the bossbabe podcast - 144. How I Organize My Life and Business

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

It’s that time of the year to re-organize your life and business. Join BossBabe Co-Founder & CEO Natalie Ellis as she pulls back the curtain on the systems and tools she uses to organize her personal & professional life. Links: Scale to Six Figures in 2021 with our Free Training: https://bossbabe.com/join-six-figure-2021 If you’re interested in joining our membership, The Société: http://bossbabe.com/connectbuildgrow Follow:  BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie: @iamnatalie

Okay, before we dive in, I have to let you know that the Society is officially open for enrolment. The Society is the place for female entrepreneurs to connect, build and grow. And if you want to work alongside me,, and so many other experts in 2021 to make sure that you hit your massive goals, then this is the place for you. We created it because we wished it existed. When we started out on our journeys, we were so incredibly lonely and finding each other and being able to come together and learn from mentors who've been there and done that has been a real game changer. So we wanted to create the place where you could come and find your business bestie, where you can learn from experts who've been there and done it before, and where you can get coaching on anything that's stopping you or blocking you on hitting those goals. So we're open for enrollment. And something

that I want to let you know is we are making some big changes to the society and it is coming back bigger and better than ever when we reopen. And with that, we are going to have a brand new price tag and it's going to be significantly higher than the cost right now. So this really is your last chance to get in at this price. We're going to be raising the price a lot because the value we're gonna be giving is gonna be tripled. It's gonna be so much bigger and better

than it always has been. So we're really excited to be making all of these changes. And as it stands, the society is already an amazing, amazing program with over $52,000 worth of value that you get for $35 a month. It's crazy. So if you're ready to get in and you're ready to make 2021 the year that you hit those massive goals and you want to do it alongside me, Danielle, and some amazing other mentors, then all the info is below in the

show notes for you, all the links that you need, or you can head to bossy.com forward slash membership. I cannot wait to see you in there. As soon as you join, come on into the Facebook group and introduce yourself. With that, let's dive in. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for

this week's episode. I am doing another solo. Happy New Year. This is not going to be a new year, new me type thing. Really, that's not my thing every year. I'm not the kind of New Year's resolution person. I like to get really clear on who I want to show up as in the new year and the whole year and what I want to achieve just as a whole high level versus I want to start this new habit or I want to remove this one. I feel like every day is a day to start afresh and to be able to start new habits and achieve new goals and refresh maybe the way you are doing things are showing up. So I'm just really thinking about the energy that I really want to embody going into the

year. Like I said, who I'm going to be showing up as what I want to achieve but I do have a word to describe what I want 2021 to symbolize and the word for me is adventure so I mentioned on my last podcast episode that I was considering moving out of California and that is so adventurous for me that's a huge if I to do it, that's going to be a huge move. So this year is going to be a lot of adventure, exploring, perhaps moving. It feels pretty likely right now. And just being willing to say yes to adventure and new things and getting uncomfortable. So that's the word that is summing up the year. If you know yours, screenshot this episode and tag me and let me know what your word is. I'm really, really interested. And before before we dive in I know that you are so committed to achieving your goals you want to hit the ground running you do not want to be starting scrambling at the end of January so if

that is you I have put a bunch of links below that you need to get on because I've created a ton of free trainings I have so many resources so click the links in the show notes below and you can head over there and really dive in and get so clear on what 2021 looks like for you, what you're going to achieve, what your roadmap looks like to getting there, what you're going to embody and who you're going to show up as. All the links are below. So come join me for a more in detail training because we only get a limited amount of time here and I put in a lot more time to the trainings. So I really want to do an episode on how I organize my life and business, because if you didn't know already, I am absolutely obsessed with organization. It's very Capricorn of me, it's Capricorn season right now, I'm living it, I'm embracing it, I'm unapologetic about my

slight OCD around organization. Even to a point, I go to my friends' houses for free and organize their closets just for fun on a Saturday afternoon. Like Stephen cannot understand it whatsoever. He's like, why are you doing that on a weekend? Like, this is ridiculous. I just go around for fun and I will organize their entire closet.

I will label everything. I will be very honest about what needs to be thrown out and what gets to stay so if you do welcome me around you have to be willing to also have that piece of it but I love organization and I used to feel like you know when some people like but is your house really that organized and part of me would want to be like well you shouldn't say yes because you don't want to come across as it you're making things up or everything's perfect and which is not the case at all but when it comes to my house it actually is really organized there is very rarely things out of place I'm a Capricorn my husband's a Virgo we're both absolutely obsessed with organizing we don't have kids we have a very small dog so yes everything is organized so I'm not saying my life

is perfect by any means but definitely the organization piece at my house, it's so organized and so clean and tidy. And I love it that way. My home is my sanctuary. And if anything's out of place, I do not feel good about anything. I cannot work. I'm not productive.

