Resources in this Episode:

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous, This is episode number 048.

Lisa Woodruff [0:06]
Hi! This is Lisa Woodruff, you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski, enjoy!

Christine Schlonski [0:14]
I am very, very thrilled to drive in with Lisa Woodruff and how tidying up is going to help me and obviously you to create more profits but first I just wanted to say thank you to Janine FQ who rated Heart Sells! Podcast on iTunes. And she says, Mindset makes the difference. Great show about creating a business with heart. If you think it, you can achieve it and Christine shows you how to use your heart and mind to find success. I’ll listen again. Well, thank you so, so much for this amazing review. I really appreciate it. If you are listening and you thinking about giving a review, hop on over to iTunes and do so otherwise, I am inviting you to join the Empowerment Notes. That is my weekly newsletter where you get all the wonderful updates on the podcast as well as amazing free empowerment content to take your business to the next level. You find the signup page at christineschlonski.com as well as all the podcast episodes with the show notes, the transcript, the resources, everything you need to keep thriving.

Christine Schlonski [1:37]
So, let’s dive in into the episode with Lisa Woodruff. First, I want to give you a little overview about her amazing services and knowledge. She is the founder of Organized 365, the creator of the 100 day home organization program. The Sunday Basket Workshop and The Sunday Basket Workshop Paper Organization Certification Program. She also is an Amazon best selling author with the book A Mindset of Organization, Take Back Your House One Phase at a Time & How ADHD Affects Home Organization. Lisa shares her belief that organization is not a skill that you are born with. It is a skill that is developed over time and changes with each season of life. Lisa has helped thousands of women reclaim their homes. And finally get organized with her focus on functional organizing encouragement and humor through her weekly podcast Organize 365. I’m so excited that she is here today.

Christine Schlonski [3:01]
Well, I am so excited to have you on Lisa. Welcome to a Heart Sells! Podcast.

Lisa Woodruff [3:08]
Thank you, Christine. I’m looking forward to talking to you and meeting your audience.

Christine Schlonski [3:12]
Yes, I am so excited because we have this special topic today. So it’s the first time for Heart Sells! Podcast since I believe that sales is holistic, being clear in whatever you do, not just in your mind, but also in your environment to have more productivity to you know, find your stuff, you are the go-to expert, and I’m so super excited to have that conversation. So what did you see so far if you put sales together with organizing? Do you have any insights you can share with us?

Lisa Woodruff [3:54]
Yes. So I started in direct sales, which is, you know, like Tupperware and Mary Kay, any of those home party companies right out of college. So right out of college, I was a teacher by trade. That was my profession. But I also joined the direct sales company because I wanted to be able to have an income and stay home with my children. And I was very organized. I was an organized teacher, I was organized in direct sales, I was able to keep all the balls going until I had that second baby. And then it all came crashing down. And my friends were actually very happy. They’re like, Yeah, she broke! But, like, how does she keep adding all these things, but eventually, you know, you run out of hands to juggle.

Lisa Woodruff [4:32]
But what I noticed specifically at that time in my 20s in direct sales was that I was more profitable and I was more productive than 90% of the people I knew in direct sales because I could juggle the business of direct sales, my children, my house and everything. I have a lot of extra energy. So that was part of it. Like I do sleep seven, eight hours a night. But when I’m awake, I’m moving and productive. I don’t need this recharging time that some people have. But I was able to create organizational even just checklists in my professional in my direct sales business that other people didn’t have that allowed me to sell more of my workshops, to book more workshops to actually book less workshops and make more money because I had a great follow up system with my customers. And this was in the 90s, like would mail a physical newsletter four times a year. But I would not just mail a physical newsletter, I would call every single customer every single time. So, I had about 200 to 300 customers. And I would call every single one four times a year. And I didn’t get them all on the phone. But because I had these systems in place, my sales were higher. My loyalty was higher. My downline were actually productive and made money because I taught them my systems. And I learned in my 20s that if you had a checklist, even in a replicable system, your business could literally be four to five times more profitable in less time than other people making the same money. So I learned real early on that the organization and duplicity of your systems could really impact your bottom line.

