Efficient Systems for Small Business Entrepreneurs: Insights from an Online Business Manager

Tech and SystemsOnline Business ManagementOrganization

Apr 13

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As a small business entrepreneur, managing various aspects of your online business can be overwhelming. From juggling tasks and projects to coordinating with team members and automating repetitive processes, it's crucial to have efficient systems in place to optimize your operations and boost productivity.

That's where online business managers come in. These experts specialize in streamlining business processes and maximizing efficiency, allowing you to focus on growing your business.

In this blog post, I’ll dive into the essential systems used by online business managers and explore how they can benefit small business entrepreneurs. From task management to project management, communication and collaboration, automation, integrations, and workflow optimization, keep reading for valuable insights and practical tips to help you optimize your online business operations and achieve your goals.

So, let's get to it and discover the world of systems used by online business managers for small business success!

Task Management Systems

A good task management tool is probably one of the first tools any business needs. At it’s most basic, it’s a way to keep track of all the individual tasks that need to be done on a day to day basis. At it’s most extravagant, it has automations and reminders that keep track of what needs to be done next for you.

There are many wonderful task management tools on the market. Asana, Hubspot, Trello, even the Reminders app on your phone are good places to start if you just need the basics. But I want to talk about my all time favorite tool, ClickUp.

ClickUp is my favorite because it can grow with you as your business grows. Whether you’re using it for your own personal business or you’re implementing it for clients, you can use it as a very basic task management tool, but it’s sophisticated enough to grow in to a full on project management system. We’ll talk more about that in the next section. 😉

ClickUp Features

Let’s cover some of ClickUp’s best features for task management, shall we?

Templates

One of my favorites is that they have templates. Templates are amazing because they keep you from having to add the same information over and over and over and… you get it.

Let’s say you write a blog post every week and you have specific sub-tasks that go along with publishing the blog every week. Probably something like, create a pin image, schedule the blog, and send an email. You can create a template that you can apply to each new blog task that automatically adds those sub tasks.

It sounds minor, but it can save a ton of time and prevents you from forgetting something!

Recurring Tasks

Next up we’ve got recurring tasks. These are super important because sometimes the regular, repeating tasks are the easiest to miss. These are also great for those tasks that come around every so often but not at a regular interval. Or, they only need to be done every few months.

Being able to set tasks as recurring in any task management tool is a make or break it feature to me. I immediately want to set any task that I know needs to be repeated regularly with a recurring schedule so I can free up brain space by not having to think about it again until it pops back up on my to-do list.

Priorities

I don’t use this feature as much but I do like having it, and that’s the ability to set priorities. Setting priorities just means flagging a task as more important than other tasks. So maybe the due date is set out a little further than a less urgent project, but it has a notation, it’s a flag in ClickUp, that lets you know it’s of higher or urgent priority. So your focus should go to that task first.

It comes in handy if you’re assigning tasks to team members and you need to let them know that this particular tasks should be their main focus that day or week.

Reminders + Notifications

Occasionally something is going to go overdue. It happens to the best of us. Maybe it was a less important task that put on the back burner. Maybe you just forgot to mark it as complete. ClickUp is fantastic at sending reminders that there are overdue tasks. It also sends out reminders when tasks are coming due soon. Every morning I get an email to my inbox with a breakdown of what’s due that day, anything that might be overdue, and what’s coming up in the next few days.

Now, I practically live in my ClickUp dashboard, but that little reminder is super helpful in the morning when i’m planing out my day.

Effectively Managing Tasks + Deadlines

Having a bomb task management tool isn’t enough in and of itself. You’ve got to know how to effectively manage the tasks and the deadlines otherwise your list just becomes a hodgepodge of random overdue things in a list.

One of the main things I like to do when it comes to task management is list tasks as subtasks of a main task whenever possible. So taking our blog example from earlier, instead of having four tasks (write blog, make pin, schedule blog, write email), there would be one main task for the blog content. The other tasks are listed as subtasks of that main blog post.

That way when it comes to looking at your main to-do list, you see the over arching tasks, but not all the sub-tasks that are a part of completing that task. To me, this helps keep your dashboard clean. You know that when you do the blog, it’s going to include those other tasks. So focus on the one tasks and the rest will be completed as part of that.

Deadlines are just as important to manage as tasks. I like to set my deadlines before they are actually due whenever possible. Now when it comes to recurring tasks, some things will just always be due on Monday, right? But when it comes to major project deadlines, I like to give myself a little room incase something comes up. Because it usually does, right?

Deadlines can always be changed so if you set it with a goal a little earlier than you actually need, it gives you space to adjust if needed.

