Episode Summary

Tune into this week’s podcast for a can’t-miss workshop with Alex Brzozowski and Melissa Swink! You’ll get into the nuts and bolts of digital organization and its role in team collaboration and productivity. 

Alex and Melissa discuss the common hurdles leaders face when they first start working with teams, especially when it comes to digital organization myths. They also provide actionable strategies for laying a solid foundation for success. Tune in to learn the need for effective systems, clear communication, and the understanding that organization is an ongoing practice rather than a one-time fix. 

If you’re looking for tips around digital organization, effective file management, password management systems, and the strategic use of bookmarks, this episode is for you! You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of digital filing, including the use of cloud storage and password managers, and the significance of naming conventions that resonate with users. 

Key Highlights:

• The average worker spends two hours daily searching for documents, but implementing proper systems can dramatically reduce this waste.
• Digital organization is an ongoing process, not a one-time solution 
• Effective file management relies on:
• Clear naming conventions (alphabetical, numerical, or chronological)
• Strategic use of cloud storage
• Simplified folder structures 
• Secure password management and clear team communication are fundamental to successful collaboration. 
• Organization is a learnable skill that should be tailored to your team's specific needs.

About Our Guest: 

Alex Brzozowski is a digital organizer, productivity specialist, and founder of Be Organizing. She's been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and many more. Her team of Digital Professional Organizers and Productivity Specialists have reduced stress, saved time, and given hundreds of businesses and individuals across the country the peace of mind knowing exactly where their files, photos, emails, notes, tasks, projects, contacts, schedules, calendars, and passwords are (and how to quickly access them!). Visit the Be Organizing website to download your free Digital Declutter Calendar today!

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hello everybody, thanks for joining us. We're just gonna, I'm just gonna give a couple more or just 30 seconds here and then we'll hop right in and get started. Cause time is valuable here. Make sure you're cognizant of your time.

Hey.

All everybody see okay? See the perfect. Okay, great. Awesome. I am trying to move my stuff around so I can see everything myself.

All right, welcome. We're at the From Overwhelmed to Organize, laying the foundation for successful team. I'm Alex Brzezowski and Melissa Swink is here as well from Melissa Swink & Co. And we'll just jump right in and introduce ourselves. First and foremost though, just to, you know, kind of...

Just a crazy stat here is workers spend on average at least two hours a day looking for documents or information they need to do their work. So that's a significant, if you're working eight hours, that's a huge portion of your day, just looking for information. And this could be you doing it or your workers. And this is an average. isn't necessarily, it could be higher. It could be lower, but more likely than that.

It might be a little higher if you don't have systems or processes in place.

So what we're going to cover are the three common hurdles for hiring a team and collaboration, four digital organizing myths that we just have to cover, have to go over, and then three things you need to take back time. Okay? And we're actually going to give you actual things you can start doing today to get ready and laying the foundation for your success within your company.

So who am I? Alex Brzezowski, founder of Be Organizing. I founded Be Organizing in 2012, and I created the Simplify method, which is our method for organizing anything digitally. There's a lot out there for the physical space, but not much out there for the digital space, as you probably have seen, if you've researched it at all. And I was, my story began, I was born and raised in Detroit. I'm a Midwestern gal. I graduated from Butler University.

and with a criminology and sociology degree. So I was gung ho legal law. I wanted to do a private investigation and all the type of stuff. still, I still love that. but I decided to become a paralegal and I worked, I moved out to San Diego shortly after graduating, which is where I remain today. I love it here. And I worked at a giant law firm as a paralegal.

Bye.

And I was in one paralegal at one point in time for five attorneys. So I got to really be involved in all of it. But what I constantly saw was that people didn't have their information together. Businesses didn't have their information together. They weren't even in compliance most of the time, like legally. And they had the other side of things were the personal side, which there was a lot of people going through loss. know, normally you go contact a law firm. It's not very exciting.

It's a very, it's usually going to something very difficult. And so I was working with a lot of people who had just lost somebody, you know, in a state administration, obviously people pass away. Oops. And with that, really, I was, you know, as a paroligal, was like, excuse me, can I have the assets and liabilities? I'm so sorry for your loss, but I really need to know like your dad's this and that and this and that. And they just looked at me like, I have no idea.

And I would go to, if they lived, well, they typically did, the decedent's home and actually carry out bins and even actual drawer full of documents and just stuff to figure out what they actually had and what they didn't have. And I was like, man, wouldn't this be amazing? And they had businesses too. Like this was, I mean, it just reached so far.

And they didn't have anything together. And I was like, man, wouldn't this be the greatest gift for yourself and for your family is to have this stuff organized and actually be ready for this beforehand. Have it in your life now. So many people are letting this wait, just bring them down. So that's when I started be organizing from that.

space and realizing I didn't want to be an attorney and there was only so far I could go. So it was the perfect transition for me to start reorganizing. And I joined the National Association of Proctivity and Organizing Professionals, NAPO for short. I was on the board. I was the president of the local San Diego chapter. And now just in the business of making things easier, simpler, and saving time for businesses teams all over the world. So that's me and Melissa, I'm going to switch it over to you.

