the bossbabe podcast - 67. How To Be Insanely Organized (Without Actually Going Insane)

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Organization is more than clearing your inbox or having a spotless desktop because you threw everything into a misc. folder (we’ve all done this). Whether you’re a one woman show or leading a small team, organization is key to scaling, operations, and your sanity. We’re talking all things organization and sharing our favorite software apps that will take your efficiency and productivity to new heights. We believe believe organization is the foundation to having control of your time - but first you need a solid strategy and a few clever tools. Tune in for the ultimate guide to organization, including hacks we use daily and actionable steps that you can implement right away.  This episode is sponsored by the Insta Growth Accelerator. A 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account: instagrowthaccelerator.com Software mentioned: Slack  Asana  Gmail  Google Drive Data Box 

Just really making sure you have a system. They're a collaborative so they're easy to link into each other and they're at a place where they're both organized in a similar system. What is it that I do need to do? What is it that I could delegate? And what is it that I actually need to do, what is it that I could delegate, and what is it that I actually don't need to do. 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 Kaye Snells, Head of Marketing at Boss Babe, and your host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of Team Boss Babe will dive into one topic, whether that's product, sales, marketing, community, or leadership.

So consider this your weekly mini training that's super actionable so you can implement it right away. On today's mini episode, we've got our very own Danielle Canty. You'll recognize her as one of the hosts of the Boss Babe podcast, but she's primarily Boss Babe's co-founder and COO. As a trained business coach and a doctor of chiropractic, Danielle's passion lies in high performance, business strategy, and operational scalability. Today, we're going to discuss the key softwares for you to stay organized in your business. So as always, screenshot yourself listening to this podcast and share it on your stories along with your biggest takeaway. You can tag at bossbabe.inc and hashtag the Boss Babe podcast. This episode is brought to

you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12 week program designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account. If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their credit cards at you, then listen up. Our CEO Natalie has created a completely free 90 minuteminute training to do exactly that. We'll take you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy from you would completely change the game, then this training is for you. Visit bossbabe.com slash grow that Insta. 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 version of success. Welcome to the other side of the Boss Babe podcast, Danielle. I am loving this. Thank you for having me here. I'm fun. I'm excited to give our listeners lots of takeaways. How does it feel being in the hot seat? Different. For sure. Very different. But I'm really excited about sharing it. I love I love staying on stage and I love doing the Boss Babe podcast as well. So it's really nice to kind

of combine the two of like teaching but through this method. So it feels good. Yeah, I'm excited to draw a lot of insights from you. So we're going to talk today about startup softwares and how they can help you stay organized. And I feel like you're one of the most organized people I know. So I wanted to ask you before we dive in, where did that start? Like, where did you first gain interest in being organized? So for me, I wasn't organized since school and just really liked things in a particular order. And I remember when we started working on IT classes,

the computer classes at school, I always had my folders very, very organized. Like things were always in set places because I always wanted to be able to find things. And that's just something that's kind of really progressed throughout my career. And obviously I became a chiropractor and you have to be very organized with your notes.

You're looking after patient's welfare. So it's really important that you have that sense of responsibility and that sense of organization so that you can find things when it matters and you know that information so it was a very easy transition for me and as I've entered the startup world I'm working with a lot more creatives it's become something that I've realized actually isn't natural to a lot of people but it is actually a skill that if you are an entrepreneur or someone who wants to kind of grow in their business, you do need to know where things are at and when to find them really easily. So I think it's a key skill. Some of us are always going to be more

naturally organized than others, but it's something that everybody can, this podcast can be something that everyone can take something away from. That's so, so true. And I feel like it's so true that you don't have to be organized right now. You can become organized because in my own experience, I am a creative and I do marketing and it's just ideas and throwing things against the wall. And so I feel like I have trained myself to become more organized and now people perceive me as someone who is, but I wasn't always that way. So I'm really excited for you to kind of share some softwares that can help people who aren't as organized right now in their business really get to that point. So can you list a few of your favorite ones? Yeah, of course. And another thing to talk about as well,

before I just dive into that list is the fact that why it's important and being organized. So when you're in business, and I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who are just starting out, and things can seem really hectic. But what happens if you don't start with like the foundations of your organization, is that you'll become too busy to allow anybody in. So what I see happening is everyone's busy, but they have all this chaos around them so that when they go to recruit, when they go to get that VA, when they go to hire the next team member, when they come to expand the team, everything's in their heads. So they know where things are on their computer. And then it becomes very difficult to let someone infiltrate that and let someone come in and help you because how can they possibly navigate the system that you don't have and so that's why it's really important and why it's a lesson that we want to kind of chat about I'm not going to be teaching you rocket science today I'm just going to teach you some basic principles

that if you can start now and start implementing and kudos to you if you've already done this but if you haven't and start it now and just spend like okay I'm going to spend an hour on this each week, getting these things in place. So the first place I always say to start, and I'm going to go back to my childhood, is like the computer files. So I know so many people whose computer files are complete and absolute mess. And you know, everything is all over the place. Their desktop is full of screenshots or random files here and there, but it's really important. I always say like, if you have an organized environment, you're going to have an organized mind. And there's actually a lot of research to prove that. So the first place I'd start is like,

we use Google drive, but if you're using Microsoft, whatever it is, making sure your folders are really like succinct. So what we have is we have a main Boss Babe folder. And then when you enter that, you're going to see folders like, okay, there's going to be a marketing folder. There's going to be an operations folder. There's going to be a product folder. that, you're going to see folders like, okay, there's going to be a marketing folder. There's going to be an operations folder. There's going to be a product folder. And then you're going to like, it's like going down the rabbit hole. So it's not overwhelming with 40 folders in front of you. You're starting to pick topics and you're starting to go a little bit deeper.

And even if you're a one-man band, I think you can start with that. So, okay, here are all my, like, here's my content folder. So that might be where you're writing your Instagram posts or where you're putting your pictures and okay, well, here is my operations folder. So this is where, or a finance folder, this is where I'm going to be keeping track of my payments, et cetera. So no matter how big or small you are, I think just starting in that, those folders and those files is really, really important. And we always love talking about softwares. We actually really love Google Drive because people can edit it.

So when you're adding somebody to your organizations, let's say, you know, you've just started out, Google Drive is free, but you want to be introducing that VA who doesn't work near you. Google Drive is a great resource because you can add them to your Google Drive and you can work on the same document together. And there's none of this downloading it, editing it, then uploading it, and then someone forgetting to upload it. It's very action when it's online. And I'm sure Microsoft had their own version of that, but that's one of the first things that I would start. It's a really good file software that is editable and organized. Oh, that's so interesting. And I actually feel like when I moved to the US,

everyone used Google Drive, but that wasn't my experience in Europe. And things have definitely changed since I moved to the US. But I feel like I still had like a hotmail email and all these things. And I definitely became team Google Drive once I moved here. So I think that's a great tip that kind of works globally, because I do know that different people use different softwares around the world. Yeah, for sure. A lot of my colleagues or like friends, acquaintances, they often use Microsoft in the UK. So I definitely resonate with that. And then keeping with the Gmail theme, then Hotmail theme, I think my next point, of course,

obviously, like, it's not necessarily software software but I just want to continue that organizational point around keeping your emails organized so a couple of tips that I'd recommend people do is they do things like have folders so so so often people just have like a massive emails and when you get to kind of like the start getting to the thousands it's very difficult to remember okay who sent me that like what was their name or what was the subject line they use and things can get really lost so I think starting off just getting in like, okay, having folders where you've opened something and then you've moved it to like, I don't know, let's say a podcast folder. So anything to do with a podcast, I know where I'm going to be able to find it. Likewise, if you're just starting business, whatever sector you're in, I think that's a really good tip along with like flagging

it. So in Gmail, you can kind of create multiple folders and you can also write flags. So let's say you're sharing an inbox, you can create flags on it. This is the case with Gmail anyway. This is okay. This is good K communication. So we might share an inbox K and I'll put K communication because I've opened it, but I want to flag it to you so that you know you can deal with it and then you're going to move it to the done inbox when you've completed. So just really making sure you have a system like you have your file system and you have your email system they're collaborative so they're like easy to like link into each other and they're at a place where they're both organized in a similar system so

you know we spoke about earlier having that finance file where you might have a finance tab on your emails that links in which works really well i knew you were organized but i didn't know we would go this deep all the people who are like real creators are like oh my god i can't cope with this so this is fine you don't have to take away all of it but they're just like i know some people like if you put it on people's radar and go hey did you know that you can do this let's say someone's listening and they're scaling a business and you might be creative well you don't have to do this but you can get your team to because it is going to help those people who are more operational as your operations scale like that organization is going to be key and don't get me wrong i'm not going to stand here and say i have everything perfect

all the time and my my organization or my operations never fail that's that's never going to be point that's not what we're trying to get out but it's just like okay well i'm gonna have on my radar that maybe it would be a benefit being a little bit more structured in this way. 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. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Yeah. Okay. So I got a quick follow-up on that one then. Do you believe in inbox zero? No, I don't. Tell me why. I agree with you. I would love to hear your perspective. Yeah. So your email inbox is somebody else's priorities. It's not yours.

