10X Your Productivity with Bullet Journaling: Small Biz Owners
Jan 17, 2025
Managing an assisted living facility—or any small business—is like balancing on a tightrope. There’s so much to handle every day, and sometimes the workload can feel overwhelming. Here’s where bullet journaling can make a huge difference. This simple, flexible approach helps you prioritize tasks, stay on top of everything, and get a clear view of your business operations. In this blog, we’ll dive into how bullet journaling can improve your organizing style, boost productivity, and simplify your business life.
Check out the video, too:
What is Bullet Journaling?
Bullet journaling is a flexible way to capture tasks, ideas, and goals all in one place. Unlike pre-formatted planners, a bullet journal is totally customizable to fit your specific needs. It’s a tool that lets you organize your workload, prioritize key tasks, and set long-term goals.
With a bullet journal, you keep three main types of logs:
- Daily Log: Where you jot down tasks and notes for each day.
- Monthly Log: For setting monthly goals and key tasks.
- Future Log: To plan long-term projects and goals.
By using simple bullet points, symbols, and quick notes, you can keep track of daily activities, big goals, and everything in between—all in one central spot. Bullet journaling takes the complexities of managing an assisted living business and makes them easier to manage, so you can stay focused and productive.
Getting Started with Bullet Journaling
The best part? Bullet journaling only requires a notebook and a pen! You don’t need any fancy tools or software, just a willingness to try it out. Here’s how to get started:
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Start with Your Future Log: Write down the big goals and tasks you need to tackle in the coming months. For an assisted living business, these could be anything from securing funding to buying a new facility or staying on top of state regulations.
Example: If you’re looking to expand, your Future Log might include tasks like reaching out to a business broker, meeting with potential lenders, or reviewing state requirements. Use this as your “master list” that you can add to over time.
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Break Down Big Goals: Now, take those major tasks and break them into smaller steps. For instance, if your goal is to purchase a new facility, your Future Log might look something like this:
- Contact a Business Broker: Schedule a meeting to discuss available properties.
- Secure Funding: Research loan options and schedule meetings with lenders.
- Meet State Requirements: Compile a checklist of regulations and licensing needs.
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Add to Your Monthly Log: Once you’ve broken down big tasks, assign each step to a specific month. This keeps your to-do list manageable and spreads out big goals over time.
How Bullet Journaling Keeps You Organized and Productive
Running an assisted living facility means you’re constantly juggling multiple responsibilities, and bullet journaling can help keep everything organized. Here’s how:
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Prioritize Tasks Daily: After creating your Future and Monthly Logs, transfer a few items into your Daily Log. This helps you focus on what’s most important right now instead of feeling overwhelmed by a massive to-do list.
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Stay on Top of Long-Term Goals: Bullet journaling keeps you working toward long-term goals instead of just reacting to what comes up each day. Having everything laid out in one place means you’ll always know what needs to be done and when—helping you avoid last-minute stress.
Don’t Get Overwhelmed: Take It One Step at a Time
The key to successful bullet journaling is taking things step by step. You don’t have to finish every single task in a day! Focus on one or two high-priority tasks each day. These small steps add up, and soon you’ll see real progress.
Remember, the goal of bullet journaling is to reduce stress, not add more work. By organizing your thoughts, plans, and goals in one place, you can clear your mind and stay focused on what matters most: growing your assisted living business.
Final Thoughts
Bullet journaling is a powerful way to manage the demands of running an assisted living facility. It helps you prioritize, plan, and stay productive—so you can reach your business goals faster. So, why not give it a shot? Grab a notebook, set up your Future Log, and see where this journey takes you!
