Spring Cleaning My Small Business — Experts Weigh In

Spring cleaning can be more than just giving the floor a good mop and your desk a good scrub. Spring cleaning can mean something entirely different to a small business owner. We wanted to ask our experts how they’re cleaning this year. From launching a new website to going completely paperless, here’s what they had to say…

1. “We’re Going 100% Digital and in the Cloud – And Many of Our Team Don’t Want To! And that’s saying something for a business that, in some ways, is very old-school; bricks and mortar! Some of our people are worried about our old paper records. So for them, part of our Spring cleaning involves scanning and digitizing ever single piece of paper from the past 7 years! And what about the concern over cloud security or a worst-case-scenario, when it would be handy to have paper and pen? Well, let’s just say I won’t be forcing anyone to give up their pen and paper (but will be encouraging them to digitize it at some point and put it in the cloud!)” –Ryan Hulland, Netfloor USA

2. “I am spring cleaning by following up with cold leads, starting a new advertising campaign and redecorating my office!” –Samantha Strazanac, Strazanac Solutions

3. “This year for Spring cleaning I’m re-launching my website. I’m making it bigger and better than before with new content and new packaging. Along with that, this time is also a good time to delete old files that I don’t need.” –Luciana Torous, 3 Leaf Tea

4. “We just finished a huge spring cleaning project: organizing all our trade show bags. With seven trade shows planned for the year (so far!), these bags go through a lot. Yesterday, our marketing team spent 4 hours organizing all our portable booth bags to prepare them to fly all over the US in the next 4 months. Trade shows are one of our most successful marketing tools, with an average 10x ROI, making all the hard work more than worth it!” –Ross Andrew Paquette, Maropost

5. “Spring cleaning doesn’t have to involve a mop and a broom. We’re taking this time as an opportunity to clean up and organize our email inbox. This could be as simple as deleting unnecessary or spammy emails or as involved as creating rules that move certain emails into folders automatically. It may be time intensive at first, but taking the steps to clean your inbox will help you to be more organized and productive in the future.” –Evan Harris, SD Equity Partners

6. “I had a friend come in to help me start cleaning up my office many years ago and I said What do you think we should do with all these papers on my desk?… and she took out a book of matches.” –Robert Barrows, R.M. Barrows Advertising & Public Relations

7. “I typically do a few types of spring cleaning, usually when my kids and most importantly my wife, are on spring break. First, I go through all of our gift basket products to make sure they’ll still within their usable shelf life and take a full inventory of what we have, what needs to be ordered etc. Second, I also create a new landing page for PPC ads and for affiliate traffic. Spring cleaning, ecommerce style is actually pretty fun!” –Mark Aselstine, Uncorked Ventures

8. “As a 100% e-commerce company our spring cleaning may look different than other businesses but we still have a big checklist to get through. We’re retiring many of our photo’s to make room for new one’s from recent shoots, updating our fonts & color palette on our website and completely redoing our email newsletters. Old styles are going on clearance to make way for new releases In fashion you need to constantly be evolving so having a fresh look as we get into summer 2017 is a top priority.” –Ryan O’Connor, One Tribe Apparel

9. “At Guidefitter, we ‘spring clean’ our meetings – a recent survey revealed on average, 25% of time spent in meetings was unproductive! We review all scheduled meetings and cancel unnecessary or possibly unproductive ones, clearing our calendars for other initiatives or individual tasks. This ensures the meetings we do have are focused and constructive with a strict agenda.” –Bryan Koontz, Guidefitter

10. “I like to call it trimming the fat – almost as you would in the Spring to prepare your body for bikini season after a long winter. It’s really about evaluating and prioritizing to slim down to what is most important to your business and giving that your attention. Where can I trim the excess to improve overall success? Anything that hasn’t directly benefited the business over the past year gets cut from the organizational diet.” –Sara K. Enos, American Pit Bull Foundation

11. “I’m definitely doing some spring cleaning! I work from home in Portland, Oregon and this was a particularly dreary winter. I’m ready to throw open my office windows, clean up my desk, and shred old files. I’m also refreshing my brand and redesigning my website, so I’m treating myself as a client and dedicating hours each week to my own projects.” –Ericka Lozano-Buhl, Mixto Communications

12. “Being a freelance copywriter means I can set my own schedule, which comes with obvious benefits but can have its downsides, too. I find it hard to stay motivated during the winter months and getting things done can be a real battle. It’s a cliché, but Spring really is a time for new beginnings. In the past month, I’ve achieved more than I did all Winter; I launched my new website last week and have already started work on my next big project.” –Sophie Livingston, Kickstart Content 

13. “We are working to streamline our processes. I believe the yearly evaluation of our company processes provides us with a competitive advantage. These include putting documentation in place for every process that exists within the company. We review the existing documentation for each process and look to automate or improve upon those processes that can be automated.” –Bradley Shaw, SEO Expert Brad Inc.

14. “I did three main things to spring clean my business this year. The first is cleaning up my physical space, so that it is clutter free and conducive to productivity without being distracting. The second is that I cleaned my computer desktop so that I’ve finally read my “save for later” files and can easily locate my business documents to maximize my time. And the third is that I cleaned my mindset by reevaluating my goals and progress for 2017, and adjusted my plans for the rest of the year accordingly.” –Kristi Porter, Signify

15. “We just launched our newly redesigned website last month. The redesign gave us a modern feel while enhancing the overall functionality of the site. It’s now far easier for customers to quickly find what they’re looking for. For us, that means more conversions!” –Cody Clifton, Challenge Coins 4 Less

16. “In terms of spring cleaning, we like to evaluate expenses and be strategic about the ways in which we’re spending extra money, time, energy, and resources. The first thing we do is look at any recurring charges to make sure we’re not signed up for anything we don’t actually use or truly need. Then we sit down with our vendors to figure out ways to get better pricing. As a result, we’re able to better evaluate our business needs.” –Casey Tongg, CFR Rinkens

17. “Reduce Clutter and Go Paperless 

A spring cleaning initiative I am pushing for this year is to go paperless. There are a lot of advantages to this: 

By going paperless it will not only reduce our environmental impact, but also reduce overall loose leaf clutter and allow us to seamlessly organize and find documents. One system I’ve been looking into to manage this conversion to digital is Laserfiche.

Additionally, by scanning our current paper documentation and storing them as digital files, it allows us to discard old file cabinets, resulting in more office space and reduces our liability should a disaster strike, such as a fire or criminal activity.” –Sacha Ferrandi, Source Capital Funding, Inc.

18. “In order to really tidy up our business operations, we look at each and every operation that is connected with our ability to build our customer base while also focusing on customer retention. We are implementing metrics and KPI’s that are linked to the goals of our company. By doing so, we’re able to better visualize where we are succeeding and where we are failing. This allows us to figure out where we may be losing customers, and then strategize differently.” –Tanner St. James, The Scott Resort & Spa

19. “My best spring cleaning tip is to audit your banking relationship by figuring out what products and services your bank offers that can make your 

company more efficient. Whether it be mobile apps, credit and capital needs, or something as simple as business checking. Also, make sure to capitalize on any rewards and benefits that your bank or credit card company may offer. It can potentially add up to a lot of money in the long run.” –Chasen Nick, RAMS Home Loans

20. “Just in time for Spring, we recently combined our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform with our Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) to help marketers on our team connect crucial campaign strategies with the financial outcomes. This provided our salespeople with better visibility into prospecting and leads. It also allowed our marketing team to hand leads over to sales without manually exporting anything. This is a huge time saver and makes the sales process flow a lot smoother.” –Dan Roberge, Maintenance Care   

21. “As it relates to operations, we’ve managed to cut out unnecessary meetings from our calendars which allows us to prioritize our time more effectively. We’ve also studied the use of our time in order to expose areas where we need to spend more or less time for peak efficiency.” –Kristopher Johnson, The Gantry Restaurant & Bar

22. “Typically we spend the first quarter taking stock of the previous year’s successes and goal setting for the New Year. After auditing not only client accounts, but also our own personal and professional growth, we have a clearly defined plan of action. Spring cleaning around the office takes place in the form of organizing physical inventory, including client product samples, etc., and moving them to storage. As a business we’re also spring cleaning in the sense that we’re building a new web site and cleaning up all branded materials to ensure cohesiveness once it goes live.” –DeeAnn Sims, SPBX   

23. “As part of Sherpa Fiber’s Spring cleaning, my partner and I update our mutually agreed upon company valuation for buy-sell purposes should one of us pass away unexpectedly. It is part of our Operating Agreement’s requirements that we do so in order to ensure our respective families are taken care of in the future. 

For Sherpa Fiber, Spring signals that it is time to perform an in-depth review of our previous year’s Profit and Loss statement to identify where costs are creeping upward so we can reign in expenditures and increase profitability.” –Darren Bonawitz, Sherpa Fiber LLC

24. “Our spring cleaning project is to optimize our website for Search Engine Optimization. We are also cleaning up our social media presence and coordinating several different approaches to work in harmony with each other.” –Michael Pesochinsky Esq., MyBrnadMark.com

25. “We are doing some product spring cleaning. We do a blow out sale on slow moving and discontinued products in the spring. This helps us make room for new product developments as well as allows space for more popular, fast moving designs.” –Scott Toal, Oeveo

26. “A crowded inbox is as bad as a drawer full of mismatched socks – overwhelming, ineffective and downright ugly. This year, spring cleaning for me means completely cleaning up my email: deleting, filing, unsubscribing, and committing to daily maintenance. A tidy inbox is key to my productivity!” –Abbey Louie, Elan Consulting Group, LLC

27. “I couldn’t take it anymore, something had to give, our company had paper scattered everywhere in our offices and the clutter was killing me. No better time than spring to do a little spring cleaning around the office. Three weeks ago I announce a new paperless initiative. Luckily I had three volunteers to come in on Sunday and the four of us spent all day digitizing every paper document we had, and then neatly organizing everything into our dropbox account. The end result is no more paper, no more clutter, and digital files that are accessible from any device. It’s simply beautiful and it was definitely worth spending the Sunday doing.” –Bryan Clayton, GreenPal

28. “For this year’s spring cleaning I plan to upload all of my paper documents onto my computer. It’s time to get rid of the old paperwork and participate in the modern way to save documents. Digital files will be so much easier to sort through and I will have plenty of backups in case any of the hard drives get corrupted, lost or damaged. I believe this year’s spring cleaning will really improve the efficiency of my company!” –Lisa Chu, Black N Bianco

29. “For spring cleaning this year I completely went through all my files & shelves in my office so they are all fresh and ready to go for the rest of the year. I am having a whole new website and web design launching next month. I cleaned out the drawer of business card from all the local networking group I attend and added them finally to my database. Lastly, I went out and bought all new color pens and color notebooks to use with my clients.” –Brittani Nelson, The Business Matchmaker

30. “This spring I’m doing a full brand refresh as well as pivoting focus of my company (Nervewracking!). I’m doing a spring cleaning of the projects and clients that no longer will fit our niche which is an e-commerce website development. Instead of taking on any project that comes our way, we will focus on building e-commerce stores that are optimized for higher conversions and higher customer retention rates.” –Lena Levine, Lena Levine Studio

31. “At my marketing agency, we are moving offices this spring, so we are committed to a one-touch office, where we only touch paperwork, files, etc once. This means reorganizing our digital as well as paper systems so things are easier to find by label, classification, type, and more. It also stems into the assessment of internal processes for maximum efficiency.” –Ali Schwanke, Simple Strat

32. “We do spring cleaning each year in the office but we do it with a little twist. Along with the cleaning of the rooms, we set a particular decluttering goal. Last year we decluttered our storage room and donated a bunch of items (PC’s, monitors, phones, desks, etc.) and this year we plan to do the same with our book shelves–we will revisit the books and magazines we have and donate or recycle whatever we no longer need, plus any extra copies we have. 

It’s a great way of ridding things that tend to pile up over the years. In the end of each spring cleaning, we usually create a poll to decide what to declutter next year.” –Olivia Joyce, Move Out Mates

33. “For us an essential part of spring cleaning is looking at cleaning up our data. We make sure we’re tracking all the right KPIs so that we’re not chasing any strategies that are relevant to us. We make sure that all of our data tracking tools are working correctly, such as Google Analytics, Adwords etc. Finally we check to see if there are any tools we no longer need, or new tools that would help us out.” –Sarah Hewitson, neatly.io   

34. “We’re a small business, but we have seen quite a swell of staff in a very short space of time. We moved into our first office at the end of last year, and it is our current mission to make it a home. We’ve recently created our ‘beer garden’ boardroom, which is layered with fake grass, picnic benches and colourful bookshelves, and now it’s time to focus on getting some more colour injected into the rest of the office.” –James Nuttall, It Works

35. “We are cleaning house on our web site by speeding it up, reducing our load time by 75%. Website load speed is critical to keep new visitors from abandoning you if the site takes too long to resolve and Google rewards fast loading sites. After searching high and low for a solution it was as simple as contacting our website theme developer who completed all the necessary improvements in four days.” –John Kinskey, AccessDirect, Inc.

36. “We are taking the time to organize and sort our files. This means deleting unimportant files and making sure the files are named something we can decipher. Springtime also means out with the old and in with the new! We are packing up 2015 invoices, statements and correspondence and storing them in a banker’s box. We’re also creating a 2015 folder on our computer for files from last year that we need to keep but aren’t necessary for the coming year. This will also make it accessible for tax purposes.” –Justin Lavelle, BeenVerified.com 

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