In any business, it is important to look professional. This guarantees that you attract the right kind of clients. If your business looks unprofessional, no one might take you seriously and clients might consider your work as a hobby. Looking professional is important for many reasons. Your clients might shortchange you with regard to paying for services. They might not trust your talents or they might have little respect for your time which could lead to a lot of requests to rework or requests to return products. If you want your business to be long-standing, you have to work on your image and reputation. Looking professional is a must. Here are 3 things you must avoid in order to look professional:

A Substandard Website

Your website is where your business will live. All your social media links should direct would-be clients to your website. There, they should be able to get all the information they need in order to make an informed decision if they should get your products/service or to go look somewhere else. Therefore, your website should be professional-looking. It should be coherent and clear, with legible fonts and an uncluttered homepage. It should be easy to navigate and must have clear images. Your site speed should be fast, otherwise, potential clients will lose interest.

No Clear Branding

Branding is the foundation of your brand. If you don’t have this down pat, you are susceptible to looking unprofessional. You must have a clear mission, target market, and products. You should be able to describe your purpose and goal or why you do what you do. You must also be prepared to describe your products/services to anyone interested, and what benefit would clients get for choosing your business. Your brand is made of 3 parts: look, sound, and feel. Look pertains to design, sound pertains to brand voice (or the tone in which you communicate), and feel pertains to the experience you create for your clients. Evaluate your branding against these three factors.

Bad Customer Service

Sure, you already have a beautiful website and a clear mission/vision statement. That’s only a part of a professional business. You must also have great customer service and audience engagement in order to grow your business ad make it profitable. Start by securing a professional email account. Yes, let go of the “myprofessionalbusiness@yahoo.com” email address and get a professional email address. Next, be attentive to customer needs and keep them engaged. Make sure to answer all queries and address all complaints. Complaints are a good opportunity to show your clients that you care about them and that you are on top of things.

How does your business fare against these three things? Do you have any more tips on how to look professional? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

With all the distractions available to us via the internet, it could be a monumental challenge for anyone to stay focused on work. One minute you can be slaying the emails in your inbox, the next minute you’re falling into a YouTube rabbit hole. You know you have to cross out a lot of things from your to-do list, but you just can’t seem to get back your focus. 

Hurdle #1: News

There’s no shortage of news these days. Whether you’re following the latest vaccine news or just keeping up with the latest celebrity gossip or newest artist album drop, there’s always something itching for your attention. 

How can you overcome this hurdle? 

We do, indeed, live in interesting times. So even if you ignore the news, you might not be successful for too long. So acknowledge your interest, park the item somewhere (make a mental note or an actual note – on Twitter, I “like” an article so that I can access it from my liked posts to read later), and focus on something more “in the now”, like your breathing.

Hurdle #2: Multi-tasking

By now you should know that multitasking hurts your productivity and reduces your efficiency. Yet, some people still believe they could get more done. I’ve written about the “Perils of Multitasking here and here. Need more proof that multitasking ruins your productivity? There’s this ‘study titled, “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress,” where researchers found that while people worked faster in conditions where they were constantly interrupted (the way you are when you’re multitasking), they actually were less productive.’

How can you overcome this hurdle? 

Close the email tab in your browser. Close all the other tabs that are not related to what you’re working on. Invest in a nice pair of BT noise cancelling earphones and put on some ambient beats to drown out the background noise. You can also use the Pomodoro Technique (for example, you can do 25mins deep flow work and 5min break)

Hurdle #3: Lack of Sleep

Lack of sleep has a major detrimental effect on your ability to concentrate. Heck, sleep deprivation causes a lot of shenanigans to your body. It can destroy brain cells, weaken your immunity, affect your memory, cause you to gain weight, and increase your risk of a heart disease. Lack of sleep can destroy the neurons responsible for the brain’s alertness resulting in trouble thinking and concentration.

How can you overcome this hurdle? 

Don’t compound the problem by drowning yourself in caffeine. The secret is no secret at all. Prioritize getting enough sleep. However, if you’re already sleep deprived but in need of a quick pick-me-up in order to finish that very important project , here’s what you can do: get up from your desk and head-out for a quick walk. You need to get your blood pumping and be exposed to natural light. You’ll come back more alert and focused.

What are your productivity pitfalls and how do you overcome them? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

Have you ever had days when you look down on your to-do list and think “every single one of these seems important”? There seems to be a ton of work to plow through and all of them look either urgent or “drop everything and work on this” kind of important. Where do you even begin?

Do you close your eyes and point at something? Should you “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”? Should you throw a dart?

We’ve all been here. The overwhelm paralyzes us before we even get to work on any of our important task items. In the end, nothing gets done. Here are a few strategies to effectively prioritize tasks that all look important.

Map out your objective

This may seem like an extra item to your already insurmountable to-do list, but this is the first step to knowing where to get started. Once you have done this a few times, it should come naturally. After you have mapped out your objective, ask yourself if the task is aligned with your objective. If not, park it and revisit on a later date.

Use the Eisenhower Matrix

Here’s a trick that might work: President Dwight Eisenhower (a productivity powerhouse) once said “ what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” He has designed a matrix that’s great for weeding out what task can be addressed urgently and what needs to be focused on. Draw a square and then split it into four even quadrants. On the left side, label the boxes with “important” and “not important.” On the top, label the boxes with “urgent” and “not urgent.” Take a look at your to-do list and decide whether they are urgent, not urgent, important, not very important. Your urgent and important tasks will fall under the “do it now” quadrant. Your important but not urgent tasks will fall under the “decide when” quadrant. Other tasks will fall under the “delegate” quadrant (who else can do it?) and the “delete” quadrant (these tasks are the ones you can ditch altogether). Curious about the Eisenhower Matrix? We talk more about it in this article.

Go for the quick win

While it is not always a good idea to start with the easy tasks (that gives you a false sense of productivity and throws you focus off of important tasks), you can make an exception in cases of major overwhelm bordering on burnout. Your productivity suffers whenever you are fatigued. Going for the low hanging fruit gives you a quick win that could provide enough motivation to start a snowball effect. A quick win can cut through the overwhelm and clear the air out so that you can make better prioritization decisions. Then you can proceed to tackling the more important items on your task list.

Do you have tips on how to prioritize items on your to-do lists? We’d love to know your strategy. Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp