9 Strategies To Keep Your Small Business Organized
There are SO many reasons why being organized with your small business—from the very start, is vitally important.
For one thing, it’ll help you to focus better and more clearly on your tasks at hand, allowing you to get things done in a more efficient and professional way. Secondly, when your small business is organized—and I mean really organized, from the inside out, you’ll be able to scale it far more easily than you’d be able to if you’d built systems that are entirely dependent on you being there all the time.
Being organized will also help you to step into the role of professional. When you feel like you have your sh*t together, you’ll find it easier to develop that entrepreneur mindset that’s so crucial for success.
If you’d like to get organized, the best time to start is now. Putting it off until “someday” will only mean that it gets pushed further down the road. Fortunately, many organizational tactics are things that you can start employing with minimal hassle. By taking a one-step-at-a-time approach, and looking to address maybe one big issue per week, you’ll soon be on your way to having a fully-functional, seamless business.
With this in mind, here are nine things that I’ve found to be tremendously helpful in the battle to get—and stay organized.
1 - Design An Inspirational Space
Our surroundings can inspire us, or they can weigh us down. Your job is to look to create an office space that sparks creativity and promotes that “I can do anything” mentality. This will give you the jumpstart that you need to tackle any task. So look to incorporate materials, visuals, and things that bring you joy and inspiration. Create a space where all of the tools and supplies that you need are easily accessible and on hand.
That’s the easy part, right?
Maintaining an inspiring space is where a lot of us stumble. Our lives are busy and we’ve got a lot happening in addition to running our small business. And all that other stuff? Well, it creates a whole lot of chaos.
Not only is it distracting, but as Sherrie Bourg Carter explains in Psychology Today, there’s a real mental cost associated with all of that clutter.
Ladies, here’s what it’s doing to us:
It makes it impossible to relax (So we can be inspired)
It signals to our brains that our workday is never really done (How depressing is that?)
It brings on the guilt and shame (As if we don’t know we should be more organized)
It frustrates us (Because we can’t find what we need when we need it)
When we see what clutter’s costing us, it motivates us to tackle it.
Adding five minutes to your daily morning, or evening routine for light decluttering can help you to stay on top of things. Or, make it your goal to tackle a bigger organizational project once per week.
If your desk is your biggest issue, simply dump everything unrelated to the day’s tasks into a box and slide it out of view until you can get your other, more pressing work done. Just don’t forget about it. Set a reminder to deal with your “clutter box” at the end of the day.
However you get it done, find a way to make space for inspiration. Then see for yourself how much smoother everything goes.
2 - Create SOPs From Day One
Having standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your online business will save you time, not to mention your sanity—especially as you grow.
Now, establishing SOPs from day one is ideal, but if you haven’t had a chance to do this yet, don’t worry, systems can be incorporated after the fact too.
There are all sorts of apps to help you get organized. One of my favs is Loom, a video messaging tool. You can create a library of videos that detail your business processes, strategy, mission, and goals. You can share them with your team and use them to train new people you bring on board.
I love tools like this that allow female entrepreneurs to conduct business when we have the time. A lot of us do the side hustle after the kids are in bed. Sometimes we’re too exhausted to craft emails and documents. Recording a video (it doesn’t have to be perfect) and sharing it with my team saves me time and keeps me organized.
3 - Integrate Cloud-Based Tools
I don’t know about you, but all these tools that are supposed to help us get organized sometimes make us feel anything but. (And no, it’s not lost on me that I just suggested another you could add to the mix two seconds ago!)
But seriously, think of all the apps you’re using. Things like Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, QuickBooks, and Google Calendar—maybe an email marketing tool or two. You probably use at least that many applications to conduct your business.
Thankfully, you can organize all of them with an integration tool like Zapier. You’ll be able to automate workflows to increase productivity and save a ton of time.
4 - Propose That Your Clients Use Your Recommended Tools
When onboarding a new client, I always try to make a point of asking about her learning style. It helps to inform the strategy I’ll use to help her launch her business. It also helps me determine the best way for us to communicate.
Usually a client is either a visual or an auditory learner. A visual learner typically prefers video messaging or written communication through email. An auditory learner might feel more comfortable with phone calls or recorded voice messages.
