We were 8-years-old and 6-years-old respectively, living in a little white-columned home with a grassy lawn that dad didn’t allow us to ride our bikes across because everyone that came over told us it looked like a golf course.

My sister Kristen’s room overlooked that lawn, and I remember sitting in there cleaning out her desk one day (I’ve no idea where she was. Probably playing vet in the playroom).

“Ashlyn. What are you doing?”

“Cleaning out Kristen’s desk.”

“WHY? That’s her responsibility.”

“Mom please don’t … she’s been paying me for a while.”

Thus ended my third-grade side-hustle of cleaning out and organizing my little sister’s notoriously messy room (ask me about the time we smelled something burning in the house, and it was because she “decorated” the room with Beanie Babies on the tops of all the lamps. There’s a poor flamingo with a very singed bottom in a land fill somewhere).

Suffice it to say organization’s always been my happy place.

So, once I started having business docs to file, I went a lil’ bit bananas making sure things were straight.

I’ve been working with my organizational fairy godmother Indigo Colton to spin some VA magic into my life, and I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how we organize our GoogleDrive for the Ashlyn Writes business.

Complete with screenshots.

Because why not pull up the curtain on some file wizardry?

Let’s go!

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The root Folder

This is a mish-mash of ideas I’ve learned from Amy Porterfield courses, PR agency filing hacks, watching Megan Minns videos, and having Indigo work her magic.

It was ultra-importante for me to have the first folder be the one I’m in the MOST, which I’ll show ya in a sec.

Client work needed to be next, but that content and product folder sees a lot of action (I’ll show you that, too).

p.s. I’d say the archive folder is a gotta-have … that way you can throw out the clutter without the annoying “This file is in the trash. Would you like to remove it?” message.

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The Back Office Folder

This is the back-bone of the business! In this folder live biz plans, trackers/stats sheets, budgets, and more … wanna see?

Voila:

Oh, hey again, favorite folder. I love this guy.

Let’s look inside each one. First up, Admin:

So here’s the meat: trackers include things like launch calendars, my business plan, 90 Day Year goal trackers, etc. I use HoneyBook for amazingness when it comes to invoicing and contracts, but EVERY so often, I have a client project that’s off HoneyBook … I needed somewhere to put those guys.

Oh, and yes — that affirmations page is where I post a list of emails my best friends sent me after I was struggling with figuring out what I wanted to do with my life after eating disorder recovery. I emailed them all to ask how they saw the ways the Lord had gifted me … my “God-prints” … and wrote them down there. Couldn’t throw that special doc away!

Here’s what is housed in the Team Members and Financials folders:

Learning Resources is a SUPER HEAVY folder … if I take a course, get a killer freebie, etc., it goes in there, and under Marketing lives

Megan Minns teaches her brand elements filing like a boss in this video right here. I tweaked her system for my own:

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The Client Folder

From there, I have a folder for client work … let’s switch over to Mac viewing so you can see how the Drive integration looks

In full transparency, I should admit that most the Calligraphy client files have to live in Dropbox, because #techwoes and slowness in load-time.

And this is how that looks, so if you’re a stationer/calligrapher, I’d give this a whirl:

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The Content + Product Folder

Finally, here’s where any content lives … aka courses, freebie downloads and their templates, blog posts, blog posts graphics, webinar replays I’ve taught, etc. …

… oh, and reminder-folder called “Ebooks” for when I launch the shop in June. 😉

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The COlor Coordination System

Last thing — you’ve probably noticed some color situations.

Between Dropbox, GoogleDrive, Trello, and a GoogleCalendar, I needed a way to super-quick-like be able to see what was what. Cue color coordination, just like you did with your notebooks and grocery bag book covers in junior high.

Here’s the color cooridnation system I use within Ashlyn Writes:

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So, that’s how I tie things up with a pretty bow over here, and I know it’s a little anal … I’ve been slightly tightly wound my whole life (get outta town you’re thinking, if you know me at all!).

But, this has made me such a quicker worker: proving that an hour or two putting systems in place is always a worthy investment when it comes to Ashlyn Writes. I tend to believe time is money: those are the two resources most dear and precious to us, and when I steward my time well, it frees me up a bit to able to get after the important things in life!

How do you organize your business? Do you use GoogleDrive?