Stop the Chaos – Why You Need a Project Management Tool (Even if It’s Just You)

Let’s be real—your brain wasn’t meant to carry every client task, content idea, and “buy oat milk” reminder. In this episode, I’m breaking down why a project management tool isn’t just a “nice to have” but a “how-am-I-not-using-this-already” kind of tool—no matter where you are in your business journey.

Whether you’re still riding solo or wrangling a growing team, I’ll walk you through:

• Why a PM tool is your ticket to less mental clutter and more clarity
• How repeatable tasks = sneaky SOPs (and yes, you're fancy now)
• Prioritization hacks to help you work smarter, not longer
• How to actually tell if you have the bandwidth to say “yes” to more
• The game-changing benefit of smoother onboarding for your VA, team, or support pro
• A reminder not to turn your PM tool into another full-time job
• A quick look at tools like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable—and even spreadsheets if that’s your jam
• Bonus: Some tools even connect with your email (yep, magic)

✨ Your challenge: Pick one repeatable task (like client onboarding or sending your weekly newsletter) and build it into your project management tool of choice. Make it easy. Make it repeatable. Your future self is already doing a happy dance.

Want help figuring out which PM tool fits your brain? Visit bizmagic.co or email me at patti@bizmagic.co.

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solid. So General Biz Chat two. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by the backend tech of their business.

We create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress. Today we are diving into something that I think is one of the more important things to have in your business, and that is a project management tool. Now, I know a lot of people who listen to this are solopreneurs, and so you might think that that's not something that you need because it's just you, but.

I'm here to challenge that and say that I do think that this could be useful for you. So I wanna talk about why a project management tool is useful for anybody who owns a business. So whether that is a solopreneur and it's just you, whether you're a business owner who has a VA or a contractor, or whether you're somebody who has a full team.

Project management tools are really game changer because here's the deal, if your brain is carrying around. Your entire to-do list, your client tasks, your content calendar, the fact that you have to take your furry companion to the vet or go buy more oat milk, it's, it's overloaded. It's too much on your brain, and it can make you feel like you're not doing enough, which might make you feel lazy, but you're not.

You're just doing too much mentally, and that's where a project management tool can actually save your sanity. So I'm gonna dive in. So reason number one, get the stuff out of your head. Think of a project management tool as a place. For a digital brain dump that doesn't forget stuff and doesn't wake you up at 3:00 AM to remind you to send that invoice that you totally forgot that you were supposed to send.

When you write it down in a system, no. Whatever that system looks like to you, your brain is able to stop holding that information. It's one less. Thing for you to have to think about. One less thing for you to have to juggle. It frees you up to actually think about other things and, you know, do the work instead of tracking the work that needs to be done all the time.

Number two, repeatable tasks make you more successful. So. You know when you have something that you do once a week, right? Maybe, or, or every time you onboard a new client, let's say you have a certain series of events that have to happen every time you onboard a new client, but. You haven't maybe onboarded one in a few weeks and now you forgot, okay, what comes first and where do I do this other thing?

When you write that down, it helps you not have to recreate that wheel. So instead of starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel every time, you can create a task list one time and reuse it. And the bonus is that you pretty much just build an SOP, also known as a standard operating procedure. And you're getting fancy pants over there.

So, and an SOP makes things repeatable. And so whether it's just you or you have a small team, this helps you so that you don't miss a step. And if you do have a team or you even have a one person helping you with support pro, you don't have to explain things to your team or your support pro over and over and over again.

You can just say, oh, hey, here, go check. The project management tool and check the list there, and that tells you what needs to be done every time we do this. So it really saves so much time and it saves so much space in your brain. The third reason is it helps you prioritize, which is amazing, a project management tool.

Can look like a long, scary list of things to do, but when you really look at it and play with it, it helps you see what the most important thing is. That needs to get done first and second and third, and so on and so forth. You can tag things depending on the tool you're using by priority due date, energy level.

However, your brain works that way. On days where you're on fire, you can knock out the big stuff on days when you're. Running on fumes or feeling low energy, you can just tick off the small stuff, and that is a win, right? The bonus is that it makes you feel accomplished. When you tick things off, even if you don't do anything because you're still seeing progress, you're still seeing things get checked off of a list, you're still seeing the things that you are getting done, and it really helps you feel a lot more solid and more accomplished, for lack of a better term.

Okay. The next thing is that it helps you to manage your bandwidth because whether or not you think you do, you do have a bandwidth. You do have some point at which it is too much, and this helps you get there. If you've ever said yes to being on a podcast or taking on a new client or agreeing to whatever, and then immediately regret it thinking, wait, do I actually have time for this?

Like that's a real thing with a project management tool. Again, depending on the type you're using, you can see your calendar, you can see your deadlines, you can see your pro, your current projects, you can see the list of things that you have. You can see everything on your plate, right? And you can then make an informed decision.

