💪 "Systemize your Life" with Chelsi Jo Moore [Use Case Q&A]

Miša Hennin

Hello and welcome to the April edition of our Use Case Q&A series!

In this series, we'll share real-life examples of how people use Meister products in a variety of industries - You'll find inspiration, tips and creative new ways to use our tools.

Today, we’re speaking with CEO, podcaster and mom @Chelsi Jo Moore about how MeisterTask can be used to systemize your operations, leaving you with more time to spend on the things that really matter.

Ready to find out how you can go from overwhelmed to organized with MeisterTask? Read on!

Got your own use case you'd love to share? Reach out to @Andrew Lapidus or me!

"Systemize your Life" with Chelsi Jo [Use Case Q&A]

Good afternoon Chelsi, we were so thrilled to see your enthusiastic introduction in the Community and are even happier to have you here with us today! Please tell us some more about yourself and what you do.

I was born and raised in the American Southwest. From a young age, I knew that I wanted to do big things with my life, but I never knew how this could coincide with having children. I poured myself into my career first, and then in my 30s, at the peak of my corporate career, I decided it was time to have a family.

I soon realized I wanted to be with my kids full-time while still pursuing the passions I had outside of motherhood. This is where I saw a gap in the market for my business: now, I teach work-from-home moms how to consistently grow their own businesses without neglecting their families in the process.

In order to scale my business quickly, I knew I needed systems; I created a home management system as well as a task management system in MeisterTask. This combination allowed me to have more time to work on scaling my business without cutting corners at home. These two systems are the backbone of what I teach to thousands of work-from-home moms through my podcast, Systemize Your Life.

For multiple six- and seven-figure business owners, I have recently released my TOBOS certification. This provides business owners with a company-wide Total Online Business Operating System and allows female CEOs to regain hours for their personal lives. I help these CEOs clean up their operations and fall back in love with their careers. How do I achieve this? By placing MeisterTask at the core of everything I teach.

Did this background inspire you to build your business on helping other moms succeed professionally?

Yes, I grew up thinking I had to choose between a career and family because I never saw anyone succeed in both. When I became a mom, I was already too deep into my career to simply let this side of my life go. I found a way to do both as well as I could, and realized that it's actually very possible: it just requires systems. I started perfecting my systems and making them plug and play for others. Since then, I've seen women's lives, homes, families, and businesses completely transformed.

You've mentioned your life turned around when you implemented your three core systems. Could you talk us through these systems and the organizational challenges they helped you overcome?

The three core systems I use to manage my home are my 5 Block Time Blocking Method, my Great 8 Fundamental Needs System, and my Menu Board Meal Planning System. When it comes to crushing my workload and being able to close my laptop at the end of the day, I rely heavily on my task management system within MeisterTask.

Knowing exactly who needs to do what each week and keeping tasks automated has reduced my weekly workload by 95%. The most important things for me and my husband to feel fulfilled and avoid burnout are my Great 8. We use this system every single week, without fail; it has kept us on the same page, supporting each other on a deeper level, and thriving in parenting and running businesses.

I cannot describe the joy I feel knowing my house is being maintained even when I am busy with my business, and vice versa. Being able to see what needs to be done in both areas of my life at a glance and automating as much as possible has helped me be truly present in my life.

It can't be easy to manage 15 different people - How do you use MeisterTask to support you as a manager?

I created TOBOS to help me manage the many moving pieces in a rapidly growing company. Its core is task management (in MeisterTask). After trying several other task management tools, I realized MeisterTask was far superior in user experience and its clean design.

In MeisterTask, I've developed an easily repeatable task management system that I put in place for every process at my company - from my operations manager to my brand new interns, every single person uses MeisterTask to navigate what needs to be done. We manage all meetings, events, projects, and recurring tasks within a series of MeisterTask workflows.

I centralize everything in a project board I call my cockpit; this is where my team goes to see a total view of everything that needs to be done and how long it will take to complete each task. With this careful management, I am able to run my business in 25 hours/week and help TOBOS-certified clients get better sleep, save money, and retain team members. I am truly so grateful to have MeisterTask as the platform for my method.

Besides managing your team, you have your podcasts, blog and other personal projects. How does MeisterTask help you coordinate all of these projects?

I have a content calendar in MeisterTask where I can see every piece of content that goes out and what channel it's going out on each day of each week for each month. My entire team has access to this board so everybody can see what the company is producing for marketing, and which tasks they are responsible for.

