05/04/2019 by Sam Leave a Comment
I’m officially on maternity leave as I write this… and decided that I want to use all that spare time I have (haha Sam… spare time?!) to clean and organise my business.
I applied the Kon Mari method to my closet years ago, and still fold my clothes the same way.
While I can’t say I’ve continued with the entire house, I like the concept that your surroundings should spark joy. (If you aren’t familiar with Marie Kondo you can simply Google her, or look up the series on Netflix).
So when I started thinking that I’m ready to clean and organise my current business structure, strategies and procedures it made sense to apply the same principles.
What does this mean?
Over the coming months I’m going to be
- Building a new website
- Refreshing and redesigning my free offerings
- Creating a clear content plan for the remainder of the year
- Clearing out old files, images and offers
- Changing the way people can work with me, my on-boarding processes and my structure around client work
And with each step, rather than just doing what I’ve always done I’m going to be asking myself
Does this spark joy?
Because so often I find myself caught up in the shoulds… feeling like I should be running webinars or creating funnels or … well, you get the picture.
There is a long list of things that I should be doing, or could be doing…
But I know that when I get too caught up in that list, the list of stuff that I don’t love, or that I don’t even want to do, that I start to resent my business.
I find myself avoiding doing the work (because I don’t really want to do it) and I find myself being a lot less visible online (because I don’t really believe in the thing I am doing)
So enough is enough – it’s time to just do the things that spark joy!
But what about the other things?
That’s great Sam… but what about all those things that I NEED to do that don’t spark joy?
I get it, sometimes there are things that need to be done, that you don’t really want to do.
For you, that might be bookkeeping, general admin, marketing, sales… the list goes on.
Here’s my plan for those things:
- Analyse does it really NEED to be done, or do I just feel like it should be done? For example, submitting my tax needs to be done as a legal obligation, there is no getting around that. But posting on social media doesn’t NEED to be done. Sure, it might help to build my audience or drive traffic, but it doesn’t NEED to be done. There are other ways I can build my list, find new clients and generate traffic. I could leave social media all together if I didn’t want to do it.
- If it really does need to be done, and I don’t want to do it, then I can look to outsource it.
- If I’m not in a position to outsource the work, then I can look to trade services to achieve the same result.
- If neither of those are possible, then I may have to suck it up and schedule it in, but with a clear plan on how to get rid of that task in the future.
How can you join in?
Schedule a little time to take a step back and look at your business. Go through each bit step by step and work out if it is sparking joy for you.
Don’t get overwhelmed. This can be a huge tasks, but just look at one little bit at a time, and look for a solution before moving on to the next bit.
Does your website spark joy for you?
Does your sales process light you up?
Do you love delivering all of your products and services?
If not, why do you do them?
This is your business, it’s time to do it your way.