January is a trigger for many people to get motivated and to get things done – but what do you do when it’s no longer January and motivation is gone? If you don’t know how to get back on track and re-organize your to-do list there’s a few things you can do to organize the back end of your business so you can get more done in less time, with better results:

Map Out Your Customer Journey 

If you’re unfamiliar with the customer journey, it happens in four phases. First, is the awareness phase. This phase is all about the customer learning and understanding who you are, seeing your name referred, seeing your work on Instagram, or Googling and finding a link to your website. They have to know you exist. The second step is consideration. They have to think about if you are the right person to help with their needs – understanding who you are, who you help and how you are qualified to do it. They do this by reading your website, watching your content and asking questions, all of the pre-booking contact. Next, is the conversion phase. This is where your client goes through the process of physically signing the contract, sending the deposit, and now they are a customer.  The fourth phase, and one many people in the wedding industry forget, is loyalty. How can you continue to be of value to your customer and have transactions with them? Maybe they have friends who are getting married, are looking to do a boudoir or maternity shoot, or a special event, maybe they want to hire you for those things. Their transactional value does not stop after the wedding.  Getting your business in order isn’t just about building awareness, it’s about understanding how to get your customers from awareness, to consideration, to conversion and to loyalty. Once you’ve mapped out your customer journey you can prioritize where you need to spend your time to get the best results. 

Want more insight?  Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast player! Listen On Apple     Listen On Spotify   Episode 48: Back-end Organization

Put systems in place

Now that you understand your customer journey, you can put time saving systems in place to give your customer what they need along each step. There are many different platforms you can use to help put these systems in place. 

Personally, I use Honeybook. If you’re interested in learning to use Honeybook, I offer a two-hour intensive with screen share where I go through with you and help you organize it most efficiently for your business. It also comes with access to all the prep work you need for your business including email templates and more. 

With your system – it’s all about the prep work to save yourself administrative time. Since you know what your customer needs at each stage of their journey, you can automate the delivery of the information at the click of a button. You don’t have to remember or worry about following up because you’ve set up a trigger in your workflow for that information to go to your client at x number of days, you don’t have to worry if you sent an invoice or not, it can all be automated. It can save you hours and hours of work on the backend of your business.  Being more strategic with your time will help you spend a minimal amount of time on administrative tasks which frees up your time to focus on other business tasks and your customer experience. 

Rethink your to-do list 

The traditional 100 item long to do list isn’t helping anybody. If you’re looking at a list, you’re not really organizing or prioritizing anything. Sometimes number five is more important than number one, but you didn’t think of it first so you’re bouncing around. Instead of a to-do list, try mind-mapping. While there is more than one way to mind-map, I like to use post-its. Take a stack of post-it notes and write out all the things you need to get done. You can also use different color notes to separate out tasks such as "to do on the computer" or "to do inside HoneyBook" and categorize and group them together. That way when you're sitting at your computer, you can pull out the "computer" stack of post-its, choose one, and as you complete it throw the note away.

You could also group tasks by how long you think they will take to get done, making it easier to manage your time or even take your post-its and block time out in your calendar. There is no right way to make a mind map, you can make it as specific or as simple as you need. When you finish the task, you can throw the post-it away and physically see your to-do list getting smaller, giving yourself motivation and telling your brain that you’re getting things done. 

If this all still seems overwhelming to you and it’s something you don’t know if you’ll ever do, a one-on-one coaching session could help you go over all of this and identify what tasks you need to be done, and what you can break down further into subtasks, or can help you brainstorm different strategies to and techniques to implement to help you get your to-do list done. 

What's Next?

Register for my FREE training, The Essential Systems You Need In Your Bridal Beauty Business To Achieve Higher Levels of Success & Freedom.  You can watch on demand and learn the exact blueprint I teach to my students inside Next Level Bridal Business on how to grow strategically and sustainably without burning out.

You might also really love my February 2023 Masterclass from my Masterclass Magic Series all about Workflows!  This masterclass is dedicated to helping you create a signature process to your admin so you can save hours each week communicating with brides and level up your client experience.  Check out more on the masterclass and all the monthly topics here!