Escape Digital Chaos: Your Guide to Franchise Freedom (and Sanity!)

Think you've got it all figured out? Not so fast! This episode of the Franchise Freedom Podcast throws a curveball at the usual franchise talk. We're not just rehashing the same old benefits; we're diving deep into the nitty-gritty of digital organization for franchise owners.

Get ready to discover:

• Why digital organization is the unsung hero of franchise success.
• How to tame the chaos of emails, files, and passwords.
• Essential tools for streamlining franchise operations.
• Expert advice on building a solid digital foundation for your business.
• Real-world case studies of franchisees who've mastered the digital game.

Plus, Shawn Lemon, the Digital Organizer himself, drops some serious knowledge bombs on how to optimize your digital workflow and avoid costly mistakes. 💡

Hit play and let's get organized!

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The Franchise Freedom: Discover Your New Path to Freedom Through Franchise Ownership, Book by Giuseppe Grammatico https://ggthefranchiseguide.com/book or purchase directly on Amazon.

Transcript

0:00

we can take you through the entire process from bleak chaos to beautiful digital order. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, The Franchise Guide. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your franchise guide, the show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom via franchising. Thanks for joining us today. Very exciting episode. We've been bringing more guests on per your request. We have Sean Lemon on from the digitalorganizer.com Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks, man. Great to be here. Yeah looking forward to we've been chatting. This has been an area of personal interest for me. So when I got your first email, I'm like, all right, we got it. We got to get Sean on the show and help a lot of these new business owners out. Before we dive in wanting to if you can give the audience a little bit of background of who Sean is and what Sean does. Yeah. I started at the Apple store in 2007 for the iPhone launch, teaching people how to use their technology and that transformed into the digital organizer, because we saw so many people coming in with huge messes and not really understanding how all the technology works together and as things have just gotten more and more complex and Really accessible to us. All of a sudden we've got tons of tools available. Now it's really confusing. Our stuff is spread out all over the place. And more than ever, we need somebody to help us navigate that digital landscape to get organized and understand what our flow can be so that we can really take advantage of the tools instead of getting lost in them. I like that there, there are So many tools out there can't keep track of them. Forget to check them. And it's like, how do we put it all together? That's been a struggle that I've had. A lot of listeners are corporate executives. First time transitioning into business ownership, whether it's a franchise, non franchise type of business. And a lot of these corporate exec had assistants, had support staff in place. And now they're coming in saying, okay, I'm now a CEO, much higher, president of my company. But I don't have my assistant anymore. How do I keep track of all this? Where? What? How do I even just, keep track of emails and organized email? So it talked us a little bit about where you can help people there because even in a franchise, although there is onboarding and coaching and assistance, they don't get into personal, balancing personal calendars, emails and events and things like that. Yeah. So we think it's really important to get organized in a few core areas. And if you do that well, then that sets you up for success for everything else. That you're doing and you really don't need to use too many more tools, especially when we're trying to cut costs and keep as lean and mean as possible to try and get profitable quickly. You want to make sure that you've got good email habits. So. Cleaning out that, that inbox, getting less subscriptions and all of the junk. Like we can't have our email completely overrun where we can't find anything and critical things, deadlines start slipping through the cracks and getting missed. So we've really got to get that under control. So we've got email, we've got to have a proper filing system. In using the right types of tools, when you're first getting started, you want to make sure that you're using a business level subscription with some of this stuff. I know we talked about keeping costs low, but that will keep your costs low on the other side. Cause if you use the wrong tools then you end up having to do a lot of work on the backend to fix it becomes really expensive. So make sure you use in something like Google workspace, the paid subscription and the right types of folders. I should break all this down in in an organization guide and a resource library that we have. If you're interested in that, we'll talk more about that. But you want to get your passwords in order to get that all straightened out, figure out what it is used to step verification. Cause when you start hiring marketing companies or any sort of contractors to help you with stuff, They're going to need passwords. You're going to need two step verification codes, and you don't want to have to be in a meeting and nobody can get what they need done because they've been there. But then they're done that. So I will say that I learned the hard way. And then it's good to have project management that I'd say you're going to see. Save that one for a little bit later because you can do a lot of project management and task management. If you're in your email, if you're doing it well, but then once things start ramping up, you want to get a good project management system in place to help keep track of all of the tasks that are assigned to you, assigned to the staff that's helping you and keep up with the hiring process. And. There's nothing that I know of that can help you drive results faster than a really good project management system. Agreed. So those are the four core things that you want to have in place once you get going. And so I guess how are, there's obviously tools out there to simplify things, get everything organized. So you had mentioned resources. Do you do a done for you as well, where you can, you go in and step by step help an individual set these up? Is it. Is it through the guide? Is it a combination? Yeah, so we've got a combination of a resource library where we've broken down at all of the steps to get organized and to implement this stuff in place. And so self starters really trying to keep their costs low and they can implement themselves. You can go with that and just do it all yourself. And then we've got two different levels of engagement of whether you need a little bit of help and consulting. It's Hey, the course and all this material is good, but I need to figure out how to apply it to this specific situation. You need some Key pointers and some help implementing that's one level. And then the next level up is, I think I need a lot of help. I've got a mess already. It feels overwhelming to transform all of this by myself. Can I get some more help? And then we've got that level. And yeah, we can take you through the entire process from bleak chaos to beautiful digital order. Yes. And digital order is nice. It's a, it's really, it's like I, when I look at my desktop, it's like my head, my brain. And there's a lot of distractions. If you have icons all over the place, folders there's no real rhyme or reason of how you find things. There's some huge value there. And especially in the beginning stages, there's a lot, maybe a first time business owner setting things up for the first time, hiring, firing, doing all that implementing. If it's a franchise, they're training as well. So these are things that are typically not provided. In the onboarding stage of a franchise that this is really getting everything, on one laptop, one PC, whatever you use to, to get everything organized and put together. Can you talk about companies you've helped in the past is I'm not sure with confidentiality, a couple of franchises just off the top. My head would be Chick fil A's is one and then fit body bootcamp another. So for this Chick fil A owner like most franchises, they don't give back office tools and and really suggestions. They'll have some suggestions for you, but you're on your own on, what are you going to use to host your email? Where are you going to do files? How are you going to run your meetings and track your hiring process and all of that stuff? And they've got some suggested platforms like use hire me and things like that for listing your your jobs and things. But what about. Tracking who you've talked to, where you're at in the interview process, the notes, collaborating with your team for the team interviews and such. That's not built out. And so we've built out entire back office operating systems for email hosting, file hosting, password management, project management, and that meeting flow. And how are we communicating as a team? Are we going to use Slack? How do we use Slack? When are we using the phone and text messages? So we'll do anything from a little bit of an optimization for a CEO's workflow, like a Bryce from fit body bootcamp. We went in and worked on his personal files and then we've gone in and now we're doing a work with their headquarters as well. And we're looking at pushing that out for all of the other franchises. So some we can get in at the top level. And push that out for all of the franchisees. And some we have to go in individually and help them out, but yeah, we can build out the whole operating system. And it's never too early to start. So even if it's someone looking at a franchise and anticipates opening we have someone just sign a franchise, they're going to open up in either August or beginning of September. This is probably the ideal time to, to get organized, get everything put together. You need this balance, right? This calendar that we talk of, there's personal, I always put my personal blocks on and then I put my work stuff, right? If I have a graduation for my daughter, eighth grade big day tomorrow. Put that on the calendar so that no one, can block off that time. I'm thinking anyone listening in, if they have questions or need some assistance, maybe start off with the personal stuff and then start incorporating. Maybe the franchise, right? Information after they get set up with onboarding. Would you agree to that or 100 percent and what I'm going to do is if you go to the digital organizer. com slash franchise freedom, I'm going to give you a personal. Files organization guides. So this is how, like, how do you actually consolidate all the files that you've got from multiple places? If you have a partner spouse, pull all of that together to create a shared space and get your own stuff in order. And then from there, I'll have a discount code for you. I'm going to give you 50 percent off my resource library for any of the listeners. Oh, great. Thank you. And that's step by step guides of getting your email under control because you don't want to have to hire an EA to manage your email and manage your calendar and all this stuff. If you can do it yourself and get I promise even the most overwhelming email accounts are, by the way, our record is 300,000 unread emails in the inbox emails in their account. And we're able to transform that person and get them to inbox zero. It's. It's not that hard if you have the step by step process. So if you get that under control, then all of a sudden you're missing less and there's a lot less stress. I'm trying to tackle new things, wrap your head around a new process. Cause you're going to be diving right into the deep end with a lot of new stuff coming at you. And it's, Going to be detailed out of step by step for that onboarding guide with the franchise that the franchisor is giving you, but even still, it's an overwhelming process. And so having as much order in your life as possible in those systems set up now, oh, my gosh, when you get into oh, I've got all this task list. Now it's time to get it done. You're not having to wade through. All of the junk in the meantime. So I'd say get organized now, and then you're going to take those principles and apply it to the business as you're setting things up and you can get some advice from us, like at the very beginning of a franchise, setting up a franchise, you're not going to need some like expensive build out. You might just need some suggestions here and there. Let's use these tools. Let's set them up this way. You're set up for success. And as you scale, you've got a partner that you can come back to and say, Hey, we've gotten to this level. What do I do about this? And my gosh, it's so much cheaper this way than to have to overhaul. Once you're in a huge mess later on down the road. And I like this. It's sustainable, right? You learn the reasons behind, you have a system and you don't need that, that the VA that you're constantly relying on, that's yet another cost and another person that needs to get trained. Especially for businesses in that first year, you want to remain as lean as possible. You want to be efficient, right? You don't want to cut too much, but you want to be as lean as possible, especially the things that you could be doing on your own. So best spot to reach you would be the digital organizer dot