I'm really obsessed with having everything clean, organized and tidy. I have spreadsheets for spreadsheets. I have a spreadsheet on everything you could possibly imagine. I have a spreadsheet to give to my cleaning lady. I have spreadsheets for packing. I have spreadsheets for assistance. I have spreadsheets for me and Steven for like things we do weekly, bi-weekly, quarterly. Like I even put on the spreadsheets things like every quarter log in to Unroll Me which is a program which you sign in via email and you can basically unsubscribe yourself to hundreds of emails at a time I have everything on there quarterly every six months every year

like you name it it's on there things like getting my carpets cleaned like I am crazy about this so if there's anyone that you want to listen to about organization I'm going to throw my hat in the ring because I really enjoy it and I get very enthusiastic about it and I have a feeling some of you listening to this are relating or like ready to commit to getting organized. Either or, I feel like you're going to enjoy this episode. So I love hacks, I love making my life easier, I love streamlining, efficiency, all the things. So this episode is going to be all about how I organize my life and business because both are really important and it's the same way that I feel really uncomfortable if my house is messy. I would feel the same way if my Google Drive was messy. So let's start there.

Let's start with Google Drive. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting

organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe I keep everything on Google Drive because I like to be able to access my files my spreadsheets anywhere that I am anywhere that I go so having it on Google Drive means I can to be able to access my files, my spreadsheets, anywhere that I am, anywhere that I go. So having it on Google Drive means I can have it on my phone, I can have on laptop. If I am not on my laptop but I'm on someone else's, I can log in. Everything's there,

everything's shareable, people can collaborate on it, all of those things. So Google Drive is firstly one of the tools that I love. Let's move on to email. So I have a few hacks with email that might make your life easy. So I am a big fan of Inbox Zero. I really like how it looks. I like how it feels. It's just me. I just like it a lot. So Inbox Zero is sometimes hard to get to if you have a lot of emails that require a lengthy response or let's be honest you're avoiding it because you don't want to answer that and that's how emails can gather all there's loads of spam in there that you're not clearing out if so go to unroll.me I'm not sponsored or affiliate by them I'm just obsessed with them and clean out any spam that you don't

need make sure you leave boss babe on there but you know everyone else can go so make sure you clean out everything like that and then be doing this regularly so I normally set two times in the day that I go in and do my emails and that's like at the beginning of the day end of the day and I have enough time just clear things out respond to what needs to be responded to and get down to inbox zero however not everything needs to be answered by you and needs to be answered right away. So I use Gmail. So I use tags inside of Gmail. My husband's obsessed with something called, I think it's Superhero, where it like brings all of his emails into one place. I'm not sold on that.

I love a good old Gmail, but you can always check that out if you're interested. But yeah, I use tags. And if you're not sure how to do it, just Google using tags in Gmail. Basically, they're tags. You can color code them, which of course I do. It's very like nude pastel color coding on the side of my Gmail. And I have three main tags. I have for assistant, to delegate, and for later. Because I don't have my assistant manage my entire inbox because there's a lot of things that I can go in there and do myself. I know my assistant would be okay replying to for me I will just drag that email into the assistant tag it looks like a little mini inbox it sits in there so it's unread it doesn't show up as unread for me but it's unread inside of that tab and she can go in every day and see what needs to be answered so that's the first one I also use to

delegate as a tag so I drag anything that needs to be delegated into that inbox and then I'll go in a couple of times a week and I'll delegate that you know when you need time to just maybe record a loom video or give a bit more of a brief I'll set aside time I'll go in I'll go through those emails and see what can be delegated maybe it's hey can I get the login details for this or I need access to this I can delegate that I don't need to do it I'll drag it into that folder then the third thing is for later so let's say it's a pretty long email that I know I need to get to but it's not time sensitive and I can get to it later I don't need it sitting in my inbox unread I just drag it to the for later box and then I'll go in I'll set time once twice a week I'll go in and I'll respond to those emails properly so already this is just gonna help

you get a much cleaner inbox drag things where they need to be and achieve the inbox zero that you're looking for I love it another thing that I would say with emails is let's say and this is this might not be for you this is the thing for me a lot of people reach out trying to get on the podcast now generally we're not booking podcast episodes like interviews right now because we want to do a lot of solos and we have loads in the bank so I can't imagine we'll be booking for like another six months. However instead of me saying leaving it unread or say like if I am interested in this person like having this person on I will say hey this isn't a priority for me right now or I'm not booking podcasts right now can you circle back in three months six months whatever it is. Same thing with if someone's pitching me for something,

like they want me to do an interview, but it's just not helping me get towards my goals right now. I'll just reply and say, hey, this is not a priority for me right now, but I'm still interested. Can you circle back with me in two months? That way it comes off your plate. You're not having to do anything. And if they want you on the podcast, they'll circle back with you.

