Time Management

In the beginning, there was time; time to set up your business, to focus on getting new clients, and to enjoy family and friends. In fact, you may have established a nice routine between serving the clients you have, obtaining new clients and living life. When you start getting a regular flow of clients, however, you may quickly find that your schedule becomes anything but routine and time is at a premium.  Unlike money, once it’s spent time can’t be replenished. After a while, you may find yourself running out of hours in the day to get done everything that needs to get done.  In fact, if you’re not organized, process serving can become rather chaotic as it is not a business that easily lends itself toward structure.

Setting of appointments is rare. It seems as if they trickle in, come in all at once or arrive at the least convenient moment.  Then BAM!  All of a sudden you have to scramble.

Process service operates on what I call a “fireman’s standby” concept. You know, you are eating lunch, waiting for the next assignment, when right in the middle of taking the next bite of your cheeseburger you get a call to drop everything, go pick up some court documents.  Right now, this instant, forget the burger, and get them delivered before the business day is done, or else. Firemen live that sort of life.  They’re in the fire station, cooking spaghetti, playing Ping-Pong, and then there goes the alarm. It’s down the pole and off to the fire.  Process serving can become like a constant battle to put out fires, and there you are not quite organized to go from one fire to the other.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Over time, I learned from others in the field, read a lot of business organization books and practiced trial and error, until I figured out a way to satisfy most, if not all, of the numerous client demands that come up in a single day. And, I still managed to have my family time, my vacation time, and my sanity.

It took me several hours stretched out over many months to develop a working routine. I literally sat down and analyzed everything I do on a daily basis, thought of the best times to do these things, how to do them, how long it took to do them, and then blocked out chunks of time in order to do them. This works whether you are a “lone ranger” or if you have a team of process servers working for you.

          Following is the schedule I use. It works for me, and will probably work for you.  You can always modify it to suit your particular situation.  But whatever you do, get organized. Set up an actual schedule. Even if it just generally sets up your day, it may be just the right amount of structure you need.  Tight time planning is critical for a successful business.  The tighter your time planning is the better.  If you can schedule things down to the minute, then do so. It will make things run so much better.  If you don’t, and then you have one too many clients running you from point A to point B, it won’t be long before you run yourself into the ground. 

Typical Daily Routine – 10 hour day for “full-timers” with a large book of clients

            Serve assignments in the a.m.

            Mail
            Email
            Logouts
                      (closing out completed assignments)
            Logins from the mail
                      (setting up new assignments)
            Serving POE assignments
                      (serving at businesses and places of employment)
            Going through the follow up folders/daily folders
            Return phone calls
            Do correspondence/affidavits/skips
            Serve POE assignments
            Daily court run
                      (afternoon pick up of new assignments at the courthouse)
            Log in courthouse pick ups
            Log out completed assignments
            Serve new assignments that have a residential service address

          What is your best time management tool? Comments always welcome.
 
Next post: What I recommend when you have a daily schedule that you closely follow and yet you still find yourself running out of hours in the day. Want more information about structuring your process serving business? Check out my book “The Business End of Process Serving, Running a Process Service Company from the Ground Up”, available on Amazon.com and Kindle.