Episode Summary

Are you busy, or are you truly productive? In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, you’ll learn four strategies for spring cleaning your business. Host Melissa Swink shares signs that your business may need a reset, such as feeling overwhelmed or experiencing clunky processes. 

You’ll learn the four practical steps for spring cleaning: auditing current systems, decluttering subscriptions and tools, streamlining processes, and organizing your digital workspace. Listen now so you can take action and improve efficiency and productivity in your business! 

Key Highlights:

• Spring cleaning isn't just for your home; it applies to your business, too.
• Feeling overwhelmed can be a sign that your business needs a reset.
• Start by conducting an audit of your current systems and processes.
• Declutter subscriptions and tools that are no longer useful.
• Look for free or low-cost alternatives to expensive tools.
• Streamlining processes can significantly improve efficiency.
• Documenting processes can be made easier with collaboration.
• Organizing your digital workspace saves time and improves productivity.
• Take one actionable step to start your business spring cleaning, 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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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to spring clean your business. So for those of you who don't know, I'm located in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and let me tell you, our spring weather is usually non-existent. We have very short spring weather. So we come from harsh winters to kind of like

mild winter temperatures, and then we kind of float into summer. There's not a whole lot of anything in between. And I'm also laughing at myself because like a typical Midwestern, I'm starting this conversation talking about the weather, but we are starting to trend towards warmer temperatures. I think it's going to be about 60 degrees this weekend, which for us is a huge victory this time of year. So I'm looking forward to that. But along with some of these warmer temperatures, I start thinking about the things that should get done around the house.

So spring and the changing of the seasons and the breaking out of a harsh winter, there's a few things that come to mind like outside window cleaning, right? Because we've got all sorts of water spots and smudges and things on the outside that's not easy to clean. So I'm thinking about, you what does that look like? I live on the second floor of my apartment building. So I'm starting to think about, does our apartment manager do an annual window cleaning or is that something that I have to try to figure out myself because

I'm definitely noticing that it needs to get done. Another thing that I'm noticing that needs to get done around the house in spring, bringing up patio furniture. Right now I have that stored in my garage. So bringing that up and putting that out on our balcony, that is something that is on my list as the temperatures start to warm up. I'm also looking forward to being able to just open up the windows and really bring in some fresh air. And so I'm thinking sunlight and fresh air. The other thing that I was thinking about is

making another round up for donations. So going through and seeing what winter clothes have I not worn this year. So if I haven't worn them this year, there's probably a good chance that they should be donated. Are there things around the house that we haven't used? My daughter, I have a 10-year-old daughter. What things are too small for her? What are things that were getting to be a little bit small this winter that we should definitely declutter and donate for someone else to continue wearing because she's simply outgrowing them?

These are all the things that I've been thinking about personally. And then I started to think about, you know, there are certainly things that could be spring cleaned in my business, and I'm sure yours is the same. So just kind of pausing there for a second, Let's take a moment to think about does your business need a reset? Does it need a little spring cleaning? And here are a few signs that there might be some things that we should take a look at. So first things first that I wanted to address here is overwhelm.

Are you generally speaking feeling pretty good about how things are going in your business, how the work is moving along? Do you have the right clients coming in consistently or are you feeling like everything is just so unnecessarily difficult? Are you feeling bogged down? Maybe you're starting to lose interest in some of the things that you've been doing and you just feel like you could use a vacation from it.

Maybe you're starting to feel a little bit of burnout, a little bit of overwhelm. That could be a sign that some things need to be addressed. Also think about, are there some processes that are feeling clunky? Like maybe you're bringing on new clients and you're like, gosh, I feel like it just takes so much to get them up and running. There's a lot of lift involved. Or maybe there are some scheduling things that are happening in your calendar and you're feeling like maybe you're saying yes to too many things and you need to start to reevaluate.

what is going on my calendar, and also how can I make sure that the meetings that are being set on my calendar, that I am adequately prepared for those going in. Just thinking through some of the things that you're like, gosh, I don't know, maybe we need to do some resetting. Also, some things to consider, are there underutilized tools or systems that you have, but you're not using or you're not using them to the full capacity and capability?

That might be something that we want to take a look at. Think about repetitive tasks that you or any of your team members are doing on a day-to-day basis. Are there things that we can do in order to maybe refine those, automate those? I also want you to think about, are we being busy or are we being productive? I don't know about you, but it's really easy for me to get lost in the busy work. I'm a checklist person, so I love to get things that you've checked off the list.

Okay, I got that done, I got that done, I got that done, but in reality, am I actually being productive? And because I have such a wonderful and capable team, was there someone else on the team who could have or should have handled this, whereas I just got stuck in my own little groove and wanted to keep checking off those boxes? Do you know what I'm saying? So sometimes I like to jump in and I get into the weeds and then I have to pull myself back. So those might be some of the signs

that your business needs a reset, these are certainly things in my business that I know need a reset as well. So if you answered a yes to any of these questions or all of these questions, or you have some other things that you like, I feel like this needs to be refined. For example, I had a conversation with a potential client yesterday who started his business two years ago, and he's like, you know, I think my target market has changed. That's totally normal. You know, when we start a business,

We are much more willing to work with a variety of people doing a variety of things because number one, we're trying to get things off the ground and frankly, we need money, right? And then we also are just still trying to feel out, what do we enjoy the most? What types of clients do we like working with most? And so he was like, I feel like I need to do a little bit of decluttering in terms of my marketing and my messaging so that I'm speaking to the clients that I want to be focusing on in the coming year.

There are just so many different signs that your business needs a reset. And really this can happen at any time, but we're sticking with the spring cleaning theme for today. So all of that being said, I'm gonna walk you through four steps or four different areas that you might wanna consider for spring cleaning for your business. So the first step is to audit your current systems. So when we think about a system, don't go too far down the rabbit hole of a specific software or app or tool that's coming. So that's kind of like,

It's the second step, but it's almost like a 1B kind of a step with that. Let's zoom out a little bit beyond specific softwares or subscriptions and things, and just think about some of the repeatable processes in your business or some of the specific areas of your business. One example might be your client journey. So when you have a potential client reach out to you, whatever means that might be for you and your business,

when you take a look at your sales process and then getting them onboarded and up and running successfully with working with you and or your team, what does that process look like? Is it smooth? Is it clunky? Are there gaps of information? Are there mistakes that are happening somewhere along the lines or are our balls being dropped? These are great indications that some of these processes need to be further looked at. And we're gonna do those in

additional steps here down the line, but just for now, start thinking about some of these areas. Maybe accounting. I'm recording this in mid-April, and so a lot of people are talking about getting their taxes done. Are the taxes done? Was it stressful? Was it difficult to compile the information for filing? That might be another thing that you can start to consider. Yep, I need to dig into that process a little bit more because this is not smooth.

Project management is another thing. So overall, all the moving parts and pieces that are happening in the day to day of your business, how are you organizing those? Are things slipping through the cracks? God forbid, are you trying to hold it all in your brain and you're forgetting things or you're waking up in the middle of the night in a panic thinking, I forgot to do that, I can't forget to do this. Again, these are some of the things that we might want to take a look at for some decluttering and some spring cleaning and some freshening up.

Scheduling might be another one where you're feeling like you have too many appointments on your calendar or maybe you just want to be more efficient with the meetings that you do have where you want to maybe gather some information ahead of time if you feel like you're going in blind to some of your conversations or if you feel like your meetings are just not very efficient, maybe you tend to go down some rabbit holes, maybe it's a great time to reevaluate.

some of your templates or some your meeting agendas or information you want to gather to be prepared ahead of time. So I just gave you a random list of examples. You could probably think of many more, but really overall I want you to think about what is working well right now. Where are some of the things that working well? And we want to celebrate those, right? And then we want to think about what could be working better. And you could probably...

make that list right off the top of your head, because I feel like those are some of the glaring things. Those are those pain points in our businesses. I do this periodically where I will take out a blank sheet of paper and I'll just write down at the top, what's not working at Melissa Swink and Co. And it's kind of my rant list sometimes, and nobody's going to see it, right? Where it's just like, so-and-so forgot to do this again. Or it's, and I'm not ragging out anybody, but you know, we've all been there where it's like, gosh, I feel like this particular client

I feel like it's just really clunky. I don't know if it's working or there's this system and it feels just overly complicated and I don't think it's meeting our needs. Just, you know, what's not working? Like what could be working better? And so with all of this information in mind, just kind of conducting that audit in your business and your day to day, we're gonna look for some opportunities to maybe automate some streamlines, some decluttering.

