Key Areas of Your Business

While in Toronto in early November at the Professional Organizers in Canada annual conference I attended a workshop delivered by Deanne Kelleher from Kaos Group called “Essential and Powerful Business Tools”.  The session made me realize how many systems all of us small business owners should have in place and perhaps don’t, myself included.  If only I could find the time!

Here are the key areas of our business that Deanne suggests we have systems for:

1. Customer Relations Management – simply using the Notes field in your existing customer contact database to record conversations, TY notes sent and referrals is a good place to start.  Also keep track of who subscribes to your newsletter.
2. Marketing and Networking – set goals for your newsletter distribution and track how many subscribers you have, how many you want and how much business comes from your newsletter.  Track how many business cards you give out in a year.  Look at your website analytics regularly.  If you write articles which ones create the most website traffic?
3. Email – create an FAQ section on your website to handle potential customer inquiries and create a standard email in your ‘Drafts’ folder for respond to routine inquiries.  Create a thank you email to send to each new person you meet asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.  Consider including a link to your newsletter in your email signature.
4. Process and Procedure – create an Operations Manual (ugh!) which includes administrative procedures, communication processes, goals, year end procedures, and much more.
5. Social Media – think about what you are saying and to whom.  How often are you saying it and where.  Does it work?  Is your goal to educate or acquire?  Are you connected to your ideal clients?
6. Tracking – what will you track and when?  How will you track it?  Why are you tracking it?

I don’t know about you, but I think I need to hire Deanne to help me figure out how to get all of this done!

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Can You Live a Good Enough Life?

I am fascinated by how the concept of ‘good enough’ relates to being organized and our many attempts to be what we perceive as ‘well organized’.  What does being organized mean to you?  Most likely not the same as it does to your spouse, your best friend or your children.

What if, instead of constantly striving to be more organized, better organized or even, heaven forbid, perfectly organized we strove for ‘good enough’.  According to Sarah Hampson the author of an article entitled, The Secret to happiness? Live a ‘good enough’ life,  “. . . when you don’t expect much, when you manage the ideas of what you think your life should be, you can be pleasantly surprised – and grateful – for the good fortune that comes your way.”

Somehow this sounds like lowering expectations, reducing the standards of what is acceptable and seems to me like settling for mediocrity.  Not acceptable to someone like me who is a recovering perfectionist and still battling with doing my ‘best’ instead of striving for ‘perfect’.  So, the concept of good enough doesn’t sit well with me but I know for many of you it might be just what you need.

If your kitchen drawers are organized so that you can find what you need but you don’t have those fancy dividers that you saw in a friends kitchen that might just be good enough?  If your clothes are all hanging up but not on matching hangers is that good enough?  If your papers are all off the floor and in tidy piles on your desk where you can put your fingers on what you need that might just be good enough.  If your email inbox is down to 50 messages, instead of 500, maybe that is good enough?

I like the idea of good enough as opposed to perfectly organized as it does allow us to lower our expectations of what organized means and move towards a level of organization that is achievable.  I think this concept is especially important for those who don’t like to spend their time organizing or find it difficult to know when to stop organizing. 

What we see in magazines and on television is often not realistic and perhaps that is where some of our expectations of perfectly organized come from?  Have you ever noticed the desk in the corner of the living room on a makeover show with a computer on it but not a single cord in sight nor a stitch of paper – no matter how organized we are our space will never look like that so perhaps lowering our expectations is exactly what the doctor ordered!

Everything in life seems to come back to deciding what matters most.  As long as your home and office are organized ‘enough’ so that you can function effectively and enjoy your space, forget about what others may think and go with what works for you.  I think the summer is the perfect time to try some ‘good enough’ thinking – at least for you my dear readers even if not for me!

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Time to Look for Something but No Time to Put It Away?

Here are some wise words from my good friend Georgina Forrest from Smartworks Organizing in Calgary, Alberta from one of her recent newsletters. 

Doing Small Things Can Make A Big Difference.  Have you ever taken something out to use it …

• a file from the file cabinet
• the hole punch out of the supply cupboard
• a book off of a shelf
• something – anything – out of a drawer

. . . used it but didn’t put it back? You know, because you just didn’t have time to put it away.

Then you needed to find something – perhaps a file or a hole punch or a book or something – only to SPEND time digging through the piles of stuff that had accumulated because you didn’t have time to put it away in the first place.

It’s a funny paradox of life:

Why is it we always have time to look for something yet we don’t always have time to put it away?

Don’t just put stuff down when you’re done with it, put it away. It really only takes a few additional seconds to do this, but can save you oodles of time wasted looking for it again in the future.

Every little thing you can do to keep order, results in huge benefits for you down the not-too-distant road.

So put that file or hole punch or book or whatever away – right now.

