165 Business Balance and Mindset: Tools & Strategies for Success with Carol Clegg

What if the secret to a thriving business and personal growth lies in mastering the art of balance and mindset? Let's uncover essential strategies to effectively juggle the demands of working both in and on your business.

This episode provides practical strategies and tools designed to optimize productivity, cultivate a positive outlook, and ultimately unlock success.

Trello is my preferred tool for streamlining tasks and maintaining productivity. Trello's integration capabilities with Dropbox, Zoom, and Slack make it an excellent choice for those looking to consolidate their workflow. By utilizing Trello, users can categorize tasks visually, prioritize them effectively, and track progress in a flexible and dynamic way. This visual approach helps individuals manage their time more efficiently, leading to increased free time and reduced stress.

Google Calendar also plays an important part in managing my day.

Link to Trello video HERE
Check out Paperbell HERE

Want to explore coaching:  Book a call HERE

Hello from your host, Carol Clegg. A coach for coaches! I work with women coaches to find balance with ease and flow, manage stress, cultivate self-empathy, and set meaningful goals that resonate with their individual coaching practices.

My clients often have too many ideas and struggle to decide which one to focus on first, leading to a HUGE BLOCK in just getting started. I love to help simplify the process, explore what is getting in the way and guide you to choose the next project, enjoy the journey, and celebrate progress while taking small, meaningful steps.

If you would like to take the complimentary Saboteur assessment to discover what gets in your way and then follow up with a complimentary coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here or visit carolclegg.com

BOOK your ✅ 30 minute complimentary exploration call HERE

Connect on LinkedIn and Instagram or join my LinkedIn Group Creative Ideas for Women Business Owners

Chapters

• 0:00 Project Management Tools for Business Success
• 10:40 Empower Your Mindset for Success"

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello and welcome to Connect, inspire, create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. I'm so pleased you're here. Join me for the discussions that I hope will not only encourage you but also provide the dose of inspiration that you might just need today. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination, or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together. So grab your favorite cup of something, be it coffee, tea or something else, and let's dive into this conversation today. So, project management I like to think of it as an overall view of tools that you're going to use to stay on track and be productive in the time that you allocate to spend on business projects, but also personal, because if we have a way to manage our time, we then have more free time. We know what we're doing with our day, but it does help to break this down into manageable tasks. That's to help you say no to the overwhelm. So you do need to know what needs to be done first and to keep track of everything in a place that works for you and I know that can be so different and sometimes it is a combination of things, but to get into the flow. So, are you visual? Are you a visual learner? Are you an where you like to manage your tasks from? And I like to think that it's more than A checklist. It needs to have some flexibility, because life happens and then having to be able to integrate with other tools. So if you store your files and folders in Dropbox, you might be a Zoom user, so you want to be able to integrate that Slack. So there are many project management apps and they have the free option. So I always say that is, have a look at what you can use starting off your business, that is available to you as a free option.

Speaker 1: 2:42

So, as a reminder, we often get caught up in this working on our business and, yes, we do. We need to allocate time to work on your business, but we also need to have time to work in your business. And you may say, well, what's the difference? How do we break this up from working on and working in. So I like to think of working on your business as your marketing, your paperwork, the project management that we're going to talk about today, and even networking kind of falls into that. Working on your business and then working in your business, which is the super important part, that's, the part that generates the income is working with your clients, and I know that it's really easy to go down a rabbit hole of thinking of all the things that you need to have to be perfect in place before you can start working with clients, and my encouragement to you is to take action. That helps when you feel that I'm stuck and I can't move and then we distract ourselves with working on our business. You absolutely want to be carving out time to be working with your clients.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So, talking about project management tools, I'd love to know if you have a preferred project management tool that you are already using. Mine is Trello. You're going to hear me talk about Trello and I would love, perhaps in a future workshop, to sort of step through how I use Trello. I will pin up a link a little bit later on. I have a Trello intro. If you're new to Trello, just it's a video that you could watch to give you an introduction, but that is my preferred management tool.

