Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Organize Your Digital Clutter with Kathi Burns

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How to Organize Your Digital Clutter with Kathi Burns · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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Three, two, one, zero.
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Ignition.
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Lift off.
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Ending small business failure.
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Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Small Biz Chat podcast.
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I'm Melinda Emerson, Small Biz Lady, your host, and it is my privilege to be back with you guys
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for another amazing episode.
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Today, we're gonna be talking about the digital decluttering that needs to happen in your
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business with my special guests.
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But first, if you are a loyal listener to the Small Bitch Chat podcast, I wanna invite you to
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leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you hear your favorite podcast.
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Now listen, if you're not a fan, do not give me hate mail online.
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But if you love us, we would appreciate it if you would help others find the great and
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amazing information that we provide every single week here at the Small Bitch Chat
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podcast.
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You know our mission is to end small business failure and that's what we're all about.
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So please help us serve more small business owners.
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Now let me introduce my guest.
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Her name is Kathy Burns, and she's an expert professional organizer and personal stylist.
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And she's here to help all of us become more organized and energized.
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She's a bestselling author.
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She's a board certified professional organizer and stylist, and she's a nationally recognized
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expert for organizing and style solutions.
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She's been on Good Morning America and she is a successful woman business owner.
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Her straightforward advice is frequently published in Martha Stewart Living, Better
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Homes and Gardens, Entrepreneur, Oprah, and more.
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And today Kathy will show us all a few simple ways to get more organized, energized, and turn
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your chaos into clarity.
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Everyone, please help me welcome Kathy.
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Hey Melinda, it's so good to see you.
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Thank you for connecting.
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Oh my gosh, Kathy, where do we begin?
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I think a lot of us are living with chaos, right?
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And we don't realize that that is even keeping us from getting sleep at night, right?
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Talk to me about how you got into this.
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How did you become a personal organizer and stylist?
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A long, long time ago, I decided that I wanted to get paid to sail boats.
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So I became a US Coast Guard licensed captain and I would deliver yachts.
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And I remember sitting out in the middle of the Gulf Stream off of Florida in the dark, and I
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was thinking about everything back at my apartment and realizing that none of it was
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significant.
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And I would get home and I would purge and I'd go out to sea and I'd home and I'd purge.
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After that flash forward I became a travel writer and I was living out of a suitcase forty
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two weeks a year.
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Again I had the clarity to realize that hey, I have everything I need in my suitcase.
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I don't need anything back in my apartment.
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So I'd purge.
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Flash forward, I moved out to California and I was reinventing myself yet again, because I'm a
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serial entrepreneur.
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And I helped a woman who also had a year off to kind of invent herself, and she was struggling,
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with some health issues.
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We became really good friends, and I went to her house one day and I looked around and I
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said, girl, you are not gonna heal.
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You're surrounded by all this stuff.
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So I helped her start purging and decluttering and getting rid of all the stuff that no longer
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served her, right?
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And she goes, you know what?
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You're really good at this.
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She should be a pro organizer.
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And I'm like, what the heck is that?
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And, so flash forward twenty years later, I became board certified.
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I went on the path.
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I've been doing this twenty years and really, what I do is help people shift and sustain and
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simplify their lives.
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And, you know, right now we are mucked up in digital stuff, and so that's been my focus for
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the past year or so is, demystifying, decluttering all the digital crap that's
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holding us back, from being, savvy entrepreneurs that are not burned out and
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overwhelmed, quite honestly?
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Well, I think digital clutter is a thing, right?
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I think it's one thing to organize your closet, it's another thing to organize your files and
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your computer, your desktop.
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I mean, I don't wanna talk about myself or expose myself, but let's just say, if you came
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to my computer and hit desktop, the things that you would see stored on the home page of my
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computer might make you break out into hives, Kathy, given your organized self.
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But why do you think it's important for people to sort of like get their digital clutter under
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control in today's society?
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Well, you know, the average entrepreneur weighs four hours a week trying to find documents that
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they know that they have, but they don't know where they are.
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Four hours a week is a month a year that we spend stuck in the muck of our stuff trying to
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find stuff.
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You know, way back in 2009, I wrote how to master your muck, and it was all about paper
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flow, right, and how to find the papers.
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Flash forward, you know, whatever this is, fifteen, sixteen years later, it's the same
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thing except for it's digital, right?
