Chelsi Jo Moore: getting things done and leading by example
CEO, productivity coach and podcaster Chelsi Jo Moore is a self-proclaimed “corporate mom” who has mastered the art of maintaining a work/life balance. From searching for a tool to help her manage her own busy schedule, to developing her own total online business operation system (TOBOS) run with MeisterTask and MindMeister, she clearly isn’t one to sit still.
Since 2020, Chelsi has rapidly grown her coaching business with Meister software, onboarded a team, and helped numerous busy entrepreneurs get their lives back. Over one thousand women have now graduated from her home management course and her TOBOS program is in high demand, with 15 CEOs having already completed the beta phase.
The challenge: helping busy entrepreneurs get organized – and save time
Before Chelsi was teaching others how to get organized with MeisterTask and MindMeister, she was looking for tools to help her better manage her own schedule. Her goal was to carve out more time for what she values most: spending time with her two children. During her search, she came across ClickUp and Asana. On trying out the tools, she recalls being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of features – it was a non-starter. An image of the mapping process in MindMeister, which someone in her network had shared, caught her eye – and so her Meister journey began.
When the pandemic hit, Chelsi – like many others – found herself out of work (she had been employed as an interpreter, which required face-to-face meetings). Although this shift was unexpected, she embraced it as an opportunity to go all-in on her “side hustle,” ramping up her usage of MindMeister and MeisterTask to efficiently build her coaching business. Friends and acquaintances started reaching out. Like Chelsi, they were all trying to make money from home, juggling work with family responsibilities and social commitments. They wanted to know her secret:
They would ask, “How are you growing your business so quickly?” and “How are you so consistent?”. Everything was produced on time every week and the ball was not getting dropped. That’s when I started teaching them the fundamentals of my home management system in MeisterTask.
Chelsi Jo Moore
CEO, productivity coach and podcaster
With her home management system program in full swing, Chelsi recognized huge demand for her approach to be applied to a business context, often by those who had already taken her home management program. She created her TOBOS course, onboarding 15 CEOs as part of the beta phase. They were earning 6- to 7-figure salaries, but in many cases, this was at the cost of their personal lives and mental health. They needed a way to maintain their success while finding balance and reclaiming time for themselves and their families. This is exactly what the TOBOS system was designed to do.
Engagement with the TOBOS program has been high, but Chelsi notes participants are often reluctant to take the time to learn new tools. For CEOs, Chelsi explains, slowing down feels counterintuitive as they’re barely staying afloat. Some want to stick with the tools they know, even when those tools are not serving them.
“I know people who have everything in ClickUp. They’ve hired multiple ClickUp specialists to help them use it, and they still won’t switch. I’ve shown them how to apply the TOBOS system and I’ve got them to where they can operate the system in ClickUp, but they have to work really hard because it’s so complicated. Tools like ClickUp have too many backdoors and too many features, which force users down productivity-sapping rabbit holes.”
The benefit that converts many of Chelsi’s TOBOS students to MeisterTask – even those reluctant to switch tools – is how easy it is to use. Chelsi shares:
“I had one CEO in the program who was using Asana, and I introduced her to MeisterTask during the training. At first, she wanted to stick with Asana, but as she started applying the processes in the software, she realized how much easier it would be in MeisterTask. Visual noise contributes to a lack of efficiency and efficacy, and it’s so overwhelming. MeisterTask is visually much cleaner than Asana and ClickUp. It’s one of the reasons I chose it and always recommend it to my students.”
The solution: a systematic approach to workflow management with MeisterTask and MindMeister
As MeisterTask is designed with simplicity in mind, Chelsi can set up comprehensive and robust workflows as part of her TOBOS while maintaining a clear overview. The main workflow is the hub or “cockpit.” This is where every overarching project is centralized. Each task on the board links out to external workflows, creating a structured network of projects and tasks. This is how she manages her business operations, and it’s also the system she also teaches to her TOBOS students.
Every month, a new cockpit project is created featuring several sections: events, to-dos, in progress, done, monthly tasks, and meetings. These relate to the administration of the different programs Chelsi runs, along with the work she does for her podcast, general business administration and more. Importantly, there is only ever one task under “in progress” at any given time. This helps Chelsi’s team to prioritize and Chelsi to see exactly what her team is working on. An automation is in place to transfer tasks to the “done” column once they are complete, keeping the board tidy and up-to-date.
