43 | Downloads Folder = Digital Junk Drawer | Organize Your Files [TDTH Challenge #10]

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Transcript

Challenge Series Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome back to Turn Down the Hustle. If you're new here, let me quickly explain exactly what you're listening to right now. You have landed on one of my Turn Down the Hustle Challenge episodes, and these are some of my favorite episodes in the entire podcast. The Turn Down the Hustle Challenges. These episodes are short, they're practical, they have strategic shifts for handmade sellers who pretty much are just tired of feeling scattered and reactive in their business. Now, each week we focus on one simple, but I try to choose one task that is a high-leverage action that can do a multitude of things. It might be reduced stress, it could build some clarity, but ultimately I want your business to move forward. No complicated funnels, no giant to-do list, and definitely not hustling just to hustle, right? This is the Turn on the Hustle podcast. Just one of those intentional moves that helps you run your business with a lot more clarity, as I mentioned. And you're in luck today because today's challenge is actually the beginning of a new section of the series. If you've been listening from the beginning, the first group of challenges we worked through were all focused on automation. We talked about things like setting an away message on your Facebook page, creating autoresponders through email, building FAQs on your website, setting moderation alerts in your Facebook group, and creating text clips inside of Send Share. They were all systems that allow your business to respond automatically without you needing to be glued to your phone all day. But now we are going to go ahead and shift into the next category of challenge episodes, and that is systems. Systems are those structures that make your business run more smoothly behind the scenes. So it might not be something that your customers necessarily know right off the bat, like, hey, Amy changed this up, this system, she put a new system in place, but they will feel it through the customer experience and service journey. They will make a huge difference in how easy your business is to operate day-to-day. Things like how are your files organized? How are your design stored? Where do you save your graphics? And where do your business documents live? And today's challenge is one of the biggest systems you can put in place early in your business, which is a perfect time for spring cleaning theme. We are organizing your computer files. Now I know this does not sound exciting. It's not the kind of thing that gets a lot of hype or interest on social media, and it's definitely not a new shiny marketing trick. But if you sell t-shirts online, there's a good chance your computer's holding a lot more chaos than you realize, and it's probably wasting a lot of your time. And if I had to guess, if you're anything like me, a lot of it is sitting in your downloads folder right now. Digital designs, DTF gang sheets, mock-ups, customer files, branding, social media graphics, fonts, your paid receipt for your sales tax for the quarter, random screenshots you meant to use later. And the problem is not just that it looks messy or feels messy when you open it up. The problem is what happens when you need something fast and you cannot find it. You waste so much time. You know that feeling when you're trying to make a post. You know you've already bought a design for a theme, but now you cannot remember what it was called or where you saved it. Or when you need to reorder a gang sheet and you're searching through a pile of files, maybe trying to figure out which is the right one. I am notorious for downloading a gang sheet, going to upload it to the vendor's website, and then I QC it one last time, make sure it all looks good, and then I realize something's overlapping. So I go back to Canva, re-download again, resave it. So now I have different variations, save two, versus deleting the one that I know had an error. So you are in good company with me because I also struggle with this challenge today. Or what about also whenever you want to watermark your graphics and suddenly you realize you don't know where your watermark file is or the local files you want to use? Today we are going to fix that because this episode is all about getting your files organized in your computer in a way that makes sense. We're going to talk about why it matters, how to organize your files, what kind of folders you actually need, why keeping them in the downloads is actually hurting you, and how to back things up. And if you listen to my last challenge about building a brand kit in Canva, this episode layers on really nicely because your files and your branding need a home too.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

You're listening to Turn Down the Hustle, the podcast dedicated to transforming how you run your creative online teacher business by working smarter, not harder, so you can spend more time with your lives, people, and passions that matter most in your life. So throw on your favorite graphic T and turn up to defrost. Amy.