Great. Alex, thank you so much. And it is a pleasure to be able to collaborate with you on the webinar today. So for those of you don't know me, my name is Melissa Swink. I'm the founder and CEO of Melissa Swink & Co. I have a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and nonprofits. I'm also the host of the Make Space for More podcast. My podcast is geared for entrepreneurs who are interested in growing and scaling their businesses.

in ways that are authentic and aligned for them. It's not so much about hustle culture and doing all the things. It's about being very intentional with your growth and scalability. And so I was super excited to collaborate with Alex on today's webinar because first of all, she and I are connected through a business mastermind group and our services are very complimentary of one another because I love how Alex really gets her clients organized and set up for success.

for working with teams like mine. And I'm gonna share with you a little bit more today. There are some common hurdles that we encounter as virtual assistants. And I've certainly encountered them even just with growing my own team, which we'll talk about in a second, that can really, if we can overcome these hurdles, it can really accelerate the success of working with our clients, collaborating with a virtual assistant, collaborating with...

work.

you know, employee that you might be onboarding, other contractors, and, you know, clients. So we want to get up and running. We want to get you in a momentum faster. We want to see that return on investment because we're not just hiring team, not only just to make our lives easier, but we should also be essentially growing our businesses and increasing our revenue and profitability as a result of working with a team, whatever that might look like for you. So.

I am happy to share a little bit more about some of the things that we're seeing so that we can avoid those. And Alex has lots of solutions for avoiding those. To share a little bit more about me personally, before we move on here, I live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. So I am still currently in the Midwest. I know Alex is from the Midwest. I'm still currently in the Midwest. In true Green Bay, Wisconsin, whether I was sharing with Alex, it's supposed to be 70 degrees today. So that's supposed to be the warmest it's been yet this year. And then of course,

Prior to starting that business, I had left my corporate role earlier that year and was doing process improvement consulting. And it became very clear to me that many business owners knew what they wanted to be doing, what they should be doing. They're just, number one, weren't enough hours in the day to do it. And number two, they didn't necessarily have the skillset or expertise required in order to do those things. And so when I was introduced to the concept of a virtual assistant, I knew right away that it was the solution to these challenges.

because it allowed our clients and business owners to be able to get help in very specific areas of their business so that they could continue to move on and to grow and scale. And so for the first six years of owning my virtual assistant services business, I worked completely on my own. And then as time went on and I reached my own capacity, I needed to start building a team in order to continue to grow and support more businesses and organizations.

So my team has taken a variety of stages and phases over the years. In the beginning, they work mostly behind the scenes, helping with client work. And then they started to become more client-based thing into what we have today. So I have a team of 25, including myself today. We have many wonderful virtual assistants who work with our clients. We have specialized team members who do things like graphic design and copywriting and so on.

And they're all wonderful to work with. And truly we enjoy helping clients build profitable, scalable businesses that they love. They're able to do the things that they enjoy and then leave the rest to us. So just want to share a little bit more about my background. And then just wanted to address, and Alice, if you want to go to the next slide. If you're thinking about hiring a virtual assistant or an employee or some other type of team member or contractor.

love that. That's a huge step for you in your business. It's something that I absolutely do not regret. It's been a game changer to go from doing everything myself and into the team that I have today. However, there are some things that can make it a little bit more challenging for you to fully get up and running with working with a team member successfully. And we're going to talk about those today.

So if you're thinking about, you you're getting ready to either add a team member or hire your first team member, we're going to pump the brakes, but just for a moment, because we want to stay in this momentum, but we want to make sure that we are fully prepared. So on my podcast, Make Space for More, it's episode 44. If you want to jot that down, I talk about seven signs that you're not ready to hire a virtual assistant. And in that episode,

We talked about some mindset things. We talked about some time requirements, if you will. do you need to invest in terms of time in order to grow your relationship with a virtual assistant? But we also talked about some of the tactical things from an organization standpoint that might make it a little bit more challenging for you to get up and running with working with a virtual assistant successfully. So highly encourage you to check that out. We're going to focus on some of the more tactical things.

in our conversation today. So Alex, if you want to go to the next slide, we can dive into three common hurdles of hiring. I would also add team collaboration in this because you might even have a team right now when you're like, gosh, I feel like things are a little bit clunky in terms of the work that we're doing together. So the first hurdle that we often encounter is that critical information is not in a digital format.

