9: 10 Ways to Spring Clean Your Business
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Welcome to episode nine of Permission to be Messy. I'm your host, JoAnn Krall and today I'm talking about the 10 ways you can spring clean your business to be more productive and efficient.
Wouldn't we all want to be as efficient as Alice from the Brady Bunch? I think about all the stuff that she would get done in a day.
Now, of course, that was her job. she lived with them so she could do all the cleaning, do all the cooking and she didn't have a commute. She didn't really have a lot of distractions in life, except maybe what was his name? Sam, the butcher.
But for you, if you could pick either one, maybe a few or maybe all of these areas to do a spring cleaning on them and refresh them and again, you don't have to do this in the spring. Just keep this list in mind, as you're thinking about areas in your business, that you can clean up to make things more productive and even more importantly, more efficient.
Okay. So this list isn't any in any order of importance. but let's start with number one. The first thing is a physical thing. So you could literally spring clean your office or your desk. And, that would be removing anything that doesn't belong in there. If you work from home, it's putting things that belong in other parts of the house, into their respective homes.
Maybe it's purging those office supplies. Are you an office supply hoarder? Many of us are. And a lot of times that stuff just doesn't get used. So think about what you can let go of there. That stuff can be donated. There are people that will buy it from, donation shops, or you could donate it to a nursery school or even up into high school, maybe even senior centers, any place that you think that these items could be used. That might be really a good incentive for you to let them go. And then give it a good dusting and a good vacuuming. Sometimes we neglect our office because there's just so much stuff in there and we're in there day to day and, we may do kind of surface cleaning. But give it a good, deep, clean. This might inspire you to tackle the rest of the items on this list.
Okay. The second one would simply be your email inbox. And I say simply, but some people are going to go, oh, my email inbox, I have 40,000 unread emails in there. So this isn't a simple task for everybody.
But for some people, it is. So this might be one you want to tackle right away. Just get that out of your hands. But. More importantly than cleaning it up I think is about going forward.
So if you've got a really full inbox and the thought of tackling, it just feels overwhelming something that you could do is give yourself a future gift to prevent it from going to say from 40,000 to 80,000 emails. Stop that bleeding create, Create filters for stuff coming in so that any future emails are going to either be immediately archived or they're going to go into a specific folder that you designate. It could be.
under the name of who it comes, you could create up a filter like that, or you could have it so that it's set up with, items that you eventually want to read and then action items. And by doing that. You're going to prevent things from growing and growing so that you can chip away at, the prior emails that were coming in.
You could also simply just focus on unsubscribing. so instead of the thought of going through and deleting everything, just make it a daily practice when you open your inbox, if you see something that you're like, wow, I've got I've got hundreds of emails from this person, and I'm never going to read them or never going to open them.
Go in and unsubscribe, you could filter and delete at that same point too, but unsubscribing, at least going to keep more from coming in.
Okay. The third area would be your digital files. Very similar to email. we tend to gather a lot of digital files. Screenshots statement downloads, photos, whether it's personal photos or business photos. Cleaning this up. Can make a huge difference. I talked about this last week when I was talking about taxes. I do have a process for that. And again, I'm going to put my seven step process guide, which is free in the show notes.
Okay. The fourth area would be refreshing your business plan or maybe even creating one. If you've never done that, there are people who have been business for years who have not created a business plan. I don't think I created my business plan until I was in business for about eight years. And I know mine, I'm thinking of this because I definitely need a refresh of mine.
So there's lots of resources online. There's blogs, there's one page, business plan templates that you can download, or you could even work with a coach. It's a really good time to do it because spring is about rebirth. And so it's a good time to refresh. So that you can make more money going forward.
Okay. Number five would be automations. Maybe you have current automations that could. stand to have a look at, to make sure that they're working well Or maybe you need to create some new automations for things that you're doing manually, that you really could stop doing manually. And you could save yourself a lot of time.
And an automation could be as simple as a calendar reminder. Or as advanced as somebody subscribes to your email list and you want to put them into an email sequence.
