Organize to Find Essential Information (Paper or Electronic Files)

As a business consultant, I see that more and more people are keeping less paper each year, but we still have paper files that are important to keep in hard copy format. Not only is it important to keep these paper files, but just as important is the ability to retrieve them when you need them.

Organize important documents

Do you need to get it together?

Following is a list of documents that we all most likely have someplace in your own home or office, (some more relevant than others), but can we get a hold of them when we need them? And in most cases when we need them, we need to find them quickly. It can be incredibly nerve-racking when these items can’t be found easily. There may be others, but this list will get you started in ‘getting it together’.

• Certificates and/or licenses:
• Birth
• Marriage
• Educational
• Religious
• Death certificates of family members
• Citizenship document (i.e.: Social Security card)
• Divorce decree document
• Estate documents
• Last Will and Testament
• Trust/Living Trust
• Living Will or Advanced Medical Directive
• Durable Power of Attorney for Finances
• Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare
• Funeral information
• Passport
• Insurance
• Health
• Life
• Homeowner’s or Renter’s
• Auto
• Other (worker’s comp, person, family, circumstance-specific)
• Titles
• Property/Real Estate
• Auto

A few of these items you may choose to keep in a safe deposit box, so establish which items those will be. Scan a copy and store on your hard drive or upload to the cloud for easy access, ie. Google Drive, and the original can then be placed in the safe deposit box or other designated safe place.  When creating the file of the electronic copy, tag the location of the original.

For all other documents, index them into Paper Tiger. The Location name in your Paper Tiger database might be “Family Docs”. You can file them in any order you wish, then type the Item Names and keywords into your Paper Tiger database. The Item Number in the database will coincide with the hanging file folder number in your desk or file cabinet drawer.

Just a quick story about a client to show you how easy it can be to allow important documents to get scattered. Before I started using Paper Tiger, she thought she was reasonably organized at home. Her husband and she  kept titles and financial documents in our desk drawer. All other documents were kept in a file cabinet. When they moved, the big desk we used in our previous home was placed in the basement office where her husband would now work. Those same documents were still there, but now some of the newer important documents found a new home in a file box that was more convenient for her to file into upstairs. When she needed to find a car title, she thought, ‘is it still in the desk downstairs?’ or ‘did she put it in the file box?’ Needless to say, getting all those important documents together, and documented into Paper Tiger’s database is now a priority. Instead of a 10 minute exercise of going through the upstairs file box, then downstairs to search in the desk drawer, she can now conduct a quick search in Paper Tiger and be able to put her fingers on it in about 5 seconds!

Be organized to find important documents

Retrieval is the Goal!


Another advantage of indexing your files into Paper Tiger is that you don’t have to be the only one that knows where everything is. Anyone that you give access to your Paper Tiger database will be able to retrieve what is needed in seconds. Finding files that you’ve indexed into Paper Tiger will no longer be a scramble to search all over your home or office, but will be as easy as typing in a search keyword in Paper Tiger’s search box, and the results will lead you directly to the file where it is stored.Paper Tiger

Source:
www.ThePaperTiger.com
www.annemcgurty.com
480-442-2014

Three Fundamentals for Organizing a Home Office

I often talk to people and they say they know they need to get their office organized, yet very few people take the time out to strategize and organize their office.  These simple three things you absolutely have to possess for organizing your office.  This simple office strategy will help you get started.  You're a busy executive and highly productive, your office at home needs to reflect what you have at your office -- no excuses.

As with almost all other areas of spatial arrangement, organizing a home office does not need a good deal of new items so much as it necessitates time to go over what you have and decide on what you want to do with it. As a business consultant, I tell my clients "don't buy anything before we talk."  It often saves them from making mistakes.  You can get started with a couple of items that you actually have to get in any home office

1. A filing system is one of those things. It could be a crate under your desk with a couple of file folders or it could be a full 4 or 8 drawer filing arrangement. The total you must keep depends on your position and on your private tastes. But either method, you do want some primary files and someplace to store them so that you may set your hands on them when wanted. Figure out what documents you must hold onto and see a path to sort out them that makes sense for you.

2. An action folder is a different thing you want when organizing an office filing system. This tip is a game changer for many of my business coaching clients.  You may have it a file folder, a box, a basket or anything else you desire. The genuine trick is to just make certain that you make one. This action folder, box, whatever, should receive all of the items which you must fulfill on in the next 30 days and they ought to be organized in rank of main concern with the ones you must fulfill on firstly at the topmost.   

3. A method to coordinate your indispensable office supplies is a different one of the staples. (No pun intended!)  You want some basic office supplies and a way for preparing them in your office so that you could get the things complete which you need to do speedily and expeditiously. Get a list of every office supply that you necessitate on a ordinary basis in your office. Then make certain that those things have a place in your house office and that everyone in the household realize that these things need to be remaining in the house office area of your home. They might be utilized by other people of your house but they must remain in the your office place while utilized and need to be returned to where they belong after they are done being applied. Making this as a rule in your household keeps you from having to search for these items when you necessitate them.  You would expect the same from your colleagues at work, so having the same rule at your home office naturally makes sense.

