226 | Are you doing TOO MUCH in your professional organizing business?

Jul 2

I have a simple...but complex question for you today--are you doing TOO MUCH in your organizing business? Are you burning out on back end tasks for your business--but also maybe not spending the time on the things that matter and can move the needle in your business? That's what I'm talking about today--trying to get you thinking about whether you're doing things that just aren't necessary!

You can listen here, read the full transcript below, or find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you love to listen to podcasts!

LINKS FOR LISTENERS

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HIGHLIGHTS

Streamlining Your Organizing Business: Essential Tips for Avoiding Burnout

In this episode, Melissa addresses the issue of doing too much in your organizing business and whether many behind-the-scenes tasks are actually necessary. Reflecting on a live Zoom coaching session and experiences from her organizing business 'Home By Eleven,' she explores the balance between essential tasks and those that may lead to burnout. Melissa offers personal insights, like conducting video consultations and avoiding detailed proposals, while providing actionable advice on conducting time audits and minimizing scope creep. The goal is to help professional organizers evaluate what back-end tasks truly add value, making room for more effective, revenue-generating activities.

00:00 Introduction and Purpose

00:33 Are You Doing Too Much?

01:12 Real-Life Example: Overdoing It

03:23 Melissa's Business Approach

05:10 Simplifying Client Interactions

14:05 Time Audits and Efficiency

21:04 Managing Client Expectations

26:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey, pro organizers. It's Melissa and I hope you are having a great week. This one today is coming to you based on a few things that I've seen lately and just a few things that have been kind of rolling around in my head, and I just wanted to get it out because it's something that I want you to be thinking about in your business.

And it's very simply this. Are you doing too much in your business? I'm guessing this isn't a question that you ask much. I'm guessing that if you do anything, you are going, I'm not doing enough in my business. I need to be doing X, Y, Z, A, B, C. Is it possible that you are doing too much? If you are making assumptions in your business that everybody else is doing this, this, and this, to have a business and that you also need to do this, this, and this.

I wanna talk today about whether you are really needing to do all those things. Or if you're doing just way too much and a lot of these podcasts, a lot of these things that come up are born out of things that people bring into our inspired organizer group, um, we do a live Zoom coaching twice a month and there was a question that came up the other day in one of our zoom coachings where someone said, I'm spending hours and hours working on space plans for clients. Including furniture. After we declutter, I give them an extremely comprehensive plan.

I give them a lookbook and they can pick products. I give them a detailed, extensive list of what we're going to do next, the plan of what happens next in detail. I do space planning, all that kind of stuff, and I just very simply said, you're doing way, way, way too much. And the reason that I want you to think about some of these parts of your business is because what I see so often is women start to burn out because of all the behind the scenes stuff that is happening in the business.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of behind the scenes stuff that you have to do in a business that is truly important, right? But what I see sometimes is people are concentrating on the behind the scenes things that don't matter or that don't matter as much as they think they do or that aren't necessary to actually get the client, retain the client, continue on the client project, and they might be neglecting the things that are really important, and that would actually help them get more clients and do better in their business. So what I want to challenge you on this week is, are the things that I am doing in the back end of my business- are these things that I am providing to my clients that I'm spending a lot of time on truly necessary to the process or something that the client actually requires, or is it something that I just think that I'm supposed to be doing or think that everybody else is doing or think is necessary when it's possible that the client themselves does not require it, does not think it's necessary.

I just wanna tell you a little bit about how I run my business, my organizing business. And, obviously every single one of us runs our businesses differently. We have different clients. We have different ways that we go to market. We have different kinds of services that we provide. There is a big difference between a super high-end luxury organizing business and the business that I run.

You might listen to what I'm about to say about the way that I do my business and go, Melissa, that's insane. I would never do that. The way you're running your business is not how I wanna run my business. A hundred percent, absolutely valid. We all need to run our businesses the way that we feel good.

But what I want to just point out is what I run into all the time is people that are saying, uh, the back end of my business is really, really overwhelming me. I have too many things going on, and I just want you to ask some valid questions. About all of the things you're doing and do they make sense?

So I'm going to tell you how I run my business and uh, just give you an, an opportunity to say, oh, interesting. She has a successful organizing business and she doesn't do all these things. Now, I will also say, because I run Pro Organizer Studio Home By Eleven is my side hustle. Okay? So. You could argue that we don't love the phrase side hustle.

You can call it passion project wherever you want, but it is not my main source of income. So far this year. I have side hustled my way into $45,000 in revenue in my organizing business. And this is how I run it. I do not do a lot of the things that other people do, so I just wanna point out it is possible.

So this is how I run my business. I do not provide detailed proposals to clients ever. When someone contacts me about organizing, we have a phone consultation, and at this point in my business, when I've been operating it for a long time, and because it is not my main business, I will typically do a video consultation instead of an in-person consultation, by the way, occasionally I will go in person.

Uh, a couple weeks ago I had an elderly woman who said that if I made her use FaceTime, she would be devastated. Those were her exact words, so I said, okay, no problem. I'll come to your house, but I will most often do a video consultation with a client. They walk me through their house and then we will talk about the plan.

I will say to them, Hey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's a little bit more about how I work. This is what I want you to consider. And then we will book the first session, or they will say, we need to think about it, and they'll come back to me whatever way that develops.

One thing I will say, because I don't have a team and because I have a little different schedule, because of Pro Organizer Studio being my main job, I am not booked five days a week with organizing, so I have a little bit of flexibility in my schedule, so please take that with a grain of salt As I talk about my process, obviously you have to fit things the way they work for you and your team, but I know that there will be a lot of organizers who will measure at the consultation, and then they will buy all the product and they will install it on the day they come in.

I personally do not do that. I will declutter with a client and then I'm going to determine what we need for a project. I will go out and buy that for the specific project and bring it on. I don't provide a proposal. I'll just talk to them about what I think it's going to take. To finish their project, so there's no written proposal.

By the way, I also do not make any promises about the amount of time that a project is going to take. I always tell them that everybody wants to know the exact number of hours it's going to take, and that I have just found that that is something that I, I don't do because there are so many things that can come up in the process.

And I haven't worked with them yet, so I don't know their speed of making decisions and how many things they're going to wanna keep and what we are going to have to reorganize. So I always tell them after we've worked together a couple times, I will have a better idea of how fast we will be able to get things done.

But. I do not tell them. This is how long I think it's going to take. I will often send an email with just a few business details such as, here are my rates, here's how payment works, all that kind of stuff. And then I will just say, I would love to book with you. Let me know when you're ready to start. I keep it incredibly simple.

Do you know why? You can say it one of two ways. Either I'm lazy or I'm just trying to be very efficient. Whichever way that you wanna phrase it. But guess what? It works. I get clients, I book clients, I go to their houses. I do the work in their houses. I have found in the course of my business that doing all of that extra stuff, unless a client specifically asks for it for me, it's just not time that is well spent.

The other thing too that I will say about, providing an exceedingly extensive document with everything that a client needs to think about and a whole project plan and things like that. What I find in the clients who contact me, and again, this is business specific, but the clients who contact me are extremely.

Overwhelmed, they're exhausted. They have stuff everywhere. Their kids are driving them crazy, their spouses are driving them crazy. Their stuff is driving them crazy. And if I send them an exceedingly long proposal or a lot of paperwork or a lot of stuff, I'm adding to the overwhelming. And my goal is to make it as simple as humanly possible for someone to work with me.

Now there is a very good chance that you are listening to this and saying to yourself, wow, this doesn't sound professional. This doesn't sound like it's, a very buttoned up business. And you know what? If you really love providing a proposal and all sorts of things, please continue doing it. What I want you to think about is if you're like, I'm spending hours and hours and hours doing all of these things, then.

That is something that I want you to think about. Is it actually necessary? If this is something like, for instance, providing a detailed written proposal or something more buttoned up than what I do with my clients. If it's something that you feel really strongly about that you want to establish as your brand or your service or the way you go to market, or if you were saying, we are a full service provider and we are going to give you a polished, professional experience from start to finish, if that's something that you feel like, by the way.

I just made it sound like I don't provide a professional experience to my clients. I do, trust me. Um, but if these are things you feel like are extremely important to your part of a process, whatever that looks like for you, please do it. But is your client expecting it and are they doing something with it?

If you are giving them a five page proposal with everything that could possibly be thought of, first of all, I just want you to think about are they just gonna take this plan? And do it themselves. Have you just given them a DIY plan? No. If it was a DIY plan, maybe they would've already done it themselves, but still you're giving them a roadmap for free.

Okay. The second thing I'm gonna ask is, could you provide the same experience that you want to provide if you're giving them a five page proposal, could it be a two page proposal or could it be accomplished in one simple page or one simple email? I just want you to dial down the amount of work you're doing that might not be as value added as you think it is.

One of the things that I think about a lot is the number of homes that I have been into where I have organized and I have found folders of other organizers, proposals and other things that are buried under a lot of other paperwork, things like that, that has happened to me multiple times.

