Organize Your Online Business With These Tips And Strategies

I don’t know any small business owners who need systems and organization as much as busy moms. Organizing your online business can give you the greater time freedom you long for while helping you be more focused on your children and family. 

It’s all about finding the calm in the chaos.

Donna Karan 

I have found that quote to be true but also that we can create a lot of our own calm by minimizing clutter, distractions, and a packed schedule and by adding in systems that work to help keep things together.

I’ve talked at length here at Grace Filled Mom about how seasonal motherhood is. Our children are constantly changing which means our lives are constantly changing and evolving and that’s a good thing. It means we’re growing and moving forward. If we learn to put the right systems in place we can adjust them as we go for more peace and calm. I am a big believer that organizational skills can be learned but if you need help putting some systems and organization in place get it. 

I pray this post helps you get started with the right systems as an online business owner and mom.

Audit Your Current Online Businesses 

To make this process as great as possible let’s start by brainstorming. Whether you have one online business or multiple ones, think about the areas that need work. What is the area of your online business that feels the most chaotic, takes you the most time, and drives you the most crazy?

Is it something you could outsource? If not how can organization make it better? Even if it’s something you can and will outsource it’s still a great idea to have systems in place so whoever you bring on to help knows just what to do with minimal training. 

Action Step: Write down all you do in your business and track the items by categories. Also, write down what you’re not doing but need to be doing. 

One area could be content creation like writing blog posts or posting on social media platforms. It could be keeping up with your finances and bookkeeping. It could be something else altogether. Think about all the things you do and the main problems. Once you have your main problem area decided begin to brainstorm how you can fix it.

We will get into multiple areas and tips but by starting with your hardest area and creating solutions you can build momentum to keep going. This is what will help you create a solid foundation when it comes to organizing your business. 

Get curious and ask yourself some inspiring questions. 

Like, “What would this area look like if it was systemized and better than that what if it was fun?” Asking exploratory questions like this can open up a world of possibilities and new ways and ideas. It’s the first step to coming up with workable solutions. Write your ideas down. 

Whether you sell physical products or digital products the tips in this post will help you take charge of many tasks, experience business growth, and make Monday morning feel great again. How does that sound?

I’m going to present some systems in the post to help you organize your online business but you do you! You do what works for you.  I will be presenting different ideas here so you can decide what will work for you. I’ve taken online courses to learn different systems and I recommend that you do also so you know and learn a system well. We want to work smarter, not harder but we have to work hard for a while to figure things out. 

What is a “system?”

System

a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized framework or method.

Google Dictionary

Here are the areas we will cover:

• Time Management
• Client Management
• Project management
• File Management
• Decluttering
• Links, Resources, and Password Management
• Areas Of Focus
• Staying Inspired
• Workflows and Checklists
• And A CEO Day!

Time Management

If we don’t manage our time and energy well we will not meet our goals. Period. 

Keep track of time during the work day for a week and I bet you will be surprised at how much gets wasted. You can use a physical or online time tracker if you want to try this. It can be quite eye-opening. There are many methods for good time management.

Here are some of the ones I recommend:

• Create a real-life workable schedule, one that allows for adjustments especially if you are a work-from-home mom. Children can throw a wrench in our best-laid plans and so can life. 
• Try time blocking. Time blocking allows you to allocate different activities at different slots of time throughout the day which can be more flexible than an hour-by-hour schedule. 
• Prioritize tasks that actually move the needle forward rather than busy tasks that don’t help you meet your goals.
• Limit distractions as much as you can. Prepare the family, set boundaries, turn off unneeded notifications, etc. 
• Make use of as many tools as you need but use them to help you not distract you more. 
• Use task batching. If you have tasks that you do on repeat then batch like items together- social media graphics one day, meetings another, etc. 
• Outsource and delegate what you can. Especially the things that you are not great at that take you much longer to complete than it would someone else. 
• Take breaks as needed to keep your focus and energy up. 
• Audit and adjust regularly. 

So much of the time we start our days in a reactive mode rather than a proactive mode. What do I mean by that? 

We begin scrolling through social media or checking emails first thing and get on other people’s agendas, what others want us to do. 

What if instead we started the day reflecting on our goals and how we can be producers rather than just consumers? Isn’t that after all why you have your own business? 

What if, instead of reaching for our phone, we grabbed our morning coffee, cleared our head and made a plan specifying exactly what we needed to achieve that day to make it a successful day?  The data says that we’d be far happier and more productive if we took that simple reflecting step instead of checking email.

Mark Murphy, Forbes

Client Management

Depending on your business this may not be for you but if you do work with clients you need a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. If this is new to you don’t get scared. There are user-friendly online systems that can make this easy. Honeybook is a popular one along with Dubsado. These platforms will help you track inquiries from potential customers, manage products, automate workflows, send and follow up on invoices, take payments, and more. They will help you give your customers great customer service while taking a lot of the mundane tasks and automating them for you. 

They’re kind of like having a digital personal assistant even if you’re not ready for human one. 

