How to Get Your Business Organized: 25 Articles to Help You Get Started

If you’ve been around here a while, you know I talk about one thing more than almost anything else: how to organize your small business. (Well, that and SOPs, of course). 

Not in a vague, Pinterest-board way. I mean actual systems and actual clarity, where you (and your team) know exactly where everything lives.

Over the last few years, I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, and if I’m honest, nearly all of them trace back to that same root question: how do you get your business organized enough that it can grow without you white-knuckling every part of it?

So instead of making you dig through eleven pages of the archive, I pulled together the 25 posts I think will move the needle fastest — organized (fittingly) into the five areas that tend to cause the most chaos: your team, your finances, your OBM questions, your backend systems, and your launches.

Find the category that matches your biggest headache this week, and start there.

Team Management

Why this matters: Your team is your biggest lever for growth, and your biggest source of chaos if it’s not managed well.

Who should read this: You have two or more contractors, you’re drowning in questions only you can answer, or you’re about to hire (or fire) someone and want to do it right.

• 5 Strategies for Leading Remote Teams Without Micromanaging: Five practical strategies for bringing calm to remote-team chaos without hovering over every task.
• 9 Tips to Run Team Meetings You Won’t Dread: Simple strategies for keeping meetings focused, efficient, and useful without being the calendar invite everyone regrets. 
• The Art of Giving Feedback: How to Be Clear Without Crushing Morale: There’s a real art to giving feedback well. This post breaks down how to be direct without deflating the person on the other end of it.
• How to Prepare Your Business for a Team Member’s Long-Term Leave: A step-by-step plan for when a team member steps away for an extended stretch — so the business doesn’t stall out while they’re gone.
• Should You Hire on Retainer? Pros & Cons for Creative Businesses: A side-by-side comparison of retainer vs. per-project support, so you can figure out which model is right for the next hire in your business.

Managing Finances and Making Smart Business Decisions

Why this matters: Financial clarity isn’t just about revenue. It also has a lot to do with making strategic decisions with your money that protect and grow your business.

Who should read this: You’re unsure about a hire, questioning an investment, or ready to get more strategic (and less reactive) with your spending.

• How an OBM Can Help You Make Smarter Financial Decisions in Your Business: How an OBM helps you make smarter calls on team costs, launches, and spending — before the numbers get away from you.
• How to Make Smart Business Decisions Even When Everything Feels Like It’s Falling Apart: An OBM’s secret decision-making framework for moving forward even when things are chaotic.
• The CEO Time Tracking Guide for Busy Business Owners: Why time tracking matters more than you think, and exactly how to start doing it as a busy creative entrepreneur.
• What Every CEO Needs to Know About Their Biz: 4 Metrics to Track for Success: The four metrics worth watching to know whether your online business is actually on the right path – at any point in time. 
• Plan a Financial Friday for Your Small Business: A simple ritual for building a regular budgeting habit into your business instead of only looking at the numbers when something goes wrong.

OBM Job Functions

Why this matters: Most people don’t fully understand what an OBM does until they’re already overwhelmed. These posts break it all the way down and show you what an OBM could look like in your business. 

Who should read this: You’re considering hiring an OBM, or you’re curious about what an OBM does.

• How to Hire an Online Business Manager (And What to Expect Once You Do): Exactly what to expect when hiring an OBM, from the discovery call through onboarding, step by step.
• How to Hire an Online Business Manager: A Vetting Guide for Creative CEOs. How to vet OBM candidates, spot red flags, and find the right strategic partner for your creative business.
• How an Online Business Manager Turns Membership Chaos Into Recurring Revenue: A real look at how an OBM takes an operationally messy membership program and turns it into steady, predictable revenue.
• Do You Need a Virtual Assistant or Online Business Manager?: Your business needs help — but what kind? This post helps you figure out whether a VA or an OBM is the right fit.
• How Can an OBM Help Your Biz? Here Are 6 Things We’ll Do in Our First 90 Days Together!: A concrete look at what the first 90 days of working with an OBM looks like, task by task.

Backend Management and Support

Why this matters: The backend of your business either supports your growth or slows it down — there’s no in between.

Who should read this: Your systems feel like a mess, you’re drowning in tools, or your team doesn’t know where to find anything.

• How Automated SOPs Will Save You Time and Money: How an automated SOP system can save serious time and money — and the one tool doing most of the heavy lifting.
• Business Systems That Actually Work (& Why Yours Might Not Be One): You’ve got Asana, the folders, and the SOPs…so why does everything feel so disorganized? Here’s why systems fail and what to do instead.
• 9 Asana Hacks to Streamline Your Creative Business: Nine hacks — templates, automations, custom fields, and more — for using Asana to its fullest potential.
• Are Your Business Systems Actually Working? How to Measure SOP Success: You built the SOPs. Here’s how to tell if they’re working, using the metrics that matter.
• The Cost of Disorganization: Why It’s More Expensive Than You Think. The real, dollars-and-cents cost of poorly implemented systems — and what to do about it before it adds up any further.
• 3 Red Flags That You Aren’t Using Your Project Management System Effectively: The warning signs that your PM system isn’t actually doing its job, and what’s usually behind them.

Launches

Why this matters: Every launch is a massive operational undertaking — these posts help you plan, execute, and learn from each one.

Who should read this: You have a launch coming up, your last launch was chaos, or you want to build a more repeatable launch process.

• Big Launches Are Out. Here’s the New Small Business Launch Strategy I’m Using Instead: The 7-figure launch era is fading. Here’s the smarter, more sustainable launch strategy being used with clients instead.
• The Launch Framework That’ll Save Your Sanity: A 3-phase launch framework built to keep you (and your sanity) intact through your next launch.
• How to Make Your Next Launch Feel Less Chaotic: 6 Expert Tips From an OBM: Six expert tips for auditing your last launch so your next one is built on data instead of guesswork.

If Chaos Management is a Point of Concern, Start Here

Reading through 25 blog posts is a great start, but I know reading and implementing are two very different things. If you’re closing this tab thinking “Cool, now what?” Here’s your next step.

I put together a free Chaos-Proof Guide that walks you through exactly which systems to build first — no operational jargon, no overwhelm, just a clear starting point based on where your business actually is right now.

Grab the free Chaos-Proof Guide here and start turning “someday I’ll get organized” into an actual plan.