133 | End of Year To-do List for your Organizing Business

There is still time before the end of the year--two weeks as of when this podcast is up--and we have some things to jump start some thoughts for you on how you can maximize your time and get ready for a great 2023 (AND get some rest and relaxation too!!!!) Scroll down to see the list if you need a reminder after you've listened to the pod! LINKS MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST: Jon Acuff January goals challenge: https://acuff.me/january-2023-challenge-waitlist/ Marie Forleo goal setting pod: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/335-how-to-set-the-right-goals-for-the-year-ahead/id1199977889?i=1000589966597 HoneyBook setup course for professional organizers (with discount code for 50% off a year of HB: https://www.inspiredorganizer.com/offers/7yd3LKFq Our free workshop, The Pro Organizer's Profit Plan: https://www.poroadmap.com HERE IS THE LIST OF THE THINGS WE TALK ABOUT IN THE EPISODE: Tasks to tackle before Dec 31: Make sure all of your expenses are set and in!  Think of things you might want to invest in--example, some software gives a discount for a full year subscription vs. a month to month (Canva as an example.) Anything that you wanted to invest in--equipment (Melissa mentioned a photo scanner she loves), courses, education, etc.  Have you used your Container Store once a year discount? Use it or lose it by EOY!  Remember to put money into your investment account for retirement--fund your IRA! Note: in the US you can do this for this calendar year as long as it's by April 15, but also great if you can get it in the end of the year.  Jan 1 is a great time to roll out new policies, pricing procedures, contract terms, etc.  Jan 1 is also a great time to implement new software and start clean---accounting, CRM, etc.  Think about and commit to 2023 goals.  Transcript: Hey, podcast besties. It's Melissa here. I just wanted to do a short episode and get it up because I always love to make sure I'm reminding people about the things that I am reminding myself in my own organizing business. And so I wanted to throw this episode up because I have been thinking about oh my gosh. What are all the end of the year things that I need to be doing? And at the time I'm recording this, it's December 14th. There are over two weeks left, two weeks and three days. I think when I looked at my calendar. I don't know about you guys. This year has gone so fast. I feel like lightning speed. I, I don't know if that's the same for you, but I've talked to a few friends. They feel the same way, I don't know about you. I'm ready for a little holiday rest, which is why I would really love to get some of these things set to go for my business and give myself a little bit of break before I go into 2023. I wanna be rested and ready to go. One of the things we talk about a lot is, Jen and I have both talked about it, in order to show up for your clients, you need to be the best self that you can be. That includes rest and self-care. So I hope that you are taking time for that over the holidays too. Okay, I'm gonna talk about some strategic bigger picture things, and then I'm also gonna talk about some more tactical, but also very important things. I'm going to start with a little bit more of the functional stuff. This is what I term like, oh my gosh, time to add this to my to-do list kind of stuff. And then I'm gonna do a wrap up of these tips and the show notes. So if you're listening along, you don't have to take notes. I'll also send an email to you guys about it. If you're on our email list, if not, hit inspired organizer.com. Add yourself to our email list.  This wrap up will be just conservate my holiday gift to you. I'm gonna gift you with a little bit of work, but it's really worthwhile work, I promise. So, all right. First up, make sure that all of your possible expenses for the year are in for your business. I will just add a quick disclaimer. Obviously I'm not an accountant. I am not providing you tax advice, and some of what I'll be talking about here is focused on the us. I'll apologize to our international listenership. Unfortunately, I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all tax laws, of all of all countries. I wish I did. That would be amazing. It'd be a great skill to have. But a lot of this I'm gonna talk about, you know, kind of United States focused, but no matter where you are in your business, making sure that all of your expenses are in for the end of the year.   I just look at my business and I say, do I have some available funds that I could dedicate to some expenses and get those in at the end of the year? One example for you, if there are things that you pay in your business month to month, there are often incentives that a company will give you to pay that for the year. Canva is a good one. You can pay that on a yearly basis. Some of the software we use for Pro Organizer Studio, you get sometimes up to two months free of that software. If you pay yearly versus monthly, so definitely take a look at that. If there's software that you use in your business every single day. Maybe it's your crm, maybe it's Canva, your accounting software, anything like that. Check out bonuses for paying yearly. If you have money left in your account, this could be a great way for you to get ready for the upcoming year.   