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Another Filing Masterpiece!

This week was very gratifying on many fronts but especially so because I got to help a client who owns a small business revamp her paper filing system.  I’m quite sure I was far more excited about the process than she was.

She admits to being exhausted from all the decisions that had to be made.  Naturally, the filing revamp begins with a good purge.  This is where I have to play bad cop and force my clients to go through every scrap of paper and every existing file and decide what to keep and what to let go of.  Asking yourself questions like, “How long has it been since I last referred to this information?” and the all important, “Do I need to keep this for tax or legal reasons?” is tedious and tiring but must be done.  And it feels good to know exactly what you have and why.

Once the purge is done, then it’s time to make a home for each piece of information that we’re keeping.  In this instance the existing system was confusing because of two things- the files were not alphabetical and there were many file folder colors in use.  Both of these make it very difficult to find what you need quickly.

So, you guessed it, we made all the file folders white and named our files so that they naturally fell into alphabetical order.  We did indulge ourselves a bit and use 3 different colors of hanging folders for the 3 main filing categories – blue for personal files, green for business files and red for tax files. 

I have to thank my client, Gail, because I actually got a new idea from her. She was keeping all of her ‘tax’ files (anything that she can claim for tax purposes as a business expense) in a separate case.  We took the files out of the fan folder case (I always find them difficult to work with) and created a separate category for those files.  I’ve actually never taken the household files like power, water, insurance, etc. and kept them in a separate section – I’m liking that idea going forward.  Hmmm…. must test it in my own office.

The final session, my favourite part of the process,  involved putting all the new labels (merged from an Excel spreadsheet for printing) on the nice new white file folders in the new colored hangers and ‘voila’ a masterpiece once again.  It never ceases to amaze how much easier it is to find a file amongst dozens of others when all the file names are visible and all the folders are the same color so you can see what you’ve got. 

Can’t wait to do another one!  Yes, I know, just a little sad that I love doing this stuff so much.

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‘Hunting High and Low’ for Office Furniture

As the song says, I’ve been ‘Hunting Hi and Low’ (famed Norwegian band ah-ha in case you want to check them out) for home office furniture for the last week or so.  Turns out I’ve got several home office projects on the go right now -very cool.

The challenge of finding furniture for a home office makes it seem, at times, like I’m never going to find just the right pieces.  We have to consider the following:

• The size of the space
• The needs of the client
• The functionality of the furniture (a biggie for me!)
• The style and color of the furniture
• The availability of the furniture (especially here in Halifax)
• My extreme pickiness (ha!)

I have to say that options seem to be improving.  Not only can we choose from the usual places if we want something inexpensive like Staples, Ikea (shipping it here is a bit pricey), Sears (Sauder) and Bombay but local retailers have done a great job of ramping up their selection. For moderate budgets  Jordans Furnishings in New Minas has a good selection including Ashley and Winners Only.  If we want to put up with a little hassle around getting the furniture here, I do love Pottery Barn for certain offices and the pricing falls in line with a decent budget.  However, if you’ve got some money set aside and really want an awesome home office, my favourite right now is local retailer Attica.  They have several lines of home office and I’m loving the BDI Sequel collection, the Hudson Street collection and the Catalina product line.

When I’m searching for furniture here are all the things I may need to have a proper home for:

• Computer Workstation or Laptop
• Printer(s)
• Telephone
• Desktop Sorter or Hanging File
• Files, Files, Files
• School Stuff – projects, reports, homework, supplies
• Office Supplies – paper, labels, ink cartridges, file folders, pens, stapler, hole punch, etc.
• Electronic Accessories
• Cameras
• Television
• Books and Magazines
• Binders – committees, courses, etc.
• Photo Albums

Whew, that’s a lot of stuff and that’s what makes this hunting job a bit tough. If I only wanted a gorgeous desk and nothing else I would have hundreds of options but I also need a filing cabinet or two, a bookcase, a storage cabinet, several drawers, and so on.

If you’re one of those lucky people who lives in a larger city, all I have to say is, don’t tell me about all the other awesome places you have to get home office furniture – I’m having enough trouble making up my mind already!

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Preparing Your Business for 2011

At this time of year I always start to get into what I like to call ‘Clean Up and Get Organized for the New Year’ mode in my business.  Somehow, I always look forward to this process. For me it involves several steps which many of you may find it helpful to consider.

