Would you believe a Post-It note automates my Productivity?

Productivity is a must as every Small Business Owner wear many hats: sales rep, customer service rep, accountant, etc. Fortunately, there is a ton of great software to help us do all those jobs, but we still have to create all the digital assets necessary to use these apps, services, and websites productively.

The Problem with Productivity

Setting up a digital workflow is only as good as the information you put into it and -especially when things get hectic- it’s easy to miss setting things up correctly.

In my workflow as a product photographer I use
Evernote to organize and store all digital documents – creative briefs, model releases, estimates, permits, notes, etc.

SalesForce is my Customer Service Management service of choice. It keeps tracks of accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, expenses, etc. and links automatically to Evernote, Expensify, and Trello.

I’ve just started using
Trello to give me a clear picture of all current projects and tasks and Expensify builds expense reports easily and quickly, that I then import into QuickBooks.

Solving the Productivity Puzzle

How do I remember to add a Note and Tag in Evernote, that will help you organize a new job? Then there’s the opportunity that I have to setup in SalesForce if I want a bin, that will collect and correlate all information I need to have at my fingertips; a new list needs to be created on Trello and the expense report needs to be created in Expensify.

Don’t laugh, but a little Post-It note does all that for me. Automatically.

I use Evernote to get this process rolling:

• Pink Post-It’s are Leads. That’s potential clients who have reached out to me and are inquiring about having product photography and/or video creates.
• Yellow Notes are opportunities. These are the projects where I’m meeting with clients, pitching ideas and creating estimates.
• Green Sticky Notes are jobs. Deposits are, production has started and we’re creating amazing visual content.
• (There’s a blue note as well, but I don’t use that for my business)

The yellow Post-It kicks it off

As soon as I capture a yellow Post-It note, Evernote saves it in my opportunities notebook automatically (Evernote lets you assign notebooks based on the colors of the notes). All I do is save the note named with the job number associated with this opportunity.

Zapier takes over

As soon as that note gets saved, Zapier takes over and creates a SalesForce opportunity with the job number (which it gets from Evernote), builds a new Trello list with the same job number, captures an expense in Expensify tagged with that identifier (I hope that soon it can create a report), creates an Evernote tag – which will be used to be able to search all documents about that job and finally sends me a SMS to my phone. Done. That was not hard.

At the end of the day, one photo of this Post-It Note creates all the digital assets I use in my day-to-day workflow.

How do you solve your productivity puzzle?

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[Wanna learn more about how I use apps, web services, and applications to run a more productive small business?]