If you have been thinking about investing in something. One thing that we've talked about in our inspired organizer Facebook group, recently digitizing client photos and documents. I personally do this for clients. I have one client that kind of started me down this path. I invested in a great scanner and I have done a ton of projects with it. It has been. Unbelievably great investment for my business, paid for itself in a very, very short period of time. But if there's a piece of equipment that you wanna invest in your business to help a service that you wanna provide for next year, think about making an investment in that. If there's a course or another educational program that you wanted to get into, great time to invest in that. Give something newer world that's gonna fit with your 2023 goals.  Okay, another one. If you have your container store once a year discount that you haven't used yet, get on it, get some stuff. Um, I used mine a million months ago, . Um, so I, I am not in this category, but I know that there are people that still haven't used their discount yet. So make sure that if you have saved up that discount, use it before you lose it because it will go away. This one. This next tip is one that was from one of our inspired organizer members. It was a really, really great and really important tip. Don't forget about your investment accounts, saving for retirement is super important and it's often a lot more challenging for us self-employed people. So don't forget about funding your IRAs. The good news in this is typically you actually have till April 15th of the following year in, at least in the US to fund those retirement accounts. For this year. So you can still say this is for 2022, even if it's in April 12th of next year. But in case you are likely to forget that deadline, it's a great time to just get those funds into your retirement count before the end of the year. And just a reminder, compound interest is an absolutely amazing thing, .   Okay. Next thing to think about, January 1st is a great time to start new things in your business. So examples would be new policies. So do you have new cancellation policy you want to do? Do you have a new pricing structure? Do you need to raise your prices a little bit? Is there new software you want to implement? Do you have new systems that you want to implement with clients, new contract terms, anything new? A lot of things are much easier to implement if you just make January 1st the start. Start thinking about if you haven't thought about it already, start thinking about, Hey, are there some things I need to tweak in my business? January 1st is a wonderful time to just make a break and start something new for the new year. One example of this, someone in a mastermind that we recently. Ran was talking about implementing new accounting software, and one of the things that we recommended was make sure that you're ready to go with that on January 1st, so you don't have to go back and change anything. You don't have to add anything. You are ready to go on that January 1st date so that everything is super seamless and easy to transition. It's a great time to evaluate your pricing structure. If you wanted to do a price increase, then you can just change that on your website and be ready to go for those New Year's resolution. So that we all know are out there, ready to come in, um, much easier to change that on January 1st than it is to change it other times of the year. So, just a thought. By the way, you can raise your prices anytime you want to, but just a little hint, get it done now, you'll be really happy that you did.  All right. If you are thinking about moving to a new crm or implementing a crm, uh, crm, client relationship management, if you wanna go back on the podcast like four or five episodes, maybe a little bit more. We had an interview with Amber Barrett who's talking about Honey Book and TA teaching you all about what a CRM is and what it does. But you might wanna think about this now too. Getting that on board and getting that CRM set up and ready to go for the new year. You will be so happy with yourself. We do have a course on Honey Book. It's $149 and in the course you get a code for half off honey book for the year, which actually more than pays for the course. We would absolutely love to have you. Group. Um, it's a combo of the end of the year investment and an investment in your sanity, , and your time saving. It's gonna save you hundreds of hours next year in your business. I will happily link that in the show notes for you.  Okay. I know I talk fast. There are lots of things to think about here. What I would love for you to do is think about, there are probably some things I have forgotten. Um, it's not an exhaustive list, but I would love for you to think about, oh wow, maybe there are some other things I need to be thinking about. Just do some thought time on what are these end of year things I can do in my business. I think it will make you really happy to get some of these functional things off of your plate. Okay. I realize that typically this is done backwards. You usually start big and go small, but I wanted to leave this next part until the, the back half of the episode. After you get done thinking about some of these functional things we've just talked about, I would really love for you to think about your 2023 goals, your big goals. If you listen to our podcast with Megan Sears, it was a couple of episodes ago, you heard her story. I love the story. It seriously just warmed my heart. But she talked about how she made a huge stretch goal for herself for 2022, and at the end of November, she was only $61 and 2 cents away from breaking that.  