We're going to talk about that in additional steps here. So that brings me into step number two, which could be considered a 1B. But we want to declutter any subscriptions or tools or apps that maybe you're not using at all. We want to cancel those. Or maybe there are things that you know that you've invested in and the implementation got a little bit overwhelming or you got busy, your team got busy and they got put on the back burner.

and we want to resurrect that and look at, okay, what do we need to do in order to get this system that we've invested in and we are continuing to pay for up and running to a point where it is truly making a difference in our day to day in the business. We wanna review all the different subscriptions that we have going on in the business. So one way to do this, if you have a list of all the tools that you're using, like maybe you have a budget or something,

Great, fantastic. Otherwise, you can certainly look at your QuickBooks and your reports, taking a look at what are all the different software charges? What are all my expenses from the previous month? Or maybe you want to take a look at a bank statement or a credit card statement, take a look at what am I paying for? And am I using this system as fully as I possibly can? Am I not using it all?

Am I unhappy with it where it's been really glitchy lately and maybe we want to take a look at using something else? This is a great list to take a look at and figure out what we want to do. So another option for this as well is to consider when you take a look at your subscriptions, the software, the tools, the apps that you're paying for, are there free or low cost alternatives? I'll give you an example of this.

Our team was using a time tracking tool for many, many years. And suddenly once we got over, I don't remember how many users it was, then they wanted to start charging us $10 per user per month. And that might be a small amount, but if you have a growing team, every time you go to add another person, the cost goes up. Interestingly enough, we found a nearly identical system that to this day has not started charging us for adding

additional users. So sometimes we can find those great fits. Another example just in our company recently, we were using a social media management tool that was designed for agencies because we've managed many, many social media accounts and a variety of platforms. And we must have been grandfathered in on a legacy plan for a long time. And so when I went to go and add some more profiles, some more slots to manage more profiles,

All of a sudden, it wanted me to upgrade to the new pricing, which was actually triple what I was paying before. Now, I am all for investing in software that you're going to use, that's going to save you and your team time, and all of that. Don't get me wrong. I'm not about spending dollars to save pennies. I wouldn't navigate from a system just because the price went up or because they started charging extra per user.

but we wanna take a look at before we make that decision, is this truly the best solution that meets our needs for the best price point or is it time to shop around? And so again, with our social media management tool, it prompted me to shop around a little bit and we found a tool that was in comparable price to what we were paying before and it had unlimited users, which was fantastic. So we've navigated to a new system. It might be time for you to do the same thing. Take a look at.

If there's a system that you feel is just very, very expensive or maybe the price is going up and you're not sure that it's quite the right thing for you moving forward, now is a great time to reevaluate and take a look at that. And by the way, you yourself do not have to do all the heavy lifting. If you're looking at researching a new system or navigating a new system switch, you can certainly lean on your team or your virtual assistant to help you through that process.

Another thing to think about, so I said, I talked about number one being auditing your current systems and your processes, and number two could be like a 1B for decluttering different subscriptions and software expenses and things like that. I would say like a 2A or like a 2B would be to consider other money leaks in your business as long as you're taking a look at.

Here are all the things that I'm paying out every month. Are they worth it? Are they not? Is there something better? Some other things that I can think about in terms of money leaks, subscriptions are big, especially if you're not even aware that you're still paying them. Maybe it was something that you paid once and didn't realize that you were on a recurring subscription. I know that happened to me where I needed to consolidate some PDFs and it asked me if I wanted to upgrade for $3.99. I went, yeah, sure, whatever.

But then if I'm not using that software, you know, for, you know, six months down the line, that might be something to cancel. Like that's a money leak, right? But another example of this could be credit card processing fees. So I know that there are a lot of systems today that automatically build in easy credit card payments. know, certainly there's QuickBooks. They have a lot of payment processing right within their system. There's Square, there's PayPal. There's so many different payment processing tools.

And I can also tell you that many of them are charging premium fees for the convenience and the ease of use. And there might be better alternatives out there that might be a better fit for you. If you are interested in talking through this in a little bit more detail, I have a great referral that I can give you. But I can tell you that I have navigated from using some of those more mainstream payment processors to an alternative. I'm going to go ahead and I'll call it a generic.