So this can look like a couple of different things to give you an example. Number one, maybe your files are currently saved on a local hard drive on your computer and it's a matter of getting them into the cloud. If that looks like Google Drive or Dropbox or insert whatever software or system that you use here, it varies certainly by client. if there are critical files and information that

somebody cannot access remotely or from another computer, even if they're sitting at the desk across from you, if they can't get that information, it can be really, really hard. And so, you know, what that can look like is you needing to manually email them something or manually upload something as they need it. And what we find is, is that then that requires them to ask a question of you or make a request from you. Time goes by for you to get to that request.

find the file, which we'll talk more about, and I know Alex will share a lot more in terms of making files easier to find. And then, you know, there's that delay of you getting that request and then finding it, uploading it, and then being able to continue on with their work. So it can make the work kind of glitchy from that standpoint. It sounds really, really simple, and it is, but it's something that sometimes people don't think about. Another example here that we run into can be in terms of critical information.

is also calendars. They're related to calendars. So I can give you a few examples here. So if you have a paper calendar, which I have friends who have paper calendars, they love their beautiful planners that they get at the beginning of every year and they're writing down their goals and they're plotting out their day. I love that for them. However, there are times that that can make it a little bit challenging.

to get a team involved with, say, helping set appointments for you or helping you book consultations with potential clients. It can also be a challenge if you're looking to have a booking link available and make it really easy for potential clients to find out more about your services and setting up those systems, like whether it be Calendly or Acuity, there are so many out there. If you're looking for support with that, there's going to be some stepping stones from graduating from a paper calendar.

to a digital calendar and then be able to implement some of those systems. Another thing not necessarily related to digital, but we also see where clients have multiple calendars and they don't always talk to each other. So they might have their work calendar, they might have their personal calendar, their family calendar, or I've even seen it where clients who serve on boards for different charities and organizations

They have a calendar for that too. And not everything always talks to each other. And so sometimes they can get frustrated because they're running into situations where they're getting double booked. Because not everything is in agreement with the true availability of the person. So that's a few things that we run into there. A final example here on critical information that we see can sometimes be meeting notes. So if you're meeting with your customers and you're jotting things down as you're talking,

If there are action steps that need to be completed following that meeting, it's difficult to hand that off to another person to help get even some accountability of, remember you said that you were going to send that sample out to that potential customer. They don't know that because it's not in a place where they can actually see that information. All right, the second common hurdle.

that we run into is related to missing passwords or other login information. So I specifically chose this photo here of passwords because we often see clients will have passwords written down on Post-it notes or they have the same password for everything. I know on the personal side, I'm kind of guilty about that sometimes. I just want things to be simple. But there are times that it can be challenging if a client is...

You know, they're trying to log in, they're trying to remember a password to a critical system that we're going to need access to. And then they get locked out and then they're like, okay, well, we'll just continue moving on and I'll reset this later. And create, you know, kind of a challenge in order for us to get access to what we need access to. And there are certainly systems that you can use to store passwords. I'm not sure if Alex is going to go into depth on that later on in this presentation, but.

It can

I know our team uses LastPass. OnePassword is a great one. Bitwarden is another one that's highly recommended. There are systems and tools that you can use for that, which make it really easy to share logins securely with team members. I will also share with you just even a recent story. And again, the overall point here is that we want to get up and running with working with our team successfully. And we want to see that momentum and that return on investment. Recently, we started working with a company

that they are in the healthcare space. And so as you can imagine, their systems are locked down like Fort Knox. And it took some time for their IT department to get our team set up with logins or for them then to even grant access to different folders and things. And it can be a little bit time consuming to get logins set up and permissions set up. It is worth it.

But if you can't find those in the first place, it can be a bit more challenging and take a little bit more time in order to get that in place. And so then lastly, the common hurdle that we get in terms of some of the tactical things is having a disorganized electronic filing system. And I already see Alex just like holding back her smile because she sees this all the time in the work that she does. And we certainly do as well. So when you think about

When you're going back through your files, and I think we're all guilty of this, maybe not Alex, but sometimes I'm guilty of this where I'm like, if it's a file I haven't looked for in a while, I'm like, where, where did I save that again? What is that under? And then you start going down the rabbit hole, not this folder, it must be in that one. And when you think about it, how much time adds up? As Alex mentioned at the beginning of our conference today, she was saying two hours a day, and that might even be on the low side.

It might be on the high side, depending on how organized that you are. I will share with you a funny story related to this, that we had a client. And so I'll take a step back. It is a funny story, but the challenges is that if you're not even sure where some of your files are located, it takes even more time for a new team member to find it. And so I will share with you that we had a client a couple of years ago who needed us to

send a headshot to an organization that was bringing her in to speak. And we went to her headshots folder and we did not find headshots in there. We found her boudoir photos in there. So I don't know who dropped those in the headshots folder. There were no headshots in there. And we're like, hey, we're looking in this folder. We're not finding headshots. And she's like, yeah, they're in there. Just keep looking. We're like,

No, actually, they're not in there. So it was just, it was kind of a humorous situation, but I don't think she wanted us to send those photos to her speaking engagement, the person who booked her speaking engagement, but it was just kind of funny. And these are real life things that happen all the time. So all of that being said, and Alex, if you want to head on to the next slide, you may be hearing this and feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Like, okay, I know that my files, many of them are saved on my computer or

two.

I am the person who has the Post-it Note or the little notebook with all the passwords and I don't even know if some of them are up to date because God knows, especially like with banking stuff, you have to update your password regularly. Who knows? You're like, this feels a little bit overwhelming. I encourage you, don't shut down because there are definitely ways that we can make this process a breeze. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Alex and she can share.

how you can make all of this easier and make team collaboration more effective, and frankly, the hiring and onboarding process that much easier for everyone involved.

