Your Friend - And Mine - Organization!
Organization is a BIG part of becoming a successful Virtual Assistant. You’ll quickly find that many of your clients, despite how capable they may be in other areas, are unbelievably unorganized! These people will count on you to whip them into shape. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share simple but effective way on how I keep my files organized.
TRANSCRIPT
My name is Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl and today we're going to talk about organization, your friend and mine.
When you're a Virtual Assistant, it's really critical that you are organized. And today we're going to talk specifically about how to organize yourself and your digital files.
Let's just step through it. So over on the right, you'll see that there's a file structure and I want to talk about that. This is in Dropbox. Dropbox is what I use and what I recommend to use to keep your files organized. Instead of using the Metafinder or My Documents in Windows, I have Dropbox folder that is created by downloading the DropBox app on to my computer and that's where I keep all of my files.
So, let's talk about some steps.
So you want to have one folder where you keep all your client work. And now we're gonna have sub-folders as well which I'm going to show you. But what I want you to understand is that, so here's the top-level of the DropBox, here's the client folder. Now, I have other folders at the same level of the hierarchy of the folders. I have one personal, I have one RocketGirl, and that's where I keep all the information. So, it's important to do that. But today, we're going to focus specifically on client data.
Have one called Client Clients and then create a sub-folder and the folder is named the name of the client. So here you say Mary Smith. You can have John Doe. Whatever their names are, don't get fancy and have some of them be the client company or a project just keep it all on one folder for each client and then after that what you're going to do is you're going to create sub-folder under that. So, you'll notice here Mary Smith and then you see headshots, images, logos, newsletter drafts. So you want to organize it underneath as well. And create folders and filenames that are meaningful. For example, if you look here, you'll see under presentations for Mary Smith, it says August 12, 2017 whatever the name of the client was presentation. You want to do this for a couple of reasons, one is clients come back to me all the time and say I need to make presentation can we start with the one we finished with last time. I wonder where that is. And I know exactly where that is. And if for some reason it was misfiled, she tells me the name of the client or the month or whatever. I can just type that into search right in Dropbox and I could find that file almost every single time. So that's why you want to have meaningful filenames.
You also what to create an archive for past clients. So if you'll notice down here, where it says Z period Archive. Let's me explain how that works. My file folders for my clients are their names and they're organized by the alphabet, alphabetized. If I have a folder that I name Z period Archive what that's going to do, Z when you force it all the way down to the bottom. You can also do this with numbers to bring folders to the top. If you have a folder you want to be at very top of your client folder because you use it all the time. You can name it 1 period and the client name. So, those are some little tricks.
Now, the reason you want to keep it archived. Clients come back, they've been clients that I've worked with for years and I was a very critical part of their business and then something changed. They went or they took a job for a while or they're working on a different project or they didn't need me for a while. And then they come back full force. And so I don't want to be tripping over their folder all the time, which is why I drag it to Z Archive, so that I have all the data and I'm no tripping over it all the time. So that's important too.
Here's the big one, in order to be organized, you're going to want to download the attachments the ones that you need to keep from your email. Keep in mind that your email inbox is not a storage cabinet. This is your storage cabinet, Dropbox is your storage cabinet. So make sure if you need the document that you download them so you're not searching in your inbox when you need them. This is a huge efficiency, you know, it's a waste of time to do that. Be careful about that.
Let's talk about what to do if you're hard drive is a total mess. So, the first thing that I would do is I create this client's folder and if you have the name of your business where you keep your information and maybe your personal folder and then what I would do is in your client's folder I would create a folder for each client and then I would drag their files all of them right into their folders. Now that's not the ideal situation because you want to organize them in sub folders but that will at least get you started and then as you use the information in the folders depending on how many clients you have. You can then organize it as you go. If it's a big mess, don't strive for perfection, just try to get the next level which is to have different folders for different clients. And if you're missing something that didn't get dragged in, you'll really know what shape you were before when it was just a big giant jumble of files. So, you can use your old systems, and go find files you can't find. It's really important to do this and be thoughtful about it. It helps you be more efficient. It helps you be more effective and frankly when you can find something that the client is referring to, it impresses them and so that's why this is really important.
Alright, before we go today, I just to let you know about my free online classroom it's call The Virtual Assistant Connection, and you can find it by going to Facebook and typing The Virtual Assistant Connection right in the search bar. Click the join button, there's three quick questions and answer so that I can get to know you better, I would love to welcome you to the group. Right now, we have about 5500 Virtual Assistants or people who are thinking about joining us in the group. I've been a VA for 9 years, and there are people who are just thinking about it. So, looks like we have a question, I'm just going to. I hopped on late so maybe I missed this. But is Dropbox your preferred storage site for any particular reason? I tend to like Google Drive much more... But would love to hear your thoughts on the difference! - Absolutely!
So, the difference for me is that I like to work in Word and Excel and a lot of Microsoft products. And in order for me to do that I would need to download from Drive and then upload it again. I do work a lot in Google Docs with the native apps- Sheets particularly, I track a lot of data. And so I use Google Docs for that. For my clients, as for the work that we're doing, it's mostly, PowerPoint Presentation or things that are in Microsoft Suite. So I hope that answers your question.
Okay, well, join me on Facebook, I love to see you over there. If you have any other questions this will be posted there and you can ask me for comments and I will circle back around if you tag me and I'll be happy to answer your questions. So until next time, I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl, signing off. Bye.