So why should I, like, it doesn't serve me well to put everyone else's priorities ahead of my own. Like I need to be listening to my own to-do list and going to that first. So I do not have this obsessiveness of getting my emails down to naught. If there are multiple in there at the end of the week or at the end of the day, that's fine. I'll just get to them when I get to them. Like I do try and not leave emails too long. And sometimes I might open an email and glance at it, but it's not the right time to me to deal with it. And I might just mark it as unread for a while until I'm like, okay, I'll come back a later date. I also don't have notifications on my phone for emails. So I took all of those off

so that when I go in my emails, I'm going in with the time to deal with them rather than seeing them on the hop, forgetting I've read it, forgetting to mark it as unread and then missing it. So I'm not obsessed with it being zero, but I am quite organized in the way I approach it when I do go in there. I love that. And I fully agree with you. I think your inbox is everyone else's priorities and therefore it's not yours. So I think you can decide which ones are important and which ones you can look at later. And what I sometimes like to do is not just mark them unread, but use boomerang. So it'll tell me, okay, if someone did not respond to me within four days, it will come back to the top of my inbox so that I know that I need

to follow up with them. So I love that. So shifting gears, what are some other softwares you recommend? So I always think it's quite good to have a to-do list software. So whether it be like Evernote or whatever it is, I think like having that software is quite good. Particularly, I really love Evernote. People have heard me speak about it before because I can have like different lists and I also can collaborate them. I know like iPhone and stuff do that too. So it really does depend. But I think actually having to-do lists is really important. I like to say a to-do list and a to-don't list. So sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming. And you know, when things are whirling around my head, I do need that space to have like that brain dump. I'm going, okay, everything

that I have going on in my head right now, I need to put it into a list. And what I'll do from there is I'll, first of all, like look at it and go, okay, what is it that I do need to do? What is it that I could delegate? And what is it that I actually don't need to do? And I really have like an aim of trying to take like 20% off that's actually I don't need to do and the way I understand whether I don't need to do it is like is it actually moving the needle in the business so is it something that is a nice to have or is it something that needs to happen and just you know we obviously have our meetings our leadership team meetings where we're talking about the milestones that we're hitting so if there's lots of things on my list that aren't really pushing towards those milestones then i know i can probably either not do them or maybe i'll delegate them i might

see that they're necessary and there may be an organizational thing that needs to happen but it's not necessarily hugely needle moving so i really like to set aside some time and look at that and then from there i'll sometimes move them into days of the week. So I can go and do this Monday. This is my Tuesday list. This is Wednesday. And I'll spend some time on Sundays normally doing that or over the weekend or a Saturday morning when no one else is in the office. But I generally do that. I find it very hard to do during the week. So I'll generally do it when I have some quieter time and then add to it over the week. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And I feel like as the COO,

it's in the operations world, a lot of things can feel urgent, right? But I think that's a whole other episode. Yeah, completely. And so these are, I know we're talking about like, I know some of this stuff, we're talking about softwares,

but I wanted to really like tie it back to, you can use, you should be looking for softwares that help you do these things as well. So I could list loads of other softwares and we'll come to a couple more, but there's looking for softwares that help you do these things as well. So I could list loads of other softwares and we'll come to a couple more, but there's loads of softwares that we use and perhaps we can do a marketing software one, which is even more bespoke. But I think it's just like understanding, okay, where does softwares lie in your business and software should always be

making your life easier. And when you identify the things that you're struggling with your business, which is a lot for a lot of people organization, these are some of the ones that will help you get organized and create the outcome whoosh perfect so my next one i'm going to say is a project management software so we are crazy about asana in fact if anyone follows me on instagram we had some asana sock centers sent to us i'm danielle canty on Instagram and I was flashing them around like they were white with bright pink and yellow. So I'm a big fan of my Asana socks, which shows we are a fan of the product. But there's loads of project management softwares. There's Trello as well. But I really like Asana because you can work in boards and you can work in lists. And

