I quite often get asked why KAPOW! is called, well, KAPOW!
It’s not just about my love of all things superhero orientated (and I’m not bothered if they are DC/Marvel or whatever, I just love all that stuff. Seriously. I do.), but it’s also about my passion for helping business owners do business better.
I’ve been running my own business in one way or another since 2001. September 11th, 2001 to be exact. I was working full time as an IT trainer for a company near where we lived at RAF Odiham, and hearing about the attack on the twin towers, realising my husband was about to have to go off and fight a war, and wondering what on earth was going to happen, made me realise I absolutely loathed my job.
So the only sensible thing to do was quit & set up my own business in one of the most chaotic and dramatic weeks of my life. Which I did. Over these last 20 years I have had some amazing successes, and had some monumental fails. Running your own business is hard work, there is no manual, and there is definitely no safety net when you are the one person in your business doing all the jobs.
I love helping people, and, by combining that with more years than I would like to think about experience as a learning & development professional, led me into business coaching and I’ve never looked back.
I wanted a name for my coaching business that would reflect my passion for motivating people, for helping them be the best version of themselves, for guiding them to create a fabulous personal brand that they are proud of, and for bringing all these skills & talents into their businesses.
I wanted a name for my business that reflected my passion for helping business owners find their superpowers. And for helping them put those to work in their business.
KAPOW! seemed to fit the bill nicely!
But it isn’t just a random comic book word with no relevance to what I do – each letter represents an element of what coaching can offer, or help promote.
O is for Organisation
Running your own business can be the most exhilarating, exciting and fulfilling thing you ever do.
It can also be the most exhausting, overwhelming, and terrifying thing you ever do.
How do you make sure your business doesn’t make you feel like you are hanging off the back of the bus, wondering where it’s going, completely out of control and just waiting to hit a wall?
Organisation.
It is the key to everything.
But it isn’t very exciting. Which is why a lot of people are really, really crap at it. And why I have developed the Supercharge Your Productivity bundle to help combat it.
Productivity and organisation are key to making the right progress, at the right time for your business.
Because we wear all the hats when running our own businesses, we can often lose track of important stuff. I know I do. When things are busy, I can drop the ball. I’ve just done that with my monthly exclusive networking event for my clients – I’d double booked myself. I hate doing that. But it happens. To all of us.
So I looked at why I’d dropped the ball (I hadn’t put an appointment in my diary at the time I’d agreed to do it – my bad. Lesson learned. Move on.) – made a process change (it helps me keep track of which hat I should be wearing), and coughed up to my coaching clients that I’d been a numpty.
Does that mean fewer of them can make this month’s event. Yes. Do I feel bad about that. Yes. Have I learned from it? You bet your sweet patootie.
Business owners wear many hats, meaning that you have to balance getting organized can increase your productivity, ramp up your revenue, and cut down on your risks.
Here are 5 tips on how being organized can save you money, time, and energy.
Be like Santa every day of the week. Make a list and check it twice. There's nothing more satisfying than checking things off your Daily Focus Planner! Make a list every evening when you stop wearing all the hats of all the things you need to accomplish the next day. Do this every day. This builds the habit of creating your daily focus so you know what you need to do with clarity and purpose.
You don’t need multiple calendars. Trust me. Choose the one that works best for you: one on your computer, or on your phone or tablet, or a paper one on your desk. Then get rid of all your other calendars and use just the one to record and keep track of everything. Use different categories and/or colours for different types of event or for different people. Oh, and make sure you enter new appointments when you agree to do them. OK? 😉
Get rid of anything in your office you haven't used in the past year. Be ruthless. If you haven’t used it for the last 12 months, it’s very unlikely you will use it in the next. Donate stuff to charity, recycle stuff where you can – but ditch the crap you are not using.
The less clutter there is in your office, the more happiness there'll be in your life. If you buy a new printer, donate the old one. You don't need two printers--the old one is just taking up space. This goes for everything in your office.
Face the tax fear and do it anyway Don’t be that person who is up until 4am on 31st January posting on social media about how horrendous your tax return is. I mean, January comes around every year – it really shouldn’t be a surprise? You just make yourself look disorganised and that is so not a great advert for your business. Let me be honest here. I have a pathological hatred of accounts. Numbers scare me. Right from when my O Level Maths teacher dragged me up in front of the class and ridiculed me for 15 minutes about not understanding a maths problem, I was done with that (if you are younger than 30, you might need to google what an O level was btw).
So I have a fantastic bookkeeper, Claire at Bilsby Bookkeeping, who takes care of all the day to day stuff of invoicing, bank reconciliation and receipt processing. And an amazing accountant, Dan Edwards at D&K Accounting, who knits it all together into my annual returns (and is very patient with how long it takes me to extract various bits of data from my husband for my personal return too – thanks Dan).
So do yourself a favour – if you are paper accounting, grab a box, label it "Next Year's Taxes," and put it in your office. Put all your tax-related documents throughout the year: bank statements, receipts for business expenses, online statements, etc, and at the end of the year, remove the contents from the box and make two piles--business and personal--for your accountant (or for yourself, if you do your own taxes).
Even better, get your own Claire and/or Dan. Let them show you how to get paperless and organised so you can face your year end with confidence.
Dump your contacts Get rid of all the business cards/contact details for all the people you haven’t spoken to in 12 months. I can tell you that if a year goes by and you haven't contacted them, chances are, you'll never call them. If you feel you need to keep the information, put all the "maybe I'll call them one of these days" cards in a file and label it that. Makes it easier to throw them away in a few months when you still haven’t called them….
Buy my stuff. Once you have done all of that, get yourself your own Supercharge Your Productivity bundle. I’m taking pre-orders now – if you order yours before 17th September 2021, you get a discount too.
What do you get?
- Supercharge Your Productivity eBook
- Daily Focus Planner
- Book of Brain
- Wall of Brain Planner
& bonus extras too!
This is going on sale in a few weeks time for £29.99. Preorder yours for just £20.00.