Owner of Multiple Businesses: How I Stay Organized and Efficient

Hey, it's Mike Andes and today we got a special video for you. I'm at my office here and today I'm actually going to go over some hacking for time or scheduling things that you can be more productive. And for some people this is not going to help you at all because everyone has a different method and there's no right way to be more productive or schedule your time correctly or make sure that you're being ultra efficient. But these are the things that I do. And so I want to be as tactical and, and tangible as possible in my tips today so that if you have never tried to figure out time hacking or trying to figure out to be more efficient, if you've never done those things before, I hope that today kind of gives you some ideas and some tangible ideas that you can use in your business and just in your personal life. So let's go ahead and jump right into it and start off with some of the things that I use every single day just to make sure I can run all the businesses that I'm in touch with, all the franchisees and they're going through personal issues. And so keeping track of all of that is really important. So I'm not gonna talk so much about CRMs today. Like CRMs and making sure that you keep in all your customer data and all that needs to be stored in a software that's very important. And I feel like the biggest thing for me is because I have so many different things going on, I need to make sure that I get rid of this stuff in my head. It's kinda like RAM in a computer. RAM in a computer stands for random access memory, which is basically the memory that the computer is able to process at any given time. And I really feel like that is the biggest limiting factor for us as business owners is the things that we are immediately trying to think. If that starts to get too much, you just go into overdrive and that's when you have burnout and it's very anxious and all the rest of it. I feel like my big thing is trying to, when I think about something, get it into some other software or some other method of communication in order for me not to have to think about it. My biggest thing is I get so many inputs every single day and me just making sure that I organize them is really half my battle. So let me go over some of the things that I like and that hopefully you might be able to pick up on. So, first things first, I'm a big fan of Apple products simply due to the Fact that they have a great ability to sync with each other via icloud. So the Notes app, the reminders app, your mail app, your calendar, all of that syncs between all your devices. So whether I'm wearing my Apple Watch, having my iPhone at my imac over there, over here, or my. I have like, no, I have three MacBook, MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air. I have an iPad. All those things sync together. All the Mac computers between the offices, they all share their passwords, all synced together through icloud. So I really like that feature. And I like the fact that when I am in email on this computer, I can literally pick up the same email if I'm halfway through it on my phone, in my car and start driving. The same reminder that I might put into the reminders app on my computer is going to immediately sync with my phone, my iPad, and all the rest of it. I know that wherever I'm at, I'm usually going to be within proximity of one of my devices that I can kind of get rid of a thought. Like I'll be literally, you know, talking to someone, thinking about a completely different thought. And I know I need to do it, but I just need to put it into my reminders app. And that's my kind of way of getting rid of the information out of RAM and into, like, the storage of the computer, if we're using that analogy. And so let's jump into some of the things that I use specifically. First things first. And that's a reminders app inside of iOS, so I use Apple, like I said, and I try to minimize a lot of my apps and things, but when it comes to reminders, super, super important. So I'm a big fan of lists, and I use the reminder app as really my list. So I have different sections and categories that I have to go over with certain people or about certain businesses. So the ones I stay in the most are at the top. So that's the list that says this week list, and then this month, and then I have the franchise updates. I have meetings with Mount Vernon, which I meet Tim with usually once or twice a month. And so things I wanna go over with him, I have media work in progress that I share with Josh. What's really cool about the reminders app is you can share a list with another person that has an iPhone or Apple device, and then you can actually share the same list. So if I go into here, I can see the things that Josh is working on, he's flagged those, and then as those things are completed, we can take them off of the list. And so things that, for example, instead of me texting Liz about stuff that I need to go over with her, because I usually don't see her every day, I don't see her as much as I used to. But when I do see her, I need to go over certain things. So I'll open up her list and see certain things that I need to talk about. And certain employee issues or customer issues I might have question about that I don't want to necessarily talk about in the middle of the day. But when I get to see her and have a meeting, I can go over those things. Midweek meeting is the one we have on Wednesday mornings with our team where we talk about financials and all the rest of it. So if I open that up, you can see some of the things that I am wanting to talk about with