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So we we might have I mean, some of us still have paper files, and then you have the digital
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files, but you can't waste time trying to find things.
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You really need to spend time and invest time in creating a business that supports you that
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you enjoy.
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Because like you said earlier Melinda, know I can't tell you how many of my clients can't
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sleep well at night because they're laying awake wondering if something fell through the
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cracks, like if something that they couldn't find digitally or their inbox is overflowing
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and making them freaked out.
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Know, they're using their inbox as a task list, which is not even developed to do that, and
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they're just stressing out, overwhelmed, and unable to really make the money that they
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deserve or the money that they really can make if they just weren't distracted by all the
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digital clutter that's there in their business.
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Now I know that you say that digital clutter oftentimes represents delayed decisions.
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So how can that idea help people take control of their inboxes and their files?
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Well, here's the thing.
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You have to shift your mindset first off and you have to become proactive.
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So take for instance, a delayed decision could be represented in your inbox.
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Okay, you go into the inbox and what happens right then you become reactive.
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You're not proactive.
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So you're not even really necessarily making a decision, you're just going whoosh whoosh
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whoosh all this stuff is coming at you and you're setting it aside and you're delaying the
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decision of do I read it, act on it, or delete it, right?
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Do I delegate it?
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What it is.
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So by delaying decisions, they tend up stacking up in the back of your brain and you don't get
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stuff done.
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And if you do get something done, you could have missed a deadline.
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So
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I know that one of the things that has become really, really popular over the past, let's say
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ten years or so, is people, everybody's got a Gmail, right?
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Everybody's got a Gmail email.
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A lot of people are using Google Calendar.
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But now those of us who want to be a little bit more savvy and have our own URL and still be
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able to leverage Google are moving to Google Workspace because you can get all of Google's
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products and still brand yourself properly doing that.
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But Google Workspace is a little complicated, isn't it?
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It's a little complicated.
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There's so many bells and whistles and they keep adding more and more on.
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Quite honestly, Melinda, you don't you can bring your own URL into a regular Gmail account
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without having Workspace.
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If you're just starting out, then it does make sense to go ahead and get Workspace and have
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Google give you your proper URL and all that stuff because that's that's part of one of the
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benefits of Workspace as such, right?
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But I have five URLs going into my regular Gmail account so once you own your URL you can
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direct it into wherever you want.
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So you don't have to have workspace if you don't want, you can you know if you want some
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bells and whipples, if you if you want more automation and more tech you know strategy
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behind what you're doing and you want that that URL that's actually your corporate name without
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having to you know, have a domain somewhere else, then that's what Workspace is good for.
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It's also it has better AI implementation, but quite honestly, you don't have to pay for
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Workspace if you don't want to if you have your own domain somewhere else.
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All right, but let's say I do.
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Let's say I have Google Workspace.
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I'm using Google Drive for a lot of my business documents, and I think most people are using
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10% of what Google Workspace can actually do.
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Absolutely, and the main thing that I see that's a stumbling block to people is they're
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not taking advantage of Google Contacts.
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And in my opinion, everything starts with that original contact because if you have your
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contact set up properly in Google, you can have them tagged, you can have them segmented, you
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can actually go into that contact and see the last conversation email back and forth that you
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had from that person looking at the contact like starting there.
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And a lot of people don't do that.
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They don't really implement Google contacts to its fullest ability.
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You can also, I mean there's so many cross ways to do it, but in my opinion it starts with
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having a good database in contacts in Google.
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And you know if you have other platforms it's fine you can in you know export import whatever
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but also with Google contacts I was just teaching a workshop a couple days ago and my
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clients like oh my god now that it's in contact so I'm going to her apartment I have the
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address.
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It's the Google Maps taking me right there because I put her address in Google Contacts.
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Woo!
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Right?
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It's like, so Google Contacts will do maps, it'll go with your calendar, it'll go with your
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doc, I mean you can, everything really starts with that original base.
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I do believe that a lot of people kind of don't really consider contacts as important as it
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really is.
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Well, I feel like I'm today years old and you just taught me something that didn't even know
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about Google Workspace.
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So let's just say there's a learning curve out here, Kathy.
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So give me something else.
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Give me something else that Google Workspace can do that people are sleeping on that could
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really help them.
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Okay, so this is my favorite one.
