What is it about springtime that makes us want to push up our sleeves deep clean everything in sight? There’s something so satisfying about stepping back after a good cleaning session and seeing the fruits of your labor. You feel so excited to spend time in your home again! It’s a big job, but it’s definitely worth it.
In addition to your annual home cleaning ritual, do you also set aside time to spring clean your business? Sure, you probably clear off your desk and wipe everything down… but I’m talking about tackling your processes and your physical and virtual clutter.
If you don’t do this, I want to challenge you to do it this year. Give yourself a little bit of time to cleanse your business so you can step into Q2 with a feeling of invigoration!
The 10 Steps You Need to Follow to Spring Clean Your Business
Here’s a list I created to help you cover all of the necessary bases as you spring clean your business:
- Declutter Your Physical Space – Did you know that 80% of the items we keep, we never actually use? I’m not telling you that you have to be a minimalist, I’m just suggesting that you assess what’s on your desktop and in your office space and determine if it’s something that can be tossed, shredded, filed away, or donated.
- Evaluate Your Team – Now that you’ve examined the items you surround yourself with, it’s time to examine the people you surround yourself with. Do you have the people on your team that you need in order to accomplish your goals this year?
- If not, make a list of the tasks you need covered, and decide how many roles you’re looking to fill.
- Make a plan and set a due date to get those job postings up so you can really start moving the needle in Q2.
- If you aren’t sure if you have the right people in the right seats doing the right work, I’d love to chat with you!
- Optimize Your Processes – It’s time to be honest with yourself. Are there bottlenecks in your processes that are holding you back from accomplishing your goals on time?
- Map out the processes you follow most often and put an asterisk next to areas that are creating a pain point.
- Inefficient processes aren’t just frustrating, they can impact your bottom line.
- Spend some time brainstorming alternative processes you could implement immediately and then make sure to get your team on the same page.
- Automate Your Processes – Along with this, I want you to identify the areas in your business that could be automated. “Automation” is one of those buzzwords that is difficult to conceptualize, but think of things like onboarding and training.
- Clean Your File Directory – Your file directory is where you store everything on your computer, and if you’re like most business owners, it’s probably a little bit chaotic. Now is a great time to organize your files into folders and create a back-up in case anything were to happen to your computer’s hard drive.
- Create a Scorecard – If you manage a team, you should have an easy way to track their performance. You can create a simple scorecard in Google Sheets in a Google Drive folder that you and the team member both have access to.
- On a monthly or quarterly basis, you can score them on a set of metrics that are aligned with your business goals.
- They can easily see which things they need to work on without you needing to micromanage them.
- This is also a great place to drop in the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are related to their role so they can take more ownership over the numbers.
- Review Your Subscriptions and Recurring Charges – The busier we are, the more likely we are to have subscriptions and recurring charges we don’t even know about. There are tools out there you can use to manage these things. I use a tool called TrackMySubs, which you can check out here (note: this is an affiliate link so if you end up getting a paid plan, I will earn a small percentage). Otherwise, you can sit down and look at the last two months’ worth of bank statements. Is there anything you can stop paying for or is there an opportunity to negotiate a better rate?
- Implement a Project Management System – There are so many good project management systems out there, and most of them offer a free version that probably does everything you need it to do. Personally, I recommend starting with Asana. If this one doesn’t work for you, Trello and Slack are also very popular choices.
- Evaluate Your To-Do List Habits – Do you spend five minutes at the end of each workday to write down a to-do list for the next day? This is a great habit to get into. I love it because when I show up for work in the morning, I know exactly what I need to do and I can dive right in. In a few weeks, I am going to be doing a “To-Do List Challenge” so make sure you’re following my Facebook Page so you can participate!
- Time-Block Your Calendar – Streamlining your day so that you’re spending a dedicated amount of time on each task is going to make you so much more efficient.
- The first step is to set your priorities.
- Then, set up a schedule based on how much time you have to dedicate to these tasks.
- Finally, create a weekly schedule to break your days down into chunks. For example, you might say, “From 9 to 10, I’m going to check and respond to email. From 10 to 11, I’m going to track and review metrics.” I actually wrote a blog about this very thing and created a Time Blocking Template that you can download here for free to help you do this!
Do you feel like this list is do-able for your business? I know it’s hard to take time away from the actual tasks you need to do in order to get more organized, but I really do believe it’s worth it. If you truly don’t have the time to do these things, tag me in! Reach out to me and I will help you get re-aligned with your goals and update any processes that are holding you back.