As a business owner or entrepreneur, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by never-ending to-do lists. In fact, the big, daunting tasks on these lists may be the source of your business paralysis preventing you from finding real success. Mark Twain wrote, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Stay with me… the frogs Mark Twain is speaking of is a metaphor for those huge, boulder tasks. In fact, this quote became the premise for author, Brian Tracy, to give you a plan to “Eat That Frog.” Brian Tracy leans into the idea of “eating that frog” providing you insight on how to overcome procrastination and accomplish your goals. Lessons that benefit every business owner. ## Identify and Tackle Your Biggest Task First: The first step in prioritization is knowing what your most important tasks are. I get it, they’re all important, but which one will actually have the most impact if you take care of that one first? Which task will create a positive domino effect for other tasks going forward? Which one, if crossed off, will free your mind to think about other tasks clearly? Identifying this “frog” task is pivotal for setting yourself up for success. Once you accomplish it you build momentum for the rest of your day. In fact, after you “eat that frog,” nothing else seems so bad. It is a snowball effect of maximum productivity and empowers you to conquer your next challenges. ## Prioritize and Focus on High-Value Activities: There’s a good chance you’ve heard of the 80/20 rule, as it has become a staple in explaining so many aspects of our lives. This rule, or Pareto Principle, teaches us that 80% of our results will come from 20% of our input. Said another way, this means that 20% of our tasks will actually have the biggest or 80% of our desired outcomes. Operating under this truth allows us to sideline those less important tasks or busywork, and focus on the high-value to-do’s that will have the most impact in our business and lives. Focusing on this 20% will optimize your time and energy while maximizing success. ## Tools to Master Time Management and Avoid Procrastination: The ideas of “eating that frog” and focusing on our 20% are cornerstones for our best time management practices. However, just knowing the principles is not enough, we must be able to take action. Having effective tools at our side will allow us to wage war against procrastination. These tools can be as simple as task lists or calendars. Having what is most important written down gives you a prompt to complete it. With practice, these tools will allow us to complete our most important tasks before they also become our most urgent because we put them off for far too long. We can even use goal setting devices to break bigger tasks into smaller, manageable steps. That way each part of the task feels like an accomplishment as we inch towards “eating that frog.” Starting these tasks immediately will empower us with momentum to take on the next task. Working these habits is like exercising a muscle that will ultimately be the driving force behind maximizing our productivity, mastering time management, and finding business success.

If there’s one problem that’s good to have, it’s having plenty of new clients rolling in. But, how do you find these new clients? Or more importantly, how do they find you? Clearly, leveraging the power of the internet and social media is the right move. However, most people’s attempt at using this power isn’t far off from throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. In this resource, we will dissect the top three ways to get more leads for your business without breaking the bank in order to maximize your success.

As a construction or home service pro, running your small business is already time consuming and costly enough. But you’ve always heard you have to spend money to make money, right? Well, what if it didn’t have to be so expensive to dial in your marketing? Or how about so complicated? In this post, we’ll dive into 9 steps anyone can do to hone in their marketing strategy, drive growth for their business, and do it all without breaking the bank. Step 1: Know Who Your Customers Are ”Anyone that will hire me!” isn’t exactly defining your customer. Understanding who your customers are is like setting up the foundation for a house. Who is you ideal customer? What do they do, where do they go, and what do they want? Pin-pointing their needs or pains can help you establish what message you need to put out there and where to send it. Are they single families with no time to take on a home project? Are they other small business owners who need to fix up their brick and mortar shop? Define them and find them. Step 2: Craft an Offer They Can’t Refuse Once you know who your customer is, you can start talking to them! Think about your message… It would be different if your ideal customer was a small business owner versus a busy mom at home, right? Figure out how to craft your message to highlight what you bring to the table. Focus on what value you bring and the benefits. Are you offering a free quote to get work done that’s guaranteed to save them time and money? Is your value that you provide a stress-free experience? Be clear and highlight the benefits. Step 3: Establish Your Digital Culture Let’s face it, people scope you out forwards and backwards before they ever even talk to you. Your digital presence is essentially a window into what working with you is like. Does your website scream professional? Do you having raving 5-star reviews? If you’re DIY’ing your website there’s a lot of low-cost (and free) website builders out there with easy templates to make you look professional. Plus, it costs nothing to set up a social media platform like Facebook and Instagram. Posting your work and gathering reviews through those channels is invaluable. And, if you ever decide to run paid digital ads, you’ll have a leg up with an established social media presence. Step 4: Don’t Neglect Your Listings Having your name and business present across as many listings as possible is paramount. Make sure at the very least you have a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business). There may be other places to get your name out there like NextDoor, Bing, or a variety of online listings. Sometimes people don’t know where to look to find help, so they turn to these listings first. Be there. Step 5: Creative Content is King Now that you have an established digital presence, don’t forget to post to it! I can’t tell you how many local businesses I’ve checked out only to see that they don’t keep up with their social media. You haven’t posted in two years? Well, that makes me think you’re out of business. Oh you’re too busy to post? Well, then you may be too busy to get hired for a new job. We all prioritize what’s important. And, you should prioritize providing content on your social media platforms. AND, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Use your phone, film yourself talking about some tips or value you’re bringing your current customers. Post. Step 6: Sponsorship or Partnership Hero There are always opportunities to collaborate with other local businesses, organizations, and events. Are you a pressure washer? Maybe you offer to clean up the side-walks of a local festival in exchange for hanging a banner. People, especially organizations and events, love free. If you’re willing to collaborate by helping them out in exchange for a little bit of promotion, not only are you doing a good deed, but you’re getting your name out there too. Step 7: Word-of-Mouth is the Most Powerful Form of Marketing Nothing is stronger than getting a recommendation from a trusted source. If you do great work for one person, there’s a good chance they’ll tell someone they know. However, you can’t just assume they will, ask them to! Ask them if they know anyone else who could benefit from your service, people are always willing to help. If you want to make it more compelling, offer an incentive if they refer. They know people and if you brought them value, they want to connect you with other people that’d appreciate that same value. Step 8: Local Community Hero Being a local hero in your community means more people talking and knowing about you and your business. Make sure your brand is everywhere: local community events, fundraisers, or gatherings. We already talked about collaborating… become a sponsor or volunteer. The more support you show the better positive reputation you’ll build. Step 9: Measure, Learn, and Adapt Finally, remember to track your marketing efforts and evaluate their effectiveness. Pay attention to who referred and where someone heard about you. Did they find you on Google? See a post on Facebook? Have a friend recommend you? Knowing what’s working can allow you to double down your efforts where it counts. Need more time for your marketing efforts? Lnvo helps carve out extra hours in your day: saving you time on paperwork and making it easy to keep your clients updated on projects. Start a free trial with Lnvo today and start getting your time back.

