If you feel like the tech running your business and marketing is duct taped together, not functioning properly, or needs to be updated ASAP, know that you’re not alone.
It can feel very overwhelming to look at a mountain of tech projects that are critical to running your business. That overwhelm is stealing your mental and emotional energy. It may also make you feel paralyzed to the point where you’re not even doing anything.
Please know this truth: it IS possible to untangle a tech mess in your business!
In this article, I’ll share with you the process I go through in order to untangle tech messes in virtual businesses.
Before you begin anything, you MUST understand something critical to your success.
In my many years of working with entrepreneurs on their tech, I have seen the same theme come up constantly.
When entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate and/or they have had projects on the back burner for a long time, everything feels urgent and high priority. The problem with that is that if everything is high priority, then nothing is. You are more likely to stay stuck.
It is impossible for everything to be the highest priority.
You MUST prioritize in order to make progress in a way that doesn’t hurt emotionally, mentally, or energetically.
Just because something isn’t high priority doesn’t mean that it’s not important. You’ll get to everything eventually, I promise! To get started, you have to prioritize.
Now, onto the detangling!
We’ve created a tool we’ve created called the Tech Action Plan Generator. It takes you through the process below step-by-step and in more detail than I’m sharing here.
When you’re done working through the Generator, you’ll have a clear, realistic, non-overwhelming plan of action for cleaning up your tech mess, one project at a time.
1) Discovery
Brain dump all the different areas of your business where tech is currently involved that needs fixing or updating. For example, your website, email funnel, client onboarding, etc.
Then consider what you’ve got going on in the next 90 days. In order to create a realistic plan, you MUST be aware of your bandwidth.
2b) Prioritize
It’s so important so I’m going to say it again: not everything can be TOP priority!
To determine if something is top priority, consider these things:
A) What do I feel most emotionally overwhelmed with?
B) What tech is being used most frequently by myself, my team, my clients, and/or my prospects?
C) Which one is so broken that it’s costing me money?
List out the first 5 that come to mind.
Consider how critical it is to your business, if it is actively negatively impacting your business, whether you need to involve someone else (i.e. delegate), whether you need to hire them, and the amount of effort needed from both you and your team.
You’ll get a clearer picture of how much effort, resources, etc. are needed for each project.
2b) Prioritize AGAIN
Review that list of 5 and your analysis of each project. Then narrow it down to 1-3 projects you can realistically take on in the next 90 days.
3) Plan your first steps
This will vary based on what the project is and how you like to approach projects.
That could be brain dumping all the tasks to be done. Or maybe creating a project description. Or hiring the right person to help you.
List out the first three things and get started.
When you go through this 3-step process, you’ll create a realistic, do-able plan for tackling the mountain of projects that’s in front of you!
What’s next?
If you want to go deeper into the process and want a step-by-step guide by your side, I encourage you to download the Tech Action Plan Generator.
It’ll take you through this process in much more detail. By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for which projects to do when and what it will take to complete each one successfully.