Yes. Thank you, Melissa. So I always like to start with the four digital organizing myths because this is a premise for everything else to kind of fall in line. And I just want to address and get it out in the air because you may be thinking these things and before like you're like, all right, let's just go, let's jump in and start getting myself organized, but you got to think it through. Okay. So this is just bringing that to light here. So first and foremost, that there's this magic wand.

So many times people come to us and they just are like, do do do, you should just come in and just boop bitty boop and it's done. That's just unfortunately not the case. The only, this is, this is what we always say, there's only one magic button and that is the delete one, the delete button. So yeah, you can select all and delete and start fresh. Here's the thing though, it's actually not going to solve the problem. It will actually just recreate.

We had somebody come to us that did this with her email. And her solution wasn't so much the delete button. It was, I maxed out on my email storage space, so I'm just going to start another email, a free email. She ended up with, I believe it was 16 or 17 email accounts by the time that she came to us. And she was debating again starting another one because, again, she wasn't addressing the problem, which was

having systems and processes in place and new habits and routines and workflows. Instead, she just, another modified version of the delete button. So there is not a quick solution. We, what we do and how we work with clients is in the emotion efficient way, because we know things to think about beforehand, but it's, you've got this much stuff.

and however long that took you to get there. And it's all invisible, right? The digital stuff that's in your computer or should be in your computer, it's invisible. It's like the hidden things, right? So it's not in your face. So the amount and how much time it took you to get there, it's going to take you a while to undo that and kind of address it. However, with the right support, you can get there. And if you are motivated to it yourself, go ahead, do it. But...

Just first and foremost, there is not this magic wand except for the delete button and you still have to solve the problem. That it's one and done. That they, this happens too. When am I going to be done? Newsflash organizing is a practice. It is not one and done. You will never get, you'll get to a point where you feel good and comfortable.

but you're gonna have to maintain it. You're gonna have to keep up with it. You're gonna have to make tweaks to it. It's like saying that I only have to, you hire this architect to build out this amazing landscape for your yard. They come and they do it and you're like, great, I'm done. No, you're not. You have to maintain it. You have to pull the weeds. You have to adjust things. this plant died. this happened. Or now I wanna install a pool. I didn't have a pool before. Well, now I have grandkids. I wanna have...

Now a pool for the grandkids, like that all shifts. So that's just like that with organization. It's a practice. There's no one and done solution. At the same time, there's no one size fits all.

A lot of, my gosh, this happens so frequently and you probably have heard like all the fads, like, you know, the different, like the home and it has different ideas and just do it this way. And Marie Kondo just do it this way. Well, and you try it and you're like, hey, this isn't sticking. This isn't sticking. And I don't, I tried like, I'm doing this. I'm doing all these things. Well, because you did it their way with their thought process and the way that they work.

and how they operate, not how you think, that's how you cooperate, not how your team operates, and not actually what you want, not going toward what you actually want. There is no one size fits all. It's all has to be customized. This is why so many people end up coming to us is because they try a lot of different things or they haven't had time to try it. And there's just, we have to come from a different perspective. So many people want to like a boiler plate.

That would be such a disservice because it wouldn't actually help you. The thing that's going to help you is how you think, how you operate. that's why we have to pull that information out. Everyone is different. Just within our team alone, Meredith can speak to this. Email is very personal. We have a standard communication across that aligns within our team. However, how we manage our email looks completely different.

And nobody's doing the same thing. And we've even tried similar things. We'll be like, we're to try this. then, you know, it doesn't, it's like, no, that actually doesn't work for me. have to switch it. This happens all the time. I this literally is happening within our team. It is so normal because it's not about what works for, you know, me, it's about what works for you. So keeping that in mind. And last but not least that everybody knows how to do it.

You, I was asked to speak to a team of people who were very overwhelmed by their email. And the owner was very frustrated that they didn't have it all together. And he was going through a lot of churn because the, his employees didn't want to stay. Well.

There was nothing set up and they were all expected to know how to do everything, but not given the tools to do it. And we're leaving and we're dissatisfied. And then it just kept getting progressively worse. It is not everybody knows how to do this. I was lucky enough that I now looking back, I was brought up in two different families. know, my, my parents, both sides of my family are very organized. Decantering was normal.

Like putting chips, like you come home and you buy a bag of chips and put it into a container was normal. Opening up the cookie jar was real because there was numerous cookie jars because they had different cookies and because everything was like, literally, I can't eat. My mom used to talk about the Tupperware parties they used to throw all the time because that was literally both sides of my family. So I grew up with that. I understood that. And then when I transitioned into business and actually working in

a professional career, I then learned all the systems and processes in the digital space and seeing that. So it's a skillset. And nobody, if you, you may feel ashamed or embarrassed about this, not knowing this, but let me tell you this, if you do have team already, they are not going to sit there and say, like when you hire them or if once you, once they start working with you, they're not going to be like, yeah, I'm disorganized. No, that's so.

