25. Digital organization, SOPs, and Workflows - Oh My! | BONUS Listener Q&A

These terms get tossed around a lot, but what do they actually mean and why do we need to know about them? Let's dive into this listener question together.

These show notes may contain affiliate links.
I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this description.

--> I'd love to support your business

Learn more here

--> Do you have a win-win story to share with the teacher business community?

Apply to be a guest here

--> Let's chat business on Instagram @teacherjaniceva

Reach out on Instagram here

Transcript

[00:00:00] Janice: I am back with another bonus episode. That means a listener asked a juicy question, and I'm here to share my answer.

[00:00:34] Today's question has multiple parts. This person is looking for tips for keeping business organized SOPs and workflows, so let's break those down. A tip for keeping business organized is to bring all of the details that live in your brain, and on paper notebooks, and post-it notes and store them in a safe

[00:00:57] digital space. My favorite place to store things is in Asana and Asana is my free project management tool that serves as the home base for everything. And I absolutely keep things in Google Drive, and I absolutely keep things in my email inbox, and I absolutely keep things in Dubsado that are client related, but all of those places

[00:01:21] link back to my master hub, which is Asana. And Asana is that bossy main office secretary that tells me exactly what to do at the beginning of my day and hands me on a silver platter of a clipboard exactly what I need to do it. And what that means is if today my job is to write a blog post, my outline for that blog post and the steps that I want to take every time I make an optimized blog post are already inside that task.

[00:01:53] And the time I'm going to do the task might also be mentioned in there too. So if it says that at 8:30 AM my daughter's gonna leave for school and I'm gonna start working on that blog post, then it's already gathered for me all the bits and pieces that I'm gonna need to do it. The Canva link to the project where I keep my blog images that are already sized and branded is already in there.

[00:02:18] The steps that I take, that outline, the keyword opportunity, all the login information for all the things I'm gonna need to touch to do that task are all already there. So my job is just to walk in and open the task, and go through the checklist. And so when we talk about keeping our business organized, that's more than just having everything in a Google Drive folder.

[00:02:42] When we add the SOP, the standard operating procedure of how we like a task done, and we take that checklist out of our brain and put it into something we can see now we have a workflow. Now we have a way that business is done inside our business. This is how I write a blog post. This is the process I go through to pin something on Pinterest.

[00:03:09] This is my signature process for making a resource that goes in my store. First, I do research. Here's what that looks like. Here's where I go. Here's where I put it. Here's the specific questions I'm going out to solve. Here's how long I'm gonna allow myself to spend on that research. Here's how long I'm gonna spend gathering the clip art and choosing the fonts.

[00:03:33] Here's a list of the fonts and clip art that I usually use so that things are matching and stay aligned to my brand. All of that is part of business organization. We're thinking beyond Google Drive. We're taking the ways that we usually do things and we're making them a little more formal so that we have a checklist and a signature process that's living somewhere other than your brain.

[00:04:00] And so business organization is a little bit of a spiral curriculum. We're not going to get all of these systems and processes out of our brain in one day. We're not gonna clean up every little digital touch point in our business in one day. But it's something that we commit to. We're saying my business is really important to me, and because it's important

[00:04:23] I want to keep it organized so that I don't lose things and I wanna be able to find things quickly because my time is of value. And I don't wanna spend time explaining things to people over and over again when I could be writing down the process once in a way that's digital and shareable. And I don't wanna have to recreate a template because I can't find the file I used last time. And I don't want to lose a great idea I found in a past research session because I didn't bank it in a safe space.

[00:04:56] So digital organization isn't about winning a prize or a ribbon, it's about honoring the business that we've built and thinking about it in a way where we really want it to reach its potential long term. And all the businesses that you admire are organized in some way because their CEO really cares about them deeply and the long-term health of that business is worth taking the time

[00:05:24] to keep things organized. So a very short answer to what was a very long open-ended question, but I hope that those ideas help you here how I think about digital organization and why I am so passionate about it and why I really do think it's worth time in our busy CEO calendar. Do you have a teacher business question you're hoping to hear answered on the podcast?

[00:05:52] I'll leave a link for you in the show notes. Thanks for listening.