3 Steps to Decluttering Your Business: BTS Pt. 3 | 109
I recently read a book by Dana K. White called Decluttering at the Speed of Life. Honestly, it sent me into a mad decluttering spree, which always feels so good. After my home was sparkling clean (or as clean as can be with children around), I felt that urge to declutter my business. So, I took some of the ideas from White’s book and began the work of organizing my business.
Why should you organize your business?
This might seem like an obvious answer, but I think it’s one that is worth stating. There is often wasted time in our life and business all because of clutter and disorganization. There are even miscommunications and poor service that can arise because of disorganization.
If you want to put your best foot forward as a business owner and get the most out of your time, you have to organize your business.
How do you organize your business?
One thing I love that White mentions in her book is to always start by organizing and decluttering the most “lived in” and visited areas. For example, I should probably organize my living room before my linen closet because I spend more time in the living room.
The same applies in our business. If you try to tackle organizing your business by doing it all at once or organizing a random hard drive you rarely use - you’re going to burn out fast.
Here are three simple steps to organize your business for success:
#1 Declutter
Before you can put things in order, you have to clear out the clutter. In your business, this will look like deleting, eliminating, or changing certain areas. My best advice is that this should be easy. If you have to debate about whether something is worth keeping, then simply keep it. However, if you know you should have unsubscribed from a program six months ago…it’s time to do it now!
Here are a few examples to think about -
What emails or files do I not need?
What software/programs do I no longer use? Can I combine any for simplicity?
What old services should I no longer offer? What services or offers can I combine?
What clients should I let go of?
What no longer makes me happy? What is not worth the return on investment?
#2 Evaluate
In the evaluation stage of organizing your business, you will think about how to prevent clutter in the future. The idea is to keep things organized going forward, so what systems or processes do you need to put in place to make that happen?
Consider these questions -
Where would I typically look for X item? (ie. a folder, project, information, hand-out, etc.)
What area in my business is causing me stress?
What area of my business is causing me to lose time?
Where do I often find myself searching or looking for information?
What things do I do again and again? Do I already have a system in place?
#3 Systems
The last step to organize your business is to implement systems that will help you stay organized. These can be really simple items (like recognizing Google folders) to larger items (like creating automations in your project-management system).
Here are a few items to check on when creating systems -
Email
Google Drive / Dropbox / Hard drives
Project management system
SOPs
Canva
Also, sometimes when you organize your business, you realize some things just got to go. That might mean stepping away altogether or hiring someone to take care of it for you.
Interested in talking business and creating marketing systems that work for you? Check out my 1:1 strategy planning sessions. We can work on identifying actionable steps you can take to reach your business goals. Book a strategy session here!
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Welcome to another Saturday strategy session. This week we are in part 3 of behind the scenes. I've done two already. I think they were both before the new year. We talked about the direction that my business is going and we talked about my brand values. Today we're gonna be talking about what's up in the new year, but also decluttering your business and the steps that I took to declutter my own business.
So before I dive into the episode…
I took three weeks off. I'm recording this at the beginning of January. You know what I do - I record a month ahead of time. So, I took like three weeks off and it was so nice (not really) because we got. We got so sick! It was awful. On Christmas Eve, I started coughing, but I didn't feel sick. And then Christmas morning, I still felt fine. We went to my in-laws and oh my goodness, something happened and my cough just went zero to a hundred.
Everyone was staring at me like, why are you here? I did a covid test. I did not have covid, but I stayed away from people for most of the day. And then a couple days later, my daughter got some sort of tummy bug. And then a couple days after that, my son got a tummy bug. And then a couple days after that I got the tummy bug and then my son got that awful cough!
Anyway, so tons and tons of relaxing, tons and tons of being sick, and so it kind of was nice that I didn't have a lot of work to do. But we did in the end, get to see everybody and it was really great. And I really, really hope that you had a great holiday.
I know you're listening to this in the middle of February - this is scheduled for February 18th - and so you're probably like, uh, Jenzaia, I don't even remember what I had for breakfast today, let alone what my Christmas holiday was like! But here I am giving you my recap and now let's move on…
Decluttering your business! So one of the books that I read over the holidays and by read , I mean, listened to, was called Decluttering at the Speed of Life. It's by Dana K White, and she goes through her five steps to decluttering any space.
I was really excited about it. I don't know if it was like a new year thing or I just go through phases where clutter really just gets to me and I have to just throw things out. So I was going through one of those phases and I saw her book on Audible. I really, really like her five steps.
I will say there were a couple spots in the book where she's talking about the extent of clutter and to me, the extent she was talking to crossed over into hoarder land. Like she was talking about not having a pathway to get from your bed to the bathroom, which blew my mind. If you need to clear a pathway in your room, to me personally, that is beyond clutter and into hoarding. But it doesn't matter.
Her five steps to decluttering - and I'll go through them quickly. Step one is trash, and that's just like throwing out things that you know are garbage. She goes through this in detail, but when she says trash and throw out, she means to recycle appropriately. If that's available, compost it. Appropriately dispose of things that are garbage and no longer needed.
Step number two is put things back in their known location. So I have a stack of hair ties on my nightstand table. And so if I were to declutter my nightstand table, which I probably will after this episode, because now I'm talking about it. My hair ties have a known location. I have a jar thing that I keep them in, in the bathroom. So I'll just grab the whole handful and I'll put them away.
Number three is clutter. And these are things that obviously you just need to get donated out of the house. They're not garbage, but you don't need them anymore. Step four is to start making decluttering decisions. If there's things that aren't immediately clutter, but you still don't have space for them, you have to make decisions. She has some really great questions about that to help you make those decisions.
And then the final thing is to container things. So organize, put things in containers and to really figure out where things are gonna live.
I really loved the simplicity of these steps. And also she talks about starting with the most visible place, so probably your front hall where people come in, where you walk into your house every day. So if you have time to declutter, you always go back to that most visible spot and you continue to declutter from there.
The final thing she talks about is that it has to work for you. Everyone has a different threshold of clutter. So these systems have to work for you so that you can find all of the things that you need.
So I wanna take all of these concepts and apply them to our businesses. So recently as part of my easing back into business, I decluttered and I really worked on streamlining my email, my Google drive, Dubsado, and Flow Desk, which are my customer relationship management. I also thought about ways that you could apply this to your offers, your programs, clients, and then marketing.
I change it up to the three steps to decluttering your business. Step number one is the easy decisions; what you wanna eliminate, delete, or change if there's duplicates. So like if you have two programs or two services that are very, very similar and you could combine them or you could just get rid of one of them.
Or for things that don't bring you joy. If there's a client who or program that is a headache, listen to your emotions, your feelings, your vibrations. You wanna be vibrating high and enjoying your business.
The other piece is low return on investment. And so this is looking at your numbers and your data. So the joy one is your feelings and the ROI is the actual numbers. So for example, your inbox, it's really easy to understand the concept of decluttering your inbox and going in and deleting emails you don't need and getting rid of duplicates. You're not deleting contracts, but if Tommy sends you one of those, “Hey, I noticed your website needs some updating so that it's more SEO friendly,” you can just delete that. These are easy things to decide.
So where are you going every single day? Probably your inbox. Before you start decluttering your folders, declutter your inbox. Start with that most visible piece and work your way through. That's what I found to be really helpful in both my house when I was decluttering with Dana's book, but then also in my business.
Step number two, after you've done all of the easy decisions, then it's time to evaluate. You're gonna start to think about how you can eliminate clutter in the future. So let's think about the inbox. I use Google and Gmail, and so there's folders and tags. So what I did is I set up a whole bunch of filters that automatically if something hits my inbox, I filter it. Everything gets a filter.
So anything client related automatically gets filtered into my client's. Anything from my contractors gets filtered automatically into their individual folders. Anything for a program that I'm part of gets filtered automatically into the program's folder. It doesn't even go to my inbox. I have a lot less emails that hit my inbox.
In my Google Drive, there's no files there. It's just folders. So I have a folder for JD Teacherpreneur Marketing. I have a folder for my podcast, and then I have a folder for admin. You don't start to find files until you open one of those folders. So there's less clutter and everything is more organized. It's organized in at least two levels.
So what kind of organization would make sense for you? And one of the questions that she asked in the book, or has you asked in the book is, where would I look for it? Not where should I, where could I, where might I, but where would I look for this thing? And so if there's a file and I'm not sure where it should go, I'd be like, well, where would I look for it? And that very first answer is where you should be putting it, because that is instinctively where you would go to find these types of files. I really, really like that you're using instinct. It helps your organization because it's just like what you would do, like what your gut says to do.
The other thing that you really should think about in this step is what is or isn't working. Like where things are getting stuck, where they're getting lost, where clutter is building up. Because the final step is systems. This is where you're actually going to implement the systems that you found or evaluated in step two. So in step two, you're thinking about what is my desired flow? What is the desired organization? What folders would make sense, like where would I look for things? And then in step three, you're actually setting up those filters.
You're actually creating the systems and creating SOP’s, so standard operating procedures around those things. I love standard operating procedures. I probably make mine too detailed and too long, but I also don't necessarily think that there's such a thing.
I remember listening to a podcast. It was a guy and he was talking about Lego. When you open the Lego, it's got 700 steps. Find this piece, do this with that piece. Every single little tiny thing you need to do is numbered out and in the exact order so that you can take all of these little tiny blocks and build this amazing castle or this amazing monster or this amazing whatever it is that you build.
His recommendation was to look at SOPs or those standard operating procedures similarly and really go through every single piece and every single step. And so since I listened to his podcast, that's what I've liked to do and that's what I've found myself doing is just being more detailed. Less like Ikea and more like Lego!
And then also in this step, you're gonna consider what you can hire out and what you don't need to be taking care of. Maybe your inbox is not something you wanna be managing. Maybe your bookkeeping is not something you wanna be managing. So for example, my podcast - I've hired a lot of my podcast pieces out. Initially when I first did it, I did have step by step of how to edit the episode. Then I went from my VA doing it, who was not trained or specialized in podcast management, to having a podcast manager who is trained and does specialize in it. So when I went from the VA who didn't really know how to edit, to the podcast manager who absolutely does not need those instructions, I took it out and just said she edits the podcast.
So if you have contractors who are capable, maybe you don't need every single little step in there for those kinds of situations. But it's really great when you wanna hand something off so that someone knows exactly how it's done and what the expectations are in your business.
Just as a quick recap, the three steps to decluttering your business are…
Number one, declutter. Get rid of all of the easy decisions. Consider what is bringing you joy and what is not bringing you joy. Consider what is giving you return on your investment and not giving you a return on investment. And that investment can be a time investment or a money investment.
Step two is to evaluate what is working, what isn't working. What do you desire to be the outcome?
Step three is creating the systems to reduce clutter in the future and then creating the system so that you can hire out.
I would love to know what part of your business you are gonna be decluttering! My next one is really going through these steps with my marketing. So figuring out what isn't bringing me joy and where there's a low return on investment. Like TikTok - very low return on investment in my experience.
Then actually building out the SOP’s. So I would love for you to screenshot this episode and let me know what part of your business you're gonna be decluttering with these steps!
Have a wonderful rest of your day, and thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!