How To Organize Your Business: 3 Steps To Set Up Your Business Systems

Business

Dec 8

If prospective clients and customers saw how you were running your business… would they still want to work with you?

Are you too too busy to organize your files, so you haphazardly name them, drop them on your desktop, and have no idea how to find anything when you need it?

Does every day feels like you're starting from scratch?

Do you write your notes and reminders in too many places and don't have a "home base" setup for your business.

With so many things to juggle, it’s easy for things to get overwhelming and out of control.

That’s why it is important to set up a foundation of systems for your business that will help you get organized and stay organized.

And it only takes 3 simple steps to get started!

3 Steps To Set Up Your Business Systems:

Step #1: set up your business email, calendar, and filing system.

Step number one is to set up your business email, calendar, and filing system. I recommend you do this using G Suite (affiliate link), formerly known as Google Apps for Work.

G Suite is a collection of must-have tools for your business. I use it to manage my calendar, store all of my files, email back and forth for business purposes, and so much more.

You can sign up for the basic plan for just $5 a month, or if you're willing to spend $10 a month per user, you can pick the business plan and get unlimited storage. I actually just recently upgraded to business a few weeks ago, and every single business file I have is in G Suite.

Plus, G Suite and Google Drive is so helpful and easy when you need to collaborate with others and easily share specific files and folders with your team or anyone you're working with.

Step #2: set up a project management system.

I recommend you use Asana for your project management system.

I love Asana for so many reasons. I'm in it every single day, all day. One of my favorite parts is how much they give you on the free account. I love that in Asana I can assign myself tasks, delegate tasks, color code, use tags, create subtasks, attach Google Drive files, and so much more. The features really are incredible, but it doesn't have to be complicated.

One of the best parts about Asana is that it is as simple or as complex as you need for your business. You get nearly all of the features and up to 15 team members all on a free Asana account.

I love that I start every day knowing exactly what I need to do for my business and having detailed processes, especially for things like creating videos, all in one place.

One tip for you here when it comes to Asana is to sign up using your business email. Hopefully, your business email is from your domain, just like mine is @meganminns.com. You want to sign up for Asana using that email. You'll automatically be set up as an organization at no extra charge. The reason you want to be set up as an organization is it allows you a whole other level of organization. Suddenly, you have access to a thing called Teams. This is great for having better control over who has access to what. Even for me, I just love that I have another way to categorize my projects. Instead of having all of my projects in one long list, I have a team that's called Content, and every project is every video I'm creating for YouTube and that entire process. I have a Content team, I have an Operations team, I have a Marketing team, and I have a Products team. It allows me to have different projects under each team, which helps keep things even more organized.

Step #3: set up a way to communicate with the rest of your team.

I recommend using a free tool called Slack to have ongoing communication with your team.

By using Slack, you can have channels to organize the topics that you're talking about. It's just a great place to casually communicate with your team and stay out of your inbox. That way, you're not sending emails back and forth.

With these two systems, Asana and Slack, you have a really clear and easy way to communicate with your team.

Asana, you would add comments on tasks when you have a task-related question, and then in Slack is where you can get to know your team, have random conversation. Maybe you have a quick suggestion, or you encountered a customer service issue that you wanted to talk about. This is the place to do that. It's so much faster than email and all around a great tool.

I know what you're thinking. Maybe you don't even have a team, and you feel like Slack can't work for you.

I totally get that, but I actually just set it up for my own business. It's been a nice way to set up different integrations with other platforms. Google Calendar will send me a message on my Slack channel with the schedule I have for the day, everything on my calendar. I can see when I have a team using Slack even more. The good news, though, is that it's free. So if you just want to set up a Slack to chat with friends or contractors, that's great. But I do think if you have a team, Slack is a essential system you need in your business.

Plus, Slack works with almost every other system, so there are some really neat integrations you can set up. When someone assigns you a task in Asana, you can get a notification in Slack. You can have Google Calendar send you a summary of your day in the morning, and so much more. You definitely want to have Slack set up in your business.

Now you know the three things you need to set up and organize your business the right way.