 About the same height here. Oh, hello. Here we go Hello, everybody. How we doing last session before lunch? I know y'all are excited for lunch It's a nice day out here in Phoenix me huge fan myself I'm gonna give everyone just a few more seconds to settle Solopreneur This one, okay, cool. I've got a few more people here wonderful wonderful welcome Thank you for making the choice to come and learn about planning and organization for the solopreneur. I Personally love seeing so many of those Attending and hopefully betting on yourselves and embarking on a career that is hopefully fruitful and successful for all of you Vicki and I have been to a few camps together. It's good to see you again in Phoenix and Let's give it up for Vicki excited to learn Good morning. Can you hear me with the mic? I'm like, okay. There's sound that sounds good So you are here for planning and organization for the solopreneur? I am Vicki delusio. You might have just heard my husband speak on some plug-in stuff and automation I am a blogger. I own two blogs surprise AZ mom and fit families Phoenix and I'm also a real estate agent or realtor I'm sure you guys have heard of those. Hopefully we are not bothering you I'm getting some laughs about that so why am I so passionate about planning because life happens and gets in the way and you need a plan and When life happens and gets in the way you need to keep your reputation solid So one year ago I was standing on this stage except at Galvin eyes and I was talking about SEO on a panel My life could not have been better. My blog was getting some national recognition. I Was running my real estate business. I have three children who are eight six and five. I was homeschooling them I know right and I was driving around with my kids all the time I was reviewing different places my real estate was going super awesome I was helping my husband with his business and I was helping my parents when they needed some help with their medical issues My my friends thought I was absolutely nuts. They're like, how are you doing all of this? I take a little swig of my probably fourth coffee of the day and I'd be like I am running on caffeine and adrenaline. This is life. So That's how my life was I was just going for it. Oh, and I was training for my third half marathon So my life was a little bit crazy In August I started feeling a little bit murky, but I'm the mom of three. I could not slow down I just said well, you know what? I got to keep on going. My husband was traveling a lot So I did what moms do. I kept on going Then September 1st happened and my life completely changed the day started out fine My kids and I and my husband went to our community pool, but then in the afternoon I Went to my upstairs and I started feeling paranoid. I Have my psychology degree and so when I started feeling paranoid. I was like something isn't right I've never felt paranoid in my life Well, my husband came upstairs. He's like, what do you mean you feel paranoid? I said, I don't want to go down those stairs. He said Vicki We've been living in this house for almost five years. What do you mean? You don't want to go down the stairs said I don't like those stairs He couldn't talk sense into me. He said we're going to the ER We got to the ER with our three children who were with us once again They were eight six and five at the time and all of a sudden I couldn't walk into the emergency room Here I was training for a half marathon days before and I could not on my own two feet walk into the emergency room So we got into the triage section Luckily, there was no one else in the waiting room I sat down and the nurse started asking me questions at that point. I couldn't answer questions as what is your name? What is your birth date? I? Couldn't answer at all. I was staring and there was no life in me The nurse recognized these symptoms and asked my husband. Has she ever had a seizure before? My husband said no, she hasn't At that moment I started flailing. I had my first of three grand mal seizures that day If you've never had a grand mal seizure or haven't ever seen one, I've never seen one, but I had three It's pretty much your whole body shutting down. You have no control of your body. My brain was spiring away Nerve impulses going crazy So they whispered me into the Emergency room away from everyone else my kids saw all this and my husband later described as mom was kind of having a funny Little dance that she was doing They put me into a medical coma at that point. They didn't know if I was brain dead A month earlier I was fine so There I am in the hospital. I Have three businesses Goodness gracious. What am I to do? Well, I had a plan. I had put plans in place months before so that should something happen my business could be Sustained for a little bit of time and I would not have to worry about it. So Do you have a plan in place? That's a big question. I'm asking you today. Do you have a plan so your business Can be taken care of because if you have a business of your own Do you have someone to take over we're going to talk about all these things My business right now has never been better. My reputation is solid If you had not been in my inner circle, you would have never known anything was wrong My business kept going My business right now is going great But when I woke up from that coma, I Didn't know how to use my phone. I Couldn't walk. I couldn't talk. I Couldn't really remember how to use a remote control and my memory was kind of like Fifty-first states. Do you remember that movie with Drew Barrymore every ten minutes? I'd recycle I Even called a doctor an elf at one point oopsie The seizures kind of caused some issues where you see lights and stuff and he came in and asked me some questions I looked at him. I'm like, are you gonna do a dance for me? Are you an elf? He might have a little reputation Understands now But I was luckily I was a very nice patient, but My reputation remained even