Beauty Brand Founders’ Top Time Management And Task Delegation Tips

In this edition of Beauty Independent’s ongoing series posing questions to beauty entrepreneurs, we ask 19 brand founders and executives: What tools help you with time management and task delegation?

Kristen Heaton Founder, Crave Naturals

I'm always looking for new apps to help me with time management because it's an area where I can always improve. I've found Trello to be extremely helpful for me and my staff. I love being able to create "cards" for specific tasks and, then, see the dialogue between myself and my employees. I can flag it as urgent, ongoing, weekly, monthly or a daily task, and I can put a deadline on it. I've tried other apps like Asana and Monday, but find them to be too detailed for what our company needs at the current time.

Aimee Gill Founder, Powerella Beauty + Wellness

We haven’t previously used a scheduling platform for social media posts. It’s not easy to get into the creative and analytical mindset of posting throughout the week with so many other things going on, so we needed a better process. We use Later to plan our Instagram and Pinterest posts. Especially as we launch new products, this is going to be a necessity to manage time by planning out a month in advance and making sure we’re engaging in the best way.

I also think Trello is a fantastic tool. As an obsessed list maker, very old school on paper, I really needed to Marie Kondo this area of my life. I’m so happy I found something super simple that is perfect for visual minds. The best part is reducing a lot of paper waste, and I now have #deskgoals!

JULISSA PRADO Founder and CEO, Rizos Curls

I just schedule everything onto my phone calendar.  There are so many things happening at any given time that I need to be able to quickly see on my phone what is happening and prioritize. In terms of delegating, everyone on my team has 100% ownership over their areas of responsibility, so I just forward them things when they come up. We use Planoly and Asana to stay organized with our team.  I think it’s important to have clear areas of responsibility on a team. It’s the only way to be able to work at the pace needed to be successful today.

Jessica Parker Founder and CEO, Kusshi

I am a big proponent of blocking out time in your calendar to focus on planning your day or catch up on email. Asana also plays a huge role in keeping our team organized with projects and quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily tasks. All of our notes related to tasks happen within Asana, and it’s really easy to assign or add a new task to someone without adding another email to your inbox or meeting to your calendar.

We also use Slack religiously within our team and also to communicate with our key partners like our third-party logistics and our advertising agency. It allows our distributed team to be constantly on top of things.

NIKITA MONTGOMERY Owner and Founder, Hazel O. Salon

There are so many things to remember in running a business, so we enjoy tools that help us either automate systems or organize data. Homebase helps with timekeeping, payroll, time-off requests and hiring/recruitment. We love this app because it's employee- and employer-friendly. Whatsapp is our favorite tool for team communication. It doesn't matter if you have an iPhone or Android, works via Wi-Fi, and allows participants to respond to specific messages. We also use Google Calendar invites for meetings with our team, salon and community events. 

Heather D'Angelo Founder, Carta

I love using Asana for project management. For social media, I love using Buffer and Later for scheduling posts.

Leigh-Ann Houchin Co-Founder, 2 Girls With Curls

Some techniques, tools and resources we use for time management and tasks are being as creative as possible. We have used interns local to us from Ohio State University that work for us for free, but are able to get a class credit for the internship. This helps a lot with time management and allows us to delegate things out. We have set days that we meet every week to touch base and make sure we are on the same page for the week. This has helped us stay organized and keeps us from getting overwhelmed.  

We use Square for payment processing, Squarespace for our website and also do our newsletter through it, and QuickBooks for all of our accounting and invoicing. All of these help us save time and stay organized. 

PATRICK KELLY Founder, Sigil Scent

Calendar, calendar, calendar. If it doesn’t make it to my calendar, it never happens. I’m notorious for booking social dinners two to three weeks out. I also use a colorful, easy app called Clear for task management. Google Sheets is a go-to for easy tracking of wholesale workflows.

Amy Carr Co-Founder, PYT Beauty

For a smaller company like ours, we use a lot of Google Sheets and documents to stay organized. We can leave notes for one another and comment back to keep work flow moving. We also use instant messaging services, so we don’t clog up email or our texts.  Personally, I love a good paper list, and the satisfaction of checking it off when completed.  Every Friday afternoon, I go through my list and update it and, then, prioritize so that Monday I can be completely efficient.