Whenever a new meeting is scheduled in the company’s Google calendar, it is automatically added to the board via the MeisterTask Google calendar integration. As soon as a meeting is registered, meeting notes, an agenda, and a follow-up checklist are automatically added to each meeting task. After the conclusion of the meeting, any item that Chelsi hasn’t been able to address within the allocated time is:
converted into a follow-up to-do meeting task,
tagged with the day Chelsi will be able to tackle it, then
transferred to the “meeting dock” column.
MeisterTask integrations are key to the effective running of Chelsi’s TOBOS system. In a separate project board, Chelsi has set up a workflow for email management that uses the MeisterTask <> Google Workspace Gmail integration.
“Previously, I would have to go into my inbox to a specific folder to check my emails. As it’s a shared inbox, I could see everything else that had come in – a lot of it wasn’t relevant to me. It was extremely distracting and time-consuming. Now, my intern manages the inbox. When there’s an email I need to respond to, she simply hits the integration add-on and the email is sent to a column in the MeisterTask project board. A MeisterTask automation instantly assigns the email task to me.”
There are multiple columns in the board that allow Chelsi’s intern to categorize emails by type, from student feedback to podcast feature requests. Chelsi explains:
“I move the task into her column whenever I have submitted my response in MeisterTask (I respond personally to every email unless it’s a generic request). She then copies the response and pastes it to the email. This process is extremely efficient and allows me to focus my attention on strategic work.”
Thanks to MeisterTask, Chelsi is able to outsource work to her interns without being involved in the day-to-day details.
“I give my interns their login and they’re able to navigate MeisterTask without ever having used it before or having had any training – it’s that user-friendly.”
Chelsi has created a central project board for the interns to work through their tasks in a highly structured way. In this board, a task links to an external workflow from the cockpit. Each column is a new week, and each intern has their own task with their to-dos laid out as a checklist. The checklists are also broken down into weeks. Checklist items include links to training material, best practices, and more. As each to-do is checked off, the task is moved across the project board so the interns – and Chelsi – can track their progress in relation to their peers. This is how Chelsi manages the progress of her TOBOS students, too. They have their own project board which is set up in a similar way, with tasks and materials tailored to their learning goals. Ultimately, the process works for many different client-focused use cases.
Although both Chelsi’s systematic approach and MeisterTask are highly versatile, for some, it can be hard at first to visualize how to use both together for their specific case. This is where MindMeister comes in. Chelsi shares a fitting analogy:
“Using MindMeister and MeisterTask together is like organizing your closet. You pull everything out, you get your pajamas away from your work clothes – you sort everything into piles. But you don’t just leave them on your bed. You’ve got to organize them and put them back into your closet! Just as you wouldn’t leave your clothes on your bed, you can’t just leave information in a mind map – it needs to be moved over into MeisterTask so it can be actioned.”
The key benefit of MindMeister for Chelsi: Clarity.
“Mind mapping is a great way to clarify your thoughts. When you do it on paper, you can’t drag and drop, you can’t move things around. With MindMeister, you can effectively structure and categorize a huge amount of information.”
The outcome: $30,000 saved – and more time for what matters
With her laser-focus and systematic thinking, Chelsi has created a robust total online business management system with MeisterTask at the core. The tool’s well-designed features, along with automations and integrations, help bring Chelsi’s complex workflows to life, while its clean and user-friendly interface makes managing these detailed processes easy.
MindMeister provides Chelsi and her students with a place to organize and structure large amounts of information and identify action points before moving them over to be worked on in MeisterTask. In combination, the tools help Chelsi – and now over one thousand of Chelsi’s students – to work more productively, saving time and money.
“I manage my business on a 20- to 25-hour week. Of course, I also have team members working 15 to 25 hours a week – I’m not doing it alone – but for a CEO to work 20 hours a week, that’s rare. And it’s not just me. All of my students say they’ve saved time and money with my system in MeisterTask.”
Always looking a step ahead, Chelsi has become something of a match-maker for CEOs and assistants.
“CEOs who go through the program want an assistant who is TOBOS certified. They want someone who knows the system and the software and how to use them together to maximize productivity. When they’re both on the same page, it makes collaboration so much easier.”
One of the CEOs Chelsi took through the program was able to streamline her operations and save $30,000 a year. In the process of “mapping everything out and putting it into MT,” she’s managed to restructure her business, massively reduce costs and take control of her schedule.
Chelsi shares one final piece of advice for anyone considering using MeisterTask.
“Go all in! Get all of your projects and documentation in MeisterTask – don’t spread them across multiple tools. Explore every feature to figure out exactly what it can do for you. When you make MeisterTask your one-stop shop, you’ll quickly become more effective and efficient.”