That might be offensive to my payment processor and friend, but just follow me here for a minute. It's kind of like, all right, here's the name brand and then here's the generic, which does just as much, if not more, and it costs a little bit less. So pay attention to your processing fees, keeping more of your money, your money. Also pay attention to when we're talking about money leaks in the business, late payments.

there might be some outstanding invoices that were never paid by your customers, or there just might be maybe some additional credits on some accounts that you haven't applied toward future invoices. I know I had a credit memo issued to me for some unused services and I was like, okay, great. I wanted to make sure that I didn't lose sight of that so that I could pay ultimately my next invoice to that vendor short in order to make up for that. So there's a lot of little money leaks.

that can easily creep up on us in the business. So now's a great time to re-evaluate some of those. Okay, step number three to spring clean your business. It's going to be streamlining your processes. So I feel like this is where I start to lose people. Like it's fun to kind of go through and make a list of, here's what's going great and here's what's not working and I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna see what are some things I could cancel or where can I save some money or where can I better utilize some of the things I'm already paying for.

That's fun, right? And then we talk about streamlining processes and it's like, that's where the real work begins. Yes, it's true. That's where the real work begins. But I want to reassure you, you do not have to go through this step alone. So when we talk about streamlining our processes, that might mean creating some standard operating procedures for the first time where you actually go through and somehow document this.

from A to Z, from start to finish, a particular process in your business. We'll get to more talking about that more in a moment. Or maybe it's time to just do a quick review. Here is the SOP that we have documented or recorded. I wanna make sure that this is still up to date and nothing has changed. This happens frequently because systems will make different changes and upgrades and then all of a sudden your how-to video that you made a year and a half ago.

is suddenly not completely accurate for how things are today. Not only just on the software side, but it could also just be that you have continued to refine your processes as your businesses continue to grow. And then that standard operating procedure needs to be updated accordingly. So now's a great time to take a look at some of those that might need some refreshing. Now,

I'm talking about SOPs start to finish. Here's how we do this process at my company. This could also be as simple as double checking some of your checklists and some of your templates that you have. I know for example, I have plenty of email templates. So when I receive, you know, common emails or frequently asked questions in my inbox, I'm not starting from scratch. I can just grab that template and then customize it as I need to. And sometimes I find that I,

needing to update the same things in a template. So it's like, maybe I need to refine that a little bit. So maybe I decided that I wanted to change the wording of how I'm greeting somebody or how I'm introducing myself. Rather than making that change every single time I do that email, maybe now is a great time to pause and go, I just need to update that template so that it's there for me the next time and it's going to save me some time. So we're talking about processes, checklists, templates, what needs to be updated.

Now I want you to be rest assured that this does not necessarily mean that you need to lock yourself in a room on a Saturday and push through this and document processes or do this in a tedious, laborious way. There are easier ways to do this. And my number one recommendation is to do this with another person. So have your virtual assistant meet with you on Zoom, record the call and

do the actual work and talk through it and answer their questions ahead of, along the way, not ahead of time, along the way so that you have that documented process on how you do such and such in your business. Your virtual assistant can then go and clean it up. They can use AI tools. They can use, what's the word I'm looking for? Transcriptions.

to create those documents for how things are done for this particular process. So for example, if you're showing somebody how to properly invoice a client and get them set up in your billing system, then that is made. It's not something that you have to tediously do or find a hypothetical example. I would do a real time example when you're setting up a client invoice. Go ahead and just record your screen, talk through what you're doing and then send that off. That's a super easy way to do that.

So there are definitely ways to make documenting these processes easier. I do not recommend doing this alone because of two things. Number one, there's always going to be something more pressing and more urgent that comes up that will prevent you from doing it. Trust me, ask me how I know. And then the second thing is, is that when we are doing this ourselves, sometimes there are questions that other people might have that we didn't even think to address as we were walking through it. So,

absolutely recommend doing this with somebody on your team. Okay, another thing that we want to look at when we're talking about streamlining processes is we're looking for opportunities to automate. So we want to reduce manual work. We want to also reduce the chances for human error. So if there are things that can be set up or automated in the system, by using a system, I should say,

that would be ideal here as well. So for example, maybe using client onboarding is another example. You have a Zapier that when a contract is signed, that the name and the email address gets added to your CRM system and they automatically get a client welcome drip. So it gives them information like, thanks so much for choosing our company. Here are the next steps that you can expect in the coming days.