We're always interested to hear how productivity experts use automations. Which automation brings you the greatest peace of mind in your busy day-to-day?

There are so many amazing automation options! My go-to productivity hack is to pair simplicity with automations, so I would have to go with the automation that reassigns a task to a new person when it's added to a different column. This allows us to reduce unnecessary back and forth between colleagues because it's always clear when somebody has completed a dependent task.

As you're a productivity guru, we have to ask: What is your one top tip for going from overwhelmed to organized?

That's an easy one - SYSTEMS! A proven system that you can apply to your daily life will save you time, money and an enormous amount of stress. Running around putting out fires every day with a super long fancy to-do list is the number one reason most people are drowning. Create a system that allows you to regain control of your home and your business.

Finally, do you have any resources you'd like to share with the Community? For example, we'd love to listen to some of your podcasts!

Yes! I have several episodes on my podcast sharing amazing tips on how I use MeisterTask. Simply go to your podcast player and search Systemize Your Life. With a quick scroll, you'll find an episode you love - we have over 350 to choose from so go binge your heart out!

💡 The best way to find a specific episode is by searching our vault. This is a searchable spreadsheet where you can type any keyword (e.g. "workflow") and instantly find all the episodes I have ever recorded relating to that topic. If you are an Apple Podcast user, the episodes are linked directly inside the vault for you to access with a click. 💡

Here is an episode to get you started:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-53-how-to-build-a-workflow-inside-scoop-at-my/id1488424047?i=1000492156576

My website is also full of information on my home management system, business task management system, and my TOBOS certification.

Thanks so much Chelsi, it's amazing to hear how MeisterTask has helped you educate others to be successful! How can users reach out to you for more information?

You can connect with me in the DMs here, on Instagram or via email info@ChelsiJo.Co.

Emily

Hi @Chelsi Jo Moore - this post was so fun and inspiring to read!

Thanks for sharing your experiences and story so openly 😁.

I'm not a big Meistertask user, but I have to say that you might have persuaded me 😉. Nobody can really argue against having more time for the things that matter!

I'd love to know whether your impressive business knowledge was self-taught or something you studied at degree level?

Cathy Fanning

Hi https://community.meister.co/profile/Chelsi%20Jo%20Moore Excellent Q&A. So interesting to hear your story and productive use of MeisterTask.

Time management is something we all need and can improve on.

Admin BSF.company

Thanks for such an inspiring post @Chelsi Jo Moore, I could not agree more with you on How to go from Overwhelmed to Organized:

Easy —> Systems! 😊

I'm seeing your content for the first time today, but I'm already a fan! Subscribed 👍

Keep it up, best wishes!
Andres

Olaf Roeb

Some 40 years ago, most possibly near the end of my days at school, I had a phase of loving Latin quotes, and one that I still think about from time to time is: Abyssus abyssum invocat.
Which, translated into the field of management, productivity, and organization we are talking about here most probably means:

You get disorganized in one area of your life most probably will have (a) negative impact(s) on other fields. And in my view and personal experience, it's not just about wasting time and/or budget you need for other projects, it's much more about psychology: Starting with one really bad experience in one important corner of a project, more often than not starts a chain reaction: Getting worried, nervous, getting angry about myself or others, becoming embarrassed about it, , too many things in mind bringing confusion and with it bad decisions and you can see the domino effect going on and on and on. House on fire, like most of the time, great analogy!

I guess what this discussion is all about is: Almost certainly the domino effect also works the other way around: Getting organized, or better organized at least in one area, and seeing/feeling the positive effects, most certainly also positively impacts other fields of life/other projects. So start and systemize/organize one corner of life, then use the effect to take up the next, and so on. At least, that's how I read this post. Works from private to business and from business to personal/social life. I absolutely love both the practical and day to day realization within the boards and the general title: Systemize your life! , I will make absolutely sure to find some of your podcasts, too, @Chelsi Jo Moore .

Thank you so much for sharing😊

Chelsi Jo Moore

@Emily thanks so much! I'm completely self taught with everything I learned in business/entrepreneurship. I was trained by degree as a professional American Sign Language interpreter. I worked in the profession for 20 years before retiring fully to run my company.

Admin BSF.company

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/4479#Comment_4479

That's some deep stuff to think about @Olaf Roeb!

