About The Entrepreneur Life

Entrepreneur Life focuses on helping successful business owners gain free time by structuring, systemizing, and growing their business.

Emmet Scott, founder and COO of The Entrepreneur Life explains his mission, “Our primary focus is helping successful business owners who have become overwhelmed by their business. These business owners may have figured out the financial side of success, but they are sacrificing more of their personal time than is ideal for them.” As an entrepreneur, Emmet Scott is very aware of the challenges facing today’s business owners. What surprised him was how similar the challenges and traits were across today’s entrepreneurs. Scott explains, “You can start a business in any industry and the challenges associated with automation and growth are largely the same. Because the skills necessary for creating a business versus building a business are completely different, our company can fill in the expertise.”

Enhancing Productivity for Small Business

Entrepreneur Life provides many services, several of which are focused on improving small business productivity. “We make sure competent employee’s roles are well documented and the processes are outlined for future use. Additionally, we help business owners clarify who is doing what and revisit roles and responsibilities to ensure they are productively allocated according to the talent base within the team.”

Wanted: a Productivity Tool that Works

Since automating productivity is a big part of Entrepreneur Life’s offerings, Scott wanted to find an online solution to help automate client rollouts. He also knew that his team’s interactions with clients had to be top notch. “Originally, I came to Smartsheet because I needed to organize my own interaction with clients,” says Scott. “I wanted something that was online, easy to use and would track progress in an ongoing way. Smartsheet excited me because it gave me a way to map out exactly where I was with each project. I could use it for something as broad as objectives tracking or as detailed as time management.”

Since Smartsheet was an easy, online tracking tool, Scott’s consultants didn’t have a learning curve or training period in order to get up to speed on how to use it. “We saw Smartsheet as a fantastic alternative to Microsoft Project,” says Scott. “Microsoft Project wasn’t web-based and it took so much time for my consultants to learn, plus there was a huge upfront cost. It just didn’t work as a productivity solution.”

Goodbye to Tracking Spreadsheets

When Scott realized Microsoft Project was too cumbersome to use effectively, his team began the tedious process of moving all processes over to spreadsheets for tracking and management. This approach came with another set of issues. Scott explains, “Excel is not built for tracking work that needs to get done across a team. It is hard to share, revisions and version control are a nightmare and it doesn’t have an elegant way of handling task/project orientation. Plus, every time we tried to print out a high level spreadsheet, it always had errors.”

Scott found Smartsheet online and made it the company standard after a week- long test drive. “Having struggled with both tracking spreadsheets and Microsoft Project,” Scott says, “Smartsheet was a light from heaven. The templates are a great starting point and so easy to customize, it immediately felt like it was built just for my business. It’s the perfect productivity tool.”

A Great Resource for Virtual Assistants

In addition to providing a tool for his consultants and clients, Scott uses Smartsheet with his virtual assistant in Minnesota. “I use Smartsheet as a resource for my virtual assistant and virtual bookkeeper,” says Scott. “It’s a great tool to make sure virtual assistants are getting what they need to be successful.”
Scott and his virtual team use Smartsheet daily to stay up-to-date on the current status of tasks and initiatives. In addition, they track budgetary items and are able to see when things change and a history of the previous values.

Now that he has Smartsheet up and running with his virtual assistant, Scott is able to clearly outline, document and track what needs to happen. “I know I’m a control freak deep down,” says Scott. “And Smartsheet releases the control freak mentality in a subtle and kind way, so my assistant and I can be very effective without getting into a micro-management situation. If I want to make sure my VA is being proactively notified of what is changing, I’ll just add an alert in Smartsheet. That way I’m confident we’re on the same page.”

Making it (Your Brand) Stick

Now that Scott and his team are using Smartsheet successfully with clients, they’ve decided to enroll as a Smartsheet partner and sell the services as part of their business model. “It was a natural step for us,” says Scott. “Clients were already asking how they could use it within their own business, so it made sense to incorporate it as part of our offering.”

Scott believes offering a valuable productivity tool will increase the perception of his firm as a leader in operations consulting for small and medium sized businesses. “We really want to be perceived as the leader in this space,” Scott says. “We are constantly working with CFO consultants and their tool of choice is Quickbooks. For us, Smartsheet is to operations what QuickBooks is to finance and accounting. It’s a necessary part of getting things done.”

The other value of offering Smartsheet to clients is the ability to brand it with his companies’ content and logo. Every time they interact with a client via Smartsheet, or refer a client to the Smartsheet tool, the client will interact with Entrepreneur Life’s logo, brand and content. “The ability to put our logo and colors in front of every client – every time they are looking at the project timeline – is extremely valuable to us,” says Scott. “With Microsoft Project, we would spend days customizing a client-specific plan, but it always looked like an out-of-the-box Microsoft template. When we create plans in Smartsheet, our brand persists and we are remembered as the experts – not Smartsheet. To have that level of penetration with your brand is really powerful.”

Benefits of Partnering with Smartsheet

Entrepreneur Life has had success in referring clients to the Smartsheet service. In addition to being perceived as a valued resource, his company is reaping the benefits of additional contracts and extended agreements. “Our clients have a lot more clarity on where we are headed and think of us as a long-term partner versus a one-time consultant,” says Scott. “They take our plans in Smartsheet and integrate it into other parts of their company. This makes them happy on two levels because they feel like the tool we’ve given them is helping them with our project but also with internal processes and management in general.”

Because Entrepreneur Life uses and refers clients to Smartsheet, they often find themselves in the leadership position at each consulting engagement. “We actually end up managing the internal team as well as the other consultants who are working in-house. Smartsheet really puts us in the quarterback role, which makes us even more valuable to the client because we are taking ownership, calling the plays and getting things done.”

“Now that we have Smartsheet, we’re able to confidently tell new clients, ‘you will always know where things stand with us’ and that is a very powerful message."