Operating a business is difficult, but it becomes easier when you have direction. Find tactical resources to help your business run, and grow, with intention.
Project Management
Free Template: Plan a Project
Planning is rarely felt when it’s in-place & effective, but it’s painful when its lacking. Before you kick off a new project, big or small, it’s helpful to organize your thoughts around your priorities and paths forward both for yourself as well as the project team.
This tool helps you know what questions to ask prior to kicking off, and provides a central home for all aspects of your project plan including tabs for: overview, Risk Management, Budget, Tasks & Timeline.
Cost: Free
Platform: Google Sheets
Deliverables: Templates for project overview, risk mitigation, budget planning, and task & timeline planning.
“Alex has a unique skillset of being very process-oriented, while keenly empathetic to creating systems based on how people actually operate.“
Amber Reynolds, Program Director @ Personal Trainer Development Center
Test & Learn
Free Resource: Learn The Fundamentals of Testing & Learning
We all have assumptions and ideas and hypothesis, but do you know how to validate or invalidate them? Do you know how to compound your learnings to answer difficult questions with data? If you don’t, it’s a helpful & fundamental skill to develop.
In 2021 I helped developed QuickCoach, a programming tool for coaches, from scratch. It started with a bad idea, and evolved into a tool approaching 50,000 users a couple years post launch.
This tool summarizes our process for discovery, testing our ideas, and doubling down when we got a positive signal.
Cost: Free
Platform: Google Slides
Deliverables: Google Slides deck outlining theory & specific QuickCoach examples for testing ideas, analyzing findings, and applying them.
“Alex is a visionary, kind-hearted, and so in-tune with life.“
Josh Duvachelle, Director of Marketplace Operations @ Verblio
Project Management
Paid Infrastructure Buildout: Powerful yet Simple Systems for
Small Business
As a small business owner, multiple things are likely true:
- Efficient and predictable Project Management practices would likely improve your business
- The skills required to execute Project Management may either not come naturally to you, or you don’t enjoy focusing on them.
- Hiring quality Project Managers isn’t cheap, or easy, and you’re likely not looking for ways to get rid of your cash.
Enter the Startup Project Manager. The focused & simple systems that come from an experienced PM (me), without needing to find, vet, and manage an experienced PM.
In two weeks, I’ll deploy my system inside of your existing PM tool (or shift your work inside of my go-to tool ClickUp) specific to your work and team, and spend an additional week making adaptations after we pressure test it in the wild.
Cost: From $3k USD, depending on complexity.
Platform: Your existing PM tool (we can decide this together, too).
Deliverables: Functioning company-wide Project Management system, supporting documentation, system adaptations.
“Alex is a skilled product professional and possesses the growth mindset critical to this work. I highly recommend him.”
John Gauch, COO @ Synervoz
Anything I can help with?
alex@alexcartmill.com