though I went through all of that stuff. So Do you have a plan as a solopreneur? so Let's talk about The plan so I'm gonna make a really big assumption here today That you are at word camp because you like using technology and I know what assumption means It means it makes the out of you and me, right? Okay, I'm gonna make make a big jump and do that anyhow Are you using an online checklist? Are you using a checklist or do you just jump in to your every day and go? See what happens? Because if you are not running your business your business is running you Do you get an email from a client and just go? You know, I'll just attend to that now and then three hours later There goes the day Were you making? Your day up and taking care of things because it's very easy For your day to just go away, especially if you're a solopreneur you work from home How many people work from home? That's a lot of you and then your day just goes away your day I mean you could just end up doing this doing that and then there goes your day. So are you doing? Doing something to make a checklist. I love my online checklist Because it's easy. I can always have it with me. I don't have to put down a piece of paper I lose it boom online checklist as I go I can just add to it and I can see that I'm checking things off Really easy there Calendar apps I Hate planners Tell you why I hate planners because you only get this much space in a planner right You can have six planners I know a lot of home schoolers who have five planners three planners, but you only get so much space in a planner So what do you do when you run out of space in a planner you make X's and stripes and marks to other places Then you forget where you're supposed to be in your calendar Are you are you putting who you're supposed to meet every day their contact information? It's a really good way to stay organized when I was in the hospital my husband knew Exactly who to contact because it was in my calendar He had access to my calendar and he was able to contact those people It's easy Every single time I make an appointment I put who I'm supposed to con who I'm supposed to beat It takes like one second then my brain is Able to just go on with that because our brains are not able to remember everything We easily get off track. Who was I supposed to call at that time? What is their phone number? Then you waste more time? Just put it all in a calendar app My mom is infamous for getting those little bank things those little calendars. Do you know those calendars? You don't get that much space and she goes Square and stuff like mom you forget all your appointments. She just you just can call and remind me mom Though Vicki just call remind me when my appointments are you have a smartphone like mom you have a smartphone too You just use a calendar app I'll eventually get her to do it That's right cloud-based filing systems I Love my cloud-based filing system because I can access all of my files on my computer or on my phone Easy, I don't have to make it crazy Just put it right there And it's searchable Make it so it's easy for yourself to find it later. I put everything by Year month client That's easy. Don't make it any crazy system There's nothing crazy. You have to do about that Customer relationship management system. It's the Rolodex. I hope I'm not doing that I'm just appreciating myself with that Rolodex. I Take everything and put it into my customer relationship management system every business card I get whether you're gonna be a customer or not. I put it in there I put Everything that I get I don't keep on business cards. I know you all make really pretty business cards You want me to have a little filing system like baseball cards? That's too much for me. I put One month one day a month put into my online checklist or my calendar app put one day put it all in all of those Business cards and put it into my door one day a month. I take all of those business cards and I just put it into my CRM Then I don't have that clutter. Thank you Marie Kondo. Who's Marie Kondo fan? You've been like watching a joy get rid of all those business cards. Sorry guys. They're very pretty I thank them all as I get rid of them. Okay But then you put them in a system put them in a system Then you can use them later tax information My husband does my taxes. I'm very thankful But I know Taxes are horrible And you do not want to wait until the last minute to do your taxes I am I'm just gonna say this I am not a CPA and I am not a lawyer Okay, but you want to not mix business and pleasure Do not use your same accounts Do not mix that I Personally have a PLLC. Oops. Sorry about that. I have a PLLC because I hold a professional license I don't know what you need to do, but get yourself a separate account and make sure you're not waiting until the last minute to do your taxes Keep that separated because you do not want to wait until the last minute to have someone else have to deal with that mess When I was in the hospital, I signed my taxes. My husband was able to give that to me But it was legal Because I signed it myself But in password managers, I Don't know how many passwords I have. I don't know how many sites I'm on. I'm probably on 400 And that doesn't include all the shopping websites. I am on so Yeah, there's so many passwords and then you get on those websites and they change they make you change it every 120 days because they love to torture you and it can't be and those passwords can't be like the Passwords that you had before so then you start going through all the the woodland creature animals So you start with squirrels and then you get to rabbits and you forget which which woodland creature you're on and you get locked out Of all your systems so get yourself a good password management system because otherwise it is So horrible to try to figure that out and then get locked out of your systems All right Do you have a network? Okay, now you're going wait a second