Module eight Procedures and best practices.
So the goal of this module is basically going to attempt to try and help you
avoid a lot of common pitfalls and things that may, you know, take time away,
um, make things less efficient, uh,
or help you avoid some of the, uh,
the common traps or things out there, um, that I've seen happen,
have some have happened to me.
And so just trying to pass that along and hopefully save you a ton of time and
frustration.
First one and a big one is time management. Number one rule.
Do not wing it. It is very easy to get lost or overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed,
and let tasks control you if you don't have them allotted and planned ahead of
time. Just walking in and saying, oh, today I'm gonna work on this, or I have,
you know, these five things to do today, typically is not going to, uh,
be the most efficient. So, some general guidelines I like to use,
whatever you're estimating the time is going to take you to do that thing.
Add an extra 25% when you're putting it in your calendar.
So that's gonna account for things like, you know, getting into work mode,
right?
Some of us take a minute or two to kind of get oriented when we're starting on
specific tasks or products or projects. Um, and then, you know,
your wrap up time, right? Um, whether that's, you know,
closing out an email or saving or organizing something that you completed
better to give yourself that extra buffer, um, and not need it,
then the reverse. And then things get backed up and crammed. Uh,
and you start to feel rushed. And then that's where our, our, uh,
quality of work starts to go down.
I recommend starting with the fixed and recurring task first,
cuz those are the things you kind of know are gonna be the most consistent.
So that could be your training time, your family time, when you need to eat, uh,
all of those type of things. And it doesn't have to necessarily be you,
you know,
make another a different multicolored thing in your online calendar for each one
of these. But knowing, you know,
specific times of day are where you're not going to schedule something else,
right?
And then we have to consider the type of task we're blocking off the time.
So simpler, monotonous stuff,
typically easier to do and break up in small chunks. Um,
so that could be everything from responding to emails, putting a po,
a pre-done post on social media, filming or editing a piece of content,
article or video. Um,
those are things that we can be pretty consistent with the amount of time it
takes us, or at least better at estimating them. The creative stuff, um,
is going to be, it require a little bit more flexibility, um,
or larger time block.
So definitely gonna require probably that extra 25% margin.
And that could be writing programs, articles, planning videos,
marketing strategy, um, just because it can take some time to, like I said,
kind of get in the zone, get the,
the creativity flowing and get into that focus zone, right? There's always
That bit of time when we're switching tasks where we're not really productive at
all because we're kind of reorienting ourselves to the, the new demand,
um, that we're trying to do. And then of course, accounting for flexible time,
right? Uh, you know, if you're,
you're working around your other PTs or you know, you finish with one client,
maybe you get caught in a, you know, five or 10 con minute conversation, uh,
with someone else on the gym floor. We can't just, you know,
I wouldn't expect to have everything, you know, back to, back to the minute,
you know,
give yourself a couple minute window basically for just the sake of safety.
And then a lot of these, uh,
obviously are going to vary based on your specific type of business,
but these are just some of the examples, uh,
that you're going to want to pre-plan, right? So client work, um,
once you kind of get in your flow with working with your online people, um,
or you know,
obviously your in-person people are easier cuz you have a set time commitment
for them, um, but the client work online,
maybe you start to get a better idea of, you know,
these clients or your clients in general take x amount of time for a general
check-in,
review X amount of time to write them a new program and you can start get,
getting good at being, um, accurate with your time estimates,
content planning and production, business meetings, all that kind of stuff. Um,
I typically try and batch a lot of these when you can. So like online clients,
obviously you don't have to, uh,
hopefully you're not having clients check in on multiple days of the week.
You're typically gonna try and condense them to one or two days per week.
So then right after that you can do one or two days of dedicated follow up
check in, program writing stuff, um, blocks of time, right?
So we're not trying to spread that throughout the week. We're gonna put that on,
you know,
whatever Sunday and Wednesday or Sunday and Thursday or Saturday and Tuesday,
whatever the case may be.
And then that we already know that those days are dedicated for that and frees
up the rest of the week hopefully to fit the rest of these things in the
financial reporting and bookkeeping stuff. Again,
this stuff isn't all on a weekly schedule. Uh,
the financial things can obviously are usually be batched to like one time a
month, right? Or better yet, if you're outsourcing that to someone,
then you don't have to worry about scheduling that at all.
Maybe you just get a monthly report from them as to what's going on so you know
how things are going.
