Declutter Your Business

By Ambila Nath.

Have you experienced the ‘life-changing magic of tidying up’ your home by following the Marie Kondo method? Marie Kondo teaches the Japanese art of decluttering and organising. 

Just by doing a simple task or reorganising and decluttering your living/working environment can give you peace of mind and enhance your personal success. Eliminating unwanted and unnecessary belongings creates a sense of freedom. When there’s less to take care of, there’s more quality and time in your life.

People are used to decluttering their spaces, but how many actually know about the ‘Decluttering of Your Business Processes’?

This is a concept that I have been doing for years. The naming of it, the BUZZ word ‘Declutter’, is very young.

Declutter Your Business is not about clearing your office space, your desk or your computer files. Those things sit in their own place. This concept is to do with your business and what you are doing within the business. Your Business Processes - for example, how is your business operating when delivering your products and services whilst keeping the business running at the same time?

When we start off as entrepreneurs, a lot of us do not come with a business background and as a result we start to build our businesses organically, or maybe with a bit of planning! There might be a little bit of a concept of what we are going to do, but as the business grows, we just start slotting blocks on top of one another rather than looking at the bigger picture of how the new parts will work with the existing business.

It’s a bit like buying a house; you knew what you wanted, you knew the number of rooms, how it was going to be set up, etc., and then as the family grew and your needs changed, you decided to expand the house, and yet all you started doing was building extra rooms around the existing rooms. Slotting in more blocks but not looking at the house as a whole. You didn’t look into the flow of the house, if you had any use for it, how you were going to use it and whether it was going to help. You didn’t ask the questions about whether it was actually going to make it worse or better, i.e., was it going to add light into the room or make the room darker.

Now, if you apply that same psychology to your business, what is it that you have been doing in your business?

Let’s look into a simple process for a product-based business:

You have a product in your shop > A client orders the product > You pack the product > You send the product > You send confirmation > You ask for feedback

There’s a beginning, a middle and an end to that process. 

You may have been doing many processes in your business, but have you ever looked at them again and assessed what are the things within that one process that you can:

1. Keep doing because you choose to
2. Delegate to others - barter services, friends, and family, or pay someone 

There are many online systems and apps available now that can help make our business life, and our own lives, better and faster. Reach out to the younger generation and groups that use systems that can help you.

We need to build businesses where we embrace smarter ways of working rather than harder ways of working. There may be things within the business that you can let go of because that way of working no longer serves you, yet it has become a habit and just something that you are used to.

Decluttering your business is a huge task as it starts with your psychological mindset, but once you commit to taking the first step, moving forward becomes easier. Remember, it’s all about taking small steps, but it is important to take those steps.

Do this on a regular basis as part of your business and always make your business work for you rather than you working for it.

Ambila Nath is a Spiritual lifestyle coach, serial entrepreneur, tarot reader, energy healer and a paid international speaker. She has worked with clients for over 2 decades helping them to build the life that they deserve by finding their life path, gaining self-confidence to just be themselves, starting successful businesses and trusting in love again.

You can find more about Ambila and her work here or look her up on LinkedIn, drop by on Facebook or Instagram or even watch her on Youtube.