1DayLater - The Blog

Five ultimate tips to help businesses get ahead

These rules will help you maximize your productivity, motivation and success in business - the 1DayLater way.

1. “Tak it on”

Translates as - take it on!

(North East slang used for extra kick-up-the-ass effect)

Have you ever had a full on mind-battle with yourself - knowing that you have something totally arduous or unpleasant to do?

Have you ever then given yourself a mental kick in the face and told yourself to just “TAK IT ON”?

Well this is the 1DayLater way and we urge you to try it. The crappier the task, the more you will be ready to tak it on!

This state of mind will get you far young grasshopper. Soon you will be jumping out of bed every morning trying to take the world on….in time.

2. “Shy bairns get nowt”

translates as - If you don’t ask you’ll never get it

Particularly for start-ups to think about:

People want to help you!

It’s human nature to be kind and generous - most people are just waiting for you to ask for their help ;)

As proof, here are some things we’ve wrangled for nothing (or a friendly return favour) just by asking for them.

• Tickets to conferences,
• A 6 month intern
• An astounding amount of advice, good will, introductions etc
• A venue for our summer charity event,
• Countless free PR,
• A professional voice-over for 1DL,
• Graphics,
• Logo’s,
• Software testers (and feedback)

The straight up approach is often best eg.

“So tell me Larry, what do I need to do to get some free widgets?” - don’t forget to throw a cheeky smile in there too!

You might need to barter like mad but you’ll get there in the end. If you’re a start-up you can barter with all sorts of things which aren’t cold hard cash - including:

• Your time and expertise,
• A kind mention of their services to your network,
• Making introductions
• Catalysing work opportunities,
• A friendly write up on your blog,
• Whatever you’re good at which costs nothing - erm within reason (i re-read this and it looked kinda wrong)

and naturally as a final bartering chip there are always your own services (for us this includes 1DL licences, web-development or SEO)

3. Blow your own trumpet

If you can’t shout about your achievements it’s unlikely anyone else is going to bother. Make sure you keep the world informed of your successes.

Had some notable PR?

• Write about it on your blog
• Tweet about it
• Frame it and put it on your wall
• Tell your bank manager!

Closed a big deal?

• Tell your family, your friends, your network
• And don’t forget your bank manager!

Celebrating your successes, however small, is also proven to have a very positive effect on motivation and your frame of mind. It is often easy to forget to celebrate your success when you’re caught up in a busy day.

But you need to celebrate successes as they happen to get the full psychological benefit. For me and my brother celebrations range from:

• a hug
• a high-five
• a trip down the pub
• A full on blow out!

(those last two are obviously exceptions to the “as they happen” rule - before you think we’re sitting down the pub with our laptops).

If the success is big, make sure the celebration is big enough to match it.

Also, take time to blow your friends and collegues trumpets too. Celebrate their successes like your own. Give their trumpets a wipe first though - metaphorical hygeine is important guys ;)

4. Keep track

Track your daily work activities like a crazy man!

Apart from the obvious ones which include your:

• time,
• income and expenses
• mileage

(all useful for billing, improving productivity etc) also try to keep track of any PR your business gets.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Check your website analytics once a day
2. If there is a surge of traffic from a particular link - check it out
3. Log any notable links into your 1DayLater using “PRESS” in the value field and “YOUR COMPANY NAME” in the Project/client field.
4. You can now easily search for past press using the search option.

Why you do it?

The benefit of doing this is that the next time you send out a press release, or approach someone for some PR - you can refer editors to past-press to save them time.

And if you’re approaching potential customers refering them to past-press can also be a great way of showing your credibility

Remember what I said about blowing your own trumpet and self-promotion. Well that was it in action!
 

5. Everything stops for tea

No kind of clever metaphor here. Just offer to make the tea every so often. And leave it to brew for a while, don’t be hasty :) Everything stops for tea

Surround yourself with skilled people

Some advice I was given recently was “Don’t do it all yourself”, a great piece of advice I think every business owner should take to heart. Which is why when it comes to dealing with law or accounts it’s wise to enlist the help of a pro.

As brothers, David and I are generally very trusting with a shared optimistic outlook on life and people. We find life is just nicer that way.

But with the occasional unscrupulous shark about and a service that can be used anywhere in the world it’s time to call in the legal team. And lovely local lawyers Mincoffs have stepped up to the mark.

Paul King (1DayLater), Antony Hall (Mincoffs) and David King (1DayLater)

So this past week we’ve been making sure that the 1DayLater terms and conditions, privacy policy and reseller agreements are all top notch. Legal banter has been flying around like you wouldn’t believe.

Why go to so much trouble and expense? Well the way that we collect and protect our users data is very important to us, as you might imagine. We take every possible care to make sure that information remains private and secure at all times. So these documents are just as much for our customers benefit as they are for ours!

Antony Hall, Mathew Foster and the rest of the Mincoffs team come highly recommended.

Our Ambitious Vision for 2010

1DayLater have enjoyed a great 2009, and look forward to celebrating this Christmas and New Year. But before we go, here are a some exciting things to look forward to in 2010…

• A Full feature set — with outputs including invoicing, mileage claims, export, more in-depth analysis, and 3rd party add-ons.

• Mobile phone & desktop app development — you’ll be able to log your activities on the move, and our handy desktop app will remind you to log them while you’re working at your pc.

• The launch of our market intelligence campaign — by London-based firm, Kingpin Intelligence. That means MORE FEEDBACK which essentially means better end service for you

• Development of an Outlook application for 1DayLater — A useful Outlook ‘skimmer’ being created by our friends at local Centre for Digital Innovation - Codeworks as part of their new Dev scheme.

- check out David doing ‘The Proposition’ pose, perfect for corporate photos!

Aaand if none of that other stuff tickled you, we’ll also have…

• Integration of 1DayLater with Sage Sales Logix (CRM) & Sage Accounts — Using the expert guidance of our friend Derek Curtis & his company Bond Solutions, the leading NE supplier of Sage software products

• A ‘secret charity based project’ — supported by our friends at Sunderland Software City, Newcastle’s Culture Lab, Codeworks & Bond Solutions - more info to come soon!

• A discounted ‘Time Recovery Tool’ for 1DayLater members — A tool to help you save time which has been created by time-management coaches, Cadenza associates.

Wow!

Writing it down like that just made me realise that next year is going to be epic. I don’t know about you lot but I can’t wait :)

Time Management Tips - no.1 

Aggressive Prioritizing / extreme time management

Here’s one of the most effective ways to boost your work productivity. I do this every day and seriously - it works!

Bend time to your will…

Step 1-Create a to-do list every morning

First thing in the morning (after you’ve had your morning cuppa of course) spend 15 minutes constructing a to-do list of activities you feel should get done that day. This won’t be wasted time.

You now have a list of activities

eg.

• 20 activities

• 5 really need doing

Step 2-Use aggressive prioritizing.

If you had to pick just one of these to do today - which one would it be? That is your number 1. Repeat this exercise to find number 2, and so on.

Step 3-Get working!

Stick to the order of your list and make sure you complete each task as much as possible before moving onto the next.

Now if you only get some things done in your day, they will have been the most important ones. Simple but truly effective!

- coming soon: time management for programmers