And that's easy for them to do. They'll put it in their follow-up sequence and they'll come back so that's been really helpful I would also say sometimes you get emails in it's like hey can you be on my podcast next month and you know it is not helping you get towards your goals it is not a priority right now but you're like oh I should probably say yes I don't let this person down it's a client or a friend or whatever but you really don't want to do it and instead you're like hey yeah let's book it for two months. Because you feel like in two months you can have a free, clear schedule and there's no better time. But realistically, two months is going to roll around and you're going to be like, oh, why did I bother booking this interview? I don't want to do it. I've

been putting it off. And then you might push it again. And all of a sudden it's getting very out of integrity because you know you don't want to do it. They probably know you don't want to do it but it's still sitting on the calendar and it's just this awkward obligation. If you don't want to do something, say no. Say no right away and say this isn't in alignment for me right now. I'm going to pass. I am going to pass. That's it and then you don't have to have something on your calendar that you're dreading in a couple of months time because chances are if you're pushing it back a few months you're not that into it really unless for example you're launching a book and you know you don't want to do any podcast interviews until the book's coming out or something then it makes sense but otherwise you're probably just putting off saying no and we all know no is a strong solid word maybe no

is the word of 2021 so that's email and like said, just checking it a couple of times a day versus always being on. Also, this might surprise you, but I don't have my emails on my phone. I don't have the app, nothing like that. I deleted it. I was finding myself just living in my inbox, jumping in and out when I had a spare five minutes. It's not really necessary. Yes, I can do it and it might keep me on top of things, but it's not really necessary. So I just got rid of it and I feel so much cleaner and clearer at not having it. So let's move on to team communication. We use two main things for team communication. We use Slack and Voxer. So for Slack, it's, you know, our entire team's in there. We have different channels based on different things. It might be

a channel for podcast, a main boss babe channel, a channel for YouTube, marketing, operations, all the different channels down the side products and that's where everyone communicates and we use voxer for voice notes we were using whatsapp but you know what it's like when someone sends you a three minute voice note that really could have been a 30 second voice note but they just like the sound of their voice no i'm kidding they're just they're not landing the plane and you know you don't need to listen to it the whole three minutes and you'll skip and you get bored. So that's what was happening for me. And so someone on my team was like, well, let's just get Voxat because I think everyone's going to be a lot less pissed off by getting

these long voice notes because basically you can speed up the message. So you can like put it on 3x speed and people are like speaking really, really fast and you can get straight to the point and it's much easier. So we use Voxer. Big, big fan of it. That's been saving me so much time. We bring everyone into Slack, whether it's freelancers or even people who are employing just for like a three-month project.

We bring everyone into Slack because I don't want to be going between email and text. It doesn't work for me. I want everything in one place. And this again might surprise you, but I don't have Slack on my phone. I don't need to be always on 24-7. That's not part of my business. That's not the kind of life that I want to live. I don't want to have to be on 24-7. So I don't have Slack on my phone. So if I'm getting texts or WhatsApps, then I want to know it's from like friends. It's casual. It's not something that urgently needs my attention. I do have Voxer on my

phone. I don't know if it has another option but I enjoy having that part on my phone I just don't check it I don't have the notifications popping up and I don't check it like evenings weekends early mornings things like that so that's covered email and then Slack and Voxer so let's go into task organization so I absolutely live by Asana every week I go into Asana and set my goals for the week and list out what tasks I want to get done. I also have a master Asana board that organizes everything I want to work on in the next six months. And I just consistently add my ideas in there so nothing gets lost, but it's all out of my head. That really keeps me on track. It's very, very clearly laid out I also use Asana for meeting notes that everything's really easy to find and again clearly laid out so everything is in Asana absolutely everything I even have you're gonna think that I'm absolutely crazy I even have an Asana board with Stephen I invited Stephen to it and we have everything in there like if we need to go and I know take

our car to do xyz or we need to file a certain form or, yeah, you never know. There's always kind of thing, book flights, everything's in Asana. I live by Asana and it means I know I'm always on top of everything because it's written down. It has a deadline, it's assigned, it's clear. I am not forgetting it. I'm not just writing it down somewhere and perhaps losing it or hoping it gets done.

I live by it and it's really, really helpful. I also delegate everything to my team in Asana and what I generally do is include a loom video. That's L-O-O-M. A loom video with instructions so that they can clearly see what I want them to do and then I also set deadlines so everyone's really, really clear. I love loom. It's a video you can share your screen and talk over it and again people can speed it up so they can get to the point a lot faster that's really helpful my team absolutely loves it I love receiving looms sometimes looms can replace meetings which is really helpful because none of us want to be in back-to-back meetings all day long so often if someone asks me for a meeting and I know it can just be a video I'm like just send me

a loom allowance from there and it saves so much time and you can work on your schedule so then let's go to calendar and I know I'm blasting through it, but we're just going to get this done. We have a lot to cover. There's a lot of ground being covered right now. So calendar. I firstly have no meetings every single Thursday. It's a blank day and it's a day that I just get shit done. I actually execute on things versus being in meetings or whatever.

