November 27, 2021

My Secret to Keeping my Business Organized

Feel like you're drowning trying to keep everything in the business organized?
Read on to see what turned my business organization around!

Business organization is a whole new ballgame from regular home organization, isn’t it? Especially when you add doing it from home with a family running around.

Organization for your home or business, while being so much work to implement, is absolutely necessary if you want to have a smooth-running house/family. When your house & family are running smoothly helps creates the family dynamic that you desire in your house.

With each pregnancy I ended up getting more organized in a different area in our house/family. One pregnancy it was the laundry, another one it was our meal/menu organization. Then it was bedroom organization. It was so much fun to see where I would focus on during the pregnancy & I loved seeing the end result. And I felt really confident in how our house ran & looked, how our family dynamics felt, & how I felt as a mom/wife.

Once I started the business though, I felt like I was drowning.

All my house management systems kind of went out the window. I wasn’t as present to micro-manage children, to make sure they did what was expected of them, to fully see what needed to be done before it became overwhelming. Balancing the house management along time working the business is still a work in progress, but I feel like we have a good system implemented. My husband is an amazing guy & we are a great team for house & kid stuff! So I’m not the only one responsible for the house management/organization.

But organization for the business?

That’s fully on me. It’s up to me to make sure everything gets done & I didn’t have anyone to delegate anything to.

I didn’t want the business to take over our life. This business was supposed to help our family, be a joy for me, & be fun, not add stress & make it so we never did anything fun because “mommy has work to do”.

So I started researching in my free time. How do I organize the business? How do I balance work/home life? How do I keep it all together & get it all done without losing my mind?!

Have you been there?

I found someone who recommended having a notebook for each client/area & writing your notes or to do lists in the correct notebook to help keep everything organized.

I then met with a business coach who is quite honestly amazing. She listened to my frustration, heard what I’ve tried, & made a suggestion of trying her favorite digital task manager, with the promise that she would help me get it set up.

The interesting thing was I had tried the one she was recommending previously, but I felt so overwhelmed getting it set up that I just walked away from it. I liked it in principle, but the implementation of it just didn’t work for me the first time I attempted to get it set up. And after having the other one not work out after spending so much time setting it up, you can imagine how nervous I was about trying again!

Here’s what made it manageable this time around.

She helped me create templates for my clients, so I only had to create the to do list once, then I created my teams & projects for each client, used the template to set it up, & personalized it, then I was good to go!
She showed me how pretty & manageable her task manager was, so I had a goal to work towards. I’m all about it being pretty if I’ll be using it daily.
There’s a spot for due dates & where you can assign tasks, if you have more than yourself working in it.

And now that it’s up & running? Oh. My. Word! It is amazing. Let me tell you how this task manager has helped my business, personal life, & sleep quality!

The app. The task manger I have comes in online & app form, so I have access to it not only on my computer but also on my phone. Which means I can see what I need to do when I’m online or off. I can look to make sure I don’t have anything else due when I’m making afternoon snack. Or when I first wake up, I can check to see what is on my list for the day. Or when I wake up at 2am remembering something I need to do the next day, I can add it to my app from my phone, no lights, no searching for or losing pieces of paper or sticky notes, & most importantly, no forgetting tasks!
I have all my client’s information, to do list, important info, & special notes, all in one place. My contractors can see my notes, where they couldn’t before since they were in my notebooks & sticky notes! I can create a task for my contractor to manage, without having to send an email.
I basically live in what is called “my tasks” section. It’s where I’ve scheduled certain tasks & what’s due that day, or overdue, or even coming up. You know the best thing about this? When I’ve finished my daily tasks I can walk away! I’m done for the day. Or if I have extra time I can start on tomorrow’s tasks, but it has given me so much freedom to be done when I’ve finished what I planned on doing!
I don’t have sticky notes all over the place, so my visual clutter is way lower than it used to be. I don’t know about you but when there’s visual clutter my stress level increases.
I’ve added my personal to do list into the task manger so now I can see not only what I need to do for work but also personal. It’s nice having everything all in one place. I can see if I’m totally overloading my day now rather than looking in multiple places & not seeing the whole picture.

So, if you are like I was & need to ramp up your business organization, check out an online task manager & make sure it has an app for your phone! There are so many options. All you have to do is Google “digital task manager” & they’ll come up. Pick one that you feel is a good fit for you & run with it. Find tutorials on how to efficiently set up your account & make it work best for you.

You can also go visit my Pinterest to see some of my favorite pins for the task manager I use.

Honestly, it’ll take some effort but once it is finished it’s amazing.

For me it was truly life changing from before I got the task manager set up to now. My stress is so much lower than before & I feel like I’m a better support for my clients, & a better Mom/Wife to my family, than I was before.