1. Purging Paper & Electronic Information - like many of you I accumulate a lot of paper and electronic information throughout the year, some of which I never use. There’s no better feeling than going through all the paper files and shredding a bunch, going through my ‘My Documents’ folder and either archiving or deleting a bunch of files and finally going through all my email folders from this year and either archiving or deleting a bunch of that information.  Somehow this process always seems to shift the energy around a bit and make room for new and exciting projects each new year.
2. Getting Ready for Canada Revenue - I have to say that all of us small business owners certainly do have to be well organized on the financial records side of our business in case our friends at CRA come calling.  I firmly believe that if I’m well organized and keep good records there is less likelihood that will happen but if it does I’ll be well prepared. I can pull any piece of   information they may require on a moment’s notice including invoices, expense receipts, HST returns, my calendar with all appointments,  monthly financial statements and the all important Automobile Mileage Log (to purchase yours go to
   http://www.janetheorganizer.com/productsforsale_automileagelog.html
   )  for the past 7 years.  The two things that they love to audit us home-based businesses for are ‘office-use-of-home’ expenses and ‘vehicle expenses’, so be sure to have those records in tip top shape and easily accessible.  In addition, HST audits are quite common so being able to produce your records in a timely fashion can make this process almost painless.
3. Creating A New Budget - I always like to challenge myself to ‘stretch goals’ on the revenue side and then see how little I can get away with spending on the expense side while still growing the business.  This year I’m thinking about a few new budget items such as a Smartphone (yeah, yeah, I know I’m so behind on that one), a part-time Personal Assistant (too exciting), and maybe even my dream of a Training Video.  Having a monthly budget and reviewing it twice per month is one of the key success factors to any business, large or small.
4. Annual Planning - in addition to creating a new budget, I schedule a yearly annual planning session for 1 or 2 days with my mastermind group(s) to brainstorm ideas for the next year or so.  This will involve both my personal and professional life and is a chance for some free thinking with no limitations.  A chance to review outstanding projects and think of new ones.  A chance to dream big and share those dreams with others.  And finally the time to put it all in writing, decide my priorities for the next year, and make a committment to others in my mastermind group to work on those priorities or, if I don’t, to have a good reason for changing them.

Whew, aren’t you exhausted just thinking about all this? Now we all have to go and book time in our calendar over the holiday season to get working on #1 to #3.  In my business #4 will be happening in two phases, one in January and the other in March.  However, you may decide to do something completely different like attend a workshop or hire someone to help you through the process.  Remember the adage, “Poor Prior Planning leads to P… Poor Performance”.

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Post Conference Overwhelm – Whew!

Here I sit in my office rather late on Sunday evening after a full day of financial paperwork for my business and my husband’s.  Catch up as a result of all the time I have spent at various Conference sessions in the last week or so.

I attended the Professional Organizers in Canada (POC) Conference in Montreal from November 5th to 7th and the Centre for Women in Business (CWB) Conference here in Halifax on November 12th.  I am definitely ‘all conferenced out’, but I have to say it was so worth it.

It’s my once a year chance to rejuvenate myself, learn from others, reconnect with organizing friends from across the country and establish stronger connections with women right here in my own backyard.  Several messages came across loud and clear, funnily enough, at both Conferences, go figure!

Use technology to your best advantage to make your business as efficient as possible but don’t get carried away with the latest online tool just because it’s new and looks cool. 

• Doodle – for scheduling with multiple people and your assistant
• Postling – to manage all your social media
• ReQall –  for voice to text while you’re on the road
• Dropbox – for online file syncing and sharing on multiple computers
• Google’s PasswordSafe – for keeping your passwords

The second message that came through loud and clear is the need for business owners, especially us organizers, to relinquish control of our business by hiring some help, outsourcing or bringing in partners and associates who complement our own skills.  My first step will be to hire a part-time personal assistant early in 2011 and then to start thinking about another staff member to work with me on client projects.  It is simply not possible to build a profitable long-term business without getting some help, not matter how hard it will be!

The final message is around the profitability subject and that is to get your finances under total control.  Build a business and personal budget and stick to it, work with a banker who understands small business, get a good tax accountant and incorporate your business as soon as it makes financial sense (for me that was three years ago). 

Yup, you guessed it, my first step before anything else is to book an appointment with a lawyer and get moving on the incorporation!  Ugh, the thought of the work involved in transitioning makes me cringe but I must soldier on.  Wish me luck!

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Organizing Systems for Small Business

Last week I facilitated a workshop for a group of new small business owners.  It never ceases to amaze me how many organizing systems you need to have when you run your own business.

Here are a few we came up with.  I’m pretty sure there are still some things we have forgotten?

• Customer Contacts
• Action Items
• Calendar System – electronic or paper (or both-yikes)?
• Financial Records including filing for HST
• Propects/Sales Cycle
• Managing Electronic Documents
• Inventory
• Time Tracking
• Online Passwords
• Managing Email
• Vehicle Mileage and related expenses

And then, on top of all that, you have to figure out how to manage your time effectively.  In a workshop a few years ago I learned a formula for managing time in the busy world of an entrepreneur.  I have since adjusted it to fit my needs and the reality of how the lives of most of my small business clients actually should work.  My overall discovery is that we have to try to minimize the time we spend on administration, while still taking care of all the details, and maximize the time we spend on activities that either allow us to earn money or have the potential to help increase our revenues.