Project Management Systems

So it’s probably no surprise to you from the last section that my favorite project management system as an OBM is also ClickUp. Remember when I told you that ClickUp grows with you as your business grows? Well, we are there! 🎉

In the last section we talked about ClickUp and its features at a very basic task management level. Now let’s get into what it looks like to use ClickUp as a full on project management system.

Views

Views are an awesome feature of ClickUp because everyone on your team can have their own way to look at the overview of a project or set of tasks. My favorite view is the list view. I like to see everything listed out by due date so I can complete the task and keep moving through the project.

You can also view projects in a board view, which is similar to what Trello is known for. I like to use this view when it comes to the content workflow. It makes it easy to see where each new piece of content is in the workflow.

The calendar view is also great if you need to see how things look over the course of a month. When things are due, that kind of thing.

There’s also a mind map view which I love. I like to use that to map out my automations for a specific list. That way I know what’s supposed to happen when and which actions I need to take vs what the automation will take care of for me.

Other available views include table view (like a database), box view, timeline view, and whiteboard view.

Assigned comments

Assigned comments come in handy when you’re working with a team. I love to use this feature with my clients when I’m working on a task that’s assigned to me but I have a question about something before completing it.

I can put my question in a comment and tag and assign it to my client. They’ll see the notification for the comment and pop in to answer it. This prevents the question from getting lost in a Slack thread or somewhere else and we have it documented on the task itself.

While it’s important to have a communication system (which we’ll get to in a little bit) the assigned comments in ClickUp really help to keep comments, questions, and additional information about specific tasks right there with the task or project. It’s perfect for if you need to come back to it later or just to keep up with any changes as the project progresses.

Integrations

The integrations ClickUp offers are amazing for enabling things like time tracking directly in the app itself. I use Toggl for time tracking and after setting up the integration, I can click to start a timer directly in the task so I know exactly how long I worked on it.

You can also connect to Zoom, Google Meets, and even Zapier if there isn’t a direct integration with the app you want to connect to. There’s really no end to the ways to make your project management workflow seamless with ClickUp.

Streamlining Project Management + Collaboration

Streamlining your project management is one of the most important things you can do, especially if you have a team. There are few things worse than working on a project where everyone isn’t on the same page.

The best way I have found to do this is with… you guessed it… ClickUp!

The way that I like to streamline is by having a separate space for each major part of the business. So for example, there’s a space for Launches where we keep all of our launch trackers and data. There’s a space for Content where we keep the Weekly Content Workflow and the Content Database. And there’s a space for SOPs and Operations where we keep most of the daily operations tasks and the SOP Database.

Within each of these spaces, there are what ClickUp calls Lists where we crate to-do lists for each project. So essentially each List is a project and it houses the different parts of that project along with it’s due dates and who is assigned to complete the tasks.

Each task has its own section for comments, including screen recordings, which makes it perfect for collaboration.

Best Practices for Project Management Tools

A couple of best practices for using ClickUp as your project management tool:

Ensure everyone on your team knows where to place tasks in the system. ClickUp is a very robust tool and without a good foundation that everyone in the business is aware of, it can get out of hand and tasks can get lost.
Be sure to use a specific naming convention for tasks. This helps to keep things orderly and keeps other team members from wondering what the task is supposed to be.
Make sure everyone on the team has a full understand of ClickUp and how it's used in your business, but let them work in it their own way. For example, I prefer to view my to-do list from the Home page which lets me see everything I have coming up, regardless of which project it’s a part of. That works for me because I’m in many different areas of the business. You might prefer to go directly to the project and work from that specific project’s list. There’s no right or wrong way as long as everyone is on the same page. 😉

Communication and Collaboration Systems

Hands down my favorite communication and collaboration tool is Slack. And honestly, the pro plan if you use it with clients or team members.

I’m all for using the free plans whenever possible for however long possible. But the Slack Pro plan is worth every penny. Since we started using it, one of my clients stopped using Voxer and just started using Slack audio clips to send audio snippets instead of typing.

You can also use it to send screenshare videos which is awesome when one of us is working on something and just need a quick 30 sec video to show each other what we’re talking about. We’ve also moved our team meetings to Slack using their huddle feature. It’s right there, it has a chat thread, you can screen share, and no more making sure everyone has the right link.

It’s 100% Slack for the win in this department!

Effective Communication + Teamwork

Slack helps with effective communication because it’s a straight up chat form of communication. Yes, it has audio messages and video, but above all else, it’s a chat tool. Which is great because depending on how your team works together, you can send someone a message and they can reply the next time they are working.

