8 Strategies for Managing a Professional Organizing Business
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As promised, I’m excited to share this first of many posts by Anne Blumer, founder of the Institute for Professional Organizers.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re managing a small business, especially when you are starting out. Here are 8 strategies to simplify and make small business management easier.
Strategy #1 – Have a Mentor or a Business Coach
There is no reason why you should have to figure out everything by yourself. There are experts who have been where you are or are going, who can keep you from getting off track or going down the wrong path. I suggest you contact SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors and have assisted more than 11 million small business owners since 1964. You can find your local chapter on the SCORE website.
Strategy #2 – Systemize Your Business
Document all your business processes and create a book or ebook of standard operating procedures. Documenting my procedures helped me examine everything to make processes more efficient. A few processes and procedures to consider writing are:
Client Processes
- new client inquiry
- client intake
- organizing process
- onsite organizing session process
- virtual organizing session process
- client cancellations
- materials procurement and inventory
- client communications-email templates
Employee Procedures
- representing the company
- communicating with clients
- scheduling
- breaks
- dress code
- conduct
- time reporting
Strategy #3 – Automate
Save yourself time and sanity by automating everything you can. I used Acuity Scheduling to automate my client process, including signing my client agreement, paying for service, completing the needs assessment questionnaire, and scheduling sessions on my website in one single transaction. This saved me a tremendous amount of time, and it looked incredibly organized to my clients!
Strategy #4 – Let Go of Control
Let go of control over things you’re not good at. For me, I’m not too fond of processing payroll and filing tax reports. However, for the first few years in business, I viewed hiring a payroll service as a waste of money because I could do all the work myself. I realized that I didn’t enjoy filing payroll reports and making tax payments, and my time could be better spent building the business. I later moved to an online payroll service, Gusto. I quickly set up our company and employees, automated payroll runs, tax filings, and payments. Gusto can also handle employee benefits, time and attendance, hiring and onboarding, and more.
Do what you’re the best at and lean on others, or find an automated way, to help you with things you don’t like to do.
Strategy #5 – Create and Stick to a Budget
You will know how many client hours you need to book to cover your overhead costs. It will also act as a guide to help your business grow! Many businesses see a budget as restrictive, but it is the opposite. It gives you enough understanding of your finances to know where you can improve and where you want to be in 12 months.
Strategy #6 – Keep On Top of Your Bookkeeping
At a minimum, schedule one day a month to catch up on all of your bookkeeping including, invoicing clients, depositing checks, balancing your checking account, and updating your financial software transactions. It can seem an impossible task if you put this off, but if you stay on top of your bookkeeping regularly, it will only take a small amount of time.
Strategy #7 – Set Goals and Evaluate Quarterly
The key to good small business management is evaluating your business progress at least every three months. A quarter is the right amount of time to determine what processes are not working. The worst thing you can do for your business is to continue implementing procedures that aren’t benefitting you. By enforcing a quarterly evaluation, you can avoid poor business decisions and the chance to grow in the right direction.
Strategy #8 – Declutter Your Business
This is a little bit like “physician heal thyself.” Let go of anything that isn’t helping your business be more productive and enjoyable. Whether that is a client who is draining you emotionally or physically or piles of old papers you don’t need to keep, let it go. Removing the unwanted emotional, physical, and mental clutter in your business will clear your mind to be more effective and productive in your life and business.
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I have a very simple business model, but even that took me awhile to “codify.” I like the idea of having a clear cut process for operations, if for no other reason that you don’t have to think as much!
Great advice here for any kind of business, to be honest.
Excellent points, Seana! Thanks for weighing in.
Such excellent advice for professional organizers, and really any new small business!
Like Seana, my business model is pretty simple and lean. Having come from broadcasting, with a titles indicating hierarchy and layers upon layers of regulation, I learned that I wanted my company to be small (just me!) and nimble. After I’m 23 years, I’m just as happy as I was early on, knowing I didn’t want to grow, scale, or sell. Most of the business is in my head, and the rest is in my computer or my work bag. Nonetheless, I have very clear processes for interacting with prospects, scheduling clients, working, and getting paid. I definitely have templates.
But the great thing about being a one-woman shop is that no matter how embedded my processes are, I can break the rules if I like, and that yields so much more comfort in having these processes in the first place. Flexibility is key to me. I’ve still incorporated very little automation (# 3) in my strategic plan. It would help in some ways, but the personal touch has proven to be the key in retaining clients, as a healthy portion of my audience (no matter their age or computer experience) wants human contact for scheduling, paying, and rescheduling/postponing. I’ve learned that my ideal client won’t schedule or pay online; but starting with automation and testing it is the only way to know what works for you.
I do wish I’d had a mentor or business coach when I started. (Coaching and virtual opportunities were far less available then than now!) I did contact my local SCORE and my regional business development center, but (at that time), all of the volunteers/staff were men, and most had all come from product-based businesses, and couldn’t wrap their minds around the work I did/do. Thankfully, being a member of NAPO and my NAPO chapter brought me a greater kind of mentorship that helped me build my business.
Julie, thank you for your insightful comment and showing that flexibility is at least as important as structure for many pros. After 23 years, what you’re doing clearly works for you!
These are great strategies for growing a business. It’s easy when you are doing everything, but if I ever talk to someone about growing their business I tell them to start writing things down now, so they don’t start from zero when the time comes to grow.
#4 – Letting go of Control was hardest for me, but like you, I didn’t like book keeping, so I started by delegating that first. What a weight off my shoulders!
I totally agree about writing things down now (whether you’re just starting or have been at it a long time) – I even blogged about it in How to improve your business and make life easier.
I worked with a business coach when I was taking my business full time, and she recommended delegating bookkeeping first too!
Great post! I am a big fan of setting up processes to help start-ups look and feel more professional in their new businesses. I did this for my business and share ways to do this with small business clients now.
Yes, you’ve written some excellent blog posts about setting up processes. Your clients are lucky to have access to your expertise!
Such sage advice from Anne. Like Julie and Seana, my business is “simple and lean.” It’s just me. While I hire help for certain things, like some of the tech and financial support, my systems are straightforward.
Many of my processes needed to change when I morphed my business from in-person to virtual. I leaned into more automation, such as using Calendly for scheduling. It’s connected to my Zoom account and includes the Zoom link with the session confirmations. That’s a big time saver.
A few years ago, I started offering my own workshops, which taught me how to automate that process better. I continue to learn and change, which is a good thing.
I’ve started documenting even tasks I don’t expect to delegate. Much of my work is repetitive, but that’s when it’s easy to go on auto-pilot and lose track. Having a list to refer to ensures that I complete all the steps and saves me relying on my memory if I haven’t performed that task in a while. The bonus is that there’s a procedure to follow if I decide to delegate at some point, or if I’m unable to work and someone needs to step in.
I wish I would have known half of this when I first started. I feel like I have made a lot of mistakes. Make sure that all of the new Professional Organizers get a copy of this post.
I know exactly what you mean!