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In Google Calendar, I can see what time it is in Spain for my client when I'm setting the
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appointment because I have Spain set up in my Google Calendar and I can see right then and
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there it's 01:00 my time, it's 10:00 their time.
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So that's a really easy hack if you have clients in different time zones or you know
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you're trying to figure out where is central time compared to Eastern time or whatever it
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is.
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So that's a great hack that I really like.
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And, you know, also I can share my calendar.
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I have all different calendars within my calendar, So I can look at my promotional
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calendar schedule.
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I can look at my client account on their schedule.
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I can look at my Pilates calendar schedule, and I can look at all of them at once or only one
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of them depending on what I'm trying to siphon through through from my Google Calendar.
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So that to me is huge.
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And say I have an appointment in calendar, I can attach the Google Doc right to that
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calendar event, and when I pop onto the conversation, I click the little thing and
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there's my notes.
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Either in the contact or in the Google Doc.
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Now I actually did know that hack, so I don't feel so dumb now.
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But okay.
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But now talk to me about how we can leverage Google Drive.
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Is added functions to Google Drive when you are like working with Google Workspace for example?
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Well, I mean with Google Drive, so everything within Google is its own ecosystem.
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So Drive will talk to docs, talk to contacts, will talk to email, will talk to calendar,
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it'll talk to everything, right?
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So what I find that people do is they go into Google Drive and they make it really
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complicated, and really you only need four main folders in your Drive to get stuff done, and
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don't go so complicated.
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One thing that I see is in Drive, to put the date of the document in the document title,
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that helps you.
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The search function is just major in Drive, so you can search by anything.
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You already know this, that when you create a document, Drive will Google Docs will
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automatically title it, right, according to the first line of your document, so you have to
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watch out about that.
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But you want to go one more and you want to put the date there.
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One thing that you probably know, but people out there might not know is that you never have
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to save and you never have like, this is my presentation on you know 01/05/1926 version
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one.
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This is my presentation 01/06/1926 version two.
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It doesn't have you don't have to do that anymore because Google will automatically
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update the document for you.
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So that that's something that some people didn't know about possibly.
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100%.
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I think that that's true.
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But I guess my whole thing is, what do you think, like what digital organization habit do
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you think people can put on autopilot, you know, with recurring reminders or automations
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in Google Workspace?
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Well, you can absolutely send emails to specific categories and not even have them hit
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your inbox if you want.
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You can also tell Google to, hey if this person wants to schedule an email, you can just hit
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add it to calendar in Gmail.
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You can also take an email that you read and make it a task right away, right, with one
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click of a button.
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You can so you know within the inbox there's so many different things that you can do to
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automate things.
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You can also write rules, you know, you can write rules for whatever you want, emails
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coming in and out.
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You can also ask Google to organize itself like within within your drive.
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So with Workspace there is a lot more automation available because they incorporate a
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lot of Gemini into it, you know, that you don't get normally.
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I see, I see.
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All that is really, really fascinating.
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I mean, company, we do use Google Workspace, so I will admit that I was probably asking you a
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couple personal questions, but I do think that it's a powerful tool that people may even be
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paying for and not really completely understand how to do it.
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My question for you is, how do you recommend that business owners balance accessibility and
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security, especially when working with virtual assistants or contractors with documents in
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Google Drive?
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Well, anything in Google Drive, you can have people either just only see it or be commenters
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or be editors.
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So the last book that I wrote with Tetris, the gaming company, we all collaborated on the
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Google document and in real time, which is so cool.
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I don't know if you knew that.
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You can collaborate real time and see what people are doing, but you can cut off access.
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You can say this person can only comment.
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This person can only view and cannot comment.
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This person can add the whole darn thing.
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And you can turn it on and off in five seconds, one second actually with the click of a button.
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So if you lose a team member, you no longer want them into your drive, you can cut them
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off.
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Or you can they're they're your all star, and you can have them edit all your stuff for you,
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and then you could cut them off.
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So you have instant security features within drive and docs that a lot of people aren't
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familiar with using.
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And you know you can send the link out within Docs and Drive.
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You can just email them the link without even having to go to email, which is another cool
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thing.
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Now if you even want to have a virtual assistant have access to your email so they can
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help you clean it up and delete it?
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Is there a way to do it without them having access to everything in your whole business?
