205 | "Put that on a t-shirt and let me wear it!" | Day 2 of The Week of Cabri!
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey pro organizers, this is Melissa Klug and you are listening to the Pro Organizer Studio Podcast. Professional organizing changed my entire life. After 20 years of working at huge companies, I started working for myself, opened an organizing business and grew it to six figures. And now I spend all day every day here at Pro Organizer Studio, teaching professional organizers around the world, how to grow the business of their dreams.
I'm so excited that you're here listening and I am ready to get started.
Melissa Klug: It is part two of the week of Cabri here at Pro Organizer Studio Podcast.
If you missed what the week of Cabri is about hit our last podcast, just the one right before this. And I will explain it all, but this conversation is a good one.
We are going to jump right in. Just super quick reminder, if you would like to come to our free workshop, head to poroadmap.com. It's 31 minutes with me and I'd love to spend it with you.
Have a great day organizers. Here's Cabri.
Melissa Klug: But these are the things that are important to think about as business owners.
It's important for us to think about, what is our future strategy and what's our plan. And by the way, that also includes if you want to remain a solo organizer, I say as a solo organizer you just. Have to have all the plans in place and you have to think about some of those strategic things, just a great big business would do.
It's important for small businesses to possibly more important. Yes. Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the changes that you and I see in the organizing industry, because this is one of the things that I'm passionate about is we have to, it's our job to stay up on what is really happening in the organizing industry and being wildly candid and transparent about some of those things.
Some of them are kind of hard. So, do you see a lot, you know, since you've been in for a while, do you think things have changed a lot in the last couple of years? I do.
Cabri Carpenter: Absolutely. And I wouldn't even say the industry changed, but I would say COVID changed our world and how it works. And it's so funny to me to see businesses who never came out of that past COVID or like that pre COVID timeframe, they still do things the way they did before.
But guess what? Like during COVID, we were stuck at home and we had our groceries delivered and we used drive thrus and we just had that instant gratification. convenience delivered literally right to us in a lot of multiple aspects. And there's businesses that are still operating before that convenience came into play and they're struggling and you can see them struggling.
And so there's little pieces like that, that I'm like, I don't know how they've made it this far. Honestly. We've also seen just in the industry specifically. Different techniques, different ways. We, of course, always are going to have like our team Marie Kondo. We're also going to have our team home edit, but we've also seen, I guess, the possibility and the opportunity to open it up maybe in a Again, I agree with you.
There's no such thing as passive income, but a more blanket opportunity for people who want to figure out how to do it themselves who maybe can't afford that luxury organizer. I don't know. There's so many options and so many different things. I think the core, like regardless of what changes here and now, versus even five years down the road in the future, the thing that I think you have to remember is businesses have to adapt or they will die.
That is a huge thing for me. And so I like to challenge if someone says, well, I have my website and I've never had to worry about using social media before that may have worked 20 years ago. That is not going to work five years from now.
Melissa Klug: Well, and I think One of the things that we can be honest about ourselves as organizers, there is a you know, and not that we are one size fits all again, because we're not, we are all different.
But. There are some kind of generalities about organizers. And sometimes those things are, it takes us a little bit longer to want to change or flexibility. You know, we go, Nope, that we need to think in order and we need to have everything planned out and we need to have the A, B and C and then the D and the F.
And one of the hills that I will die on is the best. possible thing an organizer can be is flexible. And that is something that is really deeply uncomfortable for some organizers. Flexibility is not, no, we have a list of things and this is how we do it. And flexibility is not just when you are at a client, because I believe that you have to be the maximum flexible when you are working with a client because they pivot all the time and we have to pivot with them, but it's about your business too.
It's one of the things that I see that is a big hot button for me right now is, and I have heard people say it verbatim, but What I have always done that has worked isn't working anymore. Correct. Guess what? That's true about Pro Organizer Studio. Some of the things we've done in the past aren't working anymore.
So we have to change them. You might have done the exact same things every single year for your organizing business, like Clockwork. And now, and those clients just came to you. Now you go, boy, those things aren't working anymore. I have to find new things. We have to be flexible. Yeah,
Cabri Carpenter: and I even think like being open minded and yeah.