The Downloads Folder Problem

Protecting Digital Purchases

Build Your Folder Structure

Name Files So Search Works

Backups And Canva Integrations

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Why organizing your files matter? Let's start with the big picture. Organizing your computer files matters because your business runs on assets. As a t-shirt seller, you are not just selling products. You wear many hats and you are managing a whole digital ecosystem behind the scenes. You have either designs you've bought or creative, you have mock-ups, game sheets, photos, in real life photos, branding photos, social graphics, customer information, tea party documents, t-shirt bar flyers, business documents, you name it. And if those things are hard to find, then your workflow, it quite frankly just gets harder than it needs to be. So it needs a little turn down the hustle. That's what this challenge is about. It's not about going over the top, color coding on your desktop just because it looks nice. It's about making your business easier to operate. Because every extra minute you spend hunting for files is time you're not spending on making a sale, helping a customer, or fulfilling an order. Or should I say, have a little bit of breathing room or some time back. And I think sometimes as business owners, we really underestimate how much mental energy gets wasted on little moments like trying to find files. And usually when you're looking for files, you're not doing it with a smile, right? With glee, like, wait, I can't wait to find this. No. It's usually generating some frustration, interruption, and it definitely is throwing off some momentum. You're working on one thing, and then suddenly you're 10 folders deep trying to find something else from six months ago, that starts to add up. So if you've ever said, I know I have that somewhere, you're in the right place. Now let's talk about the biggest problem area for most people. And that's the downloads folder. If I could make a comparison, it's pretty much the junk drawer of your computer. Every time you download a new file, your computer automatically puts it there. If you never move it, it just piles up in one place. The designs, DTF, mock-up, fonts, everything. Eventually it becomes pretty impossible to find anything quickly. Your business files are living next to random receipt screenshots and everything. That's why I want you to start thinking of your computer less like a catch-all, I would say, and more like a filing cabinet. Like we need to get this thing organized because a filing cabinet works when everything has a category. We need to give your computer the same type of structure. Before we even get into folders, I want to mention something really important for anyone buying digital designs. Always download your files immediately after purchase. This is from designers' websites, Etsy, you name it. Don't let them just sit in your email inbox because here's something many sellers don't realize. You may see designers post about this from time to time, but you probably don't realize it until it happens to you. If a designer deletes that listing or removes it from their product shop, that download link is actually going to disappear. Which means if you did not download that file yet, you may lose access to something you already paid for. Yes, you can reach out to the owner, but it's not a guarantee they may reply, or worse, if they've closed shop. So the habit I want you to build is this when you purchase a design, download the file immediately, then save it to your computer inside your organized design folders, which we're going to get to. And here's another helpful tip I recommend is once you have downloaded, now that email is going to be opened in your email provider, then I want you to create a folder that is called digital downloads. And I actually want you to move that email over into digital downloads. When that purchase confirmation email arrives from the designer, your first step is to download and then move that email into that folder. Now you have two layers of protection. The design is saved on your computer, and then you do still have the original email with the download link stored in one place in your email so you don't have to go digging for it. Not to mention, I'll keep your email inbox cleaned up too. This takes maybe 10 seconds when the email arrives, but it protects your business assets long term. Now let's move into the actual folder structure that I want you to start working on to complete this challenge. Start by creating one main business folder on your computer, and I want you to name it your business name. So business name is going to be the main folder. Inside that main folder, we're going to create subfolders. Some ideas you can use, some that I use would be like business records. Another folder would be designs, another folder would be branding. And so these three main folders, what I like about them are for your business records, that would have like your LLC paperwork or your annual report for your LLC, any local licenses you have to hold, your business insurance, your expense and inventory worksheets, anything that requires documentation about your business. This is where I would just keep it in this main folder. You can even start to organize it broken down even more, like licensing, and then another folder for taxes, whatever you need to do. Also, receipts folder if you'd like to do that. That would be a great place to start. So that would be folder number one, business records. Folder number two would be designs. In this folder, I would break it out by PNGs or like your graphic design, something you plan on putting on a shirt or offering as a print. The next would be inside that graphics folder would be like engagement graphics. So something you buy from me to post on social media, or you could do party graphics as well. So you can start to keep those organized. Also, your DTF gang sheets, you can create a folder for those too. Then that last folder I mentioned, branding. So this is where your watermarks, your logos, your photo shoots, all of that good stuff would live in this folder. Maybe your business cards file, all of that good stuff will stay here. The one file I always lose, and I need to do this right after we end this episode, is my template for printing corch pickup labels. I don't know why I've never saved that or I don't just put that in my own business folder. I am always hunting and I didn't save it with a strategic name. So I'm always just looking for it by a picture of what I think it looks like, which I need to do that as well. So yes, pickup labels would be a great thing to put in your branding folder as well. Another folder that would be great also is mock-ups. You could have a staged mock-up folder and then an in-real life folder. So that way, even if you're not ready to post it on social media and you're snapping all of those pictures as you are getting orders pressed, you can at least have an archive of all those in real life photos. Highly recommend that. As I alluded to, there's one habit that will make your system work so much better. Rename it something meaningful. Lucky teacher, SVG, or shamrock gang sheet, or comfort colors mock-up, main logo white transparent. When you do this, your computer search bar becomes incredibly powerful. You can type in a keyword and your file will appear nearly instant. It's like a small habit, but it saves so much time later, especially whenever we start talking about this next segment of the podcast. The last piece of this system is backing up your files. If your laptop stopped working tomorrow, would you still have access to your designs, logos, graphics, everything? For many sellers, the answer is no. But your digital assets are a part of your business inventory. You may not hold them like a sh like physically, like a shirt blank or a print, but they still represent time and money. So I recommend two backup options: an external hard drive where you can copy your main business folder periodically. So we've already made that main folder with your business name. So it should be very easy to copy and drag over to the hard drive or cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox. And if you create graphics in Canva, you could also upload them directly into folders in Canva as well. If you didn't already know this, you can actually link your Google Drive into your Canva account. That way, when you go to Apps and Canva, you can pull up the drive and you can search all of your Google Drive folders directly inside the Canva app. What this does is alleviates you having to manually upload things into Canva from your computer and then create. You can just pull directly from your Google Drive. So earlier, when I mentioned putting names on things comes in handy later. So whenever you name them and store them on your computer, my next step is then I go upload them into similar folders into a Google Drive. And the reason why I do that is now every time I go into Canva, all of the PNGs, if I need to build a gang sheet or from building engagement graphics, they're all right there in my Google Drive already organized. It's extremely helpful. So here's your turn down the hustle challenge for this week. I want you to create one main business folder on your computer and inside it create three to five subfolders that make sense for your business. Then move at least 20 files, I know you can do this, out of your downloads folder into the correct place. Bonus points if you rename your files clearly, back up your folder to an external driver cloud storage, create a digital downloads folder in your email inbox. Because remember, small systems like this reduce friction every time you sit down to work. Organization is not about being neat, it's about making your business easier to run. Thank you for hanging out with me for this week's challenge. If last week's episode about building your brand kit and Canva helped you, this one is going to be just a natural next step. Your brand needs files, your files need folders, and your folders need a system. And that's how we're going to keep turning on the hustle. So I will see you next week for the next challenge.