Staying Organized: Tips for Small Biz Owners
Oct 31, 2024
Running a small business can be tough, especially when you're juggling many tasks. As someone who manages two assisted living facilities, a YouTube channel, and a growing client base, I know how important it is to stay organized. In this blog, I'll share some tips on how to keep your business running smoothly.
Check out the video, too:
The
Why Organization Matters
When you're running a small business, like an assisted living facility, being organized is key to success. It's not just about having a tidy desk - it's about creating systems that help you use your time and resources wisely. Whether you're trying to grow your business, manage money, or take care of residents, good organization can make a big difference.
My Secret Weapon: Organization
I'm lucky to have a naturally organized mind. If I had a superpower, it would be organization! Over time, I've developed some tools and tricks that help me manage my many tasks. Here are some that might help you too:
The Power of Lists
I love making lists. To-do lists and checklists help me stay focused and make sure I don't forget anything.
Three Must-Have Tools for Staying Organized
Here are three tools that have really helped me stay on top of things:
- Bullet Journaling: This is a flexible way to plan your day and tasks. You use dots, lines, and symbols to create a quick overview of what you need to do. The best part is you can adapt it to fit your needs.
- Notion: This is a free, web-based tool that helps you organize your work. It takes some time to learn, but it's worth it. I use it to take notes, create wikis, and organize important business info.
- Google Calendar: Many people use Google Calendar, but not everyone uses it to its full potential. I use it for "time blocking" - setting aside specific times for different tasks or projects.
Finding What Works for You
While these tools work for me, the key is to find a system that works for you. Don't worry about what others are doing—focus on what keeps you on track. Try out any of these helpful tools and see what best fits your routine.
Wrap-Up: Stick With It!
Staying organized as a small business owner, especially in assisted living, isn't just about having the right tools. It's about using them consistently. By regularly using tools like bullet journaling, Notion, and Google Calendar, you can stay on top of your tasks and keep making progress. Remember, success doesn't happen overnight - it comes from steady, step-by-step progress.
If you found this information helpful and need help getting organized to create a solid business plan, make sure you download our Business Plan Checklist.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:01
building a business is a lot of work whether you're buying an existing business or building something from the ground up you are going to need to stay organized and on task if you want to be successful in this video i'm going to share with you how i stay organized as a small business owner who has purchased two existing businesses created a youtube channel and is looking to expand my portfolio and all the different business uh businesses that i'm trying to get into hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate
00:00:30
two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] in my last video i talked about how i use my small business credit card uh to just how i use it uh the process that i go through and what it's like for me to use it in my business and today i'm gonna get into a topic that i'm extremely passionate about something that i absolutely love doing uh it's how
00:01:08
i stay organized as a small business owner how do i stay on top of everything that i've got going on um on top of a full-time job my work with my assisted living facilities the youtube channel that i do here and some of the other things that i do i've got a lot of balls in the air and it's really hard sometimes to to keep on top of all of those things and so what do i do to to make it work and like i said i'm super passionate about this i love i love organizing things i would say the biggest thing
00:01:40
number one is i'm an organized person um i'm lucky enough to have been blessed with a very organized mind things uh i can do that very easily it's something that that makes sense for me if i had to say that if i had a superpower that would probably be my superpower is being able to compartmentalize different things and organize it so that i can work on things um in in a sequential order and be productive with my time i've also always enjoyed working with lists and i i do a lot of to-do lists
00:02:12
and create checklists for myself to help keep myself on task i am very much a list person and that is something that has allowed me to kind of create some of these checklists and things like that that help me be successful in fact i have a checklist and i'll link it up actually down in the bio for something i've created for assisted living to help you go through the process of of acquiring a facility or or converting a home into a facility but creating checklists in my mind is a great way for you to be successful so i
00:02:48
highly recommend it you can get that on assistedlivinginvesting.net i'll have it in my resources page for you there on the website so feel free to go over there and get that free resource something i would suggest though is that you develop a system that works for you don't worry about what other people think don't worry about what the experts think don't worry about anything that people tell you you need to do this if you want to be organized you need to find a system that works for you i'm
00:03:17
going to share my system how i build things how i'm how it allows me to be successful but you got to find what's best for you and if if my process works for you then great and i'd love to have conversations with you about that and how you could implement some of these things into your life i'm going to get a lot get into a lot of that in the coming videos about how i do a lot of this organization for my mind so hopefully that will give you a little bit of an insight into the way that i i kind of build things and
00:03:49
organize things in my life but ultimately you got to do what works for you and really i use three main tools to effectively organize my work and if these tools aren't any in any way useful to you i would ask you that you uh like this video so other people can find it and and find the useful information on how to organize their lives so tool number one is bullet journaling so bullet journaling is a method that was created by writer carol i think i'll link his book down below in the description and
00:04:25
you might be able to see it behind me it's on this shelf it might be just out of the out of the camera but he has a book on the bullet journal method and i'll link that down below so you can go in and purchase that for yourself on amazon but at a high level bullet journaling it allows you to be extremely flexible in how you plan out your day and the different type of work that you need to do it uses a system of dots and lines and symbols that help you stay on task and know what you need to
00:04:53