And then there’s planning time, one thing many of us do not spend enough time on.  As small business owners we should be spending the equivalent of 1/2 a day per week just planning.  This is really as simple as ensuring we are ready for the upcoming week with our clients and ensuring that we are moving along any business projects such as updating our website.  If we don’t plan for those business projects they just never seem to get done.  All of our time can be eaten up looking for clients, talking to clients and following up with clients.  And, if you’re like me, procrastinating by checking email and browsing the internet.

Alright already, I’m going to do my planning for the week right now before I start searching the internet for some pretty organizing products for a client!

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The Tax Man Stole my Weekend!

So there you have it.  I spent the last two weekends getting all the numbers ready for my accountant so he can file my return by June 15th.  Thank goodness us self-employed people have an extra six weeks before we have to file our return.  The bad news is, of course, if you owe money you will get charged interest back to April 30th.

Hmmm…. being someone who hates working close to deadlines I don’t quite get what my problem is here.  Why did I wait until a couple of weeks before the deadline to do this, thereby causing me to give up my weekend?  I think I have found one of the few things that I procrastinate on and I know that the reason is I don’t want to give the tax man my hard earned money, darn it!

I have now decided that I should prepare all of this in January and hold onto it for the filing deadline  instead of waiting.  Imagine following the advice I give to my clients everyday!  “Be proactive”, I say to them.  “You’ll feel so great when you complete the task with time to spare.” It really is true, honest. 

Here are a few tips for us self-employed individuals:

1. Keep on top of your income and expenses on a monthly basis.  Either have your bookkeeper enter this information monthly or do it yourself faithfully.
2. Be sure to balance things like inventory, credit card statements and bank statements every month.  As soon as you get out of balance, it becomes more and more difficult to find your mistakes as time goes by.
3. Keep the requirements for tax filing in mind throughout the year.  For example, this year we had the Home Renovation Tax Credit so we had to carefully keep all our receipts. 
4. Don’t forget if you work from home that you may be able to write-off a percentage of your house repairs, utilities, insurance, etc. so be sure to keep good records.
5. If you use your vehicle for business purposes keep all your gas, repair, insurance receipts. Be sure to complete a mileage log on a daily basis as you’ll need to have this information to calculate the number of km you drove for business. And, you’ll need this log if you’re ever audited.  If you need to purchase a mileage log Click Here.
6. Keep any documentation that pertains to your tax filing for the required number of years depending on your country of residence.  If you’re not sure, check with your accountant.

Whew, I think that’s all I can think of for today. Oh, and if you follow this advice it will save you time  in the long run.  How cool is that.

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The Importance of A Place for Everything

As I sat in my office yesterday checking my e-mail I looked around my desk area and thought about the importance of the mantra ‘A Place for Everything’.  The key for all of us is that it doesn’t say ‘A Place for Almost Everything’.

In my opinion, this is where we all get ourselves into trouble, myself included.  I find you need to have a place for absolutely everything.  Otherwise,  you put one thing out of place ‘just for now’ and then another and another and before you know it you have many things with no place.

Now, having a place for absolutely everything takes a fair bit of effort.  And my problem is that I periodically change my place for things which means then I sometimes have two places where information could be kept.  Naughty, naughty!

The main problem seems to be all the projects and bits that are ‘in the process’. They are things we have started and not finished.  In my office there are two categories of  ’in the process’ – client files and business projects.

Here’s what seems to work for me:

1. Clients I am working with over the coming months - their files are all in a binder for ‘current clients’ which stands on my desk at arms reach

2. Clients I am actually doing something with in the current week – their files are in brightly colored plastic 3-hole pouches contained in a nice sturdy silver mesh magazine holder on my desk beside the ‘current clients’ binder. 

3. The tasks associated with #2 are on my Task List

4. My business projects are in the drawer to the right of my chair where I have easy access to them in a hanging file called ‘Projects’

5. Each month when I do my monthly planning I pull out the Projects folder and review it for anything I want to do in the next month and add these to my Task List

6. Paper clips and pens have a home on the desk as I reach for those several times a day

7.  All of my other office items like the hole punch, highlighters, stapler are in the top drawer next to me

8. I have two bulletin boards on the wall behind my computer monitor where I post my focus activities for the year and other inspirational items

9. I have a whiteboard next to me where I track my projects for the month

If you want to see exactly what all this looks like, check out my YouTube site and watch the Home Office video. 

Whew, now that’s what you call having  ‘A Place for Absolutely Everything’!

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