159 | Answering Qs about the August To-Do List
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey organizers. It is Melissa, and I know that people listen to this at all different times, but I'm coming to you on August 1st, and I don't know about anyone else, I have said it on a couple other podcasts—we have had an intensely crazy summer, so I know that I am having an unusually busy summer, but I've been talking to a lot of people and it feels like this summer for a lot of people is flying at a rate of speed I haven't felt in a really long time. Cannot believe that it is the 1st of August.
But what I wanted to do for you today is give you a to-do list for a few things that I recommend you are looking at as you move into this month for a lot of people in our audience that are going to be great candidates for organizing. And by the way, all of these things that I'm talking about today, I am doing in my own business.
So I'm not telling you to do something that I'm not working on myself, but I want you to think about this opportune time of the year. Sometimes summer can be a lot slower for organizers and as we move into fall, we start to see a little bit more activity, a little bit more thought toward getting houses organized.
I just wanna say a couple words before I start. I know this is an international audience that listens to the podcast, a lot of these items are gonna be centered around what for those of us in the US as more of a summer schedule, but even in the US the dates of some of these things I'll talk about will vary wildly.
Regardless of where you are located, I just wanna suggest some core things you can do around this time and then you can adjust the actual time or schedule of when you do them. Based on matching your business and your area schedule. So just an example, one of my best friend's, kid starts back to elementary school, August 3rd, so a couple days from now. But my daughter, who is still here in high school starts six weeks from now after Labor Day. Wildly varying calendars. And if you're listening in Australia, I realize I'm talking about the seasons backward. Summer is still on the way for you. Please do not think that I do not think a lot about my friends in the Southern Hemisphere. But regardless of schedules and regardless of seasons, these are still things I recommend you do to try to capture the attention of people as they start to think about moving from one season to the next, especially as school is starting again. So wanna talk about that a little bit?
This is a great time of year to focus on someone that is in a lot of organizer's ideal client avatar and what I'm talking about are moms or parents with school aged kids. This is an ideal client for a lot of organizers, and even if this isn't your niche, or your specific ideal client.
I am very willing to bet that. Almost every organizer listening to this has a good number of parents or kid caregivers on your past or potential client lists. And what I wanna give you are some ideas to focus on capitalizing this as much as you can. So the next few weeks for this group of potential organizing clients is one of transition and busyness and probably a little bit of stress or chaos depending on where they are in life.
A lot of people are transitioning out of summer or vacation holiday mode and then they get back into school mode and that can cause some stress and some chaos. So this is a fabulous time to send them some messages and remind them that you are there to help them, whether for the first time ever hiring you or as a refresh if they're a past client.
By the way, this list of things is gonna be available in the show notes and on our website, pro organizer studio.com/blog.
First up, I wanna start with two pretty specific and what I call functional tasks that I am working on myself this week. And what I mean by functional tasks are things that are important for you to do in your business.
One of them is gonna be more important than the other. But they're not as strategic as some of the other things that we'll be talking about later on. But these two functional things are still building blocks of the business. I'm working on this for my own organizing business home by 11 as I'm recording this podcast.
So I am trying to automate my entire August worth of work on these two things because I really wanna get them off my plate and I don't really wanna have to think about them again. So just in general we have so many tools to automate that are available to us. Probably too many tools actually. As much as possible automate those tasks that you don't love as much or they hang over your head, or they might be time consuming or as I do sometimes things that I'm like, eh, I'll do it tomorrow. I procrastinate on them. So I wanna automate those things so that they get done, but I don't have to think about them. So the two functional things I'm doing this month is all of my Google Business profile posts and then all of my social media.
I'm doing it all at once for the whole month. The more important of these two by an absolute mile is the Google Business profile posts. On Google Business, if you go to your business.google.com account for your organizing business and you click add update, it's those micro blogs that are really important to do.
There is an app that I use for this, which is called One Up. app.io. It's a weird address, but it works great and it is free for the amount of posts that I do. It is an awesome way to be able to automate your Google business profile posts, and I am doing my whole month at one time, and that way it's like that. “Set it and forget it” strategy. I'm all done. This is something that is really important. It does not take much time, and it is really exceptional for your SS, e o, and your findability. So for a potential client to find you. The second thing I'm automating is my social media. If you guys have been longtime listeners of the podcast, you are aware I do not concentrate at all on social media for my organizing business as any sort of business strategy, but the strategy I do employ for social media, I call the proof of life strategy.
And with that strategy, I do wanna show up occasionally on social media. And I want to plan all that out because it's definitely my least favorite thing to do in my business. And I just wanna have a few posts out there for August that will speak to some of these more strategic things that I'm talking about for moms with kids.
But I also want to be able to get it done and off the way. I personally use Plan Lee to schedule my social media posts. It's the one that I started using years ago. I'm used to it. I like it. But there are so many different tools that you can use. Whatever you choose to use will be great.
