Organize Your Digital Clutter with Tracy Hoth

Racheal Cook: Hey there, CEOs. Welcome back to another great conversation here on Promote Yourself to CEO. Today I have Tracy Hoth joining me, and I'm so excited because this is a topic I haven't had a chance to really dive into on Promote Yourself to CEO. When you reached out to me, Tracy, and shared that you are bringing your expertise in staying organized as a business owner, I was like, I know so many people who need to have this conversation. So welcome to the show.
Tracy Hoth: Thank you so much, and I love hearing that you haven't had this topic on, so that's so fun. I love talking about getting organized.
Racheal Cook: I think you are going to be so needed for so many people because I know a lot of entrepreneurs are like myself. We tend to be very creative. We tend to move and think very quickly. And if you're anything like me, your desktop is filled with like a million icons and you find yourself getting overloaded with download folders that you can't figure out where anything is. So before we dive into how to get organized, I want you to share a little bit about how did you get into this? Because your background is both as a professional organizer and in the coaching space. How did you get to this point where you're talking about getting organized for business owners?
Tracy Hoth: I was a professional organizer going into homes and offices, helping people get organized since 2008. And then I knew I wanted to transition. It's a super physical job. All sorts of spaces. So coaching kind of came about naturally, but then I got coach certified in 2018 and because I had worked on growing my list and I had a list, I started coaching people to get organized. And I loved the combination of all the practical, because I'm super like, just, we're going to do it. We're going to focus on this. I didn't really bring mindset into it at all before that. And so when I could combine what I learned in coach training with all the practical stuff, it was changing people's lives and I didn't have to be there, which was the coolest part. I'm like, this actually works and I don't have to be there in person with them.
But then as I grew my own business online, I'm like, this is hard. Where is this stuff? And I was searching for things. I said, Tracy, you have got to get it together behind the scenes. You need to put some systems in place. You need to figure out how you're going to do all this. And so I started using my steps and figuring it out for myself and then started helping other people and realized people are running businesses and they don't know how to organize at all. How hard must it be? And then I started seeing people and they were hiding because they were just trying to keep up with their business and weren't organized at all. Didn't know how, didn't feel like they could take the time to do it. So that's what led me here.
Racheal Cook: That's amazing. I mean, I think it's really true. A lot of small business owners, you wouldn't know how messy things are behind the scenes. It's almost like there's an episode in Friends where Monica is the one who's super organized and super perfect and everything has to be done a certain way, but then she opens her doom closet and it's like stuff is falling out everywhere. I feel like that's how a lot of small businesses actually look. They might look very buttoned up and like they have it together on their website and their social and everything that they have going on. But if you were to look behind the scenes and ask them like, where do you find this information? Or how do your finances organize? It's a hot mess for a lot of people. So how do we end up like that? How is it that we end up with things just kind of here, there, and everywhere?
[05:00]
Tracy Hoth: Well, first nobody taught you. You don't really know where to turn to ask for help because people do that. You might not even have known someone could help with that, and you don't realize how much it's costing you, how much it's affecting you, being disorganized, not having those foundations in place. Until you're either burnt out because you're constantly stressed and trying to hide that you don't know where anything is, or you're capping your business from growth because you're needing to hire a team member. And I've had so many coaches and business owners tell me, I am spending more time trying to find the things that my team needs than I am getting work done. And they're paying them while they're waiting for her to get them information and she doesn't even know where it is. So it's all those things that are costing them, you, the business owner, and then in the midst of it, they feel so alone because they're trying to hide that and put on this facade that they have it together and they don't realize there are so many people that are like them.
Racheal Cook: Yes. What are the biggest areas that business owners feel disorganized in?
Tracy Hoth: I'd say that first, not being able to find what they need when they need it, but that overlaps. A good example of that is they feel like they're not good at time management because let's say they put a calendar appointment to do this task, well, then they get to that, they're really good. I'm doing the task, but I can't find what I need. So they just spend 30 minutes trying to find the file that they need and then they think they're bad at time management on top of having a disorganized business, when really it was just that they couldn't find what they needed.
Racheal Cook: Yeah. That resonates so much and I feel like one of the things that I see a lot, at least for myself, is I have multiple devices that I use to run my business. So we're talking right now, I have my desktop in front of me. I have my laptop in front of me, I have my phone, I have my iPad, theoretically. They all work together, right? But then I just went on vacation and was checking in on my laptop, so now there's stuff saved on my laptop that's not on my desktop. There's things like that that get everywhere. What is your first step for people when it comes to figuring out, where do you even start when it feels like you have stuff all over the place?
