Spring Cleaning Your Business: A Guide for Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast., Whether you’re listening to this audio version or you’re listening to the YouTube version, watching the YouTube video version, whichever the case may be welcome.

[00:00:21] Angela Mondor – The Geeky Girl: Hi, I want to talk to you today about something that could be triggering just saying I could be pushing a trigger button today. But it’s an important piece. Here we are sitting in March. We’re coming close to spring time. Living in Canada, of course. A lot of our seasons are very, very clear. We’ve got definite winter and definite summer and definite spring. Spring is not my favorite. I like the concept. that spring brings us in terms of the ideas that, you know, the weather’s going to get more mild and you know, of course I get to start planting outside soon, those sorts of things, but I don’t like the mess of it.

I don’t like how our cars are always so dirty because the snow is melting and there’s mud everywhere. Those kinds of things. But I’ll, with everything, you gotta take the good with the bad, right? I want to talk to you about spring in terms of your business. Some people do spring cleaning in their homes and maybe that’s something that makes sense to you in terms of spring cleaning in, in, in that capacity.

But I want to talk to you about spring cleaning in terms of your business. There are things that we can do. And this doesn’t have to be just a spring thing. We can put this in terms of things to be done inside the business that are on rotation or, you know, that don’t happen every month, but maybe they happen quarterly or maybe they happen biannually, those kinds of things.

The things that I’m going to talk to you about today, the most important piece to remember here is that you don’t have to You shouldn’t. I’m going to shit on you. Don’t do them all at once. Don’t try to get all of the things dealt with all at the same time because that’s going to cause you to have some over some that’s going to cause a lot of overwhelm.

However, take these ideas and put them into play inside your business and put them in rotation. Okay. Some of these things you might not need to do for several years. There are things that maybe are something that you might not do for a few years, but there’s other things that maybe you want to do on a more rotational basis inside the business.

When you are looking at these ideas, the reason why I bring it up as a spring cleaning idea is because you think about the things you might do in your home for spring cleaning, like washing walls or cleaning the oven, or there’s, you know, the tasks that you don’t do all the time, right? So, in your business, the same thing can happen.

So, one of the things that can be done is in terms of your business strategy, evaluating your goals and looking for that next season ahead. Typically, I like to do this quarterly inside the business. There’s a, there’s a strategic thing I do at the beginning of, it actually happens before the beginning of the year, so I do like this entire year strategy put together but then every quarter I want to revisit it, and this is something that can be done if you’re looking at putting it together from a season perspective, you can do it in the winter, the fall, the summer, the spring, right, quarters but looking at the importance of the choices that you made for your vision, And then saying, okay, so this is what I’ve done as a strategic plan.

Here’s what the vision is for there. These are the actions that I said I was going to take. Did I take them? Did I not take them? Is it working? Is it not working? What do I need to alter in terms of my choices in the actions I’m taking for the next quarter? Those things are really important to do on a quarterly basis so that you can be on top of the changes that are happening inside your business and then that will allow you to be able to make some quick changes to be able to make the next quarter better or to be able to even maintain what you’re currently doing in your business.

Now, Other ideas for things that you can do from a spring cleaning perspective or, you know, an ongoing basis inside your business is thinking about your operations. So our operations inside our business are the things that we do for our business, right? When we’re working on the business, not in it, okay?

Not the things we’re doing for our clients, but the things that we need to do for ourselves. Like this YouTube channel, for example. This is an operations piece. This is something that we’re doing inside the business and there are processes and procedures that are involved in creating this. Video for you that you’re sitting through right now.

We have a podcast as well. There’s a bunch of different layers, blog posts, all those kinds of things, newsletters, right? There’s so many things. And so it’s important to review, review these things once in a while and say, are they working? Are they not working? And it could be yearly, could be biannually.

You could do it quarterly. It’s up to you. Try not to do too much all the time, . When we take on too many things at one, at one time, it becomes overwhelming. So you want to strategically place these throughout the year. You don’t have to just do them all in the spring. Okay. Revamping your brand is something that can come up as something that needs to be done.

And again, doesn’t even have to happen every year. Maybe you don’t need to revamp your brand every year. Maybe it’s something you do every other year or something. Maybe this is the year to do it, but you can look at what is it that you’re Yeah. What you’re, what you’re putting out there from your brand perspective, the vision certainly some people like to get their headshots done every year maybe a different piece of your branding might be your you know, your bios, maybe they need to be refreshed, maybe some of those introductory pieces that you have on your social media, maybe those can be refreshed yearly but the whole brand pictures, colours, those kinds of things might not all need to be done every year, right?

So think about You know, how this might impact your business and what are the things that you would like to do, but don’t do them all at the same time. That’s one of the things that gets everybody and drags them down and brings the overwhelm is that they think, Oh, here’s all the things I have to do just because I called this spring cleaning didn’t mean to say do it all in the spring, okay, you can spread these out throughout the year.

