Getting Organized :: 20/20 Vision

Hey guys, so I'm sitting here taking my vitamins and getting organized for the day. Um, being organized is so important because it allows you to know what has to be done, schedule it onto your calendar, and then bang out what you need to complete. That way you complete everything that you need to complete for the day or the week or the month. Um, and for me, I use a, um, a time management system where I keep track of what my goals are, either for the month or the year. And I make sure that whatever is on my to-do list, aside from the, the typical stuff that I have to do for clients, I make sure that I schedule in time to do whatever I'm trying to accomplish with my own business and my own company. And I've got a bunch of different companies. I consult artists and help them build their careers. I do a lot of educational work like this series. I'm finishing up writing a book on how to put out your own music and make money with it. And then separate from music, I'm building coworking spaces in Atlanta with 3 partners. So as you can imagine, doing all of those different things plus the day-to-day work that I do with my clients, it doesn't always leave me a lot of time to do what I need to do for Rap Coalition, for Power Moves, you know, for my companies. So, um, I have lists that tell me what I need to get done every week, every month, and then I break them down into my daily schedule to make sure that stuff gets done. And this is all part of being organized. Um, for example, I always leave a couple of hours in the morning to answer email. I mean, I answer email throughout the day, and those of you that have emailed me know that, um, I'm really responsive with email. I suck at returning calls. I just don't have that kind of time during the day. So if you call me and you're looking for me to call you back, um, unless I know you and we have a relationship or you're one of my clients, it's not going to happen. If you just cold call me and ask me to return a call, you're not going to hear from me. But if you email me and you ask whatever questions you have, I can answer those when I'm standing in line somewhere, or when I'm sitting down to have lunch, or when I'm in the back of an Uber headed to a meeting, or, you know, whatever, while I'm waiting for the meeting to start, or whenever I have some free time, I'm able to respond to emails, and I can't just really pick up the phone and do that. Phone calls are extremely time-consuming, and those of you that own your own businesses know this. At some point, I probably will hire somebody just to answer and return phone calls, but it kind of defeats the purpose 'cause you're still not gonna be reaching me. So I'll be paying somebody basically to answer the phone and tell you you're not going to be reaching me. It just seems like kind of a waste of, of money. There's just better things for me to spend money on, you know, within my own company. But I, I do organize my schedule so that I have enough time to do all the stuff that I need to do. And, um, if I don't get it done that day, it goes on the top of my to-do list the next day. And there's nothing that pisses me off more than when I wake up and I have stuff from the day before that didn't get done. So I I really do try to get everything done. Um, today on my list, I keep looking over here because I've got my list in front of me and I'm going to kind of sort of share it with you. Um, today I have to incorporate a company, which I'm going to go online and do. Then I have to set up a, um, a tax ID number for that company, and you can do that live at irs.gov and get your number if you're doing it during a weekday. Um, from like 9 to 5 or 8 to 6. You can do that live and you can go online and get your tax ID number right on the spot. So I'm going to do that today. Um, I'm going to register, uh, 2 songs for Little Donald at Mediabase and BDS. I do that online as well. Um, if you have any songs that you're going to take to radio, you absolutely want to register them with Mediabase and, um, Nielsen BDS. And you can find both of those, um, you can find both of those web addresses. Actually, I'll post them below here on my YouTube page. I won't do it on Instagram, but I'll do it if you go— if you're watching this on YouTube, just scroll down and you'll see the web addresses, um, to encode on Mediabase and BDS. If you're watching this on Instagram, you can Google it. You can Google, uh, Mediabase encoding media or BDS Encoding, and it'll take you right to the page. You fill out the form. You either upload your song right there, or you send it to the email address that's specified on the form. You will receive back an email saying both that they received the song and that they received the uploaded information. If you do not get an email back saying those— from those two different things, it didn't go through. So just make sure that it goes through. And then the last thing that I'm doing today is going through— it's tax season, so I'm gonna go through my spreadsheets and make sure all of the money that