them. Command center meeting. You see there's a zero there because I went there this morning, had a meeting. So all the things on that list, that reminder list has been completed. Meeting with Tim. Like I said, franchise update. That's zero. Because this morning again, I did a franchise update video for all our franchisees. So there's not really much any updates that I need to give them, but if there was, I would put them in there. Like, if I did a training video on the last weekend, I did a training video and I made sure I made a note in there that on the next franchise update, I was going to mention that training video, that it was now in the dashboard. This month and this week are probably my most important list and where I stay most throughout the day. Like, I probably go into this at least two or three times an hour. This week one. This week one is the one that stuff goes off on and off of my list very quickly. So for today, for example, these are things that a lot of times I can get done in a matter of seconds, or it's things that I just think about when I'm talking to someone and I just need to get it off of my mind and into my phone. So, for example, like Command center set up Tim Beck for franchise. That's a new franchisee. We gotta get him set up at Command Center. So put that in there as a list. I'll probably mention that to Lonnie within the next 20 hours. So this list for me is like, the next 24 hours, I gotta get these things done. And they rotate like crazy. Like if you looked at the beginning of the day, they said about 25 things on it. Now we're down to six things because it's 3:30 and I'm gonna be starting to record. So most of the things have been done, but it's little stuff like going to Mako and getting a color swatch pickup. So Josh, can you hand me that color swatch there behind you? So I need to pick up a bunch of these tomorrow from Mako, which is our people who paint our trucks because this is the color swatches that our franchisees can match and they're coming here in a couple weeks for training. So I got all their binders and name tags and everything done, but I need to get their color swatches. So little stuff like that tomorrow, gotta pick those up from Mako. Then I got like lively HSA chm. That's Lively Health Savings account and looking at Christian healthcare ministries and seeing if I'm allowed to have an HSA health savings account using a cost sharing program. Health sharing program like chm. And you're not allowed to. So literally I can take this off my list just by swipe there and delete. I take that off my list because I've already researched here. Literally that thought came to me this morning and not at a good time when I could actually research it real quickly. And I wanted to see would a. Can you start an HSA if you're a part of a health savings or health sharing program? And you can't because an HSA is only allowed to be used if you have a high deductible insurance plan. And a health health sharing program is not considered a high deductible insurance plan. So little things like that I just pop into here when I get the time. I can research it, look it up. I realize that I found out that I cannot write off a health savings or health.

Sharing program as a self employee. You can't write that thing off. It's not an insurance policy. And then little things like listening the last five minutes of a chapter that I was listening to, I literally listened to this book. It was a really good part. I was then getting to sidetracked to a different conversation with one of the businesses. But I quickly made sure that I put a note in here to listen to the last five minutes of a chapter one more time. So little things like that, that's in this week list, then in this month list. That's things that are a little more longer term, next few weeks I want to get done. So these are things I'm working on with like the call center software that we're Trying to build, trying to put vistaprint thank you cards in our software for our franchisees to be able to quickly edit done for you Facebook ads. I'm working on that portal on our new franchise dashboard. So that is probably the most important thing for me is lists cannot overemphasize this enough to be able to go in here. And literally every single day, if you think about something popping in here, think about something popping here. Like, oh, I need to do this. Boom, it goes in here. And then I don't have to think about it. And then when I have a couple minutes, like if I have five minutes between meetings or five minutes before a call, I'm going to this list right here and see if I can knock something out real quick. Like, for example, the minute when after Josh leaves here from videoing, I know I'm gonna probably have a couple minutes before I gotta go to Anytime Fitness, I'm gonna be posting my Instagram video. That's gonna be the thing that I do right when he leaves because I can quickly go in here and knock it out. So reminders. Very, very important. All right. The next thing that I use almost every single day. Well, I do use every single day, and that is the calendar app. I use it all the time to schedule where I'm at and be able to look forward in the week in terms of where I have available times. So I have everything that syncs up with this calendar. So everything from my Zoom meetings with the franchisees to introductory calls for potential franchisees, to meetings that I have on a recurring basis. So all my recurring basis meetings are always scheduled in here. So I make sure I never schedule a Zoom call. You cannot book a time over those slots. And that's going to be at the Bellingham shop. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday morning meetings for like 20, 30 minutes. And then I have Command Center, I have Anytime Fitness. Those are all meetings that are scheduled every single week. And so they're calendared in here all the time as a recurring visit. But you can see here, for example, like today is Monday, and you can see Josh recording at Anytime Fitness is between three and four. And so right now, Josh is videoing me. And then I'll go over to Anytime Fitness and check in with them. And then at 4pm I have a phone call with Thomas Salazar. He's one of our franchisees. 5pm I have another call with a franchisee. And then this evening I have a family event. So that's today. If you look at tomorrow, for example, you can see similar things. I'm recording in the morning and I'll probably record earlier than that. But on here I block off usually 8 to 5. I just make sure that's blocked off because that's the times available on my calendly when people can book calls with me. So I just make sure that on my calendar I'm always booked appropriately between 8 and 5 because that's when people are allowed to book calls with me on my calendly events and Zoom and things like that. So you can see here tomorrow I got calls with Carla Garrett Dean and I have an hour of conference prep I'm doing recording quite a bit tomorrow for the MBA course that I'm recording for. And then I have an anytime fitness meeting at 5:30. So that's tomorrow. So using the calendar app all the time, very important. So that way if someone asks me if I'm available for something, I can pull up a time or I can send them an invite. You can do that really, really, really awesome here on iOS as well. Send people an invite to a meeting and they can accept. And I make sure that Zoom and all my other meetings are synced with my calendar at all times. So something that I'm a big proponent of when it comes to just organization and making sure that things are efficient throughout my day is just minimalism and just making sure that there's not as much clutter in life. So I try to keep my material possessions as limited as possible. So I'm not always thinking about things like oh, I gotta wash my boat or I gotta like do something on my house or like material possessions a lot of times will bog people down. They gotta store their boat and then they gotta like wash their car and then they have all these different material possessions that it starts to just bog them down and take a lot of their time. And literally people spend half their life just taking care of their junk. And so I just try to live as minimally as possible in terms of size. Like I'll never, I do not want a 10,000 square foot house, have no desire whatsoever for that. I'd rather have a small house that's really nice. You know, thousand 1500 square feet is all I need to be happy. And so just small, not having junk and storage. So like my family moved like 25 times throughout when I was at home living at home over the course of like 20 years. And so that really taught me to get rid of junk. And I have stuff laying around and storing things that I don't use very often. So I try to like if I Don't use something at least once or twice a month, I'm probably not keeping it. And that includes memorabilia and cards and all the rest of it. Like, if I'm not looking at it, I'm sorry, but it's going in the garbage. And so just kind of living a simple, minimalistic lifestyle is very important to me when it comes to, again, more things about, like your calendar and things. I'm a big fan of time blocking. And so taking an hour and you saw my calendar, like, I take an hour and I say, like this morning, for example, I said email and catch up. I knew that after the weekend I was gonna be behind on email. And so I block off that hour. And I know I can literally probably get through 200 emails in that hour of just concentrated going through them and responding really quickly. Whereas if I was responding to the email every time it came in, I'd be so distracted, I wouldn't be able to focus on what I'm trying to do. So that's why a lot of times the reminder or the blocking off time blocking on your calendar is so important, because you can knock things out. And I really, truly believe I can knock out 20, 30 things on a reminders list that would sometimes take people an entire day. I think I truly believe I can do that in an hour or two hours if I'm focused and disciplined on just doing those things. Like, if I'm like, look, I'm gonna look at this reminders app and I'm gonna just knock out these things and I'm not gonna focus on email. I'm not gonna focus on this or that. I'm just gonna focus on 1, 2, 3, go right through the list is very important that time blocking element. The next thing is transfer time is a big issue. And this is why time blocking is so important. I truly believe that most people are so inefficient because when they switch tasks, they waste time. So when I'm going from, let's say, recording and then I'm gonna go to writing, and then I'm gonna go over here and record something else. Between those three different activities that transfer time is where I feel like a lot of people are very inefficient, because in between recording and writing, they check their phone, they go to Facebook, they check out how the stock market's doing, they look at their emails, they. They become very reactive to what's coming into them. Whereas I want to be proactive, so I want to record knowing that's what I need to do first. Then I'm going to write, then I'm going to record, and then I can go be reactive when my time block is allowing me to. So I think transfer time