If you need help creating a solid business plan to help you obtain your funding, download our Business Plan Checklist to get started on your journey to opening an assisted living facility.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
running a small business can be really hard you have so much to keep track of and stay on top of and find a system that works for you that doesn't take a lot of time or effort to implement and maintain uh and also has the potential to improve your business tenfold in today's video we're going to get in and talk about a system that will help you build your business hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins
00:00:27
and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] in our last video we talked about what is bullet journaling uh giving a good overview of what bullet journaling is and and how you can learn a little bit more about it the history of it and how it works so go ahead and watch that video and uh comment down below if that was helpful to you and if you learned something new about bullet journaling in today's video we're going to get into bullet journaling for the small business
00:01:02
owner how it can kind of 10x your productivity as a small business owner and help you be more productive and be more oriented in getting things done for your business so that you can be successful and be productive uh quick bullet journaling overview bullet journaling is just a simple flexible method that can help you stay on top of your never-ending to-do list as a business owner and it can help you be more productive go ahead and watch my previous videos on bullet journaling i'll link another one
00:01:34
up above to help you get started in bullet journaling and you can do that by picking up a notebook for yourself and i'll link that down below and also by buying the book the bullet journaling method by writer carol i'll also link that down below so you can go in and kind of get access to some of these resources on your own and help you start implementing this process and helping you organize your business and get things done so you can be more productive where should you start with bullet journaling i'm going to
00:02:05
say that this is going to be specific let's just say this is a bullet journal that is specific to you acquiring an assisted living facility to you acquiring a business or starting your own business or transforming a house into an assisted living facility a lot of the examples that i'm going to use are specific to assisted living so if you're a small business owner coming to this video just know that a lot of this stuff is going to be applicable to you as a small business owner i'm just going to use
00:02:34
examples from assisted living which is the world that i've worked in here in the past but it's applicable to other small businesses i'm actually in the process of of starting up a franchise and have used a lot of this same methodology in doing that and it's not assisted living it's a separate type of a business and so it's applicable um more broadly in helping you get up and and running your small business so the first thing let's talk about buying a business buying an existing
00:03:03
business that is already there the first thing you're going to want to do is right here the first thing that you'll want to do is if you're buying a business figure out what those key things are that you need to do um you can start this by talking to a good business broker and i have a video on how to work with business brokers i'll link that up above so you can go in and do that but if you're working with a broker they're going to be very familiar with the the types of businesses that you're going to
00:03:31
buy the ins and outs what you're going to need to do through that acquisition process what you need to do to get funding a lot of that i've linked up i've got videos on i'll link another one up there around funding as well just go through my library of videos and you'll find a lot of resources on what that process is like but they that broker is going to be aware of all the things that you have the questions that you need to ask and you can use your bullet journal to start documenting some of those things um and
00:04:02
and create kind of your own checklist your own task list create that future log that we talked about in the previous video that is this is your master task list this is what you've got to work on so that's what you would would do first i personally have created a checklist and i'll link this down below and it's for assisted living that will help you walk through the process give you some sample questions that you would want to ask you know the person that you're purchasing the facility from
00:04:31
or you're talking to your lender those types of things the types of questions you want to ask the types of things that you need to do to get done what you need to ask the state for all of those different things i have that on my website on assistedlivinginvesting.net so go over there you can grab the free resource and use that and kind of apply it to the different type of business that you're trying to get if it's assisted living great i've done a lot of the work for you it's a
00:04:55
different type of business just make some tweaks to it a lot of the information is going to be the same a lot of the different types of questions and things like that just apply it to the type of business that you're trying to get up and running now once you know all or at least most of those things that need to get done to acquire that business you just want to create that master list in your bullet journal and that could be a lot of writing because there's going to be a lot of stuff to do so you could
00:05:20
also do this in something like excel which is the resource that i have or notion i talked about that in a previous video as well so i'll link that up uh there as well but you can create those types of lists and now you have a big long list these are the things that i need to get done this is going to help me be productive this is it's so simple i i advertise 10x your productivity as a small business owner really what you need to do is be task oriented and get those things done and not just fly by
00:05:49
the seat of your pants make sure that you have a structured process that works for you that's going to help you stay on task and get things done so you're not scrambling trying to remember or try to look for this sticky note or look for that thing have it all in one place keep yourself organized that's going to help you be effective and be productive that's what i love about bullet journaling it allows you to kind of plan those things out be task oriented and get those things done
00:06:15
now once you have everything in that future log that big long master task list now you can start throwing it out there into a monthly log or scheduling it on your calendar in a daily log or different areas of things you're gonna have things on that master task list that are two or three months out into the future and that's okay you want to make sure that you're aware of those things but um you can start planning for it planning ahead so that when you get to two months out you're not trying to
00:06:41
do the stuff that you should have done a month ago that was going to make it possible for you to do the thing that you need to do right now in the process just organize your thoughts start sequentializing those different types of things and you're going to be productive with it so that's the biggest thing i could tell you is just be organized and put those lists out there and start planning spend time planning what you need to get done and don't just put it on a list and forget about it and start