Tracy Hoth: Right. There's two things. First, I want to talk just a second about what the definition of organized means, because it just means that you know what you have and you can find it when you need it. And I think that's really important for people to realize. It doesn't have to look a certain way. You don't have to do it exactly like another person, but if you know what you have and you can find it when you need it, and your team can, if they need it, then you're organized. So next step is using a concept that I have called the wonderful one. It's deciding one place that things are going to live. So if you have, like you're saying, multiple places that you are and maybe that don't sync or whatever, what one place is everything going to live for sure. Now, in your example, it's okay. I mean, if you can find what you need 80% of the time, then you're organized, so that's a specific situation. You're gone, you have something on your desktop, but if you know where it lives, then you're still organized. It's just that was the situation. I always think of it like you come in your house and you put everything down on the bar or the countertop or whatever, and then company's coming five minutes later and there's stuff on there. If you can easily clean that up, then you're organized. All that stuff has homes. You just set it down for a minute. That's kind of your example. You set it on your computer for a minute and it was okay. But yeah. So I would decide on one place, what is your hub going to be? Because anytime you can reduce decision making in your brain, you've made it easier for yourself in your business.
[10:00]
Racheal Cook: I think for us, we've made our Google Drive our hub. I would say yes. We have a pretty organized Google Drive, but I did have to declare Google Drive bankruptcy once, because I've been in business for 18 years, and after a while you just end up with so much stuff all over the place. I had to start fresh a couple of years ago because it was just, it had gotten too unwieldy and there was so much in there that we no longer needed or used, but it kind of just became overwhelming to even look at it. So for us, Google Drive seems to be the best fit for everything, but I had to let go of, you know, Dropbox or all the, I had to stop putting things in every other place.
Tracy Hoth: Yeah. So all those little habits that you have and patterns that you're used to doing it is breaking those patterns and developing new habits that will help you stay organized. I always look at getting organized. I have five steps, and the first two are decluttering, sort, and purge. The next two are assigning homes and setting limits. That's the organizing part. And then the last part is maintain. Those are the habits. We have to have habits in place that we maintain our organization. And so those little habits that we do once we get organized, that is what we're working on, right? Because we have to maintain our organization and put things away. Because I too download things onto my desktop if I'm in the middle of a project. But I know I have to move those things and I know where they go. It's just that task of moving them to where they go.
Racheal Cook: What are some habits that you use to maintain, because I think that's one area where I get frustrated myself is I will get super organized. I will have all my folders the way I think I need them, but then I get into a project or get into working on something and a few weeks go by and it feels just as bad as it was before I spent hours organizing things. So how do you maintain that system?
Tracy Hoth: Maintain. The secret is to tie it to something you already do. So if you shut your computer right before you shut your computer, especially when your organization structure is new and you're trying to maintain it, is to put everything on your desktop away, just like you would on your desk to take a second, five minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it takes, but tie it to what you do. Maybe it's first thing you open up your computer, first thing you shut your computer. Just find something that you do already and tie it to that in order to keep that up. For example, like with taking vitamins, at first I put them right next to my coffee machine because I saw them every single morning. So then I knew, so if you need to type a note, put a reminder in your calendar, whatever it is, do that. The other thing with file structures, like you said, you set up a file structure. Pretty much new. I would tell people in the beginning to print that out to draw it out, whatever, and hang it behind your monitor at first because then it's new. Of course, your brain's never done that before. It's never put things into those files, and so any way that you can help it keep that in your brain and train it. That's why my five files is so simple and you're training your brain over and over and over, and pretty soon it just becomes like, oh yeah, that's what we do.
Racheal Cook: I love that it just becomes second nature because you've kind of committed that this is where things live.
Tracy Hoth: Yes.
Racheal Cook: I love that.
Tracy Hoth: Well, and that's just like with anything, we have software that we get and we are like, oh, I need to try this new thing. Well, then we're learning that. Then we decide that doesn't work, and then we're learning something else and we decide that doesn't work or we forget we got it, or whatever it is. So same thing. That's why I think it's so important too. Picture organization in this as a project that has a start and end date and then has a maintenance routine that you work on keeping it.
[15:00]
Racheal Cook: I think that's really helpful because I think with organization, one of the things I see is it's kind of like when you keep buying new planners because you're like, this is the planner that's going to change everything for me. I'm finally going to be on top of it and not forget anything. But then you end up with a stack of different planners because you keep changing the system. So you're saying, you know, pick the system. Keep coming back to it. Keep maintaining it. Stop trying to reinvent the system all the time.
