I love the AFL Grand Final but perhaps for reasons that may differ from die-hard footy fans! You see, I love the fact that the Grand Final marks the end of the footy season! I’m not that much of an AFL fan and I do tire from the scrutiny given to each game, team and player. However I love catching up with our good friends on that last day in September who traditionally come to our house where we share good food and conversation. And if our team isn’t in the game we still get into the spirit by barracking hard for the team we’ve adopted for the day. Another reason I love it is the timing. It’s the confirmation that winter is over and warm weather is heading our way (I live in Melbourne so that’s really uplifting!). And it’s a great excuse to spring clean the house in preparation for our guests.
We all know what spring cleaning is, but just out of interest I thought I would look at the definition in Wikipedia. It says that “it’s the practice of thoroughly cleaning a house in the springtime. The most common usage of spring cleaning refers to the yearly act of cleaning a house from top to bottom which would take place in the first warm days of the year typically in spring, hence the name. However it has also come to be synonymous with any kind of heavy duty cleaning or organizing enterprise. A person who gets their affairs in order before an audit or inspection could be said to be doing some spring cleaning”.
Since returning from overseas I’ve been spring cleaning my business as well. I’ve added “Five Star Service” to my Core Values, spoken to the team about what that means and how crucial they are. We’ve reorganised cupboards, shelves and our filing cabinet and culled old information. We bought a new server recently so we’ve removed old backups and data files taking up valuable space, made sure all authorisation forms have been signed by clients, agreements are up to date, Paysmart form signed for direct debits of my invoice and updated our data base and our Admin Manual. We’ve had a webinar for our team covering Reporting for our clients for the new financial year and planning the next one which will cover EOY GJ’s from Accountants.
It doesn’t have to be spring to reorganise your business, but the next couple of weeks before it gets really busy with BAS ON is another opportunity to review your systems (bookkeeping and admin), critically assess your business model and see what’s working and what’s not. Cull your office of old, unnecessary paperwork and clean up your computer or server to have it run more efficiently.
It’s amazing how the world works – when you make space for something then something will fill that available space. Having a spring clean of your business and making space for new clients attracts new clients. I don’t know how it works, but I know that it does.