00:07:09
checking it off make sure that you're actively planning and referring to that task list list so that you're outlining things and you're being productive and you don't get overwhelmed i say this at the end of my videos every single time i do a video just keep doing a little bit keep making progress step by step you will be successful that's what i mean by it just do a little bit you don't have to do the entire task list in one day just pick one or two things and do one of those every single
00:07:36
day and you're going to be productive you're going to be successful you're going to have what you always dreamed of just start making progress you're going to be fine uh the other one is going to be starting a business and honestly a lot of the stuff for acquiring a new business and starting a business are there's a lot of similarities there there are some differences different people you have to talk to a few different forms here a few extra or different steps on either side of the aisle but it's
00:08:04
something you just kind of want to be aware of and really you can use that checklist that i have put on assistedlivinginvesting.net to go and kind of do that i actually have a few things that are more relevant to um in the world of assisted living purchasing an existing home and converting it over to an assisted living facility um so you can kind of get a feel for what that looks like there but a lot of that information is going to be the same you're going to be talking to a lot of people you're getting the same
00:08:31
types of permits you're having a lot of those similar conversations if if you're starting a new business you might reach out to a broker but you also might want to reach out to somebody else that has been in the industry or in the business or in the market or something like that to have a conversation with them and say hey what are some of the things i want to start this business it's uh i want to start an assisted living facility talk to an existing facility owner let's say i want to start a screen
00:08:59
printing t-shirt business go find somebody that has one and ask them what was the process like for when you got things started and you know have a conversation with them and start creating that task list it's a lot of the same things regardless of the type of business that you're starting or or purchasing you're going to have a lot of the same stuff but the concept is the same get all of those things on that master checklist on that future log in your bullet journal plan them out in monthly in your monthly log
00:09:28
and then put them in a daily log and just keep making progress keep uh just taking those baby steps and you're going to be successful that's that's the secret to helping you get things done is just do it um create a log and start planning it out and spend time planning and then just spend time every single day knocking a task or two out and you know in a month you're going to be so much further along that's the secret that's how you do it now once you've got that business
00:09:55
started or you've purchased that business you've acquired it everything is is in place you've started operating the business uh you started operating the assisted living facility now you're a little bit more in maintenance mode and you got to make sure you're staying on top of those things that are going to help you be productive in assisted living i've got a video where i talk about how i operate my facilities remotely and a lot of that i track in using my personal bullet journaling method which i'm going
00:10:24
to get into in a future video that helps me stay on task and helps me get things done i have weekly or bi-weekly check-ins with my administrators i put that in my bullet journaling method that works for me and it reminds me to do those things i need to have a call with the state about the american rescue plan act i need to do research on it those things all go into my bullet journal and they're things that i am researching spending time on and it's not that i have 20 tasks that i got to
00:10:53
get done in that one day it is here's the one or two things i'm going to work on today i'm going to knock them out i'm going gonna get them done and everything's gonna be fine and that's how i do it that's how you get into maintenance mode that's how you start working on things just get in the habit of writing down your tasks migrating them to the appropriate day or month or future log whatever it is that it needs to be where you need to track it and uh then just start getting your
00:11:17
work done that's that is how you be successful that's how you get things done that's how you uh run and operate a business make sure you're just planning writing things out creating your task list and getting it done that's honestly that's exactly how i do things that's how i have been able to be successful in the work that i do what i would encourage you to do though is just find a process that works for you you might do sticky notes i've i've worked with things where i did things
00:11:45
like on a whiteboard in the past or on a chalkboard or done sticky notes and moved things around or worked on creating like kanban boards and things like asana or different tools like that i have through the past i don't know five six years have created a method that works for me and helps me be successful i'm going to encourage you to do the same thing you might want to start off with using somebody like the the bullet journaling method or the method i'm going to show you in a future video
00:12:14
you can start off with those things but then build on it and just kind of mold it a little bit to meet your needs do what you need to do to help you be successful that that's that's how you do it now in my next video i'm actually going to get into a new bullet journaling method that i call matrix planning this is how i do bullet journaling i'm super excited to show you how i do it um how how i've adjusted things to work for my brain and i think it's going to help you out a lot i've
00:12:43
talked to people that have not done planning and things like this in the past and they really like the way that it's laid out and i'm i'm hopeful that that you're going to find it useful as well so i'm going to get into an overview of that in in my next video so make sure you go over there and watch that if this information was helpful to you if you think it's going to help you 10x your business make sure you smash that like button and let me know uh let other other people know that this is a
00:13:05
helpful video to you and uh just let the world know share the video and let people know this is how you do it this is how you be successful to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net i have other content up there i have a blog you can set up a consulting call with me we can have a chat about how i can help you through your process of setting up your business and how you can 10x your potential as a business owner and how you can be disciplined in
00:13:34
getting those things done and remember it doesn't take a lot i talked about this earlier in the video it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep going keep making progress step by step by step if you do that i promise you that you will be successful just keep making progress you can do it thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
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