Your words reminded me of the Broken Windows Theory.

Thanks for the food for thought, my friend!

Cheers 👋
Andres

Olaf Roeb

@Andres D'Andrea , please believe me I would never in any way support or just reference to Broken Windows Theory! Far far far from it, maybe even the contrary is what I meant.

Just imagine for a moment Rudy Giuliani in New York's 90th had not tried to fix the city with massive investment into law enforcement, imprisonment, and deterrence, focusing on cosmetics instead of trying to build economically working neighborhoods in Brownsville, Harlem, and other poor neighborhoods. Imagine he had offered municipal money and resources to educate poor young people maybe into carpenter 101 and project management 101:
We teach you how to do it, we provide tools and glass and wood and paint, we pay rent for workshops, and the neighborhoods organize themselves from within and start to fix broken windows of their own housing, windows of course just being metaphoric for everything that is broken.

Give a "lost generation" a chance to experience they can learn how to do it, and be equipped and enabled to fix their 'hoods' with their own hands and minds. Organized from within small projects, financed but not micro-managed by the city. I know such a scenario could not be farther from Rudy's way of thinking, but finalizing the utopic imagination he might even have guaranteed to prevent rents from skyrocketing once the community had repaired, cleaned, and upvalued their own houses, shops, and schools from within.

In that scenario of social and economic urban development, I would absolutely see the psychological effects I tried to describe in my post above: Young people, maybe for the first time in their lives, feel enabled, equipped, and trusted to fix what they themselves would like to fix. They want more, they would vote for more of it, and some of them might even develop into leaders of their societies themselves. As they do, time and again, just not in Rudy's real world.

However, to be clear, in my above post I was strictly and only referencing intrapersonal effects, not socially interrelated behavior. Gaining strength from self-made and self-induced progress, fixing one problem and winning time, experience and energy, and selfconsciousness to attack the next, and the next and the next, starting a chain reaction of "progress calls progress". In contrast to being under stress, pressure, and procrastinating all the time, not seeing any progress in life at all.

I know it is hard to imagine Rudy thinking that way, but then it was your association, Andrés, not mine. I hope I am still within Chelsi Jo's thinking about systemizing life, at least that was and still is my intention.🤔

Best, my friend, Olaf

P.S: If you find the time, Andrés, forget about Broken Windows and maybe instead think Amanda Gorman:
"Being American is more
than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into,
and how we repair it"

https://youtu.be/LZ055ilIiN4?t=162

Admin BSF.company

Hi @Olaf Roeb, thanks for such an insightful response!

For what I just read, I appreciate our agreement on the importance of investing in people instead of things, and the crucial role of individuals as the basic unit of society.

My association had more to do with a vision I've acquired in the last couple of decades. 

The vision of how a small action (positive or negative) becomes part of a much bigger picture...

Habits and habit stacking, for example.

It was not a political statement, nor had anything to do with the results of any politician's time in office.

I guess I like to view things pragmatically, so I'll put it this way:

Everything we do as individuals, no matter the size or nature of the action (big, small, positive, negative); has effects at all levels:

1. Ourselves as individuals
2. Our families
3. Our communities
4. Our countries
5. Our planet
6. Our solar system
7. Our universe (or multiverse, depending on which branch of astrophysics you follow)

I believe the statement above these line and the idea of taking ownership of our actions, which is what I meant originally, has something to do with ChelsieJo's vision. 

Furthermore, I believe it also has some conceptual relationship with what you described in your last two messages, but that's my view buddy. I speak for myself, and I'm not imposing anything on you 😉

Thanks for sharing the link, enjoy the evening 👋 
Andres

Miša Hennin

@Andres D'Andrea and @Olaf Roeb thank you for these insights - food for thought this friday afternoon 😅!

Jonathan Ernst

Super post - many thanks for sharing - will check out the podcast!

Chelsi Jo Moore

@Jonathan Ernst Thanks! Hope you find a few episodes you love!

Chelsi Jo Moore

@Cathy Fanning Time management is so important given all the addictive distractions we battle everyday. I hope you found a nugget here that sparked your interest! Have a great week!

Chelsi Jo Moore

@Olaf Roeb WOW! What incredible insight you shared. I have always found language and meaning so fascinating, so its super cool you added this here. Not to mention how accurate and insightful it is. Thank YOU so much for sharing!