So you can say, oh, hey, cool. I have. You know, four client meetings next week, plus, I wanna get this blog post out, plus I agreed to this other thing. I see these things that I need to do on my list. I know that I can't say yes to this X, Y, Z thing. So it really just allows you to not overbook and overwhelm yourself, both physically and mentally.

The other thing is that. It helps you to be able to say, oh, maybe I need help now. Right? Maybe it's time that I hire a VA or hire a support pro to help with this one specific thing. And the best part of that is that you then. Already have systems and processes documented and laid out so that when you bring on somebody, whether it's temporary or long term, that onboarding process is way smoother because literally you have things written out already because you've been using your project management tool.

What amazing. You don't have to stop everything and train somebody and your future you will. Thank you. Number five. Collaborating without chaos. If you do have a team or a contractor, a support pro, a va, having a project management tool then becomes an absolute non-negotiable. And that's because. It saves you from having to chase somebody down via email or Slack or Vox or to find out where something is at.

Did this task get done? Did you see this? Do you have questions about it? Everything lives in one place. Deadlines, comments, files, checklists. Communication. It's amazing, right? And some project management tools even let you create tasks directly from your email. Asana is one of those. Clickup allows for that.

Actually, quite a few do. So you can be in an inbox and see an email come through and say, oh, I need this to be a task on my checklist. Boop boop boop. Done. You pull it up and it's done. It's another way. To make things more automated, get things out of your brain and save you time. And I also wanna say that we don't wanna overdo this either, right?

The the project management tool is here to support you, not for you to pour all your time and energy into organizing it and everything. So if you're spending more time setting up your project management system than actually working on your projects. Something's probably off, whether that's you not understanding how to use the tool, uh, properly, or it not being the right tool for you, or that might just be some avoidant behavior and you might be having tasks that you don't actually wanna do, and maybe you wanna look into finding somebody else to help you with that.

So don't get caught in that kind of. Productivity, trap of color, coding every board, tagging every task with 5 billion labels, or creating 15 automations that happen when you tick off one task, right? Your system should help you feel organized and not overwhelmed. So start simple. Add layers as you go along, as you learn your tool, and make sure that it keeps working for you.

Okay, so now you have an idea of why a project management tool can be really useful for you and your business. But what project management tool do you use? Well, you know, I love talking about that. Here's the thing, right? There's a ton out there and like I always say, it's going to depend on you, uh, what your needs are, how you process information, what your general preferences are when working with tools and platforms.

But here are a few. So Trello is one of them. It is, uh, there's a free version of that. Is really great for visual thinkers that has that Kanban kind of board style and it's beginner friendly. I am not a fan of it. I don't love it, but a because it just doesn't work for me. But a lot of people love Trello.

Asana is a really good one. They do have a free plan as well. It's a pretty solid balance of features without being overwhelming. I've liked Asana in the past a lot because it's. More like a checklist style, and I really like that. Um, plus when you check something off, like a unicorn flies by and that's kind of exciting.

Clickup is very customizable. It connects with your email. It's super robust. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it's really great. There's lots of different views. Notion obviously, um, I think is really powerful and flexible because you can pretty much build your own. Project management tool, but they do have, they do have a project management database that you can start out with and then customize it from there.

Uh, again, that they do have a free version of that, but even the paid one is pretty, uh, minimal cost. I think it's like $8 a month or something. Airtable is really great. They have. Also great free options with that. That is sort of a cross between like a spreadsheet and a database. I've also used Airtable in the past for project management, and that is also really great.

I, I really love it. Also, don't underestimate the power of a spreadsheet. If you're feeling super overwhelmed by the thought of setting up a tool that you really don't wanna deal with, you don't have the bandwidth for. Whatever, use a spreadsheet. There's nothing wrong with that. It's what we've all used before.

Fancy project management tools. Were accessible to everybody financially or skill-wise, right? So there's a lot of power in the things that you can do with an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet. You can create views, you can do formulas. I mean, there's so much that you can do in there. You can work with other people in them.

I, we have clients at Biz Magic. Who preferred to just use a Google spreadsheet, and that's fine. That's how we work with them. So. It's okay to meet yourself where you're at. There's no one size fits all. Of course, try one. Don't like it, try another. It's all part of the experiment. The point is to get your brain out of the equation of being overloaded and overwhelmed and into a system that works.

So I'm gonna give you a challenge this week. Pick. One project that you do often, client onboarding, your weekly newsletter, whatever, and put it into the project management tool of your choice. Make it repeatable, make it simple. Future you will be like, yay, past me, I'm the best. And of course. I love helping people figure out the right tools for them.

So if you want some help figuring out the right project management tool for you, feel free to message me at patty@bizmagic.co. You can go to the website@bizmagic.co, or you can hang out with me on Instagram at biz magic Co. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast. Like most small businesses and podcasts, we rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues. And rate, subscribe and comment on your favorite podcast platform.

Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.