the type of work that you’re doing.

You can lose productivity if you keep switching from task to task.

Calendars

One product that I like to use is called Asana. It is a scheduler that helps me plan my tasks. I’ve been putting all of my business tasks in Asana and then my personal tasks in Google Calendar. You can link the two so all of your Asana tasks also pop up in your Google Calendar.

So whenever I’m  working, I’ll open my Asana calendar and I can be focusing on work and not get distracted by the personal items I have in my Google Calendar. When I open Google Calendar I can see the whole picture all together.

The Big Three

The big three items that you’re going to accomplish that day. I think it’s important that you don’t set yourself up for disappointment by planning too many tasks for one day. With the big three, at the end of the day, you’re not thinking, “Man, I got nothing done. I had all these plans for what I was going to do today and I only got a few done.”

Three tasks, depending on their size, are usually a good number of things to expect to get done in one day. And then you can feel satisfied at the end of the day that you got those things done.

Systems

Systems is one of my favorite things to talk about. When I first started my business, I thought I was going to be spending so much time designing and developing fun products. Since I came from a design background, I was most excited about that and had the most experience in that field.

As I progressed in my business, I realized that probably about 75% of my time needs to be focused on marketing and how I’m going to sell my products.  So I like to use systems to help me with my sales.

Everything Automated

Automated is my favorite word. Anything that is automated, will save me time and make my work more efficient is now my favorite thing.

Some of the things I use to automate my work include:

EMAIL MARKETING

I use Klayvio which links really well with Shopify. I set my Klayvio up with automated email flows. So when someone signs up for my newsletter,  they’ll automatically go through the email flow of being introduced to my business. I also have flows set up for abandoned carts, browse abandonment, and a post-purchase flow. So after someone buys something, they’ll get an email with a video about how to use that product.

I also have a customer win-back flow that’s triggered if a customer has placed at least two orders over all time, but then they haven’t ordered anything in a while. They’ll start to receive emails and offers to come back and buy something else. I love this because I worked really hard upfront to set up all of these email flows. Then I set it and go. It’s automated.

ZIPIFY

Zipify is an add-on in Shopify. After someone purchases something, say they buy one of my diaper bags,  an offer will pop up that says, “Don’t you want to add on a Bowie Pack? It complements the Joni Backpack and you’ll get this deal!”

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Having a Social Media Manager has been amazing for me, for my sales, and for the time it has freed up for me. She also comes over about once a month or every six weeks and we make a bunch of reels together. The last time she came, I think we did 12.

If you’re at that phase in your business where you’re looking for a social media manager, some good places to look are Upwork or  LinkedIn.

Shopify

I use Shopify for my web hosting. It tracks my inventory for me and helps me with shipping. There are quite a few website services out there for e-commerce businesses. I do think that most small businesses use Shopify and that’s for good reason. It is a good product and it works well for a lot of people.

Faire

I’ve recently started delving into wholesale and have been using faire.com. Retail store buyers will go onto Faire and search for certain products. Typically you will sell your products for half of the cost when you sell wholesale compared to direct-to-customer sales.

Faire linked to my Shopify and automatically uploaded all of my products. It created a little shop for me within Faire and I’ve been getting sales with little to no effort.  Now it hasn’t been a huge amount of sales because again, I haven’t been putting much effort into it, but I love that I haven’t been having to do much work and I’ve been getting some wholesale orders from Faire.

If you want to increase your wholesale sales you can do more outreach like emailing buyers personally with a catalog. You can also hire sales reps to help you with that.

Pop-Up Markets

I try to do about one pop-up market locally, per month. It’s a great way for people to find you and do some networking. I sell a lot more in one day in person than I do online.

Other Marketing Options

Some more ways that you can market which I have not yet focused on include:

• Paid ads through Facebook Ads or Google Ads
• Frequent monthly/weekly email campaigns, besides automated flows
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Blog Posts
• YouTube

As the only person really that works for my business besides my social media manager, I can only spread myself so thin. So for me, I am choosing Instagram and a little bit of facebook as my outlets for social media.

I have heard the advice that it’s good to choose one long-term platform and one short-term platform. Long-term platforms include Blogs, Pinterest, and YouTube. One way to work more efficiently is to repurpose pieces of the long-term content you create and put them on your social media.

Short-Term Projects

Outside of sales, which takes up about 75% of my time, the other 25% of my time is spent doing short-term projects. Some of my favorite projects to do are the more creative ones which include:

• Designing new products
• Developing new products
• Web design
• Product photography
• Writing product descriptions

Some of the other less glamorous tasks include:

• Customer service/replying to emails
• Packing orders
• Going to the post office
• Going to my storage unit to get more products
• Ordering supplies

I just make sure that I schedule all of these items in Asana!

I hope that you found this episode useful and interesting as you start or grow your product business.

I have loved the process of learning how to market and sell my products. I’ve learned a lot as a business owner just through trial and error. If you’re not sure where to start, pick one thing and try it out! There’s so much information out there on how to do all of these things.

Also, you can always reach out to me via email if you’d like, at rebecca@theproductsessions.com!

Links Mentioned:

For organizing your business tasks Asana

For personal to-do’s Google Calendar

The best email marketing tool for product businesses is Klayvio

Zipify for automatic offers after a customer makes a purchase

Upwork or  LinkedIn for finding Social Media Manager

Shopify for your website

Faire for selling wholesale

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