Episode 77: Building a Team of Organizers + Streamlining your Business Life with Kate Waldo Jones
Kate Waldo Jones of Kate Waldo + Co joins Melissa on the podcast to talk about her business journey.
Kate Waldo Jones didn't know when she first started Orchid Organizing in Savannah, Georgia, that one day she would be running a 6-figure organizing business in three different cities, plus running a successful online business teaching people how to streamline the business of running a business (think emails, invoicing, contracts--all the stuff that takes a ton of time)--but on today's podcast, she tells us exactly how she did this.
Kate talks to us about how she built her organizing teams, and how she learned about automations that help make the customer experience exceptional--and how you can learn all of these things from her.
What's an automation, you ask? Think about how great it would be to be able to get back to a client with an email telling them how to book a consultation with you--while you're in the middle of an all-day organizing job. That's automation, and Kate is the queen of knowing how to make the business of your organizing business work for you while you're doing the super important things with clients.
Find more information about Kate here.
If you are considering starting or growing a professional organizing business, we have a brand new for 2021, totally free workshop you can take that goes beyond this podcast--you can register here if you want to check it out!
Links for listeners:
Kate's course which tells professional organizers on how to build an organizing team can be found here
Kate's course on the CRM (customer relationship management) tool Dubsado for Professional Organizers is $97 and it's here!
Join our free Facebook group for podcast insiders to get notified about new episodes (plus get behind-the-scenes access and other goodies weekly)!
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you so much for listening into the Pro Organizer Studio Podcast. If you'd like to get our roadmap for success as a pro organizer, head straight to www.poroadmap.com.
Thank you so much for listening into the pro organizer studio podcast. If you'd like to get our roadmap for success as a pro organizer, head straight to www.poroadmap.com.
Kate Jones teams podcast
Melissa Klug: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. It's Melissa, I'm your cohost of the Pro Organizer Studio podcast. And today on the show, we have one of our Inspired Organizers, Kate Waldo Jones. One of the things that we love to do is tell you about people in our community who are doing amazing things with their businesses.
And Kate is an example of this. She is the owner of Orchid Organizing, which has three locations in the United States and she runs that business and she also has a passion for helping organizers organize their business.
And one of the things that we love about Kate is that she has expanded her business and she can really show us what an organizer can do with their business.
Not only with organizing itself, but sometimes with a passion that comes out of organizing. So here is Kate.
We are back with one of our very, very good friends from our Inspired Organizer program.
We want to say hello to Kate Waldo Jones. How are you?
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:00:55] Hi, I am so good and happy to be here as always. Thank you for having me back.
Melissa Klug: [00:01:00] So you haven't been a guest not only on the podcast, but inside various Pro Organizer Studio things. So we're always happy to have you because you have so much knowledge to share.
And I will say so I am very fortunate to be a personal friend of Kate's and I love that. I that's very good for me because Kate pushes me on business stuff and like such a great way. And she has helped me so much in the past couple of weeks on some stuff that I have going on. And so I said, she asked to come on the podcast and help all of us, so we can all be friends with Kate.
She got all of us with all of our businesses. For those people who maybe are newer to the podcast, or don't know you, can you give us a little bit of your history and your background?
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:01:43] Yep. I started business back in 2018 as a professional organizer. And that was when, not long after, I mean, maybe a month after I found pro organizer studio.
And it was just a given, it was definitely a big investment and I wasn't making very much money yet making like next to no money, but it was. Absolutely the best decision I could have ever made to start with Inspired Organizer from the get-go because it just set me up for success without having to guess on a lot of the things.
So I started my business in 2018 in Savannah, Georgia, which is where I grew up. And. Long story short. I now live in Pensacola, Florida. We operate the organizing business in three cities, Savannah, Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia, and New York city. And I. Oversee from afar. I'm no longer on site with clients. And I also have started a couple other businesses from that, and it's been a really like fun, wild ride.
I would have never expected to get to where we are now, but, um, but it's been really great. And it all, all started with organizing.
Melissa Klug: [00:03:01] Well, what I love is when people tell their stories and, and by the way I do this too. And I'm like, and then I waved a magic wand and I had organizers in three cities working for me.
Like you, you definitely were like, well, I started organizing and then I have this huge team now and I have a business in three cities. So it wasn't that easy. It sounds where you make it sound really easy.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:03:17] Oh, yeah, you just that magic wand, you buy it on Amazon. It gets delivered in two days. It's prime, right?
Good. Yeah, no, definitely didn't happen that way. It definitely did not. It went through a lot of iterations and a lot of trial and error to get there and, and discovering new things along the way. So it's process, but it's been, it's been a lot of fun.
Melissa Klug: [00:03:40] Tell me a little bit about building a team. So you're in Savannah and I do love the story because you, you built something based on solving a problem.
And that was that you had like 212 consults in a week. If I remember correctly, something like
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:03:57] that's a slight exaggeration, but we had, I got to the point where I knew that when I started the business, I knew that I wanted to eventually remove myself from working on site, but I figured, yeah, probably years down the road.
I don't know what that looks like or how that will happen. And we were working a lot and I had started to work with an assistant occasionally on jobs. And you know, it’s when you start to go onsite and you work really hard work, so we ended up, that was all kind of happening simultaneously with, there was a day where I had like seven consults in one day, it was crazy. And these clients were getting booked, I was having to book them two and three months out and they were not happy with that because we're talking really high end clients paying us a lot of money to come and organize.
And so what I did was I talked to my clients and I said, okay, would you be all right with collapsing your days in, in half. And I'll have an assistant come with me and then we can see you a lot sooner. And they also had for why not, or, and then I hired on some assistance and have never looked back because I loved working with assistance and it made everything so much easier and we can get a lot more work, done a lot faster.
And I knew that ultimately. I couldn't multiply myself too much. And I had just come from corporate life in sales of a hustle, hustle, hustle, mentality. And that just wasn't the business that I wanted to recreate for myself. So that was when it was pretty apparent to me that, that it needed to happen, where I needed some help.
Melissa Klug: [00:05:45] Well, one of the things I love about you is that you are really good at mindset shifts. And I know one of the times that you and I talked about this and talked about building teams in my brain, I had said, Oh, well, it would be nice to have someone. I it'd be nice to have an assistant on like a huge house. And you're like, no, you can actually have an assistant on even a modest Sized house, because it's really great to have someone like working right next to you that you can be working with the client and then they can be doing some of these other things.
So I appreciated that mindset shift about who needs assistants. It's not just, if you want to build up that huge team.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:06:21] Absolutely because you want to give a really high quality level of customer service to the client. And they are, a lot of times our clients will be popping in and out.
They're busy and they don't stay for the whole session, but no matter what the situation is like, it's good to be able to have a lead organizer who can pay attention to the client. And lead the job of where you're going with everything. And then to have somebody else just as your right hand man or woman to be doing things like bagging up donations, moving recycling out of the way, taking things off, hangers, putting things on hangers.
You know, it's really helpful to have that second set of hands. It takes a lot of mental load off of you and physical. And also we found that. Once we started working even on the small one day jobs. We were able to accomplish so much more with two people. And also we weren't running like crazy. It wasn't like, uh, trying to beat the clock to get it all done, to make sure that the client was happy.
We could go in with full confidence, that what we accomplished today will get them really, to the end result that they want.
Melissa Klug: [00:07:36] So that's like a huge piece of customer service. Absolutely. That like, not only is it good for you? I think mentally and physically as the, the head organizer, but it is also very much about the client experience and having a much better experience and feeling like you are really paying attention to them the whole time while tons of other stuff is getting done.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:08:00] They're depending on the client, but most clients say it's a really emotional process and there's a lot going through their minds and it's overwhelming and all that stuff. And so they need some handholding. But you can also have your assistant actually doing work while you are doing the hand holding or having a conversation with them or talking them through things or letting them be emotional and go through that experience.
So they don't feel like they're being rushed, but you guys are still getting the job done.
Melissa Klug: [00:08:29] So what did you find as the biggest things you had to do when you were moving from being that lead organizer or being the solopreneur to then leading a team? Can you talk about if there are people out there that are thinking about it, but they're like, yeah. I don't know if I could do it. Tell us a little bit about that transition for you.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:08:46] I had to get my back of house in order so much. And that was something that even before the team came, I recognized was an issue for me was that the business itself was not organized. I would be on site with clients and you're getting phone calls and emails and there's marketing that needs to be done.
Social media there's bills that need to be paid there's invoices that need to be sent contracts need to be signed and filed and all these things. And I knew that I was hindering my growth and I was really overwhelmed that I would spend all day on site with the clients and new potential clients or hoping to get a phone call during the day from me.
But if I don't finish until late in the afternoon and I'm physically and mentally exhausted. Those two things just don't add up. So speaking of the customer service experience, I knew that was an issue with the customer service experience. I wouldn't want that experience of calling somebody to pay them thousands of dollars and not hearing back from them for days or even more than 24 hours. So that was when I started to really explore what are these systems need to look like? What kind of [00:10:00] technology can I leverage to automate a lot of the process, but keep. The customer service experience, very high quality, very white glove, so that they don't feel like they're talking to a robot.
Melissa Klug: [00:10:12] Can we talk a little bit about what does automation mean? Cause it might sound scary.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:10:17] It may sound like scary, but it's definitely not. Automation is having a piece of technology, that you set up what we call workflows, where something.
Triggers the workflow to start and then things start to happen automatically. So for example, someone goes to your website, they fill out the inquiry form. Then that triggers that workflow automation to where they're getting that automatic email from your system, your CRM system saying thank you so much.
We are looking forward to speaking with you about your project. Here are your next steps. And then. Further down the road. When you're at the client's home doing the consultation, they fill out their information and their credit card and they pay. And then on the back end, they are automatically sent their invoice and a copy of their contract.
So those are some examples of, of automation.
Melissa Klug: [00:11:19] It can also be, if you have a newsletter on your website, it could be as simple as, you know, someone signs up for your newsletter and then they get an automatic newsletter saying, Hey, we're excited to have you.
It could also be your scheduling tool. So if you do not want to have to go back and forth with them 153 times to find the perfect time for them. You have Calendly or, you know, any sort of other calendar systems. So when we say automation, it's legitimately just using tools, you find on the internet to make your life easier, which is.
Huge. Yep. It definitely is a game changer. It really, really is.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:11:55] They're never feeling like they're neglected or not taking care of. In fact, [00:12:00] we could leverage it so that they feel even more seen, heard, loved, appreciated by us in our company. While I had to do a heck of a lot less admin work.
Melissa Klug: [00:12:10] I, want to explore that a little bit because I think that you just said something crazy important, one of the things that we talk about in inspired organizers, really, how do we give that high end client experience?
And some people think that if you're not personally responding or if you're like, if you have automations in place in your business, or if you have an email that goes out automatically, when someone emails you just to say, Hey, we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Like those things feel impersonal, but they're actually a huge help to the customer service process.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:12:39] Yeah. There are some programs out there that are CRMs, which is a customer relationship management system, and they allow you to create templates using your own voice, your own wording.
And when you put your real human person, Feelings and words into it that will come across. And it doesn't, you don't just use prescripted, not robot like language , and you can set up things where. It would be even better than if you were to respond on your own. So I think people have maybe a past customer service experience has burned you in some ways, but on, on the other side of that, think about how fantastic it is.
If you get something from Amazon and it is. Damaged and you go on their website and you click return and then this happened to me the other day. I took it to get scanned, to be shipped out at FedEx and 20 minutes later, the return hit my credit card.
That was a good customer service experience. To me. I do not care that I did not talk to a human and I feel like I was taken care of. Because you can tell when you create those systems, that there was intention behind it to solve a problem.
[00:14:00] And if there's that intention behind what you're doing to create those systems of making sure that this person's experience with your company is very seamless and well thought out then that's what they want.
Melissa Klug: [00:14:15] I think too, a lot of times when a potential client reaches out to us, they have reached some sort of a crisis point. Right. And you know what? You may be on a job and you may not be able to respond to them right away so being able to put some automations in place that say. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to reach out to me. I can't wait to talk to you. I will get back to you as soon as I can to have that automation come to them whenever they have called you or emailed you or whatever that looks like, it actually really adds a personal touch to the experience.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:14:46] It does. And it gives them the peace of mind that they know that they're going to be taken care of and you hear them, you see them that part is that part's big.
Melissa Klug: [00:14:57] You are definitely very big on not just automations, but just finding ways to, like you said, get the backend of your business in order.