do at a glance as you look at your journal the other thing that's just incredibly just awesome about bullet journaling is it's extremely flexible and you can create a system that works for you that's something that i love about bullet journaling and i'm going to spend a lot of time going into how i do my bullet journaling to help you kind of learn that process as well if you're new to the method and and would like to learn more about it tool number two for me is notion i use notion.com it's a web-based
00:05:24
application and it's also just extremely flexible and letting you build something a system that works for you that you need to track your work there's a bit of a learning curve there as you're building out notion but there are a ton of youtube videos out there and blogs and things to help you kind of learn the ins and outs of things and you don't have to create some big huge robust website web application for you you can build something very simple um that is going to work for you and i will in a
00:05:56
future video i'll i'll link up here um it's going to be a while um so if you're watching this as i launch this this video release this video uh it's going to be a while before i link that up there but i'll i'll give you some resources there around how to use notion and some of the things that i've done that allows me to be successful with notion i really i like to use my personal bullet journaling method in conjunction with notion to stay on top of my to-do lists and i'll pull that all together at
00:06:28
some point in a future video and i'll link it up here once it's available i also use notion to take notes or create wiki pages for easy reference to different resources for example right now the american rescue plan act was signed into law back in march of 2021 i think it was march of may may um but there's a lot of information on there and it packs impacts us a lot as assisted living facility owners and i want to learn a lot about it and each state is different because they were funds that were given
00:07:00
to the different states and so i've created a wiki page in my notion so that i can go and do a bunch of research here a bunch of research there and i've hired a virtual assistant to do some of that work for me and compiling that information so i don't have to go out and find it i just give some direction there they go find that information for me and compile it and then it just makes a lot easier for me to have calls with people at the state and and things like that as i try to figure out exactly what i need to do
00:07:27
to go and take advantage of those programs that are there for me to take advantage of um hopefully that makes sense and something you've noticed there with those first two methods uh bullet journaling and uh notion is they're both just extremely flexible they're built in a way that allows me to do something that that works for me for my mind and that's something that for you is going to be an advantage as well you want to make sure you have something that is flexible enough that you can build it
00:07:56
and use it to your advantage for a way that that makes sense for you and those two tools are going to allow you to do that so i would highly encourage you to kind of do a little bit of research in those and start implementing them so that you can then be just a little bit more effective and tool number three um tool number three is google calendars um something that you probably have have used in the past and maybe you haven't used it to its full capacity yet but google calendars are obviously a free resource
00:08:23
that anybody can can use and it can really help you block time off in your calendar i love the concept of time blocking which is like blocking off chunks of time in your calendar to get things done in a future video i'll go over kind of the process of how i time block and i'll show you what my calendars look like a little bit again that will come up at some point in the future so if you're watching this at the launch of this video it it won't be on here for for quite a while but i'll eventually link
00:08:53
it up there above so you can go in and see how i use that and how i color code my calendars to work on the different types of projects and businesses that i'm working on that help me stay on top of everything and how i do that is after i've planned everything in my to-do list in my bullet journal and in notion i'll then go into my calendar and i block off the time for what i'm going to work on and then the following day it's very easy for me to just glance at my calendar oh i'm
00:09:19
supposed to make this call right now oh i have this meeting oh i was going to work on this project right now it just helps me stay on task in getting those things done so i know that's a lot of information that's a lot of tools and it might seem overwhelming especially to some of you who just are not organized my dad for example is is one who just um he he's tried to implement some of these processes before and he just can't like it's just not in his nature to do those things and that's
00:09:50
totally fine what i'm hoping though is that i can show you how i use these three different tools to organize my life and hopefully one of them is going to work for you you don't have to do all three you don't even have to do two of them or you mix and match you can do one of them whatever works for you that is the important part if you want to be successful find a system that's going to work for you to allow you to be successful to stay organized to help you stay on task so you can get
00:10:15
things done and be an effective business owner which is as an assisted living facility um owner that's what you are you're a small business owner and for those of you who are watching the video that don't do assisted living i think you're still going to be able to get a lot of good information from this video and from my future videos around how to plan and use a lot of these tools to help you be an effective business owner now in my next video i'm actually going to get into what is bullet journaling i'm going
00:10:41
to give you a good overview of the history bullet journaling how it works and and get into a lot of that so you can kind of have that background as i get into my method of bullet journaling and how i would suggest that you go about doing this to help organize your life so make sure you watch that video and again if any of this information was uh helpful to you please just smash that like button and let me know and let other people find out these resources so that they can be more effective business owners as
00:11:12
well and then you know to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net i have other content up there working on getting a blog up and going and you can also set up a consulting call with me we can have a conversation about your situation if you want to learn about my system and how i do planning and things like that just visit me on the website set up a call and we'll have a conversation and see what i can do to help you out and just remember it doesn't take a lot
00:11:37
just just a little bit it doesn't just keep making progress step by step by step if you keep doing that on a daily basis and you're consistent with it i promise you that you will be successful thanks for watching assisted living investing and have a great day [Music] you
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