11 Oct Case Study: How Organised You is helping one entrepreneur blow her task management goals out of the water
Dawn Beresford is a pretty inspiring person.
Already successful in her career as a talent scout – working part-time for two production companies as well as providing freelance training – she has recently started to run Yoga and writing retreats from her home in Barbados to boot. As if all that wasn’t enough, Dawn is currently writing her first novel, which, at the time of writing, has been shortlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize.
Dawn is the type of person who decides she wants to do something and goes for it, which is definitely our mantra at Organised You. But with so much going on, she knew she needed a framework in place to help her become more organised and juggle all of her different goals seamlessly. And, thanks to a client recommendation, that’s where Organised You stepped in to help. Here are the 6 key areas in which we’re helping Dawn to drive her businesses forward.
- Taming the email beast
As you might imagine, given everything that Dawn works on, she receives a deluge of daily emails and manages multiple inboxes. She purchased a personal laptop before our first consultation, in which we helped her set up all of the different email addresses in one place (Microsoft Outlook). We also helped her create some rules to help manage the influx of emails and allow her to instantly recognise those which would need a prompt response. Our next project will focus on clearing out her current inboxes, for example by unsubscribing from irrelevant newsletters and blocking unwanted emails.
- Tackling task management
At Organised You, we tend to find that everyone works differently when it comes to task and action management, and that it’s best to try a few different systems to see what suits an individual best. Since the focus for Dawn is to get everything in one place, we’ve started trialling the task management system in Outlook. I’ve shown her how to create tasks, diarise them and update them. We’re categorising her tasks by area (Writing, Retreats, Bookkeeping etc) so she can focus her attention on a specific area when she needs to. We’ll be checking in with her on her tasks every time we meet to see if the process is working and to see if there are any we can help with.
- Bookkeeping basics
The level of bookkeeping required for Dawn is minimal as she is already employed in her Talent Management roles. However, to streamline the process of handing her Year End figures to her accountant for her training and retreats income – and hopefully in the future, her writing – we have implemented QuickBooks Self Employed. We’re using this both online, and as an app on Dawn’s phone, where she can easily record mileage for business-related journeys on the go, as well as photograph receipts to be matched to expenses.
- Avoiding a paperwork pile-up
Like many clients who approach Organised You, Dawn has a substantial pile of paperwork that she has not had the time to tackle. At our next meeting, we’ll decide what can be discarded and what needs to be kept. We’ll scan the latter onto her cloud folders for future reference, and add anything that can be disposed of to our shredding bags in the office. All of our paper waste is securely shredded and recycled via Reef Environmental Solutions, with certification provided. As part of our ongoing programme with Dawn, we’ll be repeating the process every couple of months to keep the backlog at bay.
- Mastering mailing lists
Dawn has a number of people who have expressed an interest in, or have already booked a space on one of her future retreats. We will be helping her to set up a mailing list and create a mailing template which will allow her to keep in touch with everyone and share her news as and when she needs to (in a way that’s GDPR compliant, of course!).
- Keeping up with compliance
There’s nothing quite as time consuming as trying to find out what paperwork you are required to have in place, such as insurance, questionnaires, data protection forms, health and safety requirements etc. Over the next few months, we will be helping Dawn to confirm what she needs, as well as setting up professional templates for her to use.
It’s already been such a satisfying and productive process working with Dawn. We all know how much I love organising things, but it’s even more rewarding when you’re working with someone who embraces the process and is really dedicated to it. I’m sure there will be more items to add to the list as we continue to work with Dawn, and I’m really excited to see how her writing, and her retreats evolve over the coming months. I definitely think I need to try one of the retreats out myself… Yoga anyone?
If you need a little helping hand and motivation to get organised and take on your own task management projects, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