If she hadn't set that stretch goal for herself, she might not have known what was possible. She might not have implemented some of the things in her business that made it. I want you to think about what do you want out of your business for next year? By the way, those do not have to be financial goals. They can be client goals. They can be start your business goals, grow your business goals. They can be personal goals. I want to take the month of August off. I wanna take the month of December off. I would like to quit my full-time job and make organizing my full-time job. I want to be able to spend more time with my kids. Those goals for your business can be anything that speaks to you. They do not have to be financial goals. Anything is fair game in the goal game, as I always, always, always will remind you of something very important. They are your goals, so they need to be what's important to you, not what you think they should be or what other people are doing. They're your. Goals.  I wanna talk about one important note on this. Recently I was talking to someone who was looking at other organizers who were building teams, and she felt like she was doing it quote unquote wrong because she was a solo organizer and she didn't have a team on the horizon. I always come back to one of my favorite, favorite quotes, comparison is the thief of. It's completely natural to look at what other people are doing and to think about what that might look like for you, but it's also extremely, totally very okay to say, man, that is awesome for them. I love what they're doing, but that is not something that works for me or my business. Personally, I am a solo organizer. I always have been, and I always plan to be because that's what works for me. That works for my personality, that works for my business, it works for my goals. But you also do not have to say, well, Melissa is a solo organizer, so I need to be a solo organizer too. And listen, I'm here to tell you, girl, if you want to start a team of 20 organizers in five different states, I am here to cheer you on and I want you to go crush that. I just don't want anyone that is listening to this to spend time thinking you are less than because other organizers are doing something different and your goals are different than what you see other people doing. Your goal can be to get one client a month, and I love that goal. , your goal can be to regularly have $10,000 a month. I love that goal. I love any goal that you were gonna set in your business, and I am here to help you achieve it. I want you to make all of the goals that fit your life and your world and your self-care and your sleep and all of those things, okay? If you want resources on goal setting, I will link this in the show notes, but I can highly recommend John a's podcast. John Acuff, you know, I talk about a lot. He has the book, soundtracks Love that book. He has a podcast called, all It Takes is a Goal. So it's basically all about goal setting. It's a, it's about a lot of things, but a lot of it is about goal setting. He has an upcoming challenge that actually I'm joining in January. Totally recommend that it's free. And Marie Forlio just did a podcast, a pretty short podcast on achievable goal setting tactics. So I will link both of those if you want some help with some goal setting. All right, one last word. As you cruise into the last two weeks of the year, hopefully with some rest and some fun and family time and all that. If you want a little bit more in-depth learning from me, we have a free workshop called the Pro Organizer's Profit Plan, and you can watch that on demand 24 7. If you like me, sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. Great time to watch it. I'd be happy to. Happy to stay up. head to po roadmap.com for that. I would absolutely love to spend an hour with you. Plus it's cool. We have this new software that we use that has interactive components, and if I happen to be online while you're watching, I can message you live. Like you can ask me questions live while you're watching. And, um, hopefully that sounds like fun and not creepy. I realize as I'm saying it, , I don't want it to sound like I'm watching you. I'm not. Um, it just happens to be that I, I can interact with you if I happen to be online while you're. So I love chatting with organizers. I will love to try to connect with you on that webinar. If you have any questions after that, you can also email me always at hello per organizer studio. Okay. That's it. That's your shorty podcast about. The last two weeks of the year and getting some amazing things done. You can message me on Instagram. You can email me at hello Pro Organizer Studio, tell me what your goals are for the year. I would love to hear how we can support you. Ask me any questions you might have. I am off to go do this list of tasks for my own business home by 11 right now. I'm actually gonna do it right now, and I am excited to support you in any way I can. All right, have a great day. Organizers.