That is, it is such in our culture that you should be just organized. That is such an expectation, but it's just not the reality. So being cognizant of those things is really big, especially when working with a team. So what do you need to lay the foundation for a successful team? You'll notice I'm not going to talk about one thing today, which is email. Because like I said, email is a personal.

Way more personal, there are communication standards, but I'm just covering some top three things here. Um, emails with own beast and, uh, stay on the lookout for other presentations and things like that. Um, webinars that I've done and, um, for more information about that. So first we already kind of touched on this is having a folder structure. So you want to be able to find what you need when you need it. You want your team to be able to find what they need when they need it. So you can easily collaborate and share.

This is actually my folder structure. There you go, B. This is my main folders. That's it. Now those are the main ones. There's subfolders, but it's very simple, right?

So you want to create a procedure document for your files and folders for your team because then they can follow it. This is the one thing that

How, so you have your personal drive, right? In your personal files. And then you have the company ones. Your company ones need to have a procedure document for sure, because you can't have people using different systems. But it's about how your business operates then is how you want to file it. How you guys actually work, how your workflow currently is. So you want to think about what goes where, why it goes there because the why is going to help remember.

and dictate moving forward, it's like, why, how are you using this later? What are you using this for? Why, like, what are the thoughts that come up when I'm actually gonna be looking for this information? So you wanna think about that when you're creating this. And you wanna have a file naming convention written out as well, because different folders could have different file naming conventions. And we'll touch on that too. So.

When you're creating your folder structure, want to make sure to kind of like what exactly what Melissa said is have one main folder, ideally in the cloud so you can collaborate and share. Whether that be in OneDrive, Drop, whatever it is, even just, I think Box is even one of them. Whatever that is for your team. We use Google Drive for ours. You want everything in one main folder for your company. And then you want to use broad categories to name main folders.

Subfolders can be more specific. Okay, but I'm going to give you some handy tips here in a minute about not getting too out of control with that because we find a lot of people who want to get organized and they started doing it themselves. They get over into, they're like, I need a container for everything. And the containers in the digital space are these folders, right? That's the container in the digital space and in our workspace.

and they just go out of control. It's kind of like going to the container store and buying all these bins and being like, this is gonna work. Because it's bins and that's what it's there to do, help organize. No, no, no, we gotta think this through further.

So, and the three naming conventions are alphabetical, numerical, and chronological. Alphabetical is great for resource files and for temporary files. So really great for templates, really great for training materials, onboarding type documents. Like our operations folder is mainly alphabetical because it's the, processes for everything are in there.

So it makes sense to go by name to search for something. And it's where the date doesn't matter, right? Doesn't matter. it's obviously financial statements wouldn't fall under that. Numerical is really, really great for version control. And here's an example. We used to do some both law firms and they went with 001 as the starting and then 0.1 is the first version of that document.

because then we would go back and forth. And yes, now there's like version control and all that. But when you're sending it back and forth in an email, it's really easy then to keep the trail of the version changes then separate. So that same document, but different version, if somebody made edits, becomes 001.2. And then if it's not a service agreement, it's a, let's say it's a, a, a,

What else do we get? Credit card authorizations. I'm going by what was in that folder when I worked with that law firm. And it would be credit card authorizations. Well, the empty one, the blank one would start off 002.1. And then 002.2 was the completed version because there wasn't back and forth. Now, if there was an updated version, they wanted to send a new credit card, it would become 002.3. And that would then be the most recent. But there was a trail.

Lastly is chronological. is great. This is the one they're going to use the most. For sure. Most universal. Great for correspondence, agendas, meetings, financial documents. It's really your bread and butter. You're going to mostly use the chronological. What you don't want to do, please don't do this, is put the year and the date and the month at the end. Because then you're ultimately just going by alphabetical.

Please, please,

Because your computer is going to, the computer just automatically does it alphabetically. And then if there's a number in front, it goes to the top, right? So you don't want to put it at the end because then you're now doing it alphabetically and not chronologically. And so you want to start always, always, always, always, always, cannot stress this enough, is put the year first, the full year, 2025. And today zero, what is today? April 23rd. So zero, four.

and then zero or 23. So year, month and date. And when you're putting in the month and date, make sure if it is a single digit day or month, put a zero in front of it. Because what will happen is it will automatically go, like October, for example, is going to automatically go right below January. Because there's a one at the 10 versus zero one, right? So you just, you...

Gotta be cognizant of those things or else it's going to end up jumbled. And you'll be like, no, it was here. I mean, we've seen this where people are like, it's here, it's here. And it's like, oh, because it's up here. It's not in order. You want your files to be able to kind of tell us, I always say tell a story. That sounds really weird for some people, but I'm like, I want to know the flow. And I can actually see what's going on high level when I open a folder. And a great way of doing that is using naming conventions that are consistent and make sense.

Like my financial folder, my taxes, it's like, these are all my receipts. and this was, yeah, this month I was working on this. Yeah, those are those receipts. You know, it goes through like my whole year. know exactly what I did just based on that. and it's from the beginning to the end. So those are the three naming conventions. Some handy tips. Name it what you call it.