Vicki. I'm a solopreneur I don't need anybody else and I was I was the right along there with you I I worked at Target when I got out of college. I was an assistant store manager and after I got out of that Place I know a lot of people love shopping there Telling you Had my time there um I Was like I don't need to do anything with people and honestly it couldn't be more wrong You guys are here this weekend, and I hope you guys are networking Solo entrepreneurship is not going it alone You really need to be making a lot of connections and I say use your network to bridge your gaps So that means you should be using a checklist to figure out what you're good at and what you're bad at We all have things we also like to do and don't like to do And if you don't know what you're good at and what you're not good at ask a sibling or ask your mom They will tell you So use that network to help you I Right now with my my epilepsy. I can't drive a car Kind of makes showing houses a little bit difficult, right? Okay, Joe and Sally you're gonna go look at that house I'm gonna go get an Uber Alright, so I'll meet there in 20 minutes. Yeah, it's kind of a problem, right? So what did I do? I use my network and now I have my own real estate team Now I use my network as an affiliate so Find those people who are in your own space They they can be your competitors that do something better than you Set up an affiliate So they can also be people who are completely different than you Use your network get a network and a lot of people are like, oh, I tried that networking thing didn't work out for me You weren't in the right networking group. There's a lot of them and a lot of place and Doing face-to-face networking is So much better than online. You cannot get the same relationships online Then that you can face-to-face. So Today at lunch, I'm challenging you to sit next to someone you don't know And meet them so I see that you three ha ha ha go sit next to someone else ha ha just challenge you Picking you out of the crowd I'm really good at like going up to people and making them feel uncomfortable and then making them feel comfortable So I'm gonna challenge y'all to do that. So And when the going gets tough like when you're kind of stuck Are you with people who are going to help you are they going to validate your feelings or are they gonna challenge you? So sometimes you get stuck you get in a rut and people like yeah, it's a rough time. Yeah, it's rough Or they're gonna be like we'll try something new You know so a lot of times you just kind of get in that slump and you just don't want to do something different man I've been in a couple slumps that the past couple months of September. I could have just sat down and gone. I'm done That would have gotten me nowhere So find people who challenge you All right backups for business So Where are your backup files? We talked about cloud-based systems Don't rely on your laptop If you've never had a laptop crash I want to go with you and buy a lotto ticket with you. So you know just so lucky I don't know how many laptops I crash and you know, you can have Either cloud-based you can have a external hard drive if you have an external hard drive make sure that's not in a Hot or too cold area and who are your backups? So that's really important so how was I able to keep going with my business and No one knew That anything was really going on thing. My husband was able to take care of my stuff But he knew he didn't run my business. He was just able to cancel some appointments He had access to all my passwords my email and he knew where my backup files were That's it. He wasn't going to try to run my business. He has his own business to run He just spoke he had enough to do he had three kids He had to take care of and try to figure out my medical bills. Well, we won't even talk about that So that that person isn't going to run your business They're just going to parcel out things so that you don't lose your reputation Because that's what you don't want you don't want your clients who Need something to not be taken care of to go. She didn't have a plan. He didn't have a plan for me I mean if I had a real estate transaction if I was in the middle of one They could have lost a house. They could have maybe not made a move Because I fell sick But because I had a plan because I had all my files aligned My husband would have been able to just pick out those files send it to one of my my Affiliates and it the transaction would have gone through No problem It would have been as easy as that But you need to have someone you trust to do this could be a sibling could be a parent they just need to have access to your passwords and And some key important information But that has to be something that you talk about and a lot of people don't want to talk about that and I Started thinking about doing this speech in about October and I was still really recovering and I thought and I really off-paced with this Does this does this need to be said so I asked people I asked for people I asked one person I knew and three people I had just met in a networking group I said am I off base is it's just me being you know very Emotional am I just being crazy to start thinking about it? so one person told me that His mother passed away when he was 24. This is early 90s and She was a real estate agent and She owned a great deal. I have rental properties in the Phoenix area He being a 24 year old. He didn't really care what his mom did until she passed away Then he realized he had no idea where the rental properties were Who were in the rental properties and how much they owed? Oh That's you know 90s that's kind of before the internet kind of an issue probate court Then mother-woman lost her husband about two years ago. They never really spoke About the the business he ran She took care of the kids. He did his thing. He died unexpectedly so She Got his computer got the files that she could find Headed