Tracy Hoth: Yes. And finding, thinking there's a magic answer out there. I say focus on the skills of learning to get organized. Do it as simple as possible using what you already are doing. And once you practice that and get organized, then if you want to learn and get some fancy software or whatever you want to call it, new planner you can. But now that you're really practiced in it, you know, and your brain works like the funnel that it is, that it's running things through or whatever, to stay organized.
Racheal Cook: When you are helping people get organized, what are some of the biggest mindset things that come up around being organized? Because I definitely feel like it is such a mindset thing for some reason, for all of us, and I feel like we can beat ourselves up around this if we don't stay on top of it.
Tracy Hoth: Totally. So first, you know, if you ask yourself, why am I not organized? The things that come up in your head, like, that's not how my brain works. I'm messy. Maybe you were told that as a kid, those things are with you, they are running in your head, whether or not you know it or not. And then also I don't have time. That's a huge one. What are some other ones? I don't have time. I'm just messy. It's their identity. It's who they are. I don't know how, I don't know where to start. All of those thoughts keep you stuck where you're at.
Racheal Cook: Yeah. And then that just perpetuates the issues that come up from it. For sure. Especially when you said it's not just an issue when you can't find something. It's holding you back from your team being able to access things and you really becoming the bottleneck over and over and over again with your team.
Tracy Hoth: Right? And it affects your confidence. I mean, you think about it if you're disorganized and you can't find things and you're just like, feel like you're barely keeping up, or you got to make sure no fires happen because you can't find it. You just show up differently then if you have committed to working on this for a quarter, you've made progress, you've started training your brain, now all of a sudden you're like, oh, I got this. I know how to do it. I know the steps. I can do it. And then you come across differently.
Racheal Cook: I love that. So as we are thinking through, you shared, you have this process to take people through where they sort, purge, assign homes, set limits, and then maintain.
Tracy Hoth: Yeah, assign home set limits and maintain. So it spells the word spasm, which is kind of dorky, but it's been with me for 17 years. I'm like, I can't change it now. And it works. It works with literally everything like your physical space. It works with digital space, it works with your brain. If you feel overwhelmed, follow these steps. Works with a project. If you're doing a new project, follow those steps.
[20:00]
Racheal Cook: I love that. That makes it so much easier. So you shared that you have five file folders that you recommend every coach put in place, and I believe you have a free resource. Can you tell us more about that and how it can help us?
Tracy Hoth: Yes. So we've decided our one place, our one hub, and for you it's Google Drive. For me, it's also my Google Drive, which just that. When I work with coaches and business owners, the Google Drive has a learning curve in how to set it up and little tricks that go with it that I think is so important for people to realize if they don't like it, it's just because the view they have isn't the one they should be looking at, or, because they have four different Gmails and they're four different drives, and how do you decide on one? So it's all those things initially that are challenging with it, but once you get that figured out, it's so easy and I love it so much. But yes, so you have your one place, and then what I would do and think about your computer and things you download, it's all either home or business. Because more than likely, we're business owners and we also have home. So I do that first. I say personal and business, those two folders. But looking within the business folder, there's five folders. The first one is operations. It's anything that happens behind the scenes of your business. The second one's marketing, that's anything outward facing that people see in your business. And then my content, anything you create your programs. And then education is anything anybody else creates. All your certifications, all the free downloads, all your coaches, that kind of thing. And then the fifth folder is clients. That makes it so simple. It's like in out mine, theirs, or clients. And now your brain's like, oh, that makes so much sense. Now there's some overlap things, but it's just ask yourself where would I think to look for it? And that's the decision. That's where it would go. But it's so nice to just train your brain. Those are the files I use in my Canva, those are the file folders that I use in my email, and now when I'm keeping something, it all fits everywhere. My brain is so used to that and it's so simple that I think it makes sense to everyone that I've talked to so far.
Racheal Cook: I love that you broke it down to just those five. I have kind of a similar structure in mind, but something else you just said is you use those same ones in other places, so you use it in your Canva when you're making these things, which I think is brilliant. That's one thing that annoys me about Canva. I love Canva to make things, but they don't have a great system to keep things organized, so that's huge. Using the same file structure. And your drive, as you do in your Canva, but also in your email. This is how we make it even simpler, not just for us, but for our team to figure out where stuff is.
Tracy Hoth: Huge. And even in those, I was listening to something recently where they said they have an archive folder. It's a different system that they use in my mind, within each of those folders. If it's something old, even like you were saying, your Google Drive had a bunch of old stuff in it. There could be an archive within each of those folders. I mean, there's sub folders obviously, as you see if you need a sub folder only. But then you could also have an archive in there and it's still goes through the structure. And you know where to find it. Because you've trained yourself so well.