The sixth thing you could work on is your website. Maybe your website needs an overhaul or just a checking. maybe there's some language on there that doesn't apply anymore, or they're links that don't apply anymore. Or maybe you changed your branding and you haven't updated. Colors in certain areas. take a good look at your website and make sure that it reflects your business as it is today.
Number seven is spring cleaning your social media. So similar to your website, make sure that your bio's. Reflect your current business, all that your links are correct. That your photos are up to date and they make sense for what you're doing. Maybe you've had automations back in place that, W are posting things that really no, no longer makes sense to what you're doing.
Really take a good look at that.
The eight thing you could look at is subscriptions. Now I've talked about this in a prior episode. subscriptions in life can be anything from a gym membership to Netflix, to. software for your business. So is when we're talking about your business. This is a great time to do this. Because as I'm recording this.
We're heading into tax time. And again, last week's podcast was about tax time. You're going to have all of these subscriptions at top of mind, because you're going to be looking at your books. this is a really good time to review to make sure you still want to keep them and maybe set up a log of when those renewal dates are. So if it's something that, you still have eight months left on, you don't want to cancel it. You want to get that on your calendar so that you review it at that time.
Okay. Number nine would be your standard operating procedures. A lot of people don't even have this in place. I will admit I have it in place for some things, but not everything. So this is, again, something that I will be working on this spring. Standard operating procedures would be.
Things that you doing all the time and that you need to have consistent so that if you ever stopped doing it and you want to either hire somebody out to do it or you can't do it. for a period of time, somebody else could pick up and do it. And this would be for things like somebody purchases, something from you, what is the procedure that, that has to happen?
Just having everything spelled out. What are your procedures for when you post on social media, what are your procedures when you hire a client? what are the steps. do they book a call with you and then where do they go from there? So everything's spelled out. And this can all tie in with your automations and having a project management system.
Is really key for this, having it all. Mapped out so that you can use it for yourself. But also again, as I said, if you ever want to hire that out or you're unable to do it, somebody else will we. Be able to pick up and do it exactly the way you do.
Number 10, the final area is your legacy. This ties in with your standard operating procedures and knowing your subscriptions and. Having everything. Okay. Spelled out. So if something was to happen to you tomorrow, And somebody had to take your business and either close it down or keep it going.
would they know. Where everything's hosted, what you're paying for, if you have clients where they're at in their journey, what would happen with them? how would you refund them? How would you, get them more help? this is a big one that I am working on myself because It's just me in my business. Not that there's no replacing me, but for my clients, they've hired me now. I want to have something in place. So that says, if somebody just comes into my world and I'm helping them, I want to make sure that they have the names of other organizers that they could go to.
I want to make sure that, my family members can instruct the people. Okay. You're in my membership. You're paying me you. This is how you go cancel so that you're not paying me anymore. you've got access to these courses. I want to make sure that they know they can keep access to these courses or at least get the download so that they're not losing out on anything that they've paid for.
So think about things like that. Think about what happens if something happens to you tomorrow. this is something that we should think about in everything in life personally. But it's really important in business. And I will admit it is something that I have dragged my feet on. So I'm going to be working on that. So if you want to work along with that with me,
Let me know if you have any questions, because your question may help me as well.
Pick one thing off of this list. I think I'm going to put together a download for this.
It may not make it into the show notes right away, but I will get it into the show notes at some point. I'll do a little check list with the bullet points that I've mentioned. So you don't have to come back and listen to this episode. If you don't want to, you could just download that.
But these are areas that you can think about in your business. That, can always use a good, free, fresh, but this is a really good time to do it. and when I say this is a really good time to do it. You're probably going to wait until after tax time, if you haven't filed and you've got other stuff going on.
But as you're going through and doing your taxes. A lot of this stuff is going to make you think.
It's gonna make you think. What if next year, this is all cleaned up and organized. How much easier is tax time going to be?
So that's all I have for today. I'm wishing you much productivity, peace prosperity. And of course the permission to be messy. Thanks for listening.