Project Management

This is one of my favorites as I get a bit nerdy about project management systems. I have used paper planners and digital ones and online systems. I started with Trello. Then I was a ClickUp fan. I dabbled with Monday and Asana and landed on Notion. I love Notion! Once you have templates and have it set up it’s my favorite. You can make it more visually appealing than ClickUp but I still think Clickup is great too and others as well. It just depends on how you like to work and look at things. 

The purpose of a project management system is to help you track and organize all your projects and all the things you have going on in your business. You can use one to save your business plan, manage your social media presence, keep track of your business finances, and so much more.  

As mentioned I love Notion for my project management system. There I have my blog and social media content calendar, book reading list, quarterly planning templates, continuing education Hub, habit and energy trackers, and a lot more. It’s like a home and CEO dashboard of all the things. 

File Management

While I use Notion for project management I use Google Drive as my main squeeze for file management along with file folders on my computer desktop. A hack I learned about and love is the PARA method from the Book Building A Second Brain by Author Tiago Forte. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives.

You can create file folders for each of these and have files within those as needed. You can label files this way on your computer desktop, your tablet, your smartphone, and even your email folders if you wish. Projects are for the things you are working on currently, areas are for things you are managing that are recurring and don’t have an end like work and health. Resources are for anything you want to store like books you are reading or business assets you use. Archives are for anything you want to save but are not using currently. 

You can learn more here PARA Method. 

Jeff Su has a hierarchy file system you can watch if that is a better method for you.

Decluttering

I would not be doing this blog justice if I did present a little minimalist plug here. It’s hard to keep things working and organized if we have a bunch of digital clutter. 

Some things that may need decluttering in your digital space:

• Emails
• Downloads
• Digital assets
• Computer- I use Clean My Mac
• Mobile device
• Photos
• Files 
• Workflows and systems that are no longer used

Links, Resources, and Password Management

Links and resources you want to save, those 500 passwords you have for every tool. What do you do with them? It’s a good idea to have systems in place to save them. You want a system that is easy to add and access from multiple devices and easy to carry around. That is one of the reasons I love Notion to save books I want to read, links to courses, and other resources because I can access them on my desktop and also on my phone which goes with me. For passwords, this is not the most secure option so it’s good to have another system for those. You could use a locked document or a password saver like NordPass. It could be a great solution for your small businesses because you can also use it with a team. 

Areas Of Focus

As you are working through setting up systems for your business it’s a good idea to keep in mind the main areas of focus for your particular business. This will be hard work in the beginning but will make your business flow so much easier later. Some areas of focus with online business are:

• Branding
• Marketing
• People/Networking
• Sales
• Admin

Thinking about these areas is a great way to organize your online business especially if it’s a new business. 

Staying Inspired

Staying inspired yourself and clear on your target audience, business idea, new products you want to create, relevant content, and all the things that come with running your type of business will go a long in helping your business feel attractive and fresh. It will also inspire others if and when you decide to bring on team members. 

You can keep a vision board on your desktop. Decide on a word for the month or year. You could write a powerful Bible verse every week on your calendar. You could keep your mission statement and your why front and center on your project management dashboard. Take courses, keep growing, and read voraciously. Whatever works to inspire you. There is inspiration all around us too if we learn to look for it. 

Workflows and Checklists

Workflows are the processes you take in different areas of your business. You can have checklists within those workflows for tasks you repeat. For example, if creating YouTube videos is part of your business you could have a workflow that looks something like this:

• Planning and Research 
• Pre Production set up
• Filming
• Editing
• Graphics
• Publishing
• Marketing

Within any of those, you could have a checklist that acts as a to-do list. Your research checklist for example could be to do market research by checking Google search on topic, using keywords everywhere, using Google keyword planner, etc. Think higher level and do not get too minuit with the details or this will make things more overwhelming instead of less but create checklists of all the basic tasks involved. 

If you don’t have good workflows already in place and are not sure how to get started you can ask Chat GPT for help. Just type workflow for… and then put in whatever the workflow is that you need, adjust as needed, and implement. 

Don’t forget about having a system for backups too if you’re using systems that do not back up your work automatically. And don’t forget about organizing mobile apps too. 

CEO Day

You’re a business owner so it’s important to act like one. When you have your head down working in the business you don’t have time to work on the business. 

If you feel overwhelmed start with an easy task and then build momentum from there. Schedule regular CEO days to step back from daily operations and review how the business is going. This is one of the best ways to keep a fresh perspective. Use your CEO days to review goals and objectives, to ask those open questions that can give you new solutions, and to be re-inspired. Evaluate and refine your business processes always. 

I’m working on a Notion Hub specifically for work-from-home moms so if you have input to help with that leave me a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts and what you need. 

Remember you don’t have to find one singular system to do it all. It’s about building workflows and systems that work for you across different platforms. I use Notion for project management, I love RankIQ (my affiliate link) for SEO research, Google Drive for files, and Gmail for email. I use Canva for graphics, learning platforms, and more. I also love using the note-taking app Goodnotes on my iPad. All of these work together to help me run my business. Use online tools to help you with whatever you need help with. It’s one of the benefits of the modern world we live in. 

What is your favorite “organize your business” hack? I would love to know!

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