– I needed a place to dump my business thoughts and ideas that WASN’T my to-do list. That’s not the purpose of a to-do list. I needed a place that was dedicated to IDEA storage!

– I wanted this “brain dump” area to be divided into different categories for organizational purposes. Ex: My Education, Shop/Collection ideas, Blog Post ideas, Speaking ideas, Christmas gift ideas for family members… etc!

– I wanted a way to create an on-going blog template that I used for creating ALL of my blog post so that I wouldn’t forget little things like SEO, keywords, Alternative Text for images, etc etc.

– I needed a way to store ideas and thoughts that I could access on my laptop and on mobile.

– I wanted a way to share my blog post templates with my assistant so that she can proofread my posts and schedule my social media posts and have all of this info in ONE place.

– I needed a way to store MY EDUCATION notes!

Evernote has become the solution to ALL of these things in my life! I loved learning how to use Evernote to my advantage and I’m going to show you what my system looks like! Is it perfect? No. Does it need to be? No. :) For example, I have a “Jesus” notebook with like two notes in it. What a fail. But what I have found is that my REAL journal (like pen and paper) can never be digitalized. I tried it and it didn’t work. However, Evernote IS working to organize several other areas of my life and I’m hoping this post will give you some ideas about how you can use it too!

Ps. Why is this important? Because if you don’t DUMP your ideas…. guess where they stay… in your head. Do a daily brain dump so that you can fall ASLEEP and never have to worry about forgetting these ideas!

Here are some things to know about Evernote:

1. You can create a ton of different “Notebooks” for different topics and then each “Notebook” can be filled with different “NOTES”. Below is a screenshot of some of my Notebooks so that you can have a glimpse into how I use different notebooks to organize different ideas and information. The notebooks with the “red tab” means that I have shared them with others!

2. This is a peek into my “BLOG POSTS” Notebook. You’re viewing a NOTE in this notebook. Each time I create a blog post, I copy a new template and I fill it out in Evernote (like below). I don’t store all of the images in Evernote but I do store my featured images and any images/graphics needed for my social media sharing and scheduling so that my assistant has access to them. If we have questions or interest regarding this blog template, I’ll be sure to do another post about it! 

3. The difference between my “Blog Posts” notebook and my “Blogging Ideas” notebook is that my posts are ACTUAL posts ready to be scheduled and my ideas are just simply the beginning ideas for future posts. As I hear ideas, quotes and other information about a future blogging idea, I’ll jot it down in the “ideas” folder until I have everything I need to launch the post! Michael and I listen to podcasts all the time on the road and as I hear new information, I either add it to my “Education” folder or I start a new “Blogging idea” note! For example, I loved Michael Hyatt’s quote about Negative people and it sparked an idea for a blog post! So I started a note and one day, you’ll see that on the blog as a FULL post!

I use Evernote notebooks for recording ideas, organizing blog posts, saving business ideas and documenting random other thoughts too… like Christmas present ideas throughout the year! ha! I hope that if you have struggled with this in your own business, now you have a solution!! And if you found this helpful, SHARE it! The #1 way we grow our audience online is through sharing valuable information with them! …Whether it’s ours or other’s info! If people know that they can depend on you to share valuable information, they will keep coming back! So if you loved this post, share it and pin it!!!

Happy Monday!