How To Be More Organized | Wendy Day

Hi guys, how are you today? So we've all heard that old adage that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. And as much as I hate those little ditties, in this case it's actually true. Um, A lot of you have been asking me to share, um, how I stay organized and structured, and it seems like in the music industry that's the thing we're missing the most is organization and structure. And one of the reasons that I built my company Power Moves was to give organization and structure to artists who wanted to remain independent and start independent labels or just have, you know, a career on their own without having to sign to a major label. So I'm going to share with you some of the stuff that I do, and you can keep what you like, you can throw away what doesn't work for you. Um, but basically I do a lot of planning. I keep a calendar, I keep it on my iPad. I used to be old school and keep it in an actual calendar, um, you know, like one of these one of these type of calendars, but I now keep it on my iPad, and I have for the past couple of years. It's just easier for me to have it wherever I am. If I'm driving in the car, if I'm out at a meeting and somebody needs to schedule something, I can just pull up my calendar. It also— my assistant has access to my calendar and and can add stuff on there. I'm really funny about stuff being added to my calendar, um, without me. I don't like surprises. So, um, what she does is she usually texts me and asks if she can add a certain day and time and event. Um, and then on my calendar, um, I also schedule things that I need to do. For example, um, I'm in the process of writing a marketing plan for a client right now and I schedule time on my calendar to do that so that I make sure I have time blocked out where I can really sit down and work on that, because it takes a lot of research, it takes a lot of writing, it takes a lot of thought to put it all together. So I actually schedule appointments for the marketing plan to write it. Um, another thing that I do to stay organized is every Sunday night. My, my week begins on Monday. I usually leave Mondays open, so when I'm scheduling appointments, I'll schedule anything from Tuesday through Friday, but I almost always leave Monday open because for some reason there's always a lot of work to do on Monday. I used to think that people sat around over the weekend and figured out ways to put me to work. I used to seriously believe that because Monday is definitely my busiest day. Um, And that may be because on Sunday night I sit down and I spend about an hour every Sunday night, um, and I do two different things. If I have a client that I'm working with, I will put together a list of what needs to be done for the week, and I'll send it out to his or her whole entire team so that they know what's coming, and it keeps everybody on the same page, you know, with a weekly update from me as to what everybody's kind of working on. And then I do the same for myself. I put together a list of the stuff that I need to get done, and I schedule the priority stuff into my calendar so that if I have a deadline coming up for something, um, maybe it's for an incorporation that needs to be done, or maybe I need to make some phone calls to get a client onto a tour or whatever, um, I schedule all that stuff on my calendar so that I don't ever run out of time and I don't forget. And that stuff is actually more important to me than taking meetings. It's really hard to get a meeting with me. Time is more valuable to me than money. Time is my most valuable asset. I've only got 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I want time left over to spend with my husband and my dog, you know. And I want to do stuff that I enjoy doing. I want to be able to go to art openings and out to dinner and see movies if there's something playing that I want to see or go see a jazz band play, or even just sometimes I like to veg out in front of the TV and watch an old movie. So I make sure that my schedule allows me to do Wendy stuff, and that helps keep me balanced, because if I'm not balanced, I am one miserable human being. So that's what I do on Sunday nights. I plan out my week. I basically know what's coming. I leave stuff open. Because in the music business, as you know, stuff pops up all the time that we have to handle. Um, so I make sure that there's enough time in my day to handle the, the stuff that pops up. Um, I take time out of every morning and afternoon to answer email because it's very important to me. When I was coming into the music business, I had a really hard time getting people to return my phone calls, and I swore that, um, when I got to a position where I had some power in the music industry, that I would remember that. And I always have. And while you can't get me on the phone— it's very difficult to get me on the phone because the phone is just a huge waste of my time. It's a time suck. And unless you're my client, or unless I'm making calls trying to do something for a client, it's just really hard for me to spend time with people on the phone. But I do answer every email that I get to make up for that. So those who are savvy enough to do the research and know that the best way to reach me is by email, they get responses almost right away. And those of you who have emailed me know that it rarely takes me longer than 24 hours to respond to you by email. And the last thing I want to mention that I do is— and I've done an entire video about this— So I suggest you guys go back, go to wrapjewels.com and go back into the archive. But I keep a, I keep a notebook and I do this old school. I don't do this on my phone because there's some satisfaction I get. It's a to-do list and there's some satisfaction that I get of actually putting a line through something after I finished it, and I just don't get that same enjoyment with putting a digital line through something. It just, you know, I press a button and bloop, and it's not fun for me. So I still keep it old school, and what I do is on each individual page, I have the date at the top of the page, and it lists everything that needs to be done for that day. For example, here is my list for, for today, and actually it's yesterday's list, it's not today's list. But, um, I was so busy yesterday with the marketing plan that I didn't really get to accomplish a lot. I did like the emergency stuff and the priority stuff, um, but basically I will now go through and, um, as I finish things on that list, I cross them out. When it gets to the end of the day, if there's still things that haven't gotten completed, I move them to the next day. And this helps me because I'm a little bit of a procrastinator. And this helps me because at some point in time I get really tired of moving stuff from today to tomorrow and then from today to tomorrow and then from day to tomorrow. So eventually I just do it to get it off the list, which is crazy. Um, for the stuff that needs to be done for my clients, um, although it is on my list because it is stuff that I need to do, um, I don't do it old school. I do not do it in, um, in in booklet form for them because I need them to be able to access it. And I use one of two apps for that. I either use Todoist, which is T-O-D-O-I-S-T, or I use Wunderlist, and it's W-U-N-D-E-R-L-I-S-T, Wunderlist. And the great thing about both of those is that I can share with other people. So if I have more than one client happening at one time, I can keep their separate lists separate, yet everybody on that team can access the correct, um, to-do list. And that way my clients know what's expected of them. You know, they receive an email every Sunday night or, or Monday morning. I usually do it very late at night, so when they wake up Monday, it's in their inbox. Um, so they, they know what's coming for the week, But then they can also go into Wunderlist and see exactly what needs to be done, and I can access it at the end of every day. And again, I do this like in the middle of the night. I'm more of a night person than a morning person. I usually sleep till like 9 in the morning, but I'm up till like 3, 4, 5 in the morning depending on how busy I am. But I'll go through before I go to bed and I will check out the Wunderlist to see what everybody's working on, what's been done, what's still outstanding, because I want to make sure that we don't miss any crucial deadlines. There's a lot of deadlines that we can miss, but if we're about to drop, um, a full-length project, for example, if we're about to shoot a video, stuff can't be pushed back. It has to be done because we've got a finite deadline that we need to achieve. So, um, I'll go into those apps just to make sure that we're on pay— we're on point, that nothing has to be done. Um, and then I will— if something needs to be worked on, I will both email the person that needs to do it and update it into Wunderlist or Todoist. Okay guys, so that's how I stay organized. I hope that helps you a little bit. Remember to keep a list when, when you're returning phone calls, when people call you, make sure you keep a list of people that you say you will call back because so many times your phone will ring, you're in the middle of something, you'll say, hey, can I call you back in 10 minutes? Can I call you back in 30 minutes? And I'm guilty of this as well, and then I don't write it down, so I forget. So just take a little bit of time to make a note to yourself to call that person back. That way you don't become that asshole that doesn't return calls. Or if you do, you do because you choose to be that person, but don't do it because you're slacking. Okay guys, hope this helped keep you a little bit organized. Hope it gave you some structure and a little bit of organization, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for tuning in.