by Vicki Flaugher, CEO of SmartWoman Guides

I am a strong proponent of automation and process. It’s one of the holdovers I still have from working in the corporate world. From years of being a project manager and process control analyst, I care about the flow of information and how it’s handled. Process impacts how much time, money, and resources are needed to get things done. Flow can make things go fast and easy or bottleneck it all down to a slow crawl. 

More honestly, focusing on infrastructure is actually part of my personality. Call it a blessing or a curse, I tend to ask how things are done, to ask how I can eliminate waste and repetition, and to work to make things work in a smoother and more effortless way.

For the entrepreneur, systems are crucial. You have so much to do that it’s important that every minute is used wisely. And, you can’t work all the time – you have to figure out ways that allow you to accomplish what you need to, while allowing you to have a life. Rest and rejuvenation is not an option - it’s a requirement, especially when you are working hard. Besides, there are only 24 hours in the day and some of those hours are for eating, sleeping, showering, etc.  You have to leverage yourself.

Email can take a lot of your time. If you find you are answering the same questions over and over, or receiving a similar type of inquiry repeatedly, you can work to make your time more efficient with these easy suggestions.

Use email autoresponders that includes helpful links:

By establishing a welcome message that greets people when they sign up for your opt-in gift, or responds to a help inquiry immediately, you allow yourself some breathing room to respond to emails on your chosen schedule without neglecting your clients. I’m not suggesting that you push off answering your emails for too long, but rather that an autoresponder with a Frequently Asked Questions link can go a long way to giving customers the answers they need while you are blocking your time doing more pivotal things.

Also, if you find that your customers don’t reliably get their download gifts (perhaps due to pop up blockers) when they opt-in to your email list, it’s smart to include the link again in your thank you email, which gets triggered when they sign up in the first place. That way,  you don’t have to answer so many support questions about downloading issues because you give the client a second chance to retrieve their bonus via email.

One word of caution – it’s important to assign one specific, unique email for these inquiries, rather than putting an autoresponder on your regular, day-to-day email address. This is because an autoresponder will always answer back. If you mix autoresponder enabled email addresses with every day communication email addresses, you will be sending out the same message to people over and over and that’s not really that smart to do. It’s not personal enough and it’s annoying.

Use your email filtering feature to sort your incoming emails:

By automatically routing certain types of emails, either by subject or “from” address, you can take a lot of the hassle out of reviewing your email inbox. I sign up for many newsletters and I automatically filter those to their own specific folder.  That way, they are easily collected, without any intervention for me, and routed out of my active inbox so I don’t have to manually sort or decide everytime if I need to act upon them. These emails sit in their folder until I have time to get to them. They are rarely urgent but I like to read them, so with very little trouble I get them off my active desk so I can focus on what I have to do now instead.

The types of emails you could apply this system to are newsletters, invoicing and receipts, new signup logon info, personal blasts from your friends, and google alerts. The goal is to have only actionable items present in your inbox.

Use action based rather than topic based folders:

Sorting your emails by how urgent they are to act on is helpful in keeping you focused on getting things done. As an example, some categories would be Today, This Week, This Month, Reference. This method creates a basic to-do list for you that allows you to not get distracted by items that really should be pushed aside for awhile why you concentrate on the more important tasks.

Many business coaches suggest that you only check email once or twice a day rather than have it open all the time. One of my heroes, Tim Ferriss, goes even farther than that in his book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich to suggest that, done right, you can do well by checking your email only once a week. Whereas you might not be ready to go that far with it, you could learn quite a bit by opening your mind to his ideas about delegation, outsourcing, and time management.

Another great book to help you is Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. It has been a real lifeline to me for organizing my work, including emails and folders. You might check it out if you feel you struggle with staying organized and prioritizing your time. I consider this one my business bible for organization and it has helped me tremendously. Check it out and see what you think.

Use these simple tips and work to get things done and to give yourself time to rest and relax with your family. That is in fact why we are working as entrepreneurs in the first place, right?

Together, we are stonger.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman

follow me on Twitter: SmartWoman

I received this email from a dear friend and had to share. I am not advocating one candidate over another in this post. I am simply in tearful awe of these women who went before. It’s a strong message, so if you are easily offended by becoming fully aware of the sacrifices women before us made on our behalf so we can vote, then click away now.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.  

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for  

picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above
her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping
for air.

(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her
head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate,
Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,
beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his
guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because
they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right
to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their
food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike,  

they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured  

liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks  

until word was smuggled out to the press.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf
So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because-
-why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?
Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York)
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history,
saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk
about it, she looked angry. She was–with herself. ‘One thought
kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,’ she said.
‘What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use,
my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just
younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’

(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the?U.S.?Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters,

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by  

these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

I’m excited to announce a whole new level of success tips if you are a business woman (or want to be one): The Ultimate Business Camp For Women!

This is a free Teleseminar Series with professional business coach, Tami Szabo, and co-host, Ingrid Olson, designed to empower and educate female entrepreneurs. I met Tami Szabo through Evan Carmichael and was more than happy to sign on to help out when Tami asked me to join in.

And, the speaker list really is pretty darned impressive, if I don’t say so myself - did I mention I am the opening speaker on Oct. 2nd? Yes, SmartWoman will kick off the fun and I am so honored and thrilled. I am still pinching myself, giddy to be rubbing shoulders with these awesome women.

I’ll be speaking for about an hour, with a Q & A session afterwards, and my topic is “The Marketing Power of the A-HA! Moment”. We’ll be covering the following ideas:

1.  What is the A-HA! Moment?
2.  How can the A-HA! Moment help me as an entrepreneur?
3.  Five mistakes to avoid with beginner adult learners
4.  How to apply the A-HA! Moment magic to your website
5.  How to apply the A-HA! Moment magic to your emails
6.  How to apply the A-HA! Moment magic to your backend sales

You will be given the opportunity to purchase my latest SmartWoman product at a special discount, complete with bonuses. If you think you could benefit from receiving a practical, step by step recipe for improving your business systems to reach more new clients, you’ll likely enjoy this offering. But, don’t worry – it’s not a pitch fest! My most sincere wish is that the information you receive on this call is enlightening, actionable, and full of quick and affordable ideas to help you, even if you decide you are not interested in anything other than listening in on the free Business Camp calls. You will not be pressured nor are you obligated to do anything other than to enjoy the session. I will leave it up to you to do whatever else you feel is best for you.

This should be an incredible event with great information to help you be more successful in your business. Tami and Ingrid have pulled together a whole list of women who can speak to your issues in business and what I like the best is that the speakers come from a wide range of viewpoints. It’s important to have a variety of mentors, who have a range of skills, to learn all you can, and that’s what you will experience. So go sign up on Tami’s site and show up throughout the month!

When: Every Tuesday and Thursday in October at 6pm Pacific/7pm Mountain/8pm Central/ 9pm Eastern

To sign up for the event, and find out about more about all the scheduled speakers, visit
http://tinyurl.com/53az8d

I look forward to having SmartWoman Guides readers on the call. I think you’ll enjoy it!

Together, we are stronger.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman