161: Canva Account Chaos? No More: Tips to Get Organized

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Hey there. I am super excited to chat with you today and I have a special guest and I will tell you that I'm a little bit. The reason why I brought her on is because I need help in this area too. So I am super excited to have this conversation. I know you're going to get a ton of value from this conversation. Today I have Brenda Cadman with me. Brenda has taught thousands of small business owners through her courses and in particular she loves to help them tame their hot mess Canva accounts by creating an organizational system that ensures they can spend less time in Canva and more time doing what they love. And I would say that describes my Canva account perfectly.

It describes a lot of Canva accounts.

I've had my Canva account since, I don't know, 2017, 2016. I don't even remember being quite honest with you and it is a hot mess and I have thousands and thousands and thousands of designs in there and quite frankly it does need to be organized so we're going to definitely chat about that. But Brenda before we get into all the questions I have for you today, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Sure. Well, as you mentioned, I am a Canva verified expert. I actually ran a website development company for. Gosh, I guess it was 22 years. I've been an entrepreneur for over 24 years. I retired that website development company in 2022, September 2022, because I did want to focus all of my time on creating Canva education and content and helping, especially with the organization piece of it. And as much as I'd like to be able to do everything, I can't run a web agency and do this. So I made a choice and I have not looked back.

So you can't do both.

I tried for a long time.

It is hard, right?

It is hard and you know, it. It's possible if you have a lot of support. And I wanted to keep things simple and really follow my heart. And it was a decision that I had been. I'd been contemplating and trying to execute on for a couple of years and finally just, you know, pulled the plug on the whole thing and said, I'm done. I'm going to hand off these wonderful clients to somebody that I know will take very good care of them, probably better care of them than I could have. And I'm going to go do this thing that is calling to me. And that was, like I said, September 2022. And I have absolutely loved being able to full, you know, fully throw myself into the Canva education space in the meantime and now being able to put a lot of time into the digital organization side side of it as well.

Well, I will say that Canva is one of my favorite software tools out there. I think it is so easy to use, so easy to learn. Even if you're a complete beginner and you don't consider yourself a graphic designer, which I'm not, by the way. I'm. I'm a marketing expert, but I have no graphic design skills. But it really, you know, in terms of tools out there, I really do think it's one of. Must have tools that all, all small business owners like us, like everybody who's listening or watching this particular video or listening to this podcast, I really think it's a tool that we all need to have. And I know that there's people listening here. Maybe they've been using Canva for years or maybe they're just getting started. So we're going to kind of weave in some different type of questions here. But for those who are just dipping their toes into this tool, learning more about it, how would you suggest they get started?

It can be really easy to get overwhelmed because there are so many features and that's one of the great things about Canvas. They are constantly iterating, they're constantly refining features, adding new features. A lot of AI kinds of options available now. Canvas Magic Studio is certainly something they've put a lot of time and energy into promoting. But I think it's really important not to lose sight of just getting comfortable with the fundamentals, you know, being able to understand basic navigation and how to create some of the, the foundational pieces, marketing pieces in your business. So if you are starting using Canva because you want to create, you know, a checklist or a guide or something you're going to use as a lead magnet for your business, just focus on being able to create that. Focus on learning how to find a template, how to set up your brand kit and customize that template and how to download it so you can share it with your audience. And yes, later on you can learn all these neat apps and features and you know, Magic Expand and Background Remover and all these various things that will definitely come in handy at some point. But I think not getting overwhelmed by all the bells and whistles is one of the things I would really caution watching out for because it's very easy to get sucked into that rabbit hole.

And I do want to circle back on that. So don't let me forget, I do want to hear some of those new and snazzy features because quite frankly, I don't even know that I've paid much att attention to them myself. But let's say somebody's just getting started, they're doing everything that you're saying. What can they do initially in terms of organization in Canva so that their account doesn't turn into a hot mess right now?

Well, I think getting familiar with the projects area right from the get go is important. And when you're starting using Canva, it's, you know, you might feel very, it might feel very manageable to just create your designs to be able to scroll and find what you're looking for if you only have a handful them to look through. But when you do start using it on a regular basis, you, you are going to find those designs and images start to pile up very, very quickly. And scrolling and searching to find something you created three months ago, six months ago is suddenly going to be causing a lot of frustration. It's going to eat up a lot of time. So I do highly recommend creating folders right from the get go. You will change your folders over time. It's hard to know what system is going to work for you in terms of creating kind of a Canva filing system, or I like to call it a canva filing cabinet, until you know what you're going to be creating and needing to organize. But create some sort of structure from the beginning, even if it's just a few folders so that it doesn't get wildly out of control. That's really going to kind of not only help you stay on top of things from the beginning, but it's going to start creating those organizational habits and start getting you into the routine of once you create something, moving it into a folder, and just those sorts of behaviors that are far more difficult to establish later on once you've gotten really used to just creating content on the fly. So I like to encourage creating folders right from the beginning and make sure that you are, you know, naming things right from the beginning. Don't leave it named as copy of template xyz. If you copy something thinking you're going to use it and then you don't end up using it, delete it before you forget why that's there. And then you end up just leaving all of these extra clutter bits around because you, you don't remember what they were for and you don't want to accidentally delete something that you didn't mean to. So staying on top of it right from the beginning is going to be really beneficial in the long term.

So I do have a lot of those copy of XYZ test in my account, so I'm definitely guilty of that. And I, I just, I don't know this off the top of my head and I'm sure you do. Can people create project folders in the free version of Canva or do they need the paid version? They can.

No, you can create it in the free version. Once upon a time, not that long ago, but it's been a while now, you were only able to create two custom folders on a free plan, whereas you could have unlimited on the Pro plan was one of the big reasons to upgrade to Pro. I mean, there's a lot of reasons to upgrade to Pro, but that was one of the foundational reasons that I used to emphasize. But some time ago they did remove that limitation and now you can have unlimited folders on both the free subscription and the Pro subscription. You can nest folders 10 levels deep on Both. There are some differences in terms of organizational capabilities between the two plans. For example, you know, storage capacity, you're only going to have five gigabytes on a free plan, whereas you'll have a terabyte of storage space on a pro plan. And there's some limitations around the number of items you can have in folders and things like that, but just down to the actual number of folders that you can create, there is no difference between the plans.

So what would you say to somebody like me that has this huge hot mess of a Canva account and I really don't even know where to start or where. Where my resources would be best used to start organization. I meant to go in to kind of see how many designs I have. I know it's. I've gotten those, you know, kind of those badges or whatever from Canva. I know.

Yes, a lot. You have created 2,000 designs.

Yeah, it was a lot more than that.

It was more than that.

Yeah, a lot more than that. So there's a lot of them in there. So what would you suggest to somebody like me who has this monster, quite frankly, on their hands? And I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

Sure, sure. And there's a couple of questions that I would throw back that are going to help dictate. The steps to take. First would be, do you have the bandwidth to do this? Do you have the bandwidth to actually organize this? Do you want to go through and create a system and move everything into the folders? Because if you. If you want to take care of it, great, we're going to figure out what that path looks like. If you don't. If the. If you. The reason you're not organized. There's a lot of people, the reason they're not organized, despite wanting to be, is every time they look at their account, they just have this sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach. And the idea of dealing with it is just too much. So for those folks, I think what can be helpful is to just, you know, lump select everything, move it into a folder called, you know, future problem, or, you know, maybe lump it into years or something, big chunks so that you can start fresh. Because if you don't have the bandwidth to actually go through and put some sort of filing system order to the files that you have already, let's at least get you started moving forward, and then maybe you can chip away at that backlog over time. If you do want to actually tackle this, the next question would be, are you going to be the one to do it, or do you have a team member that you could, you know, pass this off to, or do you want somebody else to do it for you? I occasionally will do this where there's, you know, particularly with teams, but sometimes solo entrepreneurs as well, who they're just like, I can't find anything. Could you please take care of this, hand it back to me in order and I'll take it from there. But a lot of folks want to do it themselves. So it's just a matter of getting a realistic assessment of what you want to do at this point. And then if you do want to put the effort in, you need to start carving some time out. Maybe it's a couple of days to tackle this. Maybe it is smaller periods of time over a longer calendar portion. So really understanding what you're capable of doing without tearing your hair out is going to be really important. And then from there you can start going through and doing an initial purge of the things, you know, the files you know, that do not need to be there and you don't need to archive.

So let me ask you this. Let's say we, I, you know, somebody has some sort of a naming system right on their, on their, you know, whatever they've created in Canva, is there a way to go in and like bulk select and put those particular images in a folder? Would that be a faster way to kind of go through and organize it?

So you can go through and, you know, click and drag and select multiple files or click multiple files and then bulk move them, but you can't yet. And this is one of those little features that I really hope gets refined in the not too distant future. Because folks do ask about this, the sake. If I search on a term, can I do organization on those search results? For example, if I wanted to find everything that had a particular client name in it or a particular styled stock prefix to it, that I can grab them all in one chunk. Unfortunately, those organizational capabilities in Canva don't yet extend to that results page. But that is something I'm hoping that they will, you know, modify in the not too distant future, because that would make my life a lot easier as well.

But you can do it based on the. How you've named the images, right? Is that what I'm hearing?

You can, based on if you are reviewing it and you're actually looking at it and you are pinpointing by looking at it that the names you know, okay, that one's a style stock and you can select multiple items, you don't have to move them one at a time, but if you wanted to search on it by name and then bulk organize the search results, that you can't do yet.