And then definitely don't want to skip things like the continued education
again, doesn't have to be a weekly thing or even a monthly thing.
It may be every quarter or every semester you, you know,
invest in a new course or you spend time once a month looking at, you know,
the newest, uh,
studies that have come out on particular topics using something like, uh,
the mass review or something like that which kind of condenses and summarizes a
lot of that for you.
And you can kind of pick which ones you want to actually read all the way
through, right?
Because I'd always recommend doing that over just looking at the abstract or
looking at someone's interpretation of the abstract. Um, and getting good at,
you know, your critical thinking obviously.
And of course we need to plan our time for, uh,
Personal stuff, fun, uh, workouts,
family time and doing things fun cuz working 24 7,
while it may feel efficient,
you'll most likely burn out and become less efficient, uh,
with the amount of stress that may put you under. And then finally,
email management. So this can be a major time suck. Um,
these are the kind of the ways that I'd like to use to kind of make this more
efficient over the time that I've been doing this. Um, again,
some of this will depend on the scope and size of your business.
So multiple addresses and inboxes. Um, that would be like if you have, you know,
different aspects of your business,
like you have a membership and you have e products and you have
online coaching, right?
So you may have separate inboxes or separate folders and rules
for all of that to keep that stuff pre-organized for you.
And then that's also easier to delegate as you maybe start to hire someone on to
do customer service for your membership or for your products.
You can just give them a login to a specific inbox.
That's all they have to worry about. Um,
rather than them trying to filter through, uh,
emails for 20 different things and then it's inefficient on their time and
you're paying them for that inefficiency, inboxes and rules,
tremendously helpful. Um, they can, you can do it in Google,
you can do it in the Apple mail stuff. Um, if you have, um, you know,
receipts coming through from your e-commerce store,
they'll typically have a same intro or same part in the subject. You set a rule,
hey, if it contains this in the subject, it goes to this folder,
like all the receipts go here, customer inquiries go here, applications go here.
And that will save you a ton of time of clicking and dragging that you don't
need to be doing as far as executing this stuff. Um,
I like to use the 2 24 hour rule. Um,
so that just means I give myself a maximum two hour block
a day and it can be two one hour blocks,
it can be one two hour block depending on what your email volume,
what your schedule looks like. Um, maximum two hours a day,
hopefully shouldn't take that long depending on what you're doing. Um,
and then 24 hour response time, that's what I like to do. Um, especially from,
mainly from a customer service pers uh, perspective. Um,
trying to show people that you're gonna get back to them as as soon as possible,
especially your, your customers, the people that are paying you. Uh,
having an FAQ can hopefully cut down on some of this.
Not everyone's gonna use the faq,
but it can also be a time saver for you if you have your own internal FAQ
of questions that you get asked a lot.
You kind of have a pre-written response that you don't have to type out every
single time. You can say, oh, I got that question last week. Go to your faq,
copy paste, you know,
adjust as needed to suit the particular person's question or
situation and send it. That can be a major time zero for you,
especially if you're hiring, again,
hiring people to do your customer service and you want things answered in a
specific way. Uh, or maybe they require
A certain amount of specific knowledge to answer certain questions that they
might not have yet. Um, or you have things like, you know,
you set up a payment plan and it has these,
all this spec specific knowledge and details in there.
You don't want some trying to remember or figure that out every time. Copy,
paste, send it done and then stick to that schedule, right? So don't,
uh, you know, you have five minute down through, oh, I'm gonna check emails.
Like, no, take the five minutes, maybe look at your day,
organize some bigger picture stuff,
save the emails for the emails or you get sucked in. Um, to that,
the other part of the,
the 2 24 hour or 2 24 rule is I
typically don't recommend responding within two hours of a customer sending
an email. So between two hours and 24 hours is the response window.
The reason being,
if you respond to someone 15 minutes after they send you an email,
you may get sucked in to a, a, a live email conversation,
which is again going to be a tremendous time drain potentially,
unless it's something like massively urgent for some reason that needs to be
handled right away. You need it, you know, taken care of, then you can kind of,
of course bend that rule. But if it's general customer inquiry stuff,
wait at least two hours cuz typically once people send an email,
they at least know that you're not sitting there waiting for their email
response. Then that'll save you some time as well. So that's the quick enter,
uh, overview of some ways to increase your time management, efficiency,
efficiency. Uh, and then next we'll get into managing, uh,
clients and multiple stages of that.