Automate that social media as much as possible. The other thing that I want to give you, I've talked about it before, but it bears repeating. I want you to reuse old social media posts. If social media is something that you really struggle with or you're just like, oh my gosh I really just wanna do the bare minimum for the proof of life strategy, go to posts you have already done and reuse them.
Only a tiny part of your audience has probably ever seen the original post. Just 'cause the way the algorithm works and even if they did see the original post, unless you posted it yesterday, they've probably forgotten about it or it is a great thing. A lot of things in organizing are great to repeat.
They're good reminders for people. Very few people are going to remember that you posted something six months ago. Please repost it. Use the work you've already done. I tend to repost quotes and other things, and sometimes if it's something they saw the first time, it might not have hit them in the same way that it would hit them this time.
And guess what? It may be the exactly right time for them to see that message again. So please go reuse your posts both for yourself and for your audience and someone that I know and respect a lot in terms of their ability to automate a lot of things. She recycles her social media content basically every six months, just straight up recycles it.
You can change a couple things. Obviously if there's like a holiday or something special going on or something seasonally focused. Repeat your stuff. It's great strategy. So Google business posts and social media. I'm automating those things for the month of August. Totally recommend it.
What I would say is just to carve out like a couple of hours, especially if you're using the reuse strategy. Carve that time out, go automate all that stuff, and then you're done for the entire month, which I am very excited about. I'm almost done with this.
Let's move from these functional things to more strategic things.
These are the things I want you to think about that really will get you some movement in terms of looking at your fall calendar. Whether that calendar needs to be filled for full-time work capacity for a team of organizers, or whether you are just looking for one client a month to fill your schedule or anything in between.
So I just wanna say I'm gonna use the phrase moms a lot, and that is because we all know that moms tend to bear the brunt of a lot of the housework and kid work and social work of the house. This is not to say that there are not other parents that participate, but let's just use the phrase moms to be simple. What I want you to do is start thinking about how you can focus on moms and start with your existing clients or past clients. One of the things that everybody always comes to me for in coaching is how do I get more clients?
How can I get more people interested in my services? And one thing that I want you to do is if you have been an organizer for any time, one of the best sources of filling your calendar are people that have already worked with you in the past. And it might be that you have done their entire house and then you have finished with them and you haven't seen them in a year, a lot of those people might need a little bit of a refresh, some maintenance sessions, or just a reminder that “Hey, I'm out here”. Maybe they can refer you to a friend. That type of thing. So think about people that you have already worked with as a great source of future sessions.
I want you to think about people on your list that you can target specifically, for back to school.
Whether you call them refresh sessions or maintenance sessions it doesn't matter, but I want you to think about those. Pass people and how you can focus on them. So one idea. Cabri Carpenter, who is one of our mentors in our inspired organizer program, she posted in our group recently. She sent out a text to 20 past clients who were moms of school age kids.
And that text was very simple. I'm just gonna read it directly. “Hi. I wanted to check in and see if you wanted to schedule back to school organizing for August. This can include anything that will help you prepare for the beginning of the school year, going through closets, toys, paperwork, overall end of summer, reset, et cetera. If you want, send me a day in August that could work for you and I will get it added to the calendar.” You can make any sort of variations to that you want to. But that was a very simple text that she sent to those clients, and what she reported was she sent it to 20 people within a very short period of time.
She had three people who had already put sessions on the calendar and two more that were checking their calendar to figure out what day worked for them. One text got at least five sessions scheduled, and you know that those sessions usually turn into multiple sessions. Okay, awesome.
So this is just a great reminder that going to the people that already know you and love you and have worked with you is a great way to fill that calendar. There is a concept in the business world about the cost of acquisition of a new client. And I'm not gonna get into boring business speak, but when you think about finding a new client versus having someone that you have already worked with, it's a very small jump to get that old client back then it is to go find a new client. Use those past clients and you can also go to those past clients if they don't need you. And just remind them, especially if you have any sort of referral bonus for them, remind them what that referral bonus is and just say, Hey, if other moms that might need some help as we start in the back to school season, I would love for you to refer me and you get X, Y, Z, whatever your referral bonus is.
All right.
The other thing to remind you is some clients might not realize that, hey, they can work with you again. Let's say it's a client that you've done their entire house and again, you've been done with the process and maybe you've given them a goodbye gift or something like that, you might need to remind them like, Hey, I would love to come in and do a little refresh for you. I can do it for you, or we can work together. Organizing takes some maintenance and I would love to be able to help you with. That just remind them that they can continue to still work with you and for all you know, those clients might become frequent maintenance clients. I have a maintenance client that I have had for years and I talk about her a lot in both inspired organizer and in our organizing essentials program, and she has provided not only a ton of revenue for me, but a nice steadiness to my schedule. I always know that she'll be on my calendar no matter what. So great thing to think about.