I would say even if you're a one man band, or even if there's just two or three of you in your business, Asana is a great place to start. It's almost like you have that list that we spoke about, but this is like moving the project forward. So it's kind of like more complicated list. So there might be like, okay, you have this, but you want to delegate it. So now you put it in Asana and you put someone's name next to it. Or it might be that you have a plan. So you have a plan so you have a launch so with the society launch takes i know you live asana as well you mapped all the launch out in asana and then was able to delegate it so you

can have that brain dump in asana then delegate it and the other way i like to use it as well as to move projects forward so you might be able to say like create a board where you're like okay well this is what i'd like to do this is what's in progress and this is done and you can move big tasks through that. So it really helps with that sense of accomplishment if you're on your own and also helps with that team management as you start to build.

And I think, like I said at the beginning, even if you're on your own, starting to get used to using these softwares is a really good baseline, particularly when there's only like one or two of you. I'm not actually sure with Asana if it is free at that stage. I think it might be actually.

But most of the softwares get you in free. And then it's just scaling that way and start charging. Yeah, I love Asana as well. Some of my previous teams actually didn't love it. And I was a huge fan. So I'm actually really happy when I joined Boss Babe that you guys do everything in Asana. And my favorite feature is you can turn on the unicorn. Have you done that before? No. What? I need to know the unicorn. About to blow your mind. So you can turn on

this unicorn setting where if you complete a task and you hit to do or you hit done, then a unicorn will jump across your screen. Oh oh my goodness you wait that is like as soon as i've done with this podcast i am getting on that and getting that unicorn i love it a lot if you're like checking off a lot of things but you know can you have two unicorns in your life i'm not sure yeah that's actually true all right what else is there i think another one which i don't think is necessarily an organization, but a software that I think has been really instrumental in our business is actually Slack. Because I think one of the key things where we have a remote team

is communication. And I think Slack has been really instrumental in that. We use it with our mastermind clients as well. And it's just a real place. Facebook can be very intrusive at times if you're working and you want to be socializing on it as well. But what I like about Slack is there's that communication software. It has things like a snooze button. So actually at the weekend, you don't need to get notifications. Or after a certain time at night, you don't need to get notifications. And I think that's really powerful and has been really instrumental in growing our business.

So we can say to you, I also use Slack for corridor conversation. So it's not for like Asana's like for managing projects and it's like updates on workflows but Slack's like oh hey I know just letting you know I've uploaded this so it's just like a pass like something you'd be able to say to someone in the corridor rather than like can you do this like it shouldn't be utilized for can you do's but it's okay for like updates or like oh yeah I'm this is happening or hey it's Kay's birthday today let's shout her out or let's shout out these wins we use it for that and I think that's really powerful yeah agreed I also love like all the different integrations so us being able to see some data about our company we just type in some code and then it just pops it up for us. I love

those features and I'm glad you love Slack. I'll pass on the message to my friend who works at Slack as a product marketing manager. I love it. She's doing her job right. I love that. And then I think my last point actually is what you've just touched on there is I'd say DataBox is my last software. So again, I hope what I've hoped to do this podcast is like, there's almost like an evolution, like starting on those basics and adding to them. Because then I think as you're getting more advanced and you're growing your business, a real key software is like, you need to be able to see your data. And we use DataBox and we actually have that link to our Slack. So like Kay says, if anyone wants any information on the business in the leadership

team, they can type in Slack and they can see that data and i think just looking at integrations is really powerful and actually saying that asana also integrates with slack as well so just having those like powerful integrations and automations and what makes your life easier is really important when you're kind of deciding on your softwares i think that's really interesting and i would love to kind of wrap this up by advising someone where they could get started. So let's imagine that, you know, you're a one woman show, and you want to start somewhere, where would you recommend out of all these softwares that someone starts? I would just be like, okay, outside of getting your files organized and your emails sorted like I'd say that's priority I would probably say Asana to be honest or like a project management software

because I think it's just really really powerful even if you start with to-do list on there I think it's just a really nice way to have that on your desktop map your workflows out see what you've got like because you can get a little bit more complicated with okay this is my brain dump of where I am with this launch and what I want to get done. So I would say a project management software for sure. That's so key, because I think it's not just a tool, it's a tool for motivation as well. Especially if you're running your business by yourself right now, it can feel so satisfying to check that box and then potentially a unicorn pops up. So thank you so much for this episode today. I feel like there were so many takeaways. So thank you. Thank you.

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