It’s perfect for messaging clients when you have that 24 hour turn around boundary in place. They can send you a message when they are working, and you reply when you’re working.

It’s also great because you can add apps to it like, ClickUp! Depending on the rules you set up, you can get a Slack ping whenever someone assigns you a new task or comment.

And again, it’s great for teamwork because you have the opportunity to use voice messages and huddles (real time audio) to work with team members whenever you need. Those features are on the paid plan which is why I think it’s very much worth the upgrade.

Choosing the Right Communication System

Now, as you know by now, i’m all about Slack. But in all fairness it might not be for everyone. It’s important to choose a system that works for your small business.

Some other options for collaboration and communication are Voxer, which is a walkie talkie type app. I have heard of people still using Facebook messenger. If that works for you, sweet!

I think its super important to keep your team in mind when choosing a platform.
How does everyone prefer to communicate?
How often do you need to meet?
What methods do you need for communication? Screenshare, audio, video chat?
Do you need it all in one app?

There are lots of things to keep in mind and consider.

Automation Systems

There are so many different ways to use automation systems in online business. So I’m going to focus on two systems here. Email systems and client onboarding systems.

Automation is key to running an online business because it’s simply impossible to do every single thing manually all the time. I don’t mean it’s just difficult. It’s actually impossible.

So automations allow us to sort of ‘set and forget’ pieces of our businesses so we can focus on the things that actually need our attention.

Popular Automation Tools

So my favorite automation tool is an email system. This could essentially be any email system, but I favor ConvertKit in particular. You could also use Flodesk, Aweber, Kajabi, anything like that to send out emails automatically.

The idea here is just to have a system set up that a) lets you send emails out automatically as soon as someone joins your email list (we’ll get into that in the next section) and b) lets you schedule out emails on a regular basis so that you can nurture your audience.

The other automation tool that I’m a big fan of is Dubsado for client onboarding. This is fantastic because if you’re just trying to keep track of your leads via email, you’re bound to lose people. They are going to fall through the cracks during follow up.

But if you have a great CRM (client relationship management) tool working for you, you’ll know exactly where everyone is in the onboarding process.

How Automation Tools Save Time

So, like I mentioned previously, the email system, ConvertKit, saves a ton of time and increases productivity by automatically sending out emails anytime someone joins your email list.

Imagine someone signs up to your email list for the amazing free gift you’re offering them. Would you want to manually send an email out to every single person who signs up? No, I didn’t think so.

With ConvertKit (or whatever email platform you decide to use), you can set up an automation to automatically send that email out the instant that someone signs up. You don’t have to lift a finger!

You can even take it a step further and set up an email sequence that sends to those new subscribers saving you even more time! And then ultimately once your new subscribers have completed the email sequence, they’ll start receiving regular emails from you that you schedule ahead of time.

Automations, baby!

Dubsado saves you time in much the same way. And also helps you bring in money because you’re no longer losing leads by not following up with them.

A Dubsado automation can look something like:

Potential client fills out an application on your website
They are automatically added to Dubsado as a lead
You review their application and determine they are a good fit
You send them an email with a proposal, contract, and invoice
This triggers an automation inside of Dubsado that once the invoice is paid, they start receiving onboarding emails and are moved into the Client status
If they do not pay the invoice right away, you’ll see that they are still under Lead status and can send a follow up email.

If you were trying to keep up with all of this in your regular inbox, there’s a pretty good chance that their original email would get buried and you’d never know if they didn’t pay the invoice and just disappeared. Now, you can clearly see it and schedule a follow up email to secure that new client!

Conclusion

To sum it all up, they key systems you need to have in your business are:

A task management and project management system. I recommend ClickUp.
A communication and collaboration system for your team and clients. I recommend Slack.
An email automation system for lead generation. I recommend ConvertKit.
A CRM automation system for tracking client leads and follow ups. I recommend Dubsado.

Using automated systems in your business wherever you can not only saves you time, it also helps ensure that tiny but important things aren’t slipping through the cracks. It’s easy to think “oh I’ll remember that, it’ll take 2 seconds” but then 2 seconds later you’re working on something entirely different and that thing you wouldn’t forget is nothing but an afterthought.

Do yourself, your business, and your team a favor and start implementing these systems today!

xx,
Delana

PS: Ready to add a virtual assistant or OBM to your team? I’m currently taking applications for new clients! Imagine having those pesky tasks that take up all your time (that you should be spending on more important things) off your plate and handled professionally. Looks good doesn’t it? 😉 Apply below.

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