So no meetings every Thursday. That's the first thing. Monday is the kind of day where I'm reviewing the past week or getting really clear on what's happening this week and really setting myself up for success. Tuesday is normally client calls or collaborating on projects, things like that. Wednesday is normally a meeting day. I get a lot of team meetings done on Wednesday and then Friday is normally a content day. This is where I batch absolutely everything. Reels, podcasts, social posts, everything gets batched on a Friday.

It's when I'm like feeling that Friday mood. I know I'm you know going for acupuncture at 4pm. I have a very specific schedule so I feel a lot more relaxed and a lot more able to create good content on a Friday. So that's kind of how I organize my week. And surprise, surprise, I color code absolutely everything in my calendar so that at a glance, I can see what's coming up. I have team meetings a certain color. I have personal things a certain color. I have tasks a certain color, client calls a certain color. What I also do is I schedule all of my personal things in there. So date night, if I'm going to acupuncture, personal training, and I also schedule tasks that I need to complete. So I'm time blocking and knowing that things are getting done. So I might schedule 30 minutes, record podcast episode,

30 minutes, create two reels, 30 minutes, review this copy. I put it all in so I know like every minute of the day, I know what I should be working on. There's no kind of guessing. And then I obviously invite people to see my calendar so they can see what I've got going on. They can get time in my calendar if they want to. There's none of that back and forth. Are you available on these times? It's just very, very clear and people can get on there. And then moving to the personal side. So I won't go too much into detail about this because I know we've covered a lot today, but I want to give a bit more on the personal side. So one thing that I did, which I love, I have a whiteboard on my fridge

where I write down any personal errands that we need to run. I also add meals. So what we're eating and when, so that I know what kind of food I need to get out. Do I need to get salmon or steak out of the freezer? Do I need any vegetables prepped? I know what we're doing each day. Personal errands can be can be put on there like do I need to run some returns to the post office do we call the post office in America I think so take it all off it's all on there I

even stick I have the moon deck which is a deck with affirmative cards it's really nice and so it's different things like I think the card I pulled the other day was my inner compass knows the way I love that so I pull a card genuinely with Stephen every week and we put that on the whiteboard as well and it just like sets the intention for the week and we've got that up as a reminder I have a lot of systems for everything in my house like the whiteboard is one of them and then another thing is I keep a lot of back stock I don't ever want to be running out of things I label everything I normally once what I do once a month like on a weekend is I just do a quick sweep of the house and make sure like if I go in my cupboards I normally have everything

organized into bins and labeled if things are just getting thrown in you know when you're having a really busy week you just throw things in once a month I go through and I just make sure everything's clean and tidy because what happens is if you leave things for too long that's when you get like chaos and mess so I just go through get everything tidy make sure it's clean and then I also like do refills if like hand soaps are low different things like that I do refills and then I'll order anything that's low I typically have everything on a recurring order from Amazon Prime or other companies like toilet paper paper towels and all those different things it's generally on auto renew even like a lot of my food is on auto renew as well just to make everything efficient and easy. So I'll do that

once a month and it doesn't take a lot of time, a couple of hours and it just keeps everything in check and make sure that everything's organized and it's fun, fun for me. I like it. If you haven't noticed you've probably seen all my stories, those little time lapses where I'm just sitting organizing stuff. It's really cathartic. So that is how I organize my life and business and I hope it's been really helpful for you if there's anything that I didn't cover that you would like to know about firstly take a screenshot of this share it on your stories tag me at I am Natalie at bossbabe.inc let me know what else you want to see I love talking about organizing if you couldn't tell I don't think I've taken a single breath this entire episode and also before I go I would love it if you would write us a review

if you love this podcast or share it with someone that you think would love it. We are going all in on the podcast in 2021 so any support that you can offer would be absolutely amazing. I love doing podcasts and then again I've put a bunch of links below with free trainings for you if you're wanting to really dive in and educate yourself ahead of the new year and get a roadmap ready for 2020 so when it comes to end of January you're not scrambling now is the perfect time it's the perfect week to get your roadmap pulled together so I will see you next week. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll

send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. the boss of 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth it covers everything from our favorite rituals books and hacks if you want a copy just leave us a review screenshot it and send to podcast at bosswave.com we will then email you a copy asap and since we love instagram you can go to the hashtag the boss babe podcast and find our latest post and leave a question in the comments we love reading through the comments and we'll make sure to answer it on our next podcast