Reverse Calendar May Save Your Sanity
Setting fixed availability isn't helpful when you're a podcast creator with a demanding and fluid schedule.
Calendar booking tools can be a life saver for the busy business owner, creator, or both.
Instead of having to share your personal calendar with strangers you can share your availability with others publicly (while being able to hide sensitive details within your appointments).
Let’s review some great get-you-started calendars that have seem to pop up just about everywhere.
Popular Booking Calendar Tools
Calendly, with a free tier, is fairly intuitive, easy to set-up, integrates with popular software (such as Zoom, Google Meets, and others), includes options to accept payment during booking process, and sends out appointment reminders.
One feature that I recently learned about is meeting poll. The meeting host can ask guests for a preferred time to meet from a list of options. Super handy - especially when you have busy guests spanning different time zones.
Feel free to watch this video to learn more about this cool meeting poll feature in Calendly.
Google Calendar, within the Google Workspace subscription service, allows you to create a shareable link with others. Being a tool for business owners, Google Workspace ensures that external partners can book time based on your availability without risking personal meeting details that may be available to view within your team. If you’re using this tool anyway, this calendar tool is definitely worth considering. Take a peak at this quick video to learn more about appointment setting with Google Workspace Calendar.
Simply Meet, also with a free tier, has a lot of similar features to Google Workspace and Calendly. The one major benefit that I really enjoy from this calendar service is the reverse calendary sync feature.
This feature is great if you wish to separate out your availability for specific audiences, need to book clients for your part time small business (requiring flexibility around your day job), or you want to be very specific with respect to your availability day to day (perhaps you want to take an impromptu day trip or spend a sick day with your child).
Instead of updating your favorite calendar tool with your fixed availability (set it and forget it), you can sync up your calendar with Simply Meet, and book in when you’re available. As well, you can also tell Simply Meet what calendar the booking is done in so you don’t have to manually update your availability every appointment.
Although there is a bit more effort with setting up, it’s nice to be able to update your availability on the go (versus having to sign into the Simply Meet Dashboard and update there).
Now Booking: Final Thoughts
As an entrepreneur Do you prefer to set a fixed availability with your calendar booking tool, or do you prefer to set fluid flexibility to balance the needs of your adventurous availability?
For me, a reverse calendar works well for my needs; working a part time business to be flexible around my day job. As well, not having to share my calendar directly with others gives me a great deal of piece of mind.
What calendar tool do you use? What’s your favorite feature?