And that it frees you up to be able to do those truly important things like with clients. What are some of the passions you have around this backend experience that you've put together?
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:15:13] Well, I'm all about working smarter and not harder. And the whole point of starting our businesses is so that we're in control of our time and our effort and our energy and leveraging those technical tools allows you to actually have a life and. Speaking of those automations, that something that happens within your CRM system that you can set up. I prefer dub Sato. I know that's one that is recommended by inspired organizer as well. And that's how I got started with it, but it allows you to have your customers be taking care of, but you can take the weekend off and you're not obsessively checking your email and you're not worried that you need to take time out of.
Playing with your kids or spending [00:16:00] time with your family or friends to respond to an email, to make sure that a client gets what they need. It allows you to set more boundaries for yourself in order to breathe and have that white space in your life, that probably was a big part of what you wanted to create for yourself when you started your organizing business.
Melissa Klug: [00:16:19] So one of the things that we talked to people a lot about, when they're first starting out and it's so exciting to start a business. But I mean, even though I had a business background, I did not fully understand all of the pieces that go into, like when you are a solo preneur or, you know, if you are the leader of a team of organizers, there's a lot of backend stuff that has to happen.
And the beautiful thing is there are so many tools out there extremely affordable sometimes free tools to do this for you. It does not have to be a huge outlay of money. In some cases, there are great, totally free resources out there.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:16:57] Right. And the reason that you set these things up is so that you're able to focus on the really high level tasks that takes a lot of mental energy and you're not spending all your time, effort and energy on things like filing a contract to make sure that it goes in the right folder with the right client. That is not where your brain should be. That should be automated for you. The, you know, payment processing.
And invoices, reminders for invoices, all those things that should be automated, that should not be where any of your time or energy goes. It should be on thinking about, okay, this worked really well for us. As far as marketing and customer retention, what can we do to. Create more of that in the business.
What can we do to grow? What can we do to streamline? What can we do to make it a better customer experience, be able to help more people. That's where your, your mental energy should be spent . So that is why you leverage the technology to do all the other stuff [00:18:00] for you, because just because you can do it.
Does not mean you should.
Melissa Klug: [00:18:05] That is one of my favorite phrases. Sometimes these things we can do. Take so much time that then when you say like, Oh, did I maybe just spend an hour working on this when I could've spent this hour working on my website to make sure my SEO was really good, which is how new clients are going to find me that's right.
The thing it's all about taking those tasks and figuring out a way to make more money out of not having to do them.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:18:31] I'm going to do some math real quick, because I think this is important. So say your rate is a hundred dollars an hour for organizing just to make it simple. And then this CRM system we're talking about Deb Sato right now, it's $35 a month.
So we're going to divide that by 30 days, which is. It's like a dollar a day, dollar, 16 a day, and then we'll divide it by 24 hours. So it's 4 cents an hour. Yep. To have a system like this working for you. And it works when you're asleep and it works from your asleep. It works on the weekends. It works at night when you have, because we so often have clients that will go on our website at 11:00 PM and fill out a client form.
We'll. I'm not going to be up at 11:00 PM, responding to that, but they automatically get an email so that a hundred dollars an hour, that you could be spending your time with a client or getting paid to do consulting or whatever it is, leverage those tools to instead use a 4 cents an hour tool to do the things that are going to take you.
Way more time.
Melissa Klug: [00:19:48] I love looking at that way. Cause I do think, and I mean, I certainly fell into this trap when I first started. Um, and I could still fall into it some days, even though I've been doing this for a while of like, Oh, that's going to be an [00:20:00] expense. And I would like to avoid expenses, but what you have to look at it as is it is an investment.
And in a lot of cases, it's a very small investment in the grand scheme of things. Really small. Yes. To, to what it will give me in the end. And if you get even just one additional client, because of the system that it's going to pay for itself for the entire year, Yeah. Not just the month, not just to 4 cents an hour, right?
Well, one of the things I love about you is that you not only started with organizing and then figured out, what is your dream for your business? And your dream for your business was to have teams of organizers, but. You also were able to start some passion project. We'll just call them passion projects of some of this automation, because you were an organizer.
So can you talk a little bit about how you've created your business to be a little different too?
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:20:55] Yeah. So Oregon organizing was the first business and I never expected that we would be in three cities and now people are really dying for me to start it in Pensacola. Yes. Um, but. I never expected that even.
And what was really cool is that through the process of organizing, I started to work with a lot of bloggers influencers, content, creators, and recognized the need for them to have these systems in their business too, because they would say to me, they would start to talk to me about my emails are just out of control and I don't know how to organize, like all the business side of what I'm doing.
And so having the organizing business introduce me to that world of bloggers and influencers, and those were some of my favorite things to do where to do collaboration projects. So I had immense respect for these people and I was then able to leverage the income from the organizing [00:22:00] business to start.
Kate Waldo and company, which is now the umbrella business for everything and create these courses for content creators so that they can also learn these skills that I teach to professional organizers for their businesses.
Melissa Klug: [00:22:18] Another business that you have where you have created a course, actually for pro organizer studio students on how to create a team. Tell me a little bit about how you decided to start teaching people, how to form teams.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:22:32] Because you made me, uh, well,
Melissa Klug: [00:22:35] I mean, I asked nicely, just kidding.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:22:38] Um, kind of Melissa kept sending me all these messages and she's like, Hey, all these people want to learn how to build a team. And I had a lot of people that would ask to meet with me a lot of professional organizers that would ask to meet with me about how did you do it? How did you build your team?
And what does this look like? And the best way that I found to be able to help them most people was to create another course. So, we have teams for pro organizers one Oh one, and that is available now. And we have a. Second advanced level that is coming very soon as well.
Melissa Klug: [00:23:16] Jen and I know very well, like we know what we know, but we also know what we don't know.
And when we don't know something, we go to an expert. And if you asked me how to form a team, I would have said, I'm sorry. I. Don't know what you're talking about. We, we turned to the person that knew everything about forming a team and we wanted to make sure that people had the best information possible.
Tell us a little bit about your course and what kind of things people can learn in the version that's out now. And then what's coming in the future.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:23:48] The version that is out now is four. It's the basics of how to start. Your team, and it really is beneficial. Even if you already have started your [00:24:00] team, because there's a lot of little nuggets in there that you may not have thought of that will help you make the entire process a lot easier on you, but we cover everything from what the structure of the business looks like when you start to bring on assistance, what to do for posting the job interviewing, hiring, onboarding contracts, and I've got tons of email templates in there for you. I talk about a lot of the soft skill stuff that I have developed a pretty strong eye and ear for, for red flags and green flags.
The good, the good and not so good to look for in the hiring process that had made a massive difference and cut a lot of stress and anxiety out of that process. And we also do talk about the difference between hiring employees versus hiring contractors.
Melissa Klug: [00:24:57] One of the things that you and I have chatted about is so there is nothing that I can't overthink and make more complicated than it actually is.
And one of your things that you say over and over again is especially about teams. It does not have to be complicated.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:25:14] Nope. We keep it so simple because it doesn't have to be complicated. And I think it's easy to over-complicate something. So this is a really straightforward streamlined, laid out for you path of exactly how to do it from a to Z.
Melissa Klug: [00:25:31] And you have told me this before and I still am like, but it sounds really hard and you're like, I swear it's not. Difficult.
It's really not, which is good. Right. And I know that you've gotten feedback. So there are a lot of people that are in the course already. And the feedback from that has been like, Oh, it actually is not as complex as I was trying to make it.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:25:52] So, um, I think that, yeah, I think it's organized people and, and type a people. A lot of us, [00:26:00] we try to create new wheels. Yes. We do reinvent them all the time or, or add a lot of what ifs to things. And I've done this for going on four years now. So I've tested a lot of those what ifs and it really just doesn't have to be that complicated.
The more simple you can have it, the better.
The big, big thing that I forgot to mention on both is when I talked about business structure, I also talk about the pricing.
Like, what do you pay your people? What do you charge your clients? What is the structure of the organizing and the consultation? What does all that stuff look like?
Melissa Klug: [00:26:37] And I know that one of the things that is a huge plus about having a team is that you are definitely able to really rock it, your finances.
You're really able to get some nice profit going by having a team. And I know that's one thing that we tend to in the course, for sure.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:26:53] It is. You're able to immediately by doing the same work you're already doing increase your. Profit margins by 155%. I mean, the money is like no brainer kind of stuff.