is very important. That's why when I say I can knock out 20 things very efficiently is I'm going from one to the X to the next to the next. I'm not doing one. Like, oh, great, I got that off my list. That's super fun. Okay, now let's check my iPhone. Let's see what's going on Instagram. What's Snapchat doing? I'm not doing that. And I really feel like transfer time between tasks is the thing that kills people's productivity. And that's why time blocking is so important. Know what you need to accomplish. And if you have five things on your list, do not break them up in terms of like, oh, well, I'm gonna do one of them, then go to the bathroom and then I'm doing another one. Then I'm gonna go, like, get some food from the kitchen and then I'm gonna go, and then I'm gonna call somebody, like, knock things out. And that's why I truly believe that some people can get literally two and three and four times as much as other people done in an hour, because the transfer time between tasks can be massively collapsed. Another thing, email inbox. I get a lot of emails. Most small business owners do. People that have probably 50 times as many emails as me. So I'm not an anomaly here. But I don't have a personal assistant that goes through my emails yet. Eventually one day I probably will when it comes to my email box. Basically the same thing, and that is, look, if I'm not going to deal with this problem now, if I'm not gonna deal with the email now, it's not getting opened up because as soon as you open up that email, you become reactive. And it's another thing in your rem, your ram, that random access memory. If I read an email and I don't respond to it right now I'm going to be thinking about, oh, I need to respond to so and so. And it's like turning in my head of what I'm gonna say and how they're gonna respond. I will address my email when it's on my time block for my email. And maybe, maybe I'm seeing my computer and it pops up and it's like, oh, that's relevant. And I'm gonna open up and I'm gonna respond to it. A big issue with people getting stressed is the fact that they allow things to store up in their ram, their random access. I keep coming back to this analogy, but it's very pertinent. And that is if I read that email, I'm going to respond to it right away. And that kind of leads me to the next thing is do things now when you can. So if I need to do something, like for example, literally a few minutes ago, someone requested that they needed the closing documents on one of the properties that I just purchased. And like, yes, I could have just put that on my reminders list. But literally in the amount of time it would have put me to, you know, taken me to put it on my reminders list and then keep it in my RAM for the next couple hours till this evening before, like that would have been like bogging down my memory. It would have been bogging down my speed. So what I do, it only took like 2 minutes. Quickly scan the documents on my phone and email it, address it right then. And if you can do anything now, if you can get stuff off your plate right away, do that first. If it's gonna take 30 seconds. Most little tasks, things that bog us down, emails, text messages, responding back to someone sending over a message, literally a minute here, 30 seconds there. Just if you can, if you open up an email, respond. If you're going to listen to a voice message, respond, don't allow those things to bog down your memory. Last thing is what happens when you have a list and what I call runoff. And that is there is no physical way you're gonna be able to finish all the things on the list. And there's been times I have 30, 40 different tasks to do on my this week list and literally there's absolutely no way I'm going to get it done. This is where you think of it as a repository instead of your ram. I have put it into my to do list and it stays there. I don't need to think about it, I don't need to dwell on it. I don't want to get overwhelmed. And it's very easy to get overwhelmed when we had to shut down the gym and that week I was getting literally bombarded with hundreds of emails, text messages, phone calls, as well as trying to figure out if I was gonna stay open, if I was gonna be breaking the law. The tax implications, PPP loans, Eidl loans, unemployment, all this stuff was coming in and questions I had like, okay, what happens under this scenario? What happens? I had to make sure I stayed organized and addressed all those things. But I had to realize I was not going to get to everything and you're gonna have runoff on your list. And you do not wanna get overwhelmed and stressed out about those things. Just realize that as long as it's not in your RAM and it's in the repository of your to do list, you will eventually get to it. And just once it's there, it's there. And so those are some of the things that I do to try to stay organized as much as I possibly can. It's by no means perfect. It works for me though. And my main thing is figure out what works for you, figure out if it's lists, figure if you need to have a whiteboard. I have lots of whiteboards around here for sketches and drawings and more creative work. But when it comes to like getting things done, lists for me work great. And so I encourage you, figure out what works for you to be the most productive, get the most done, and most importantly, to not allow the things of day to day minutiae and stuff that's going on every single day in your face. Don't allow that to bog you down, stress you out, or get you just completely overwhelmed. It's not worth it. Get structured, make sure you know what you're doing and stay productive.