com forward slash franchise freedom. They'll be able to get the resources and contact you. Is that fair to say? Yeah, so from there you can just enter in your email address and that'll give you the guide. So you get that household organization guide and then on that page and in the email I'll send you a discount code. You'll just use franchise freedom at checkout. If you want to get that resource library. And so you can have that, but at least go in and get that guide. And then you'll get a little a series of emails from me telling you about us and what's going on. If you want to continue along and follow along. Awesome. I appreciate that. What else for the listeners in, as I mentioned, a lot of them are just starting out or very close to making a decision with a franchise or with the business, any other. tips or starting points or things they should consider at this point in the game? the few things that you're going to want to do is we already talked about it. The email getting that under control, but figuring out what your main platform is going to be. Are you going to use Google? You're going to use a Dropbox, you're going to use Microsoft 365. And a great way to make that decision is think about what you're most comfortable with, but also who are you going to be hiring? So if you have a franchise that you're going to be mostly be hiring young people who are coming out of school, maybe in their thirties or younger, You're most likely going to have the best success with Google Workspace because all these kids are using Google Workspace in in school, whether it's their high school, junior high colleges, they're very familiar with those tools and almost everybody has a Google account already. So using those tools is very easy. But if you're working with companies that are primarily business, old business, really entrenched especially healthcare, things like that, you need to be in the Microsoft space. And so having Microsoft 365 and finding a good it provider who doesn't necessarily require you to have A monthly ongoing subscription, but somebody good who can help you get up and running. If you need some suggestions, I can give you some suggestions of companies to reach out to, to help you with that initial setup. We can help you with Google workspace. We don't do quite as much for the setup in Microsoft 365, but having that core platform and knowing what tools you're going to use as your baseline, I think it's going to be important in getting that setup, it's really tempting. Sorry, this is a long answer, but it's tempting to go down the route of just creating a free Gmail account and doing everything in that account. But the downside is if you try and take that content that you're creating in a free Gmail account and then start collaborating with other people using those free tools, it's really tempting. Whatever other people are creating for you and putting in your folders, you don't own. And trying to get all of that into an official system later on is expensive and time consuming. And if you scale it too big, then it becomes a really big job to get it back under control. So I would say figure that out and then decide on your project management platform. Asana and ClickUp are our two favorites. And so having a really good project management tool is is just going to take you so far, so much faster. You want to learn it, get familiar with that, watch some YouTube videos, watch some of our content on doing project management well, because it's just the most important thing to make sure that you stay on track and you hit those deadlines and goals. Awesome. Speaking of ClickUp, that's who, that's the company we use for our marketing company. I will, I know I, they have to approve an idea and then I have to approve the final content, the captions and everything else, even the hashtags. So I can definitely say that's been a life changer, beats the heck out of, A hundred emails back and forth where you can make edits and comments and approvals and things like that. So I've never used until January of this year and I've owned my, businesses for the last 20 years any type of project management, just aside from a CRM. Really helpful. And definitely recommend that. And they're not that expensive either. It's shocking. And a lot of them have a free version and then you can grow into them. So you don't have to go to the nines. I. Probably pay 33 a month like per account for my Asana account because I have all these bells and whistles and automations that we grew into once we realized what we needed and we really had control over our processes and we understood. It's okay, we're doing this. This is the way we do it. It works well this way. Let's go ahead and start automating that process. Like that. And, if you try and go into automation too soon, then things get out of control and out of hand really fast. So you actually really want to go down to the basics, get really good, figure out your system, and then someone can help you automate and take things further and further. Awesome. I appreciate that. Makes a lot of sense. We're as we wrap up the the episode and this has been extremely helpful and I'm definitely going to be checking out the guide. If you could share with the audience one fun fact that'd be awesome. Yeah. I would say this may be a little crazy, but my fastest speed on a skateboard is 55 miles an hour. I used to do downhill skateboarding, those crazy people who go down the mountain, yeah, 55 miles. That that, that is pretty fast. Yeah. I used to skate back in high school. So 55. Wow. And that was that recent? That was probably four years ago, four years ago after breaking my shoulder and breaking my wrists. Was that the last, was that the last run? The last race? I still had a few after it was really my wrists is it was like, okay, I'm in my late thirties. This can't happen anymore. That's awesome. It's cool. It's interesting. I told you we've had some interesting some interesting fun facts and that was a cool one. Awesome. Listen, I Sean, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This was. Really helpful. Again, the digital organizer. com forward slash franchise freedom. You can access all the resources, contact Sean. If you have any questions or want to set up a call, learn a little bit more, maybe get some done for you all taken care of. I appreciate it. We're going to add this all to the show notes. So if you think of anything else that we didn't talk about today, we can always add that to the to the notes, to the blog and again, appreciate you coming on coming on the show. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Thanks again. Appreciate it. If you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise, join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today.