What do I mean by that? sounds so simple, right? Well, for some reason isn't. People overthink this and they start just creating numerous folders for the same thing. For example, this was one that really stuck out in my mind. I was working with a client who had car insurance.

And she had a folder called car insurance. She had a folder called auto insurance. She had a folder called insurance within a car within it. So now that we're talking for, and then she had a, her, the name of her car, I think it was like Range Rover, whatever Range Rover insurance. And then another insurance folder for her second car. So now she's had six folders for the same thing.

So sometimes we'll say, is this? And people think we're crazy because it's like, you should know what this is. I'm not asking because I don't know. I'm asking because it's not about what I call it. You have to call it what you reference it as. What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of this document, when you look at that document, name it that. Okay. It's in, whatever you refer to it within your, so in a team standpoint, what do you constantly refer it to?

Like for us, service agreement is what we call it. We don't call it a contract. So if somebody put a, a folder called contract, you'd be like, I don't know. That doesn't make sense in our line of business at all. We call it a service agreement. So name it what you call it. Super important here. It literally can change everything and you create numerous unnecessary hiccups and just, just overwhelming. If there's over 30 documents inside one folder or what?

what it could be also called below the scroll, meaning you have to scroll down to see the rest of the documents. That's a great indicator that you probably should create subfolders. Cause this allows then you not to have to feel like you have to create a subfolder for every single fold. Like some people get a little subfolder crazy here where there's one document in it and they're like, well, I need a subfolder. And it's like, well, do you know, is it ready for that yet? Maybe not.

So this is a great indicator to say whether or not you do need a subfolder. Set up your internet browser to ask you where to save documents. Don't have it on Macly go to your downloads folder. Don't have it on Macly go to your desktop. Have it ask you. This is easy. This is in your settings in your web browser. It depends on what web browser, and I couldn't tell you off my head where to find that, but it's really in your settings.

within Chrome or Microsoft Edge, whatever you're using, Safari. And it can then, you just say, ask me where to save when I'm downloading a document. And that can help you maintain the organization and actually think about it. And it does, and then it doesn't, your downloads folder and your desktop just doesn't get out of control. Utilize Z-Archive. And the reason why we put Z in front of it is because, like I mentioned before, the computer automatically

Organizes alphabetically and numerically. So Z drops it to the bottom. So that's a great way to keep documents that you're not ready to part with quite yet, but you don't need it taking up your mental, your, all this space that you're using, your main workspace, right? Second thing you want to have is a password management system. This is what Melissa was talking about.

Really important thing to remember is that you can then store and share passwords securely in one place. You only have to remember one password and you'll never have to forget a password again. I have a client right now that we did this for her company and she was somebody that she had the, she would exactly what most said. She would have things on notes, her assistant would have some.

And then she would have them in her contacts on her phone as well. And so they were just all in some and then Apple passwords as well. So then she would have only like a few here, a few there, a few here. And then they also weren't consistent. So we didn't know which one was actually the correct password. It was always like a guessing game. And then we'd always end up wasting time. She would end up wasting time and her assistant would end up wasting time because...

And they'd have to reset the password and then, are you available? Because it's going to call you, going to text you the code and all this back and forth. That's just unnecessary if we had this in place. And it's also just for your peace of mind. My goodness, time saver and peace of mind. This is huge. There goes my light. Apologize. I'm just going to put that down. So the benefits of having a password manager is it will generate strong, unique passwords for you.

So you actually can be more secure because you don't have to remember all your passwords anymore. And I'll explain why in a minute, because it's going to show you all your passwords and it's going to automatically, it will actually know it will auto fill for your passwords across your devices. That's why you don't have to remember all, but the one to log into the password manager. And what's really, if you're worried about security, let me tell you something. They may get really hard.

to log in another device, you have to, like, I mean, one pass, when we, I use one password and I set up a team on one password recently. And let me tell you, it was like, all right, do you have your unique code? They only give it once. We have to save it. We have to make sure it's an important space. We have to password it. And then, you have to remember your password and it's going to text you. So now there's three things that you need just to get that password manager on that device. Now, once it's set up.

You're good to go. And then it's just a matter of don't let anyone steal your device. And then it will like, obviously have to have a login and to get into your, you should have a login to get into your, open up your computer or anything like that or phone. But having these strong passwords and then auto selling it is just amazing. Game changer. And then you can also share securely with contractors or members of your team.

So when you hire outside help, so easy to just share that way.