And you're doing, you're doing the same thing you were already doing and you're making so much more money and you're so much less tired . It's just. A no-brainer,
Melissa Klug: [00:27:16] you're like really bringing math to the table today, which I am,
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:27:19] and I'm not really a math person, but I think these are this stuff.
When I start to actually sit down and do the math, it blows my mind. So I mean, I really, even the dub side of the thing that kind of blows my mind that it's like a few cents an hour, 4 cents an hour. Yeah. That's really crazy. And but because I have the other businesses.
The time that I spend on orchid organizing is about four hours a week, and a lot of that is because of what I teach the basics in the DUP Sato course.
Melissa Klug: [00:27:50] So you, you teach us how to do everything. You teach us how to build a team. You also teach us how to use your favorite CRM, which is Deb Sato.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:27:59] Yeah, [00:28:00] I. Found that all the paperwork was really hard to keep up with and I was printing things
and then I needed to like scan a contract to then email to a client. And that just was all messy to me. So. Using Deb Sato, which is a CRM customer relationship management system. It allowed me to keep up with all of my contacts so that even if people didn't become clients, I could follow up with them.
And I knew where they were in the process of things so that I didn't have to guess at it or try and hold all that information in my brain, because what you'll find is, as you start to leverage, help, you need to have everything digital. Because there's no way to offload things that are paper and I learned that very quickly when I had my first virtual assistant was that I needed to get everything centralized in one place so that I could actually hand things off and over to them.
You can definitely still have a virtual assistant and you want to do that in a mindful way, but. Using a tool like dub Sato allows you to have all your contracts in one place, all your payment processing in one place. And it's all attached to the client that you were, that it all associates with, and you can find all of that.
It keeps it all super, super organized for you. And it is also very mobile. So you can use it on your phone, which is what I liked the most, because we have everything set up to where. We just pull it up on our phone when we're in the client's house and, and they fill out their credit card information and they sign the contract on the phone and it's all taken care of.
It makes the process super seamless and it also looks very professional. That was one of my biggest things is that it looks, it's a very clean, professional, intentional experience from the client facing end, as well as it's really easy for you on the backend to use. And manage.
[00:30:00] Melissa Klug: [00:29:59] And that's an important piece because we want to present one of the things that Jen talks about and inspired organizer a lot is how you show up for your clients and to your clients.
And so you want to show up and present as a very organized, you have your stuff together, kind of person. And if you are like fumbling in your bag for paper contracts and you know, all that kind of stuff, sometimes that doesn't leave the impression that you want to. And so some of these systems really allow you not only to create less work for yourself physically, but also to create a really seamless client experience.
And. I would argue also I was always big on like, I don't want to leave things at a client's house. So like, I don't want to add to their piles of paper.
Yeah. I was just thinking that yeah, these people are already disorganized. If it can be in an email, that is the easiest thing.
It's not to say that their digital lives don't also need help, but at least you're not adding one more thing that you are going to have to take care of with them.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:30:59] Yeah. Well, the cool thing too about this system is that it's very flexible. So we can even text invoices to clients. You know, they're like, don't talk to my email. You can text them the links to an invoice or to a completed contract. So that's, that's pretty cool.
Melissa Klug: [00:31:16] One of the things that I love about, like, when I started my organizing business and I had no earthly idea that like all of these worlds existed, like, I didn't know, that there were like, you could take a course to teach you how to do anything. Like you can, we could take a course on how to record a zoom but the thing that I absolutely love is. For a very small investment. You can go out and find really smart people like Kate to explain to you exactly how to do stuff.
And it is going to make your life so much easier, which is our goal. Like as entrepreneurs, we want to be able to enjoy. Our businesses, but that also means enjoying our lives. And I don't want to be doing [00:32:00] emails 10 hours a day. I really don't.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:32:02] Absolutely not. There's no reason you shouldn't be either.
Melissa Klug: [00:32:04] You and I are basically at the same point in our organizing lives, in terms of like when we started our business and stuff. And I know I would certainly, I would have a lot of things to tell myself to 2021 me would have a lot of things to say to 2018.
Me. So what are some things that you would tell 2018? Kate's if you could go back.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:32:24] I would say don't be so hard on yourself and give yourself some grace that small steps every day make a huge difference. And. I think I would Pat myself on the back for continuing to invest in myself and doing that through getting help from people who were smarter than me and had been where I wanted to go.