Listening to feedback goes in plays into that because five years ago, Google business profiles were around, but they were not what they are now. I mean, you have a whole entire course that you can sell to potential organizers on how to grow and market your business using Google my business or Google business profile as the current new name.
We didn't have to worry about that five years ago. Well, guess what? If you're an organizer and you start utilizing it and you actually start optimizing it the way that. To its best of ability, guess what? That may be the only thing you need to run your business. But we weren't talking about that five years ago.
And I'm sure in another five years, there will be something totally different. And so it's that constant ever flowing state of what's working really well for us. But can we be open minded to new things? And if it works better, what are we going to replace? And it's evolving and it's fluid and liquid. And.
It's never going to change, unfortunately. That's just business in general. I'm sure Jeff Bezos has the same exact conversation with the board of directors at Amazon of, okay, we did this, but now we're not going to do that anymore. And this is where we see things going in the future. How can we adapt? How can we grow into that new thing?
Whatever that is. It's happening at big businesses. We just need to make sure that we're bringing it to the small businesses as well.
Melissa Klug: And Part of our job is to bring you some of those trends, right? So you don't have to do all of that thinking yourself. That is a huge part of what we do. But you have to be willing to be open to that and going, Oh, it's not going.
I'm going to have to learn some new things. And then some of that is, Oh, well, I'm not really another thing I hear all the time. I'm not tech-y. 2024 everybody, you got to learn how to be tech-y. I hate to say it, but you do, you are going to have to learn how to do some things that might be outside of your comfort zone.
And some of that is really important too, is we don't have the luxury to say, I can't do X, Y, Z anymore. We have to learn it.
Cabri Carpenter: And, you know, just like it's not a one size fits all for everybody. Maybe you are not techie and you have zero desire to be techie. Guess what? That's fine. You just need to make sure that you can still find those extra two to three clients so that you can hire the techie people to fill in the gaps that you can't.
It's not always like you have to learn, you have to do things. I do think as a business owner, you have to be pretty flexible. You have to be open minded. And if you don't want to do it, that's perfectly fine. But you're also going to have to pay for somebody to come in and help you do the things that need to be done.
Melissa Klug: Find someone who does. Yes. Absolutely. But the what used to work isn't working anymore is my biggest thing of so far this year that I have seen is we are having to do things differently. And part of that is because Let's just be honest. There are a lot more organizers now. And while I am always going to tell you there are also more customers out there, there is, there are people out there enough for everyone.
This is still not a, you know, ginormous industry, but there are more organizers now. And so you have to do things differently to stand out from, you know, and say, this is why I'm the best organizer for you. And that is a whole other part too. Yes.
Cabri Carpenter: I think too. So yeah. One of the things that I love about our Inspired Organizer course is we do, we have over 800, almost 900 organizers in the group.
Right?
Melissa Klug: It's over 900 now. Okay. Over 900. Yeah. In the Facebook group, there are some people that aren't active or don't have Facebook, but yes, there are over 900 people in Inspired Organizer
Cabri Carpenter: okay. So we have this group. Some of them have the same niche. Some of them are in the same exact markets as other people.
The thing that, and this is where our own individual magic happens that I fully believe, like we all have our own little superpower, our own magic. Is you can take two organizers in the same market, the same ideal client, same zip codes of who they're trying to target. You can take them and you can have them run through every single module and do things exactly the same.
The magic that is them is going to shine through in their website, in their social media copy, in the way that they conduct a consult or a proposal. And that's the part that I can't. Like stress enough to people is be authentic. Let the you shine through because that magic will connect to the right clients who need you and who will want you to work with them.
Melissa Klug: Not who you think you need to be to make someone happy. Not who you think. An organizer needs to be, being authentically you. For the person that does want that traditional, very traditional thing. Great. They have someone out there for someone that wants someone a little bit more non traditional as an organizer.
There is room for you. Absolutely. Another Hill that I will die on. I need to just do an entire series. Hills I will die on. It would be a long series. We have a lot of hills. We would die a lot of hill. I was actually I, we have been rebuilding our website, which doesn't sound like a lot of work until you realize we have 180 podcast episodes, all of which have their own page.
And there's just a lot. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that no one needs to hear about. But Point of the story is I did since we were talking about How To Summit, I did a couple of podcasts with the women that are in charge of the How To Summit. And one of them, the title of it is I need to die on less Hills.