Having someone to count on in your business can both be exciting and challenging. With two heads, you have more ideas, more energy, and more skills to draw upon. However, you also have more responsibilities and more decisions to make. With that in mind, it’s important to fine tune your divide and conquer strategy. Lnvo starts off any new account with two users immediately. That means you have your account and you can add your business partner right away to start managing projects at no extra cost. ## Who Does What? Maybe you’re better in the field and your partner is better keeping up with admin work. Maximizing efficiency between you both means understanding each other’s strengths and interests. This will ensure that each partner is contributing in the most effective way possible. However you decide to split your responsibilities, Lnvo makes it easy to communicate and collaborate. Plus every action you take inside the app is instantaneously synced across all devices. Identify each other's strengths, weaknesses, skills, and interests. From there it’ll be easy to pin point who should be doing what and even which parts of the business to focus on. If you’re more into the admin work side of things, then Lnvo will allow you to review client projects, generate new estimates, and keep an eye on an entire snapshot view of your business including invoices paid and sent. If one partner needs to be in the field, perfect… Lnvo works on the go. All projects and clients are mapped out via GPS so you can see an accurate map of all your clients and work. Not only is it easy to keep track of where you need to be, you’ll also have a complete history of documents at your fingertips to support you in the field. ## Keeping a Pulse on the Business Beyond dividing responsibilities, it's important to establish clear goals, timelines, and communication channels. Regularly check in with your business dashboard to see what documents are completed or outstanding. From there, communicate with each other to make sure you have a plan of action on connecting with clients to fulfill any outstanding work orders or get an invoice paid. ## Adapting and Growing As you grow and expand, you may need to bring on extra teammates. Lnvo makes that as straight forward as possible. Add or invite a new user at any time. Any additional users are only $6.95 per month and can be enabled or disabled only when you need them. Also as you bring on new team members, be open to adjusting your roles and responsibilities to ensure everyone is working at maximum efficiency and to ensure the business continues to run smoothly. Plus, Lnvo grows with you. As you adapt and come up with new systems, Lnvo is always adding features to make your work even easier. Not using Lnvo yet? It’s easy to start and right now we’re offering a Free 14-Day Trial. Start today!

As a business owner, you know exactly what it feels like to have a great experience you want to rave about and we know you want your customers to feel that exact same way. So, you go above and beyond their expectations and they are absolutely in love with a job well done. That’s fantastic that they’re thrilled with your service. But, truthfully, leaving you a review may not have even crossed their mind even if they are 100% willing and ecstatic to do so. That’s why it’s important to ask for a review, so we don’t leave it up to chance. Not only does it help you attract new customers, but it also shows you value feedback and are committed to providing great service. How do you ask for reviews in a friendly and effective way? Here are four steps to secure more Google reviews today! **Step 1: Make sure your business is listed on Google.** This part may seem like a no brainer, but in order for you to start collecting reviews you have to have a Google Business Profile. This is easy to create if you don’t have one and all you need is to enter your business information and verify your ownership. **Step 2: Asking in a Friendly Way** No one wants to come off as too pushy or too timid. So, it’s important to know what you’re going to say before you say it. Your clients appreciate having their feedback valued — so you’re half way there. If you’re already talking to them in-person, face to face is great! However, email and text work well too because then you can even include a link: Here are some examples of how you can start the ask for a Google review: Example 1: "Thank you so much for letting us serve you! Your support means everything to us. If you have a moment, could you leave us a review on Google? That would help us tremendously!" Example 2: "Hey! We hope everything met or exceeded your expectations. If you have a minute, we would be grateful if you could leave us a review on Google. It helps us share our business with more people like you." **Step 3: Make it easy.** Now, it’s important to provide a link to your Google Business Profile. Making it easy for them to leave a review means the more likely they will be to leave a review. Here's how to get your link: 1. Go to your Google Business Profile dashboard. 1. If you’ve already verified your business this is as simple as doing a Google search for your business name. 2. Click on the "Ask for Reviews" button and copy the link provided. 3. Include the link in your email or text message for a review. You can even add it to your business card! **Step 4: Always Respond to Reviews** Nothing shows you value your client’s feedback than responding to the reviews and comments they leave for you. Even if it’s a negative review (Just remember to be nice in a negative review too because potential customers will be reading that)! That’s it! Just like when you’re searching for a product online and reading the reviews first, your potential clients are checking out your reviews before they commit to your service. So, make sure you ask on every satisfied job because you can always use another 5-Star Google review.