So here are some password managers. One password, like I mentioned, Bitwarden and Dashlane is really coming up too. One password we use, I recommend that one the most right now. And then I would say the second one, I say Dashlane. Bitwarden is just a little clumpier, but for coders and people who are really into the technical side of things, it's great. So it's just more, I feel like it's just more techie in my eyes, more for those like,

techie people, which is fine. it's just a little bit more clunky, but, you see, I don't mention LastPass. I know Melissa uses LastPass. I no longer suggest them just because of all the data breaches they've had and issues they've had in the community. The organizing community has actually, been frowned upon because the way they handled their themselves and the way that they knew things were happening and didn't do anything about it. So,

We have steered away from that. So now we talk about these ones. It's very like, it's really big in the community. It's been since that all happened a few years ago, still talked about today. Some things to not forget when you're setting up a password manager is to make sure to download the extension on your internet browser, download the app on your computer and download it on your phone and tablet. So then you don't have to be stuck.

and be tied to one device or having the clunk around it will auto fill for you. So you just want to make sure that you set this up correctly right from the get go when you start doing this.

You can, this is, this is really cool too. So setting up the organizational system in your password manager, you can create different, what they call either vaults or folders for certain passwords. So you can then separate out private ones that you don't want to share from ones that you do, that you could share. So for example, well, here we go, can categories to help share with others. This is the example, my marketing one. I have a folder of all the marketing passwords that I would need to share with the team.

So I can literally just share that entire vault with somebody, that folder, right? So I can categorize it and they only get access to that. And what's really cool, lot of these password managers, they don't even see the password. It's encrypted. It's very, very cool. So you just want to think about that. Outside of that, I don't, my husband is like really, him and I share.

like share the password manager, right? So I have access to all of his things, his vaults. He is a vault for everything. Entertainment, food, finances, travel, but not just travel. No, no, no. Then it's like airplanes. It's just like a nuts. There's too many folders and he's sharing it with me. Like it's almost overwhelming. You can, there is such a thing, like I said before, you can get a little crazy with.

and make it more cumbersome for yourself. You want to think high level here. I really like just creating what's private, what's shared, and if it's categorically shared, like with my marketing team, financial for, with the CFO or bookkeeper, you know, so on and so forth. Like separating my admin, like Meredith is my executive assistant here today. And Melissa's team actually helps us with marketing. like, it's like, here you go. This is what you get, right? This is here, easy peasy.

And Lest.ly is an organized bookmark system for quick access.

Bookmarks are not for your reading list. You want to use a tool like Pocket. And now even Google Chrome has like a reading functionality. I don't know how great it is. I haven't used it myself. But you ultimately want to take that out of your bookmarks. Don't let those become bookmarks. If you want to read something, put it in Pocket. Put it in, I even use Pinterest. Pinterest is great for hobby type things I want to read or that I want to remember.

to how to do something, like there's like how to, I love to paint. So it's like, mixing colors and there's a whole article about it and a technique. Well, I'm going to put that in my Pinterest because it's a hobby and that's where I'm going to go to find it. And I do, I literally will go there and pull it up and be like, yeah, I'm working on this, I want to find, like there's, it's easy. Pocket is great for articles that you actually don't, it's not a hobby based, it's more, hey, I just want to read this later.

And it gets rid of all the advertisements so that then it's just the readable portion left. There's other tools like that. I'm just throwing out pocket right now, because that's one that I've used. but again, there's other ones now that exist, but just don't save it as a bookmark. Your bookmark should only be for things, for links and different websites that you frequent regularly. That's it.

That's it. Don't save everything. Whatever you do, don't do that. So use the bookmarks bar for daily sites you visit. So like Mosa was mentioning, we're in this coaching program together. We've been in it now for a couple of years together. And I use the bookmarks bar to go to that group because I need to go to it and post in it daily or weekly or whatever, but I need to go there enough.

where I'm like, this is frequent. I'm in another program right now where I'm working on some updating, some marketing things. And I'm going in it every day, numerous times a day. It is in my bookmarks bar. The, our internal website that we use, we have a, we call it the B block. And it's where we keep all our system, our processes for everything, our how to's, what apps we were like, want to, that we like.

it's, basically the, whole business information is on there. We share it internally. It's our internal website and that's in my bookmarks bar for sure. Go there all the time. Keep working personal separate with your bookmarks. I, so my main ones you've got, and you can use the bookmarks bar for that, but then you can create folders. So you can create a folder in your bookmarks bar. Mine says B.

for reorganizing. And then my personal one, I think it's literally just called personal. And then within that, it just, it makes it very clean and it kind of puts you in that mode of whatever you're in. And then you can create, again, create folders to organize different bookmarks. This is actually helpful. I would suggest creating folders for this. It just makes it so much easier. I even have a folder that's just logins for coaching programs. Like it's like coaching logins.

Because I'm in all these, like I do different programs and they have different portals and I don't want to have to go searching for that, but I'm not going in there as frequently where I need it in my bookmarks. I'll put it, throw it in that folder. Finances is another one, marketing. And you can actually do subfolders within that if it starts getting a lot of control. But ultimately you want to keep it up by deleting duplicates and links that no longer work or have outdated information.

Don't save stock market information that's from today.

Because it's going to change. That's not what you want to save as a bookmark. You want to keep things that are standing the test of time. your financial, your Chase, Bank of America, that's going to pretty much be there, right? Portals, where to get free stock photos. Easy. That's the kind of stuff you want to keep in there.