Source:

www.annemcgurty.com

480-442-2014

Are you an Internet Entrepreneur? Then You Probably Need Some Tips to Manage Your Cash Flow

As an internet entrepreneur, you are managing a business that requires you to manage your cash flow. Managing your cash flow is an important task and not to be neglected. It will aid your business to soar to greater heights or fall from grace.

Weigh the Opportunity Cost

During the first few month or even years, your start-up or internet business will be generating little to no profit. You would most likely be working for free, being the owner of your business. Most start-up or internet entrepreneurs will be faced with the same problem, tight cash flow. Naturally, most people will tend to save cost by selecting the cheapest offerings or product. It is not wrong to select the cheapest but I would recommend you to weigh the opportunity cost of the spending. There are some task and projects which are suitable for cost reduction and some not so appropriate.

Quoting an example: If your company is promoting high end software for sale, in a bid to save cost you signed up low priced hosting that makes your site loads slowly and crashes many times in a month. Before even trying your product or look at the pricing, your clients would most probably not have much confidence in your product.

As a business consultant, it is my recommendation that you ensure the decisions made be inline with your company goal and objective

Planning ahead

You do not have to be an accountant or finance person to manage your cash flow well. It is all about planning ahead, it does not matter how well or bad you are currently doing, sometimes it makes a huge difference if you are able to pull through the difficult time by hanging in there and just be in operation before the next big break comes along. Therefore, managing your finances well is very important. Plan ahead by generating a report on when and how much funds are coming in and which period to take note of when cash flow are low.

Back-up Funds

Some companies do not keep track of their finances and they tend to stretch their finances to the maximum.  A business coach can help you be accountable.  A company generating negative cash flow could risk the chance of getting into liquidation. It is always good to have back-up funds ready so when there is a essential need for the  funds, you would be prepared. With strong cash flow, you would be able to carry out your expansion plan smoothly. Or during any difficult period, these back-up funds might just be your life boat.

I hope the above pointers mentioned will help you better in managing your cash flow. With a healthy cash flow and sound financial decision you should be able to manage your company well.

Source:
www.annemcgurty.com
480-442-2014

If You Forget About Your Customers, They'll Forget About You!

Have you ever wondered how are you going to keep up with it all?  How can you run your business, have stellar customer service and still be innovative?  Last week, I had the great opportunity to attend the Infusionsoft Annual Conference #ICON15 in Phoenix.

Thanks to Infusionsoft's new partnership with  eliances, I had the chance to receive a valuable ticket.  I had tons of notes, pages in fact and I'll share with you some of the key takeaways for me.

How do You Fascinate?

I have been a DiSC(R) facilitator for years and have used these profiles with my clients to identify their communication style.  That has been a great foundation and now I have a new tool that I learned from Sally Hogshead.  This tool will help you find even more focused key words to help you with your marketing and even a job search.  If you would like a free sample of this report, through April 30, 2015, add a comment to this post.  I learned that the three adjectives that best describe me are 1. Precise, 2. Sharp, and 3. Under-the-Radar.  As a business consultant, I think that was a great summary.

Automate, Automate, and Automate

Considering automation is the underlying core competency of Infusionsoft, you have to assume that you will learn about automation.  By attending Ryan Deiss' workshop, I got the nuggets of what to do to keep my relationships through newsletters automated with what to say and when.  That may seem a little calloused as I'm writing to my audience now, but let's face it, I do want to keep in touch with you because when you think about needing a business coach, accountability or business consulting, I do want to be top of mind with you.  With automation, I can get those processes in place to keep in touch and be spot on focused when we work together.  

Facebook for Business

Hooray for Krupa Patel.  Like me, she grew up in a family owned business.  Growing up in a day when social media was simply attending the Chamber of Commerce meeting, I related to her stories.  I was also thrilled to know how she used Facebook for Business was spot on for how I coach my clients to use Facebook and other social media platforms like Google Plus.  Make sure you have a personal profile as well as a business page if you want to use Facebook for your business.  The goal of social media is to educate your audience. If you want to sell on social media, do spend the money to boost your posts.  Personally, I'm a little guilty of being a little salesy - it's a process.  Think before you post.  I've been coached to think, will what I tell my audience save them money, make them more money and is it interesting or something they didn't know.  (That's thanks to my friend David Green, author of The Invisible Hand.)

Business today is more personal than ever, so every relationship takes more nurturing,  I know that I have over 6,000 people in my database so that's a lot of conversations and faces and businesses to remember.  Keeping in touch with everyone does need to have an automated system in place, with understanding my personality strengths, I can be focused in my conversations and with social media we can tune in on what's going on personally and professionally.

Thanks for being part of my community.