All right, so again, focusing on this group of people or this time of year, I want you, no matter how small or big your newsletter list is, send out a newsletter to your group. It does not have to be a super, super long one. It does not have to be involved, but I would love for you to get a newsletter out to your list.
And in this newsletter you can talk about, hey, it's starting to be back to school time, or it is back to school time. By the way, even if there are people on your list that don't have school age kids, it still is a good time of year to remind people like, Hey, even if you're not going back to school, maybe you have some things that you're working on. As summer starts to end, I would love to help you with that. In that newsletter, give people away that they can contact you easily or schedule a session with you easily, and you can use the phrase refresh and reset, whatever that works for you. But definitely get that newsletter out. I have said it before, I'll say it again.
Anytime I send a newsletter out, I will get people that are like, oh my gosh, yes, let's book a session. Even if that newsletter gets you one session, that's still a session you didn't have on your calendar, so go do it. Also, make it as easy as possible for them to schedule. However it works for you.
Give them a couple calls to action with a button that goes directly to an email to you or directly to your booking software.
Whatever works for you, but make it easy.
Another thing I'm gonna recommend to you.
If you have a lead magnet on your website, this is a great time of year to change it up a little bit and change that lead magnet to something that is, back to school or reset related. I love the idea of changing up your lead magnet a few times a year. You might get some people that, maybe they come to your site and the last one didn't hit them, but this one does.
You can also do a refresh of the lead magnet to make sure that they see the new popup and the new opportunity for a lead magnet. But think about some back to school content that you can make for that lead magnet. It might be your 10 best tips for getting ready for back to school, something simple. The other thing, go back to my episode about using AI in your business.
Maybe you can use AI to give you some great ideas of what you can do for that lead magnet, but it's a great way to be able to get some people into your funnel and it's very topical. And then just remind yourself, put a flag on your calendar that, let's say in September, maybe you change that lead magnet back to what it was before, or add something else. You don't want it to stay back to school forever. But another great idea for you to try to focus on some of those people, especially if you're doing more content and you're trying to drive some people to your website, drive them to something that is going to be speaking to the interest of why you were getting them to your site in the first place.
A couple of other ideas. How moms can corral paperwork, getting your paperwork in order for school, or how can you develop a process for getting ready for all those papers that are about to hit you, especially as your kids are in elementary school. Just think about all that stuff, okay? The other thing I want you to do, this is great for S.S.E.O. and it's just great practice for you to be able to do a lot of other content.
Do a blog post, a back to school themed blog post. It can go with your lead magnet, it can go along with your newsletter. You can start to create some of this content that flows between all of these different things. But remember, blogs are a great way to increase the S.S.E.O. on your website, and I would love for you to do a blog post.
I'm going to do a blog post about back to school myself in the next week or so, and it's a great way to remind people that you have expertise in this and that they would be great to work with you.
So when you think about all these things, you start to get a theme going. So you've got a blog post and then you've got an email newsletter to your audience. You can do some social media around back to school, gives people some of that inspiration to get people to get organized to go back to school. And then you get your Google Business profile posts from those social media posts.
You see how everything feeds together. And then hopefully our goal is that your August becomes really filled out and from a marketing perspective, and hopefully from a calendar perspective, if it isn't already, you can start to get people in those August and September sessions. The other thing too, is sometimes moms are gonna be too stressed out to think about organizing before the kids get in school.
You can also put in your messaging, Hey, if you wanna wait until the kids are back in school, I would love to schedule you a session in September or October. You can get that calendar filled out way in advance if you want to, and then you can start saying, sorry, I'm really filled up. I would love to book you for you in October.
I would love that for you guys. Another thing you can start thinking about is where are the moms groups in your areas? A lot of the organizers in our inspired organizer group have success with doing Facebook group posts for moms Facebook groups. You might have a mom that you connect with and say, Hey, are you in any Facebook groups?
If you get a chance, To talk about an organizer, I would love for you to talk about me, but there are a lot of organizers who have had great success being able to post to Facebook moms groups. A lot of those groups have rules about there's one day a week that you can post or something like that.
The other idea that you can use is you might be able to go to the moderators of those groups and just say, Hey, I'm a professional organizer. I would absolutely love to give your group a back to school free zoom, a back to school, complimentary zoom about how to organize for back to school. You could offer some sort of freebie that you give them something that creates that knowledge of your business and creates some networking opportunities.
Also, you might wanna check in your area if there are back to school nights for PTOs in your neighborhood area. Maybe reach out to those schools. Do they have a raffle coming up? Do they have any back to school event that you would be able to participate in? There are lots of people that I know love kind of those school events that you can start to become Five Mile Famous, which is another podcast I would love for you to go back and listen to in terms of networking, but just trying to get you to brainstorm a little bit on how do you reach out to those moms, how do you find those moms that then can be an important part of filling your calendar.
All right, so go think about those moms, think about how you can target them, and I would love to get your calendar filled.
That is it for us, I hope that you guys have a great day and let me know how your August calendar's filling up.
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