Reduce headaches, delight your clients and amp your creativity

My beloved art station. Pardon the crooked angle of the photo. 🙂

My kids are art fanatics. It doesn’t matter the medium – pen, crayon, paint, clay, even lipstick — there is nothing they would rather do than spend hours making things.

The center of our home is the family room/kitchen, where most activity takes place. As soon as the kids wake up (about 5:30 usually), they want to go downstairs and start making stuff.

I have always kept art supplies in the cabinet above our kitchen counter. I suppose in the early years it was to keep my toddlers from making a mess, but as they got older, I didn’t think to change the location.

So at a rate of at least 5 times a day, I would be asked:

“Mom, where is the paper?”

“Where did the crayons go?”

“Do we have any clay left?”

Or, I would find one of my kids perched precariously on tiptoes on a chair, reaching for supplies in the overstuffed cabinet, one inch away from tumbling off and breaking an arm.

When the kids got tired of working on a project, they would leave the paper and art supplies all over the counter or kitchen table.

“Hey guys, put this away!” I would say, with my frustrated Mom tone.

“We can’t reach the cabinet!” they would say with a glint in their eyes, as they watched me put it away for them.

It drove me nuts.

But despite this frustration, I let this go on for years.

Until one day, I saw a picture of a metal shelving unit with some clear plastic containers on it. The containers were filled with art supplies.

Suddenly, I had to have one of my own.

So I went to Costco, and was delighted to find exactly what I was looking for. In a couple of hours, the cabinets were emptied, and my kids and I sorted the vast quantities of art supplies into neat, clear plastic boxes.

What is your creative logjam in your business?

We all have our version of “inefficient crammed art cabinet” in our businesses.

When I thought about my own, I realized with embarrassment that my coaching clients are constantly emailing me when they misplace the link to schedule an appointment. They are not totally clear how to cancel an appointment, or which email to use to submit materials for my review before their call.

We always sort it out in the end, but there is no consistency. And if I get really busy (like I have been this month), I can miss important information, or delay my reply to them.

This logjam only serves to interrupt our free-flowing coaching relationship, and blocks the best work we can do together.

So guess what Sheila and I are building this week? A coaching “art station” – one page where my clients can easily make and change appointments, submit information and ask questions.

Why has it taken 7 years to organize this?

Because we usually only pay attention to things that are massively broken, or cause direct pain. Little annoyances can be overcome by good communication, or are ignored because they are “not worth spending time on.”

But they sap energy, time and power from your creative process. And they chip away at a great customer experience, and affect your brand.

So how do you start to fix these holes in your business?

Your homework ( I promise to do it too):

1. Identify a core part of your business (an offer, a program or a service)
2. Write down the recurrent questions you get about it from customers or clients (it is helpful to look in your “sent mail” folder if you can’t remember – most likely, you will have a series of emails where you answer the same questions over and over)
3. Step back and brainstorm ways you can simplify and organize the delivery of the service by doing things like:

–Creating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page
–Creating a visual map of a system or process (My web consultant and author coach Tim Grahl uses a mind map for coaching clients to explain how he will work with them, and checks off progress at each stage of the coaching engagement)
–Creating a series of autoresponders in your email system as follow up to product purchase that answers frequent questions
–Create a form (my client, fellow coach Ali Davies uses a standard form with her coaching clients so they can summarize progress, identify open issues and define goals before each session)
–Create an email template to answer common questions you receive frequently by email.

As a full-blooded Virgo, the amount of satisfaction I get from an organized and efficient process may frighten the rest of you. Let’s just say that since I set up my art station on Sunday, I have gazed lovingly at it at least 20 times. My kids are excited to see long-lost art supplies that used to be stuffed inside the cabinet.

And when the pictures are painted, the clay molded, the beaded necklaces complete, Josh and Rosie quietly put the supplies back in the plastic bin, and place it on the metal shelf.

Without being told.