While considering what’s most effective for your client, it is equally important to propose productivity tools that are already streamlined within your business. For example, we ask our clients to use Voxer (a walkie-talkie app) and WhatsApp –especially for international clients.
Suggesting options that you already use will keep you and your business organized and better positioned to serve your clients.
5 -Find A Bookkeeper Who Gets You
At some point you’ll need to hire a bookkeeper to help you and your small business—or online business stay organized. But that person should be someone who does more than just keep your books.
Ideally, you’ll want to hire someone who is down with the mission of your company and attuned to what motivates you—what makes you tick. She needs to get you. A good bookkeeper can be your ally in growing your business.
Every Friday, Alison sends me a small financial report, that’s more like a basic state of the union. It shows what’s coming in, what’s going out, and how much cash I have in the bank—the standard stuff. She also creates a Google Sheet so I can play around with numbers, to see what I need to earn every week/month to achieve my annual revenue targets. That weekly exercise motivates me and keeps me focused on my goals. She knows that.
Aside from getting me, she believes in what we’re doing. She feels vested in the success of my business. She is part of the team. And because of that, she feels empowered to offer recommendations such as potential cost-saving opportunities and strategies for growth.
Find an Alison for your business.
6 - Set Team Expectations
Just like a great bookkeeper can help to keep you on track and organized, every team member can contribute to your business’ success. So look to hire people who get you, and are on board with your company’s vision. When your team is committed to your company and what you’re doing, you’ll be in for a much smoother ride.
To keep your business organized and running like a well-oiled machine, make sure your team understands exactly what’s expected of them. Likewise, make sure you also devote resources to train your team to maximize the benefits of those processes you put in place.
That investment will ensure a more productive, engaged team who will better serve your clients.
7 - Start Tracking KPIs
Want to get organized internally? Then make KPIs a part of your regular routine.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that you can use to see how you’re progressing on toward your business goals. These metrics include things like your net profit margin, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value (CLV), average transaction value, and market share.
Of course, your KPIs might look very different. The important thing is to ensure that you find KPIs that are connected to your big-picture goals, and figure out what YOU should be tracking. Then get a system in place for doing so. When tracked regularly, these metrics can be one of the best ways to assess the health of your business, and help you determine where you should be spending your resources. When taken together, they’ll help inform your decision-making and strategic planning.
8 - Ask For Help
Guys might have a reputation about not asking for directions, but as women, we do the very same thing and often shy away from asking for help when we could use it. And here’s the deal: this can keep us bogged down and prevent us from getting what we want. Don’t feel that you need to go it alone as an entrepreneur, in fact, the opposite is true. The truth is, I don’t know a single successful female entrepreneur who got where she is today without some help along the way.
So look to women who have been there, who have brought their own big idea to fruition. Find a mentor, hire a business coach, and just put yourself out there. Step outside of your comfort zone and look to enlist a second opinion. You’ll be surprised at how much more clearly you’ll be able to focus when you have someone in your corner rooting for you.
9 - Build For The Future
Finally, it’s so important to think big-picture, even when you’re still a small, fledgling company.
This can be difficult during the beginning stages, when you’re so focused on getting your small business off the ground that it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. We focus on details like branding and getting those first few dollars in our account, but we neglect to look at the long-term plan and how our business should function in, say, one to three years’ time.
But it’s important to think bigger from the start. Have a rough plan in place for how you’ll manage growth. If you expect to hire more people, consider when and in what capacity. Set benchmarks for this that are tied to growth or your revenue goals. If you have a storefront, you may want to plan for potential expansion. If you want to scale back your hours or involvement once business is humming, you should think about who you will be entrusting with day-to-day operations.
When you consider these things early on, your small business will be more organized and better positioned for future growth.
Remember: we’re all on this journey together. Getting organized in your business is an ongoing process and it’s not something that will happen all at once, so don’t try to force it to. Start by taking small, manageable steps in the right direction –look to tackle one aspect of your business per week, and then take note of your progress. Soon you’ll find that you have a well-organized business, and will be able to reap the rewards of a seamless, fully-operational company.
Do you have any tips for getting organized in your business –or life in general? Share YOUR secret to success!
Header image credit: Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels