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Oh, well they can only have access to your Gmail if you want and not give them access to
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your other items.
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In fact, I have a client right now who just we found her personal assistant actually not even
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a VA.
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Her personal assistant is coming in and she's into her inbox and she's learning what's
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important and what's not important to the client and starring them and deleting some
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other ones or if she's not sure, foldering them into I don't know folder.
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But if we don't want her, she cannot be invited into documents or drive.
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Okay.
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So you can actually separate what an assistant even has access to versus them having access to
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everything.
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That's cool.
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That is an important thing, also teaching them what you want them to do in your Gmail and
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where they're going to start and stop with their role in your Gmail inbox.
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Yeah.
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That's what we're reading on right now, know.
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She's like, I don't know what this woman wants me to do in her inbox.
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It's like, well, let's figure out the priorities and let's set some labels, right?
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Know, set some filters to label out.
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So, you know, Franny this, ask Franny that, I don't know.
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So let's just start the whole process of learning what's important to Franny and what's
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not important to Franny inside her inbox.
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I like it.
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So if somebody is listening to this and they are like, Oh my God, my head just exploded with
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all the stuff that they just said.
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What would you say is the first quick win that you can help somebody have as they're trying to
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wrangle this inbox, this out of control inbox into shape?
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What one, what was the first thing you would tell somebody to do?
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Regarding the inbox, I would make sure that all of your emails go into one bucket.
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Please do not have log out of AOL to log into Gmail, to log out of Outlook, to log into
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Gmail.
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Have every single thing going into one bucket And once you do that, then you start making
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agreements with yourself.
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Like everything about getting organized is about agreeing with yourself.
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How old is too old?
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So first off, put your inbox on viewing a 100 at a time, not 50 at a time, which is the
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default, and then say, okay, anything older than January 2025 is gone.
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Okay?
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And you go in and you mass delete everything that's older than January 2025.
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I see your eyes lighting up with this.
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You can also make exceptions and say, okay.
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I wanna filter all these emails from so and so at jackbquick.com, right?
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So first you move all of Jack Be Quicks into a folder so that they don't get deleted, then you
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go back into, you know, January.
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So so start with the oldest ones or start with the ones that you know that you don't like
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anyhow, and make sure that you have Gmail filtering for you, promotions, updates,
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primary, like a lot of people aren't even using that.
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Let Gmail do
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I do have that.
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I'm not that bad.
21:31
I do have that.
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Come on.
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Yeah.
21:32
Yeah.
21:32
Yeah.
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Yeah.
21:33
Well, you know what I do?
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I go into motion promotions every morning, Melinda, and I highlight them all.
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I highlight every single one to be deleted, and then I unselect the ones that I care about, and
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I delete everything else.
21:44
Oh, wow.
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Now that that is a good tip, ma'am.
21:50
That's a good tip.
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It's easy when they're, you know, let Gmail filter them, and it's like, okay, I care about
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one.
21:56
Can, you know, and it it every morning, you know, for me, there's like 200 new promos.
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So it's like I'm going to delete them all except for these few that I care about right
22:06
now, knowing that I'm going to get more the next day that I might care about or not care
22:10
about but either way it's a mass delete for me.
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So you do it.
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I like them it's a good mass delete.
22:17
I like it.
22:17
Yeah, yeah, mass delete baby.
22:20
But make sure that all your emails go into one bucket.
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Like don't have Outlook and then don't have AOL, you know, God love you if you do, don't
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have Gmail, please lead everything into one so that you can actually get it under control
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because that's where you start feeling out of control is if you don't even know what you
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missed in the other place.
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You're like, Oh my God, did I miss that one or what did I miss?
22:46
Right?
22:46
Well, part of it is just, I mean, somebody like me, I get 300, 400 emails a day.
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Really do.
22:55
Sometimes if I have a slow Saturday, I'll just get in there and just Every now and again, I
23:01
find something really important that I didn't see, or somebody emailing me on LinkedIn, Hey,
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I sent you this email, you didn't reply.
23:09
And I'm like, I never saw what they were talking about.
23:12
It happens.
23:14
Every so often having good email hygiene is good for your health, is it not, Kathy?
23:20
Very much so, yes.
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And everybody has their own tolerance, right?
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My husband, if he has one in five emails, he freaks out.
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I'm good at 100.
23:30
One hundred's good for me.
23:31
I don't care if I have 100 emails sitting there, I'm happy with that.
23:34
Kathy, I'm not going to tell you how many I have.
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I'm not going to tell you.
23:38
I'm just not going to do it.
23:39
All right.
23:39
Now
23:40
And there's no judgment.
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Right?
23:41
It's like whatever floats your boat.
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Whatever you can handle.
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It's just because it's just not something I prioritize.
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Right?
23:48
But So you obviously teach people a whole lot more information about this.
23:54
Yes.
23:54
Yes, Tell I me about how people can work with you to get this Google Workspace and this
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Gmail, email, whatever under control.
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Tell me how you do that with people, please.
24:08
Well, know, I do one on one consulting for sure for people who want to just do the short track
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and get everything done quickly.
24:15
One on one is the quickest way to do it.
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However, I have Simplify Your Workspace Using One Online Tool.
24:24
I have a presentation webinar coming up on January 27 and they can sign up for that and
24:30
learn even more and decide whether they want to jump into the five week workshop that follows
24:35
because in the workshop I go into every single aspect of you know calendar.
24:40
You know it's like everything you would want to know, all the hacks that you need to know to
24:46
operate more efficiently.
24:48
And the work, you know, the masterclass is free, and then I also have a download, 10
24:54
hacks, 10 Google hacks, so we'll put a link in the show notes for that as well.
24:58
So you can get started.
24:59
Start start playing around with Google, see what you can do, and, you'll be amazed at how
25:04
much time you save.
25:06
But here's the thing, you gotta spend time to make time.
25:10
So you gotta spend some time learning this stuff in order to implement it.
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But once it's implemented, it's good.
25:17
You know, like, one other thing is that I know in Gmail, you archive things, they're never
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gone.
25:22
So don't be worried when you go go to delete all that stuff.
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They're not really ever gone.
25:28
Alright.
25:28
So Kathy, tell us the URL.
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Where can I go to register for the master class or just, you know, how can I follow-up to get
25:37
more information about how you help people get organized?
25:39
Okay, go to kathyorganizedandenergized.com, kathiorganizedandenergized.com because that's
25:48
what you will be after you talk to me and, hit me up.
25:51
You can go to chatwithkathy.com and book a session.
25:55
Just give me a call, book a little time.
25:58
We'll do a thirty minute clarity call to figure out where you are and what's your next best
26:04
step.
26:04
So chat with Kathy, k a t h I, is probably your best bet to get with me directly, but you can
26:10
also go to organizeandenergize.com and check out a whole bunch of stuff about, getting
26:15
organized and getting your life, your business optimized.
26:19
Alright.
26:20
I love it.
26:20
Now, Kathy, I've got one last question for you.
26:23
What is the best business advice you have ever been given?
26:29
The one that I didn't take?
26:31
I'm gonna say that one.
26:33
Whatever you wanna share.
26:35
My mother said learn to type.
26:38
And I said, mother, I'm never gonna be a secretary, and I did not learn to type.
26:44
And here we are.
26:45
Here we are.
26:46
Everything's about typing and text, and everything's about typing and text and say, oh,
26:51
well, you know, where they say bought sense is better than borrowed.
26:54
Alright?
26:56
Listen, thank you so much for being a guest on the Small Bitch Chat podcast.
27:01
You are amazing.
27:02
And thank you all for being my guest on this month's edition of the Small Bitch Chat
27:08
podcast.
27:09
You know that our mission is to end small business failure.
27:14
Do not forget our next Ag CEO Summit is coming up January.
27:21
If you are looking to buy a business, buy a franchise, I'm gonna give you all the
27:27
information that you need to figure out what you want, and I'm gonna have the finance folks
27:32
there to show you how to pay for it.
27:34
So if you haven't already done so, head over to smallbizladyuniversity.com/nextactceosummit.
27:44
Get your ticket, get your VIP ticket, okay?
27:46
Because you're going to get lots of extra information if you do that.
27:50
So I want you to take advantage of that.
27:53
And as always, you know that you never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
27:58
God bless everybody.
28:00
See you next time.
28:05
Thanks for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
28:10
Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us next Wednesday for
28:15
more fantastic information and interviews.
28:18
You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
28:23
website, succeedasyourownboss.com.
28:26
Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.