Mary-Andrée Ardouin-Guerrier Founder and CEO, Loving Culture

I find that Google's G Suite for business has significant tools that can help with delegating tasks and overall operations such as real-time collaborations on different documents, calendar sharing, video conferencing, and securely backing up documents on the cloud.

Cherie Hoeger Co-Founder, Saalt

I live by my Google Calendar and use Asana to keep track of personal tasks and projects. But, as a team, we've found that Slack has been easiest to adopt and offers the most fluid environment for collaboration. Tagging also makes it easy to delegate tasks to multiple people in one post, and every channel provides a thorough backlog of information to reference when onboarding new team members.

Lorri Mansker Founder and CEO, Sweet Cheeks Organic Konjac Skincare

We are a lean team. We have a bit of a mind meld thing going on where we can bounce around from topic to topic and still keep it together. We start each morning with a WIP or a work-in-progress meeting to make sure everyone is on schedule. It’s a quick status update to communicate issues and offer solutions. More brains are (usually) better.

Gabriel De Santino Founder, Gabriel Cosmetics

I make a task list for myself every week, plug it into my calendar and stick to it as much as possible. This allows me to start each day with a plan of attack, helps to keep me focused on the task at hand, and allows me to knock things out one at a time, always starting with the items that are most important or time-sensitive. I have a strong team that works around me, and I am confident in their abilities, so I can easily delegate as needed which is crucial.

EVELYN GINOSSI Founder, Marine + Vine

I am old-school and love working with a handwritten list to tackle tasks on a daily basis. While I use a calendar on my computer and phone for appointments and task reminders, I love working pen to paper with lists, projects, copy and strategies, and to outline my objectives before I delegate tasks. 

In terms of time management, working with a list that I’ve drafted after assessing emails and appointments for the day allows me to prioritize and target what is most important in a day rather than reacting to what’s in my email inbox on a daily basis. It’s important to stay in charge of the day as opposed to permitting outside influences to redirect your day, particularly when, as a founder, I wear a number of different hats.

Cathy Chapman President, Lune North America

Spreadsheets. For the longest time, I went out of my way to avoid them. Now, I have multiple collections of spreadsheets for all aspects of marketing to ideation innovation. Heck, I even plan vacations on a spreadsheet. It’s so easy to delegate who owns what tasks and see them being completed in real time clearly and quickly. I expect my team to be consistent with referencing and updating them.

Annie Tevelin Founder, SkinOwl

My goodness, I am constantly looking for tools to help with efficiency and delegating. It is so important in growing a brand, one that is constantly evolving and taking on new challenges. I have made it a point to wake up every day at the same time. This allows me to enjoy the morning and not be a slave to waking up late, thus derailing my entire morning. 

I have breakfast, walk my dog, and then I am able to sit down with a clear head and start my day versus shoving everything into a shorter time block. As for delegating, I constantly perform “audits” on the things that I do on a daily basis. I ask myself, “Do I have to do this or if I give myself the time to teach someone to do it, could someone else do it?” This practice has changed my life!

Kristen Bowen Founder and CEO, Living The Good Life Naturally

We are always open to trying a new way to be more efficient with our time while still maintaining a culture of connection on our team. Currently, we use Asana, Google Keep, and the note section on our phones. Every year, I use a different paper planner and, this year, I am really enjoying Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner. I always have some alert going off on my phone to keep me accountable for my time.

Michelle Shaffer Founder and CEO, TwinMedix

To help with time management and delegating tasks, we use Apple, Google Calendar and Excel. Emails are what help me keep organized.

JOAN SUTTON Founding Partner and CEO, 707 Flora

As a new brand owner, it is so hard to delegate! Once you can start delegating, time management becomes easier. I struggled a lot with this when I was in the first stages of development. I wanted to do and control everything, which meant crazy long hours. That’s not good for many reasons. When we are overtired, we aren’t operating at our optimum, so the work suffers.

I have learned to let go and trust the people around me more. It’s hard because the stakes are high, and I want it all to be perfect. A good way to start letting go is to assign smaller tasks. Then, when you see that is done correctly, let go a little more and so on. The advice I would give is to trust your team, but, more importantly, trust yourself as a leader to know when it is time for you to step in on a given task or project.

If you have a question you’d like Beauty Independent to ask beauty entrepreneurs, please send it to editor@beautyindependent.com.