Speaker 1: 4:33

So, having a look at where to start, I think that your calendar is an important part of your project management and I like to think of your calendar in two parts. So my preference you'll hear me talking about this I am a Google person and that's once again because you have so much available for free in Google, but having your Google Calendar integrates with so much. So it integrates with Zoom, it integrates just with so many other ways. But starting off your own personal calendar. So using your calendar to keep track of your projects and when I say projects I mean your personal time as well you want to be blocking out your personal time on your calendar and be realistic with how much time you give that, and I am working on reducing the amount of hours that I actually spend working on my business and that comes back to that lifestyle business and that comes back to that project management tool. So you have your calendar to keep track of your projects, your personal time that you carved out, and you can color code these into different categories. So in my Gmail Google Calendar I have categories for coaching, for personal, for admin, for marketing, and they're all different colors so that when I take a glance at my for the day, for the week, and you start to associate the tasks with the color, it gives you a quick overview, a quick visual of what your day or your week is looking like.

Speaker 1: 6:11

And then the other part of your calendar is your scheduling calendar. So for clients to be able to work with you easily, you need to decide what you. A lot of people use Calendarly. I use Paperbell for coaching because it's an all-in-one package tool and they have a calendar option in there. But there are many different ones that you can use and you do want to have an easy way for clients to talk to you for that discovery call book, a podcast interview, anything that you want to do with your clients. They need to have a way instead of going backwards and forwards about. Well, I can meet you in the morning and I can meet you this day and that day. It just is a much project management. It is a seamless way to have know what's happening and to have that calendar integrate with your main calendar so that it does it blocks out when you're not available.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So the second part of the project management is your. I think of it as your second brain is where are you storing everything? You need to be able to find it when you want it. And this has been such a learning curve as well for me that I love to discover new tools, because I have to be flexible when I work with my clients, because we don't all, as I mentioned earlier, learn the same way, so I need to touch on all of them and have a little bit of experience in all of them. And, of course, that sends me down a rabbit hole of oh, this is the nice, new, shiny object, but you do want a cloud-based place to store everything and be able to find it. So, yes, I agree, explore what might work for you before committing to something. There's always a learning curve, but don't spend too much time kind of go, is this working for me, does this work right? Is this a place that I can store my files and know that I'm going to find it easily? So, once again, no need to spend extra money.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Google Drive serves as a great cloud-based storage Once again, especially if you're using Gmail and your Google Calendar, and on the drive, there is so much that you can do. You can organize your folders, you can color code them, you can put them in numerical order, you can collaborate from your Google Drive with clients, with other people that you're working with. So just so many options within Google Drive to store what you need. And then I discovered something that had me down a rabbit hole yesterday and I've kind of forgotten about this which is Google Keep. And I used to use Google Keep many years ago and it just popped up on my radar again and I just started playing around with it. And the fun thing with Google Keep is you can send your notes back to Google Drive. So that's definitely something the part that I like about Google Keep. If you are guilty of having a million browsers open and wanting to save a million things to read later, you can save those with Google Keep and come back to them.

Speaker 1: 9:18

So definitely, once again within the Google Suite, so much that you can use for your project management. The other one that I do use is Evernote, but that does have a bit of a learning curve to it. So that's just another one to consider. But for the overall, tool for project management for me is Trello, and I just think it is one of the easiest to use, especially for those who enjoy the visual side of things. I think of it as a huge big whiteboard sticky notes, move things around to priority, add dates that you can keep yourself accountable and be reminded when something is due and then collaborate. So it is available on all platforms on Android and iOS and the web. It's a click and drag interface. You can create multiple projects with unlimited tasks. I know there are others that people enjoy, like Asana. There's Nifty ClickUp Basecamp, so there's definitely quite a few project management tools, but having something cloud-based where you can keep an overall look, a bird's eye view, have a priority list, have tasks that fall underneath that and then put a date and keep yourself accountable.

Speaker 1: 10:40

If you are looking for tools to build powerful habits around a lifelong positive mindset, then I'd love to explore what results you are looking for in your life and your business. Every coach needs a coach. I'm sure you've heard that before. As a mindset and accountability coach, I work with women coaches in midlife to find balance in their business endeavors and prepare their foundation for a positive mindset. By blending my personalized accountability and mindset coaching along with the powerful positive intelligence program, you'll learn about saboteurs and sage powers and gain lifelong tools to create a shift in all areas of your life, from personal to professional, and reduce the negative self-talk and discover more self-love. Curious to know what your own saboteurs are? I invite you to take the free assessment provided by Positive Intelligence that you'll find on my website, carolclaguecom, and then book a call with me and let's explore the results, because I am here to support you on your journey. You can connect with me on LinkedIn Just search for Carol Clay or by my website, carolclaycom.