And she was just talking about I have so many Hills I can die on. I need to die on less Hills. So maybe I need to adopt that same advice. Who knows that
Cabri Carpenter: same concept though, like of your Hills that you will die on is part of your secret sauce and part of your magic. You will find. Other organizers who relate to you and love you because they're like, heck, yeah, same.
I feel it. I
Melissa Klug: feel it. And if I don't feel it, then I might not be the person for you. And that is okay too. Is there somewhere out there, someone out there for all of us? Do you have anything else that you have been seeing a lot recently in the organizing industry?
Cabri Carpenter: I think this kind of goes back to just seeing an influx of more organizers. It's becoming more popular. It's becoming a career path that people can see themselves on. I don't know. This sounds really harsh. I don't know if there's a ton of people. That are entering right now, or even have entered in the last year that will survive and do the things that they need to learn and adapt to survive maybe five or 10 years down the road.
We've always talked about how organizing you technically don't have to have certifications. There are certifications available, but you can essentially get started with a website and some business cards and call yourself an organizer and be in client's homes. There is a whole other aspect to.
Running the business and making sure that it's profitable. Like when you're in, there's those things that you have to think of. And I think that we'll see same thing. We'll see that influx and we'll see a lot of people come in, but I don't know if you'll see all of those people five years from now.
I do think that the ones I would like to say the ones in Inspired Organizer they're the ones who are taking action to build a business that is a legacy. It's not just a business. It's not just something to create a paycheck. They want to grow their team. They want to make an impact on their clients lives.
Maybe they even want to grow a business to a point that they can sell it and make a big chunk of change and say Hey, I grew this thing, but now I'm ready to deuce out. Somebody else can take it over, pay me my money. That's not a bad strategy either. We talked about that at the how to summit.
It just, you know, if you are ready to exit, can you have something that will actually give you a nice little nest egg versus just this. dissolving of a business that happens sometimes. So a lot of different things. And I hate to be like negative Nancy on that, but no, it's not people that are going to do the work that they need to grow
Melissa Klug: it.
And that's a reality. So we have a very low, one of the great things about organizing very low barrier to entry. So you do not have to have a tremendous amount of resources to start. You actually have almost no resources that you're really required to start a business. Financially, you know, you don't have inventory, you don't have any of those things, but starting a business and creating the longevity of that business are two very different things.
And there are two different sets of skills and they require you to be a different person. And I think that's something that people don't. I'd necessarily realize is it might not be for you. And I know an organizer, a dear friend of mine who recently just realized like running the back end of a business.
And I had a long talk with her about this, the reality of running the back end of her business. was not what she loved. She loved organizing. And so she actually joined someone else's team because she said, that's what I love. That really lights me up. I did a podcast with someone who realized she really wanted to design closets at the container store.
So she took her organizing skills and said, I don't really want to do that part, but I still want to work in organizing. There are a lot of paths you can take with this business. If you find out running a business isn't for you.
Cabri Carpenter: Oh yeah. And I love it whenever we see people who maybe. Pivoted adjacent to organizing, whether that's like a style consultant or they do home planning and design of like where furniture needs to go and where things need to float.
There's just a lot of opportunities for it. And I, you know, I don't want anybody to fail, but I also. To be realistic of yes, you're going to see a lot more people enter. You will also see those people exit. Just give it time, but keep doing it. Yeah. Keep doing the things that you need to do to create that longevity and that legacy within your business.
Melissa Klug: One of the things we see a lot is people will get really frustrated correctly and understandably by people who enter the market at 35 an hour or 40 an hour or, you know, I would argue even 50 an hour now is a very bargain basement professional organizer. And they're like, how are they doing this?
And the answer is they're not going to be doing it for long. The reality of our business is you have to charge more money for what we do and keep staying, you know. Keep going. Do not be discouraged by those people because they are not going to be in it for the long haul. They'll find out very fast.
Cabri Carpenter: That was a very hard lesson for me to learn circa, you know, Cabri 2018 of charging 40 an hour and realizing my body hurt.
And when you account money set aside for taxes and, you know, for softwares and systems, and I realized that there was some weeks that I was making less than minimum wage. That hurts. When you actually look at those numbers, like that pains me. And so I don't want to see other organizers doing that. So I tell them I'm a big advocate for raise your rates.