So inspired organizer was a huge part of that for me. I'm so glad that I invested in it early on in my business because it cut my learning curve by years and years. And it made a huge, huge difference in. Where I am today for sure.
Melissa Klug: [00:33:05] One of the things that I would tell 2018 me is that I didn't invest in myself enough until later on in the process.
And I really wish that I would have, um, I would've done that sooner. And I think sometimes that feels scary when you're a new entrepreneur. But that, like you said, it's going to cut your time so dramatically. Like, not even in half in like 10th and 20th and 30th.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:33:29] Yeah. It will shave years and years off your learning curve.
Melissa Klug: [00:33:33] Yes. And it will not take years off your life. Right. Which is really important some days. Right. I tell people sometimes, like I made all the mistakes so that you don't have to like, please take my advice because I made all of these mistakes. And so I'm telling you what not to do.
If people are listening to this and going like, Hey, I want to start this organizing business, but then I would like to do, there are other things that I want to start.
What would you tell them in terms of your journey?
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:33:57] I would say. Don't get [00:34:00] too far ahead of yourself. Try to establish your first business so that you have something that you can, leverage to do the other things that are you're passionate about, because if you spread your time and energy and thoughts between a lot of different things at one time, You won't have strong, a strong foundation in place that allows you to go play with other things.
And it's okay if you want those things to just be hobbies and always be hobbies. But if you do want them to become businesses, go deep on the first thing and get it to a place where you feel pretty comfortable with it.
I was at a conference where someone was speaking and he said, think about an Oak tree. When they're small seedlings, they are very easy to, you know, one bad storm could knock it out and it might not make it, but once it starts to grow, when it's got deep roots, even a hurricane might not take it out
that's pretty cool when you can get to that point
Melissa Klug: [00:35:05] and you and I both have a passion to help other organizers be successful. And that's why we do what we do every day is we want organizers cause we love organizing and we love organizers and we just want them to have the most successful business as possible.
So you have created some tools. We've talked about them, you've created some great things and we would love for people to be able to find you. So tell us about Kate Waldo and co.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:35:31] Uh, you can go to Kate Baldwin co is the parent company for everything. So you can go to Kate Waldo and co.com and you will find all of our courses there.
Also, you can find us on Instagram at Kate Waldo and co it's, a and D spelled out, and we share a lot of really good stuff over there. I think it's fun. So great.
Melissa Klug: [00:35:53] I will. Say that one of the great things about, having someone in business that really gets you and [00:36:00] so find your own Kate so seriously, like reach out to someone network, try to find someone that's at the same spot as you like. The nice thing is Kate and I get to talk about what we're doing in business and what's happening in our organizing businesses and in our coaching businesses.
And if you can find someone that you can talk to that speaks your language and understands you, the people in your life will appreciate it because. They won't have to talk to you about it and it will really push you to be, a better business person, I think so makes a huge difference.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:36:31] I'm so thankful to have you to talk to, and it's so nice when you're going to have a conversation with somebody that you don't have to set up.
The thing that you're about to say,
Melissa Klug: [00:36:40] you don't have to explain like 10 minutes of explanation before you get to the story.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:36:44] Right. You can just talk in jargon and right. Yes, I got you.
Melissa Klug: [00:36:48] And I'm on the same page with you guess what happened to my email letter today? It was terrible versus having to like explain it to my husband who really doesn't care.
Kate Waldo Jones: [00:36:56] Right, right. And they care because they're in it. Right. Exactly. So, well, Kate, we are so happy to have you so thank you very much.
Thank you so much for having me. It is definitely an honor to come from students now, teacher, and I really appreciate all, all the stuff that y'all have done with me.
And, you guys are such a great group.
Melissa Klug: We are so happy to have you be a part of our pro organizer studio family. So thank you. Thank you.
If you are looking for business inspiration, we have a brand new free workshop that is called The 4-Part Plan for Landing Your Dream Clients in 2021. Jen Obermeier leads you through that workshop. Sign up for that poroadmap.com. If you are interested in our Inspired Organizer® program, you can find us at www.inspiredorganizer.com and don't forget, we have a whole library of podcasts here, our YouTube channel, and you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pro Organizer Studio.
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