Okay, so that brings me to my next question is what tips do you have for naming our designs? Because I think that seems to be a critical thing that we need to focus on, right. Initially or going forward if we haven't.

Been doing that well, and I mentioned earlier, you know, getting rid of those copy of those kinds of things, because that's just not going to tell you anything about it. It really comes down to being, focusing on having keywords in it so that you can find them when you search on them, but also just being descriptive if you have. It's very easy to have a, a suite of images in Canva that on the outside, those thumbnails, they all pretty much look identical. And if you have not distinguished them in the name so that you can easily know, oh, that one's my Instagram post. This one's the presentation, this one's the, the one that I'm going to put on LinkedIn. You're going to end up spending a lot of time opening things up and having to assess each time which one it is. So if you make a point of just being really descriptive in the name from the outside, that's going to save you a lot of time. It does require a little more effort up front to remember to take that step of naming it again. It's just about establishing those habits. So if you are copying, let's say you're copying a template, name it right away. If you're then duplicating something that you've created because you're going to resize it to another social media dimension, rename it at the time that you do it, because it's so easy for that to slip away from you really quickly.

So I'm going to change gears on you a little bit. We're going to move from organization and you mentioned it a little bit earlier, so I want to circle back to that. And I know that canva, they're con. Constantly, right? They're constantly innovating, they're constantly coming up with new ways to make our life easier. They're integrating AI into it. What are some of the latest new features that you absolutely love that we may not be using today that we should, you know, dig into?

Well, I, I would say so. Everything in the AI side of things is kind of where the excitement has been and where Canva has been, you know, adding a lot of different features. Their background remover that has been around for quite some time. It is now considered part of that magic suite of features. But that certainly while it's an old, an oldie, it's still a goodie. And that is probably one of the, the AI features that I still use the most. But there are new options available. For example, there's one called Magic Expand and that can be very helpful if you are, let's say you have an image that you want to use, you're using on an Instagram feed image and you want to stretch it to work for an Instagram story. We're going from two different, you know, slightly different dimensions. And while you can stretch and crop an image to a different dimension, sometimes it just doesn't work. And you kind of wish that I wish it was a little taller here or there's a little more below it. With Magic Expand, it's going to use AI to basically fill in the gaps and give you options of what that image could look like if it was actually a taller version, for example. Now, as you'll see across a lot of AI features, sometimes the results it gives you are spectacular. Sometimes they're kind of weird, they're a little bit wonky and they, you know, especially anything involving people and hands and that you can get some pretty creepy results. But I have also seen some really remarkable options come back and it's nice to have that flexibility to, for AI to fill in some of the information that you kind of wish was there but wasn't. They also have one called Magic Grab that you can actually remove the text out of an image. So if you needed to change what it said or just remove the text altogether from a photo, you can often do that. Now there's Magic Replace, Magic Edit. There's all these different kinds of photo editing options that allow you to tweak your content to be able to, you know, achieve what you, what you would like your final product to look like. But I do think it's important use these features to support what you're creating. Don't use them for the sake of using them. I think you always form always needs to follow function. Let's choose the features that are actually going to support what you're trying to create as opposed to just making them flashy.

Well, you mentioned several there that I wasn't even familiar with, so I'm definitely going to going to check those out.

Go have a plan.

So any last minute tips here today, Brenda, for the audience, I would say don't.

I mean, we talked about organization and it's not one of the sexier pieces of Canva, but I think it's really foundational, especially if you're using this as something to support the creation of marketing and course materials and client materials for a business. So don't overlook some of these foundational features that they may not be the fancy flashy bits that attract our attention, but they are really important for being able to use this tool in a very intentional, efficient, you know, time conscious sort of way. And along the same lines, something like the brand kit is going to be another one of those features that if you don't have that set up, you are, you're wasting too much time tracking down your brand assets and you're also probably not creating consistently on brand imagery and marketing for your business. And that's a really critical piece if you're going to be using this design, support your marketing. So make sure we don't overlook those really foundational things in lie of fancy flashy bells and whistles.

Well, those are some great tips. And Brena, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to let the audience know where they can find you. So can you kind of give us a rundown on that and I believe you have a free gift for them also?

Sure. Everything I have to offer, free and otherwise, is@brenda cadman.com I am on social in a few places, admittedly neglected to a degree that I'm not super proud of. But hopefully that will change in 2024. And then as far as a free gift, I do have a, you know, if organization is something that you want to tackle for your own Canva account, I have the Canva Organization roadmap. It's going to walk you through kind of a simple framework of steps that you can take if you're trying to figure out how do I actually tackle this clutter and create something that's a little bit easier to navigate in the future.

And we'll make sure all of those links are below in this either podcast episode or the video. If you're watching the video so you can connect with Brenda either on Instagram, go to our website, download her free gift. And Brenda, thank you so much for joining me. I love chatting with you about Canva, one of my favorite tools out there.

Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

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