over to the CPA. It's like I don't know Here you go Take as much money as you can. I have no idea CPAs business caught on fire She kind of thinks that maybe there's a lien on the business Doesn't know if there was an LLC on the business Kind of a big deal. Are you talking about your business with someone else in your life? Another person I do know she was like your issues scared me. You were perfectly healthy and you just I Hired someone else to know and then someone else said The husband passed away She had no access to even their personal information Let alone his business information So she didn't know any of their passwords to any of their of their stuff She just kind of hovered over the keyboard and hoped it came to her it did She's very lucky So for my husband I Know who his key partners are I come to the word press with him So I get to meet the people and that's more than a lot of other people do But is there someone in your life that you can share your information with they don't know They don't need to know how to run your business And I'm not saying that they do need to know how to run your business But they should know some people in your life know how to get access to your phone Know at least where your files are Very important and some people don't want to talk about it. It's kind of like talking about a will It's like I don't want to talk about it. I wouldn't have wanted to talk about it I would have never guessed this would have happened to me So my medical issues We don't know what's going on with me No clue. They have no answers for why anything happened to me. I'm going to Mayo Clinic. We're hoping for the best Some of the doctors at my first hospital lost some of my cancer test So Kind of a bummer right there. So I asked to get it redone. There's a spinal tap that I had done twice. So That kind of sucks a little bit but I'm standing up here today because I felt like I really needed to impart information to you right this year I've been working with Walmart Kind of a cool deal Cirque du Soleil Some top notch. Yeah, some top notch restaurants in the area So it's not over until it's over for me So I hope like You really are using this time to today to think about planning your business Not just tomorrow, but going forward to be networking with lots of people I'm challenging you just sit next to people that you don't know. It's hard. It really is sometimes hard I'll put up my This is how you can reach me. I run two blogs And if you need to know anything about where to move in the valley, you can reach me to I have an awesome team And if you have any questions Let me know And don't be shy because a lot of people haven't been asking questions and then people are coming up But other people need to hear questions too, and I'm like super not shy. So yes My husband actually makes mom makes the one and his is amplified plug plug in so you can check that out Yeah What checklist I use actually I use on Google keep Yep Keep Yep, that's right on my phone. Mm-hmm. So I get to yes Yes So it depends on what you're you're looking for I'm not a tax professional so or a lawyer So you would have to look into that yourself on what that would work best So I I hands off on that Yes So I like Google because I can see what my husband is doing too So we because Because I can't drive I We also schedule everything so I can see when he's on the phone He can see my stuff and then we can separate our stuff a lot of people use a lot of different things There are tons of different different apps out there So, you know, it all depends on your personal preference but I someone else said something the other day and it's like Don't get mired and just trying to find the perfect one Just use one because and don't make one Don't like it get all mired and like trying to find the perfect one just use one. I and I personally hate sticky notes Don't use sticky notes. They don't work in the desert and they don't work in the humidity someone else. Yes Because I'm a real estate agent my my brokerage holds holds the insurance for that, but it depends on your Your individual need so you'd want to see Whatever your business is so I hands off of that for lawyer purposes anyone else Yes For me, I do it basically on I have long-term checklist I have the short-term checklist it honestly depends on what your business is so I Do it based on things that come up in my head. I'm kind of a creative person and it just kind of pops in mine even includes my grocery list, so I don't forget to do that and because you know I'm dealing with some medical issues I've learned that I need to incorporate some more reminders with stuff and I think We just need to make sure that we're putting stuff in our checklist I think we often think we're gonna remember more than we actually do I mean how often do you wake up in the mullin? I feel like that's a great idea. I should write that down. You fall back to sleep and you're like There's a great idea in the middle of the night, and I don't remember what it was. So Anyone else yes, I use last pass I Use last pass Yeah, there's quite a few of them, but I mean honestly just use one Because there's I I was against it for a long time, and then my husband's like are you using all the same password for everything? And then you know and then I had a lot of websites that were changing every 120 days because they were like torturing me Pretty much that was all I I could say for it and and you know, I was getting mad at the computer. I Believe in getting mad at inanimate things It's very justifiable Yeah Last pass Let's pass Yeah Yeah, and yeah, I think you have to pay for it for the the phone or I don't I don't know I don't remember which one you have to pay for yeah Yeah, everything is renewable, and that's how they get you because they want you to pay so but it is what it is Anyone else you can ask questions, please No, all right. I know you're all hungry. I won't keep you All right. Thank you very much