and so on. If there's intake forms that need to be filled out, if there are other forms that need to be submitted, you can include that in that welcome email and have that drip series. That way, nobody on your team has to touch it and it happens every single time and so on. Just giving you a high level example of other things that you can look at for automation. Okay, the last item that we have here, item number four, is to organize your digital workspace. So,

My friend Alex Brzezowski at Be Organizing. If you wanna dive into digital organizing in much greater detail, go ahead and check out her website, beorganizing.com. Alex and I also have a workshop coming up. Get on my email list and you'll receive information about that in the coming days here. That is going to be on April 23rd, 2025. So certainly send me a message if you're also interested in more information on that.

I will also be uploading that workshop recording to our podcast as well. So look for that as well. Would love to have you join us live if you can, but little free plug for Alex. I just believe in the work that she does so much. So some examples of organizing your digital workspace could be organizing some of your files and folders. So the first thing that comes to mind when I think about our team's Google Drive,

is archiving things that are just no longer being used. So client projects that have wrapped up or clients that we are no longer working with, making sure that those client files are moved to an archive folder, right? That way we're not having to scroll through and comb through old information that we don't need anymore. And that just kind of speeds up and saves everybody time. Also taking a look at file names. I'm going to use a date for an example here. So real life example.

I have a marketing call with my marketing team once a month and we go through last month's metrics and I noticed the other day that we are naming files with inconsistent dates. So then, you know, if somebody literally types the word May, M-A-Y, and then the year, and then somebody else does like four slash nine slash 25,

and so on, and there's lots of different date formats, what's gonna happen? These things are all shuffled out of order. So when I went to go and take a look at a previous month's metrics report, I'm like scrolling through and having to read every file name to make sure that I was finding the correct one. And there are ways to consistently label things with dates so that you're not having to do that. So that is something on our spring cleaning list within the company as well. And so the other part of this could be,

taking some of your manual files and putting them into an electronic system so that they are easier for other people to find. So you might be saving things on your desktop and maybe you want to look at moving that to Dropbox or Google Drive or some other type of cloud-based system so that number one, if your computer crashes, you don't lose access to those files. They're not gone forever. Or number two, it makes it a lot easier for you to collaborate with your team or other service providers.

in order to get things done. those are just a couple of high level examples of organizing your digital workspace, but it definitely is necessary and helpful for finding things and saving times on that front. So all of that being said, I highly encourage you to take one action step that jumped out at you today. So maybe it's making that audit list of here are the things that are working, here are the things that are not working. And then for the things that are not working,

What's the next step to iron that out? Like who can help me with this? That's an important one. It's not necessarily to make a list for yourself to do because we have plenty of things as business owners and executives that are on our plates. We don't need to add anything, but we want to make sure that things are continuing to move forward and be refined so that things are running more smoothly with the help of other people. So we might be reviewing some of our processes as well.

I'm taking a look at, this particular process is really clunky, mistakes tend to be made. Who can sit down with me and we can map this out and take a look at where are the gaps and how can we seal those gaps so that things are running more smoothly. Again, highly recommend doing this with a partner or somebody on your team, another human being who has a little bit of a sense of how you run your company and what your business does.

so that they're able to bring in some fresh set of eyes and some expertise. Maybe you want to cancel a subscription that you're not using, or maybe there is a software that you know you're not fully utilizing, and you want to lean into that more and to integrate it with more of your day-to-day operations in the coming year. That might be something that you want to do as well. Maybe it's something as simple as archiving old files and taking some time to do that.

just pick one thing that jumped out and tackle that one thing. And then you can certainly do more if you like, but just pick something simple and go from there for spring cleaning your business. That will get you a jumpstart on doing all of that. So I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to the podcast today or watch us on YouTube. If you have a moment, do you mind just leaving us a review? That would be really helpful just to...

Let us know that you're listening and that this is helpful to you and also let the powers that be, the different platforms and things know that we're a legit podcast and we are bringing helpful information to our audience and community. So would be much appreciated if you did. And I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.