That applies to everybody. Yes,
Melissa Klug: raise your rates. Yeah, I started at 40 an hour. That was my first, by the way, I think I only ever charged one client the 40 an hour because I learned pretty quickly that was not sustainable for me. Unfortunately one of those 40 an hour clients stayed with, stuck with me for quite some time.
So, but it was all fine. It was a learning, learning experience, but but that is another thing too, that I see is we really want people. To be smart about what they're charging. And I still see people who, even in really good markets, are not charging what I think they could be for their services.
Cabri Carpenter: That you'll always have those people. I want to make sure that it's not our IO people. Just because I hold us to a higher standard, but yes, you're always going to see those people. But you also, again, like some jobs, you know, your body's going to tell you at the end of the day or the end of the week that 40 an hour was not worth it.
It
Melissa Klug: was not. No. There's
Cabri Carpenter: something We'll figure that out sooner or later. You'll also see those people burn out. You will see them You know, tired, exhausted, ready to exit because it's not fun anymore. And whenever you're pushing for such minimal margins as just from a business perspective, it's not worth it and it's not fun and you don't get to have any creative outlet and you don't even get to feel like you're enjoying the money that you make off of it.
Melissa Klug: Totally. I do want to go back to something though, cause I know I talked about there's no such thing as passive income, which again, correct, but I do love, and we haven't really talked about it, but I do love. You are making the point that there are other things that you can do outside of in home organizing and that is truly that's one of the things that COVID brought is there are so many more people are open to different ways of doing things now that they might not have been before and so people are open to maybe I just want to learn from a professional organizer.
About the system that I need to use, but I don't actually need someone to come into my house, or I don't have the budget to hire an organizer, but I'm willing to learn and do the thing on my own. So there are courses, there are you know, you can give people DIY plans. You can give people digital, you know, digital print.
Easy for me to say. Digital printables are a really big thing now. You know, you charge 19, you give people essentially an ebook of what you do. There are tons of options out there. There are different ways to market that. There are different ways to sell it. That's a whole other podcast, but I do love that we have other options that are available for organizing now.
That's more many to one instead of one to one.
Cabri Carpenter: This is the other thing that I feel should be mentioned. Organizing is never going to go away. We might not have put much of a focus on it circa 1990. Like it, it might not have been as important in that time, in that space. Organizing. In our lifetime, it will continue to evolve, but it's never going to go away.
Even if you look at organizing as part efficiency, part as mental health, part productivity, part of just family management, whether you're trying to help a mom who is struggling with mental health because of her home, or you're working with a Fortune 500 company who needs better organization processes so that they can be more profitable and to make sure that all of their employees are on the same page, you're essentially doing the same thing.
Two totally different clients, two totally different You know, types of projects, but the core principles remain the same. And so it's never going away. Absolutely not. I refuse to believe that. I do think that we will see people get more specialized in what they offer, whether that is I want to work with moms who are struggling in their home.
Or you may have some organizers who take more of a lean management consulting role of let me come in and help you organize your business so that. These things flow better and you're more profitable. Your employees are happier. Your customers are happy. The principles
Melissa Klug: are the same. Or it might even be, I'm going to take my certain part of organizing that I love, and I'm going to create an organizing business just on that.
I know there are people out there that just want to do photo organization. They just want to do digital organization. They just want to teach families efficiency skills for their house. It's a different kind of organizing. It's still extremely important for people. Because as we all know, it's not just about being organized in your house.
It is about all of the things that have to happen for you to be able to maintain it. It's not just about having pretty containers for things. Put it on a
Cabri Carpenter: t shirt and let me wear that statement.
Yeti Stereo Microphone-7: So that is today's week of Cabri part two, stay tuned later this week for even more with one of my favorite organizers in the whole world. If you would like to chat with me about some of Pro Organizer Studio's programs, I would love to have a zoom with you and talk about how you fit in to our wonderful group of people.
Email me at hello@proorganizerstudio.com. And if you want to spend 31 quick, but meaningful minutes with me, I have a brand new workshop. It is called how professional organizers get clients without using social media. And that is at poroadmap.com. All of the information and links are in the show notes or right below this podcast have an amazing day organizers.
And I'll see you soon with part three of the week of Cabri!
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