But looking at your finances is another thing. So like, now we’re on number four. If you try to do this all at the same time, these are big things. They would take up a lot of your time and perhaps even move into the time when you should be working with your clients. So make sure to spread these out throughout the year.

These are just some ideas, okay? But looking at your finances your, what are your budgets look like, your expenses, your revenue you know, what is your financial health in your business look like? Some people like to use the profit first idea where you’re doing percentages. You can certainly look, am I actually matching those percentages?

Does that make sense? Some people simply want to know what is the revenue of the business and what is the profit that’s coming back to me. You know, and looking at, you know, did I spend within my expenses that I expected to or not? Certainly we look at the finances in Canada, we do our taxes in April.

So now is a good time to be doing financial stuff to make sure that we have a good health in it. But it’s also really important that we look at where’s your fiscal year. So if your business fiscal year runs January to December, it’s important to make sure that you’re reviewing this stuff in November and December in case you need more tax write offs for the year or something, have a conversation with your accountant.

So make sure to put this sort of finance look. in the end of your fiscal year. The end of my fiscal year is December 31st. So for me looking at November, December is the time that matches for my business so that I can get the best results when it comes to tax time. Even though we might not have to file till April all everything that happens up until December 31st in the business is what counts when I file in April.

Talk to your accountant. Find out what’s the best time for you. But it is important to look at what does that look like for your business? Is, are you financially? Healthy in your business, and what do you need to change or what would you like to change next year to change that outcome for the upcoming year?

And then looking at your physical space, your physical workspace is something else that you can think of doing from a spring cleaning perspective or fall cleaning, however you want to look at it. Is this working for you? Does your setup work? I literally just moved my office around. Most of you wouldn’t be able to tell because the background’s pretty much the same.

I’m in the same room, so the background’s the same colour. The blue’s the same. I moved the shelves so they look similar to what they were before. But I have physically changed. I am now facing north before I was facing east. It worked for me for the time and now I wanted to make a change in terms of where I wanted to sit inside this room.

But these are the things that you can look at. Does this fit for me anymore? Does my desk work? Do I need to change my desk? Do I need to change my location? Maybe your location changed. Maybe you needed to get a physical office and you need to go and actually search for the right lease for you for an office space.

All of these kinds of things, you want to be working towards your peak performance. And one of those things is definitely what does your space look like? Obviously, do I have enough space to work in terms of flat surfaces? Are they clean enough? Do I have everything tucked away? Do I have places for everything?

It’s really important to me that everything has a place and every place has a thing. So that when I’m looking for something, I know where to look because that’s where it belongs. Your brain might not work that way, but that’s the way mine needs to work. The concept of of misplacing things is huge for my brain.

You know that idea of object permanence? People say, if I can’t see it, I don’t know where it is. Well, I know that I’ve got four, five, five bins up there. Four of them are mine. One’s my husband’s. But I know that even though I can’t see it underneath the bin, the second from the right is where all my Halloween stuff is for the office.

So I can change my look behind me to office Halloween. I can’t see it, but the box is there, and it’s labeled, and everything’s in there. Okay? So just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean to say I don’t know it’s there, because I have given it, I have given that place, I have given that place the things that go in it, and the things belong in that place.

I don’t know, does it make sense to you? For me, the keys have to go in the key bowl, right? Like, there’s just certain things I need to know where they are, and in order to know where they are, they have to go back in the same place. That works for me. Why not work for you? Maybe you have a stack of things, and you need your stack.

I certainly have my stacks, not gonna lie. And they are organized stacks. I know exactly where the things are inside them. What works for you? Looking at that from your physical workspace, that’s important. And just because you’ve identified that you need to make changes doesn’t mean to say you have to do them now.

Okay, here’s the other side. You could say, I’m going to plan a change. and then make the change later. It doesn’t work really well for me usually. As soon as I make the plan, I want to make the change. But it might work for you that you make the plan first and then make the change. But what is it that’s going to help you?

So remember, if you’re thinking about all the different ways that you can revamp your business throughout the year, this whole concept of spring cleaning, Don’t try to do all five of these things at the same time. Or I’m sure there’s other ones that you would want to put on this list too, but just spread them out throughout the year.

When’s the right time for me to do these things for myself and my business? And at the end we’re trying to make sure that we are working in our optimum way. And so then you can actually look at these items What do you want to change about your business or your physical piece of the business? Right? Not just the SaaS stuff, but also the physical stuff.

And then when do you want to make these changes or when do you want to revisit these ideas? Don’t do them all at the same time. It’ll overwhelm the hell out of you, but pick one thing and then do that one thing and then move on to the next. I hope you have a fantastic week. I look forward to talking to you next time.]