[25:00]
Racheal Cook: I do that, I do archive pretty regularly, especially with clients. I know some people will just delete client files, but I literally just had somebody who I worked with probably two or three years ago and they reached out to me to be like, Hey, do you still have this thing that you made for me? And I had it because I still had them in my archive file. And then often I'll have clients where you know, I'll create something for them, but then it'll be really helpful for another client. I just helped one client go off of insurance in her healthcare practice to be cash pay only. And so I had written out a whole marketing system for how to transfer your practice over to cash pay, and I was like. I'm not going to get rid of that. I've used it with five other clients now.
Tracy Hoth: Yeah.
Racheal Cook: I have an archive file, so I can always, nothing is ever lost. I love that, which I think is really helpful, but I also think it's really helpful to have that long term when it comes to your content, if you're creating a ton of content. This is one thing I see with a lot of small business owners. They create what I call couch potato content. They create it and put it out once, and then it never sees the light of day again. And I'm like, you probably created something great a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. They could come back and still be useful and still grow your business. But if you don't know where it's at and you can't access it to see if you need to edit it or rerecord it or whatever, then it's lost. That was effort that you put in that now you can't repurpose.
Tracy Hoth: Yeah, those two areas, that one where you can find what you've made so quickly, and then the other one is when you buy a program or you have stuff from your coach, being able to find that is so key because you're not going to use what you've paid for if you can't find it. And so many times you download it and then you're like, I don't know, I don't know where the login is. So I have I run my business with four dashboards. Those are Google sheets, but they are on my bookmarks bar and I can get to them in one click, and they have a place for all of that kind of stuff. So you have a central location where you have the links. Now it's not stored there, obviously it's in your Google Drive, but you can see it quickly stored there with the link to it, so you can get to it quickly as well.
Racheal Cook: Just to keep it easier for you to, like you said, find what you need when you need it. It doesn't have to be super complicated. It doesn't need to be another app in order to do that. Right. It could just be the Google Sheet or the Google Pages or whatever, where you keep all those things in one place.
Tracy Hoth: Yeah, and even me, I'm so tempted, there's so many cool things out there, and I'm like, but I can do it just with Google.
Racheal Cook: Yeah. I do feel like one of my things that I always think about when it comes to getting organized is keep it simple. Keep it as simple as you can, because this is one of the things where there's always going to be a new app or a new software or a new thing to try to make all of these different things easier. But when you have a gazillion different things you have to log into in order to run your business, that to me, slows me down and it just becomes, also you're paying $5 here and $20 here. It becomes really bloated expenses when you're trying to stay organized with dozens of different things. Right? So I love this. Keep it simple in one place. Doesn't have to be complicated. Use the same structure for all the things that you're doing.
[30:00]
Tracy Hoth: Yeah. And people might think that they wouldn't be good at that or that they don't have even, they don't have time to do that. But again, you can train your mind in a way that makes sense to you. So even like the names of those files, if operations doesn't make sense, you can use admin. That might make more sense to you. So I definitely help people to custom what works for how they think through things and what will, what maybe they already do something that works amazing, then keep doing it. But how can then we also make other things simple.
Racheal Cook: I love that. So Tracy, is there anything else you want people to keep in mind as we wrap up this conversation? If they're feeling like I'm just not an organized type of person, what's one final tidbit you want to give those people?
Tracy Hoth: Just write down those thoughts. I'm not an organized person and I have this visual the other day that I was thinking about and that. The thought that you are organized or that you can go find somewhere in your life where you are organized, is buried underneath all these other thoughts, like, I'm not organized, I'm messy. I could never do that. Like her, whatever all those thoughts are, and they're just burying and covering up the fact that you can and that you can. The other thing is put a start and end date on this project of getting organized. Don't just do a little here, a little there, because it just drags on forever and then you forget you're working on it. I really do encourage people to put a start and end on it, and then challenge those thoughts, challenge and question them. What if they're not true? What if it is true that you are organized and it's buried under there? The freedom that you get when you release all those.
Racheal Cook: I love that, Tracy, what's the best place for people to come find you and follow you and also listen to your podcast?
Tracy Hoth: Yes, go listen to the Organized Coach podcast, and then my website is simply squared away.com and you can find everything on there. And I'm mainly on Instagram at Tracy Hoth.
Racheal Cook: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. This was such a helpful, practical conversation for people. And if you're someone who has been feeling like, I don't even know where to start. I think her five folder system is just so clear and straightforward, so I will make sure to link up that download so you all can get organized in your business too. Thank you so much, Tracy, for joining me.
Tracy Hoth: Thanks, Racheal.