Christine Schlonski [6:13]
Wow, I love that. And I’m sure the audience loves this as well. Because you know, so often, well, you know, you have days where you were you are the headless chicken, right? You try to get things together. But sometimes it’s just not working, you know, you start with a good intention, maybe even have a plan you have, like, a to-do list or something. Um, so for somebody who is not really aware of that huge impact that organizing can make to their business what is a good way for them to start like, or even get their head around, putting in the extra effort to create a system right, to then help their business to grow?

Lisa Woodruff [7:00]
Yes, I think especially I know, you have a lot of entrepreneurs listening. I know you have a lot of women listening. And specifically for female entrepreneurs, we tend to grow our businesses in the nooks and crannies, especially if we have children, like we were taught, like, do naptime, do bedtime, do any nook and cranny and I did that for a long time. Or maybe you’ll hire a mother’s helper one day a week. And that really helps you as well. But we get in this nook and cranny mentality to where we are every five to 15 minutes trying to check something off of our to-do list. And if we can get any productive time we check something off our to do this in our business.

Lisa Woodruff [7:37]
And what I think is really hoping holding females back more than anything, are your household responsibilities and jobs at home. And we don’t take the time to systematized delete or delegate the household responsibilities, which are way easier to delegate, we’re always trying to how do we hire a virtual VA in the Philippines or some know like, get a house cleaner. Step one, eliminate eight hours of work for 60 to $80 a week, maybe $100 way cheaper than a VA and anybody can clean your kitchen floors and toilets. Like this is not a skill that you have to teach them how to do. You just have to free up the money. So outsource some of those household tasks. And we don’t realize we we prioritize our time and money differently when we’re thinking about our business. And we’re thinking about our house. And we think because we can do it and it’s free. If we do it it’s not free. If you do it if you could eliminate some of those household tasks, even laundry like for one solid year, I took all of my laundry to the dry cleaner. Do you know they do underwear like they do everything? They don’t dry cleaning like they put in a washing machine but it was so freeing for me.

Lisa Woodruff [8:44]
Because the mental the mental, of knowing that your toilets are dirty. And the laundry needs to be moved and the dishes aren’t done. And you ran out of milk that mental is wearing on you when you’re trying to focus on your business. So I think if you take some time, even though Sunday afternoon, take one hour, think about what you’re going to do the next week. What can you start delegating or deleting? Can you stop going in the grocery store and order everything online. The first time you do that it’s really hard because you wake up Saturday morning to go to the grocery store. And you realize that if you’re going to place the order online, you can’t pick it up till Saturday night or Sunday. And you’re literally out of milk. So you you’re there is a learning curve. And there is an awkward time and implementing these systems but household delegation and deletion systems will gain you gain you 15 to 20 hours a week.

Christine Schlonski [9:35]
Yeah, I love that. And I think I’m pretty good at this, like the delegating or just, you know, not doing the dishes moment. I think I trained myself pretty well. But also when when I heard you speaking, I got the impulse, like sometimes when you’re stuck in your business because you’re thinking about an idea you can’t maybe make up your mind which direction to go and then you know these household tasks there so lovely. They give you something to do. Like you have like a real excuse not to work on your business and that is what when I heard you talking about Well, but you know, what about the excuse? Well, let me just run to the store real quick

Lisa Woodruff [10:22]
Right?

Christine Schlonski [10:23]
Because I have to get whatever it is.

Lisa Woodruff [10:25]
Sometimes when you run to the store, like so around [2:30] in the afternoon, I will kind of hit my ceiling of like, you know what, I’m going to go get onion rings. Culver’s onion rings in the United States they’re super salty and hot. Like… but it takes me about 25-30 minutes round trip to get onion rings. But at [2:30] when I do that, I actually listened to a podcast there and back or I marinate on my day and actually get great ideas. So I’m not saying that you have to outsource every single thing in your house and become a robot. But we have, so there’s a Research Institute called the Pew Research Institute who has statistics proven we have 28 hours a week of household tasks, not including children to people without children in the United States have 28 hours of household related to task. Cooking, cleaning, lawn care, vehicle maintenance, grocery shopping adds up to 28 hours. And it divides right now 18 hours for women 10 hours for men. Do you really want to spend 18 hours a week ladies doing laundry and grocery shopping? Like can we get that down to five? So it’s a real it’s a real big time saver. When you look at everything you’re actually doing.

Christine Schlonski [11:37]
Yeah, well, I definitely love the advice. And, you know, if you need an excuse sometimes to you know, get clear on an idea. And obviously, I love the advice that you know, listen to podcasts, Heart Sells! Podcasts. But yeah, that’s, that’s really great. So because when we have a business, we usually have a special gift that we can share with the world that pays so much more than, you know, doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom. What what other things could women be aware of that, you know, they might just do automatically?

Lisa Woodruff [12:18]
Automatically. I think that we, you know, productivity comes from habits and habits get developed over time. And really, we live much more of our life on default than we think we do. And if you were to track your time for the next two days, every 15 minutes, have your alarm go off and write down what you’ve been doing. I think you’d be surprised how you spend your time. One of the things I love to do, I love Instagram, but I don’t follow very many people. But I love it. I love doing Insta stories and watch Insta stories. And so every couple of hours, I’ll go on Insta stories just to see if the people I’m following have added one.

Lisa Woodruff [12:55]
And so one of the things I started doing was: Well, Lisa, if you’re going to check it that often than you should add that many Insta stories. Like if you’re looking to see if the people you followed are updating. Are you recording a new one? So then just even that thought is every time I go I haven’t done it as much yet. Like I record mine in the morning and then maybe one in the afternoon. But usually not. I usually record Insta stories once a day. But I look at them five times a day. But now when I pick up the phone, I think do I want to record an Insta story? Because I definitely want to see one. And I’m I’m deciding if I want to add that in my day. Another thing is I don’t exercise. My mouth and my brain are exercise at a marathon level. My physical body we’re close to sloth here. Because I’m always on the computer. So I’m like I would like you know, like when I wear dresses that my convention and stuff. I’d like my arms to look a little bit better. So I’m trying to do 20 push ups a day. I know it’s not a lot. But it’s I couldn’t do one two months ago. Let me just tell you that.

Christine Schlonski [13:50]
Yeah, I was going to say you are so much further along that road.

Lisa Woodruff [13:54]
They’re hard. Oh my gosh! And I’m still doing them on my knees. But I don’t have a time in my day to do them and I don’t want to do them. So now I love hot baths. Every time I turn on my hot bath at night I just drop and do 20. And then I finished taking my hot bath. So my hot bath is my reward. It’s not costing me time. I kind of snuck it in there. I do a lot of task stacking. So create a habit that’s already working, add in something new in there and then you slowly change your day that way.

Christine Schlonski [14:24]
So that’s amazing. Yeah, I’ve heard about task stacking, and I kind of got the idea so can we go a little bit deeper in that? Is it like when I brush my teeth I’m saying at the same time that I haven’t done before?

Lisa Woodruff [14:38]
Yes. So and I found that you know, like I used to get into super stacking, I’d have like 12 for it’s too many like five things at one time. There are things that you do every single day, people call them morning, afternoon, morning and evening routines. I think the afternoon, after school, after work routine is the most important one. And people usually don’t talk about that. And I actually have two morning routines. None of them will like anything in those books. I told you, I’m a slot.

Christine Schlonski [15:03]
Now, I’m Curious.

Lisa Woodruff [15:04]
They’re like normal, right morning treat routines. Like I get up. I shower, I wash my hair. I do my hair. I do my makeup. I make my coffee. That’s I mean that’s my morning routine. Then I’ve added a second morning routine. And the second morning routine is I record my Insta story. I let the dog out. I wash the dishes, things that I wasn’t doing that I wanted to do every single day, consistently. I created a list of those three things that I’m going to work up to five. Drink a glass of water is another one. And I actually have them on these index cards. You guys don’t see it. But I’m showing Christine my index cards to remind me of my new routine that I do that one as a second morning routine. My afternoon routine now is when I’m done working. At the end of the day, I used to work literally till the second my husband was physically inside the house. Now I try to stop five minutes before I know that’s going to happen. Look at my calendar for tomorrow. Write out my schedule, double check my email physically turn off the my computer. That’s my after work routine.

Lisa Woodruff [16:02]
So these little routines where you can take a couple of things and stack them together. They then become little mini habits. Like for example, for your household routine. You may do a bunch of different household tests. But maybe you create a household stacking habit. And mine is this: I go in the kitchen, I turn on the hot water. Then I go in the laundry room and I start the laundry. Then I go back in the kitchen and I fill up this bucket with hot water. And I put all the dishes in there so that they’re soaking. Then if the dishwasher needs to be emptied, I empty the dishwasher by then most of the grime on the dishes are loosened and I finished washing the dishes, put those in the dishwasher, set the timer on my phone for the laundry and then wipe down the kitchen counter. That whole routine takes me about 15 minutes. But when I don’t do it in that order, it takes me 25 to 30 minutes.

Christine Schlonski [16:54]
Wow.

Lisa Woodruff [16:55]
So if I miss straighten up the downstairs if I do it in that order. Because I have optimized that system. I now know I have 15 minutes. Okay, I can wash the dishes, empty the dishwasher and start a load of laundry if I do it in that order. So productivity is all about time hacking and creating stacked routines that work for you.

Christine Schlonski [17:12]
Yeah, I do like the outsourcing idea better. I have to admit that.

Lisa Woodruff [17:18]
Amen. Earn more. Outsource it.

Christine Schlonski [17:22]
Yeah. Awesome. So um, what while you already mentioned earlier on that it really made a big difference to your bottom line being so organized and having checklists. So they are a lot of Solopreneurs are listening as well, or like a small company owners and you know how it works. You just do something, and then you hope that everything works out. And there might not be a routine to it, right? So how can they deal with their, you know, organizing their their business, maybe in a better way? Because when I look at my PC right now, I started to declutter, I started to, you know, put away create folders and create a system. But then also, it’s so easy and fast for just something to put it on the desktop. And then all of a sudden, you know, your desktop was clean, there was just this one folder. And now it’s like all over the place. Again, do you have any recommendations, because I know it takes it’s easy in the moment to just throw it on the desktop.

Lisa Woodruff [18:33]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [18:34]
But it’s not creating a good and healthy system that I can come back to at a later point. And I just would guess that a lot of entrepreneurs have this issue and I’m hopefully not the only one on the planet.

Lisa Woodruff [18:48]
You are not. So all the way back to, you know, the late 90s when I was with my direct sellers, and I’m a teacher by trade. So I literally created a system for them to run their business. And I color coded it and every one of my team did everything the same way kind of like you would as an employer with employees. Well, fast forward, you know, 25 years later. Now, here we are, I’ve created these things called Friday work boxes, and it’s this box that sits on your desk and it has these different colored folders in it and I’ve literally created playbooks and workshop trainings to organize your business for we have seven different ones. Now, we have real estate agents, entrepreneurs, corporations, homeschool teachers, direct sales, and a missing one professional organizers.

Lisa Woodruff [19:34]
And basically, we take four colors of pockets, and we divide your business into the workflow cycle. Usually you’re good at two, maybe three of those, but not all four. And so you don’t do the fourth piece. So the flow of every single one is leads to customers, to your team. And personal development to finances and administrative tasks. And all of those have a color and they go in the box. But the beauty of the boxes, especially for entrepreneurs, 80% of our box, our new ideas that we want to do, people you want to interview on the podcast, Christine, or new episodes, episodes that you want to do, or you want to record an intro or you, you know, whatever it is like we have all of these ideas, right. So I take index cards, and I write all of my ideas down, right. As we were getting ready to record this interview, Christine asked me to do something, I literally wrote it on a post-it note and stuck it on my computer. She watched me do it so that I would do it at the end of this interview. And not forget, because especially as entrepreneurs, we’re on to the next thing. Like, as soon as I’m done with this, I’m on to the next thing. I’ve got another meeting, I’ve got another idea. I’ve got to save the world, you know.

Lisa Woodruff [20:37]
So we have all these ideas. And I just drop them in this box. And I literally print out my emails. So for this interview, you sent me things to do, I printed out that email, and it’s in this box. And then every Friday at two o’clock, I empty out the box. I go through the whole thing. I sift through my ideas 50% end up in the trash. But some of the other ones are really good. And then I decide, okay, have all these great possibilities that I have. What are the things I’m going to do next week? I can only really accomplish three big things. What are the three big things everything else can wait until next week, inside of this box? And then I have a home version to call the Sunday Basket for all your household actionable ideas and to do’s.

Christine Schlonski [21:20]
Yeah, yeah, awesome. Yeah, I’d love to go deeper. Especially because you mentioned that there’s one folder for leads. And I know that so many entrepreneurs do have some strange feelings in regards to sales in regards to create.

Lisa Woodruff [21:40]
Yes, yes.

Christine Schlonski [21:41]
And I would love to go deep on that one. In the next episode.

Lisa Woodruff [21:45]
Let’s do it.

Christine Schlonski [21:46]
You did bring an amazing gift for us.

Lisa Woodruff [21:50]
I did.

Christine Schlonski [21:51]
Yes. And I’m really excited. So can you can you explain?

Lisa Woodruff [21:55]
Yes. So one of the things I find is that we get held back in organizing our businesses because things fall apart at home. And if you can get your home completely organized and running on its own, then you can not only bring your physical self to your business, but you can bring your mental self to your business, especially for ladies knowing that everything’s taken care of at home. I don’t need to be there. So I have a program called the 100 day home organization program. And I would love to give you a free week and the week is organizing your laundry room No. 1, because no one’s going to undo it. Because who wants to go in there. And No. 2, if you have all clean underwear, you could do a lot of fun things, right? So if you just go to organize365.com/try100. You could try a week free.

Christine Schlonski [22:37]
That’s, that’s pretty cool. I’m really excited about that. And, and also, you know, I noticed that when I organize my stuff, like at the beginning of the year, I clean out my bookshelf, you know, and I put everything in order. And it really felt better. I but I also felt that there was a shift in energy.

Lisa Woodruff [23:00]
Definitely 100%

Christine Schlonski [23:02]
Yeah, you agree. Okay. Oh, yes. I think that it kind of calls like, if everything is an order, it calls in more of the things you want, you desire because you have more space. Does that make sense?

Lisa Woodruff [23:15]
Right! Well, you know, I’m sure you’ve you’ve seen the show where the monkey has his hands through the bars, he’s holding on to the bananas maybe just left the bananas go, he could be free kind of thing. Like, if you’re holding on so tightly to all of these things from the past, like your, your books from university and your old businesses and other things, you’re not only holding on to the ideas, but you’re also holding on to some things that maybe didn’t work or like, in my case, when we couldn’t have children. And we were going to adopt, like, letting go of some of those baby items meant that I was never going to be pregnant. I mean, that’s a process. Letting go of stuff is a process like you brought it into your house for a reason. So you have to physically process letting go of it, whether it was a bad purchase decision or you overbought and with that comes like dang it money I shouldn’t have spent or time I shouldn’t have spent and you have to forgive yourself and let go of that. And as you do that you physically get more space. So you feel lighter, but also emotionally and mentally, you have more space. And if you have more mental and emotional space, then you have that to pour into your family to pour into your business to pour into your self-development. You just have more more availability for what’s next.

Christine Schlonski [24:25]
Yeah, I love that. That’s such a beautiful finish off this episode. And I’m so excited to continue the interview with you. Thank you so much for being here. Lisa.

Lisa Woodruff [24:34]
Thank you.

Christine Schlonski [24:35]
Wow, I already know now that I’m doing some things quite right to increase my profits. So that feels really, really good. I hope you are on the same journey that you already have had the opportunity to, you know, minimize work that does not produce the results for you that you really truly desire that you were to maybe outsource the one or the other task and that you can truly focus on what brings in the revenue and also kind of balance that with what brings yourself the energy to enjoy what you are doing to enjoy life. And I think this is a really good example says she is so full of energy and it’s just fun to have her on the show.

Christine Schlonski [25:27]
So I hope you enjoyed. Hop on over to christineschlonski.com for the show notes, the transcript and all the resources we talked about as well as all the social links so you can connect this Lisa it’s only one click away and you find the podcast including all this information at christineschlonski.com. Make sure you’re tuning in for the next episode. I am super excited to have you. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful day wherever you are this beautiful world. Bye for now.