So to recap, digital organizing is a practice and a skillset. Everyone is different and you want to set up your team for success here and yourself for success. Help have you have yourself some peace of mind and saving you time. Create a folder structure, write it down, commit to a password manager. Do it if you haven't already done so, or at least commit to yourself and have a plan where you're like, all right, I'm going to tackle this. I'm going to, I'm going to do it. If that's

You know, whatever, whoever that's with, just do it. It's so worth it. my gosh. And keep your bookmarks under control. This will really help with even working with your team to be like, here's where I go for this. Here's where I go for that. Easy. Makes your life so much easier.

So if your desktop's looking like this.

Or you have a bunch of tabs open. This doesn't even show the bookmarks. How many people have tabs up the wazoo here? There's some people I know even, there, there was an organizer that works for us that she would, she was like, don't look at my tabs on my phone. That was her weakness. She had, I mean, we're talking over a hundred and on her phone. And she was like, I can't even, she's like, it's not something I should be working with with clients. I need to like, that's my.

That's my downfall of And it's true, like, you know, there's some, they can get out of control very quickly to the point where you may not even want to shut down your computer because you're scared of losing where you were at, which you can reopen those, but still people are weird about them. Or if you have a to-do list that's just looking like this and you're having, it's kind of all over the place and not very helpful to you.

Or like Melissa shared with you, your passwords. I use the same image, but forks is so true. Are just all over the place like we talked about today. Or your calendar. It looks like a beautiful calendar, but there's so many calendars that are hot messes and tasks and notes are all over. That's where we come in and can help you set up for success. So this is how we streamline. I know some of you here have worked with us and are working with us currently. So we love having you and are so.

this

thankful that we get to help you be getting back your time and just making your life easier. We work with the team's key decision makers to determine your organizing goals and company guidelines. So things like the folder structure, communication standards, we can actually do all of that. Okay. We create and implement customized digital organizing solutions for your team. depending, and we can do this for you, guide you, or train your team. Your level of comfort.

is we work within that. Sometimes we start doing things for people and then other times we're like, we are just going to train the team on this now and move ourselves out of this a little bit, but we'll just be high level over here. it's depending on what area we were very flexible in that way. We also provide ongoing support for we're the digital organizing patrol is what I like to call it. Because here's what HR and what you probably don't have.

is when somebody from your team isn't following things or something's broken, then you can see it, there's symptoms, right? Like things are being dropped. We are those people that can be like, hold on, let us address it. We can be the people who address it for you. We're the bad guys. We literally have done this so many times. It's kind of like, for us, it's fun because we are just like, well, we're the bad guys, you know, cause...

That's just what we do. That's what we're here for is to get your team and you in line. Sometimes it's a, you know, a lovely conversation. We're not mean and all, but it's like, this isn't working. This is why we're doing this. Stop, stop doing it. Like we need to get everybody. I know at the law firm that the second, especially the second law firm, when we would hire somebody new and they would learn the system, cause they did have everything written out.

And this is where things go. This is how you do it. And it's file naming everything. And we would hire somebody and they would not follow it. And I was the first person being like, I'm not going to do it. But I felt comfortable. They empowered me enough that I felt comfortable enough to be like emailing that person and having a conversation with them being like, that's not, you're not following this. Please refer back to X, Y, and Z. And guess what? The person that I did that with lasted

I think it was like three weeks.

So was kind of funny, but like that, was part of the, you know, part of the thing here. so we can be that for you. And if you want to start saving an hour plus a day and getting organized schedule free consultation, we will then give you our life locker. This is, I created this when, pretty much because of my past, which is

the estate planning, the estate administration that I was doing, it's putting all your information into one solid place that you own. So it's like, here's my assets, here's my liabilities, here's my dependents, here's my pet stuff, here's the pet meds I need, my dog has diabetes. So here's how you do X, Y, Z. Here's where to find that. Here's my safe deposit box. So if something, it keeps...

you

It helps you have peace of mind and it also allows your people around you to have peace of mind. We've set this up for a lot of people. even help you fill it out. So if you want to schedule a free consultation, we would love to help.

And thank you so much. Here's our information. Does anybody have any questions?

Anyone? No. Good. You guys are going to be all organized like tomorrow and ready? Yes. Well, at least I hope so. I know, like I said, there's so much more to organization, but just do one thing.

One thing. Just try, you know, just try one thing. Shift one thing. Looks like here is somebody.

Yes, you're welcome. Thank you guys for being here and we're here for helping you and just want to see you succeed. Okay. And thank you, Melissa, for being here and co-hosting this with me. I know that we just love talking about this stuff so that we could partner up like this is just such a lovely blessing.

100%. I loved everything that you shared today in all of this. It may take a little bit of time to set up and to organize. I realize we're using that word a lot today, but it really makes a huge difference in terms of how much time you're spending and really how much time your team is spending as well.

For sure. All right, everybody, well, have a wonderful rest of your day. If nobody else has questions, you know where to find us. We're here. And we'll send out a replay as well. So if you have anything that you want to look back on, you'll get that in your email later today. All right. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful rest of your Wednesday.

Thanks everyone. So nice to meet all of you.