I spent in 2019 is logged into the spreadsheet. I'm gonna go through my business bank accounts, my personal bank accounts, my PayPal— excuse me— my Zelle and my Cash App and just to make sure that everything is there. I make it really easy on myself though. At the end of the night when I come back in, um, to my home, I go through the receipts from that day and I enter them into a spreadsheet. Um, on days where I'm too busy to do that, and that does happen, I'll do it at the end of the week. I'll either do it on Friday night or Saturday morning. I'll go through and log in um, all of the expenses that I missed. When I travel, I keep an expense report for myself. It's a separate, um, sheet that I keep in either Word or Pages, and it just lists where I flew, where I stayed, um, how much I paid for the hotel, how much I paid for food, how much I paid for the rental car, um, airfare, you know, whatever it took for me to travel. And then I keep a log of who I met with in those cities when I was moving around. I only do that for business trips. I don't do that for personal expenses. But I don't really take many vacations. I don't really travel for pleasure. If I do, it's like a good, you know, 2-week chunk or 4-week chunk, most of the time around Christmas because that's when we have downtime in the music business. But I make sure that I'm very organized so that when it gets to be February or March and it's time for me to file my taxes or have my accountant file my taxes, I'm not going through a box of receipts that, you know, where I have to do an entire year's worth of logging in or tracking of expenses over a weekend. It's all pretty much done for me. I just have to go back and make sure I haven't missed anything. And from time to time I'll miss stuff, but it's, it's rare. And the stuff that I do miss is pretty small. So if I had to give up, like if I were super busy and I had to give something up, I would give that up because I would trust the fact that my, you know, weekly system is strong enough. And then the last thing I do is on Sunday nights, I make a list of everything that needs to be done the following week for each of my clients and for myself, and I email it and then I also print it out on my side. It hangs on my wall, and as my clients knock off tasks that need to be done, I cross them out. If they don't complete them that week— and I usually follow up with them, um, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, somewhere in there— anything that's not taken off the list, um, goes back on the list for the next week. Or even if I just haven't heard back from them about what's been accomplished, it goes on the list of stuff that needs to be done, um, the following week. And then that goes out late Sunday night or early Monday morning so that they can get on top of their week, um, at the beginning of the week. But I recommend that you guys all do that. Just keep a really good account of what needs to be done, break it down into small tasks, and then put those tasks on the to-do list. And then just start banging them out one by one and, um, schedule them into, you know, your, your Google Calendar. I use Google a lot because it's free. Um, I, I use a different calendar along with Google. I use Google mostly for my, uh, day-to-day stuff outside of the music business and for traveling. And then I use, um, I think it's Riatl for, um, my, uh, clients and my own work. Um, in addition to Slack, um, I reach people by text, by email. Basically, I work with my clients however it best suits them. Um, you know, whatever apps or programs they're used to and comfortable with, um, I tend to use whatever is available, um, from them, and I make it as easy as possible. So that's basically what organiz— organizing and organizational skills do. They just make your life easier. And those of you that aren't organized, you know exactly what I mean, because you're sitting around at the beginning of the day going, okay, what do I have to accomplish today? Like, what do I need to do? And that works when you've got like 5 to 10 things to accomplish, but when you start getting upwards of 20, 30, and 40 things that you need to accomplish every day, your mind just can't possibly remember everything. So rather than letting it get lost in your brain, it's just better to get it out either on paper or onto an app on your phone. You know, there's a lot of really great to-do lists. You can put it in Notes on your phone. It's, it's really that easy. Or you can get a little bit fancy and start using an app that tracks your to-do list and breaks out your goals. So that's really all I wanted to talk about today was being organized. It's, um, important to be efficient, especially when you're as busy as I am and you're running multiple companies. It's just, if you're taking somebody's money to deliver a skill set, you better deliver that skill set, and you better be really good at it. And being organized is what makes you really good at it. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Hope you get organized and get it really together. Bye.