I do have clients occasionally who say, you know, like they might be nervous about the process, or they might really just need more information. And I find that if someone is really struggling and I feel like it's going to be a hindrance to the sales process. That if I don't provide them this thing, then they may not book.

I will do the extra work if they are really like, Hey, I need to understand more about how this process works. I have had clients who have asked for that type of thing and I have given it to them. So I'm not saying that I won't do it if it's necessary, but I'm going to tell you something else about the most recent time I did that.

Where there was a guy who was really just not understanding the process, and he said he wanted to know more specifically about how we will tackle his house, what order we would go in, that type of thing. And I spent a, a decent enough time, uh, on it. I did not give too much away. So this is another key thing is, um, I did not go through detailed like, we do this process and this is how we sort and this is how we, you know, because I'm not giving him a DIY plan.

Okay? Giving too much away is not a great plan, but I did put together a plan for him. I said, this is what we would do. Ask me if that guy booked with me. He did not. So I just want you to think, am I going to do all this? And like, then it doesn't even yield a client. So especially if you do this for every single client that comes to you in the process.

Let's say that you were providing a detailed proposal to every single person that comes to you. I want you to think about your closing rate on those clients. You know, if your closing rate is a hundred percent and you think it's because you give them a really detailed, wonderful product proposal, keep doing it.

If it's not a burden on you, but I want you to go through your process and go, what am I spending my time on, and is it actually yielding what I think it is, or do I think I have to do this?

One thing I ask people to do, sometimes if you come to me in a one-on-one coaching situation or some somewhere in my group and someone's talking about, I'm just spending way too much time on backend stuff in my business, I'm spending tons of time doing proposals and space plans and things that I am not getting paid for.

What people tell me is I'm spending so much time on things I'm not getting paid for. Obviously there are times in our business where we have to do things. That we're not getting directly paid for, right? Like we're not getting an hourly rate for doing it. Um, there are backend things in our business that you, they are just simply a part of the sales process, the cost of doing business.

Okay. But I would urge you, and this is something that I have had people do, and they have been very eye-opening experiences for the organizers, do a time audit.

Here's what a time audit is. Uh, the way that I always think about it is lawyers. So people who are attorneys bill in usually 15 minute increments of their time.

If a lawyer spends three minutes looking at something, that client gets billed for 15 minutes of work, even if it was only three minutes of work. Okay? So I always think about that 15 minute increment Now. Whatever works for you. You could say you could make it 30 minutes, 20 minutes, but I want you to start keeping track of the amount of time you're spending on backend parts of your business, okay?

Because this might turn into revenue for you. A time study of your days. Okay, do it for one week or two weeks. The most value, I think, is when you get two weeks, because one week, you know, each week is so different, you might not get a good representation of your time, but I just want you to simply write down, and it does not have to be complex.

You just say, it was 25 minutes to drive to my client. It was four hours to work at the client. There was a 30 minute time in which I was doing donation drop off. When I got home, I had 45 minutes of email. I wrote a proposal that took me an hour and a half. Break down also, if you have the ability to do it if it's not too burdensome, what does that email look like? So when I'm spending time doing emails, am I responding to clients via text or email of questions they have? Then I want you to start thinking about, do I have clients that are kind of starting to push those boundaries a little bit? I know people who have gotten into a trap where, and by the way, I myself have fallen in this trap on many occasions.

Okay? So if you think that I'm perfect about this, I am indeed not. Um, but there are some clients that are. Higher, uh, you can say higher maintenance, higher touch, higher requirements where they start emailing and texting constantly. They might be anxious about their project. They might just be someone that needs a lot of reassurance.

So are you spending a lot of time working outside client hours with client questions? Okay. Do you have a client who's texting you all the time and it's really starting to be a drain on your time? So I want you to start categorizing in this time audit. Oh my gosh. I spent 20 minutes replying to Betty Sue's texts.

When you start to do this time audit, you will start to find things that will probably shock you. Um, you know, like, so if you have an iPhone. If you ever open up your screen time, um, the screen time app and you go, oh my gosh, I spent how much time on text messages last week? Uh, I, I had that happen to me one day.

I had a, a client, and by the way, this was more of a per personal response than a professional response. This was a, a long-term client, that I have a personal friendship with as well as a professional relationship. And she was asking more of a personal question than a professional question, and I was not actively working on a project with her, but I missed a text that she sent and the next day she sent me this.

Quite direct text that was like, you didn't respond to me yesterday. And that really hurts my feelings and I just very simply responded. Um, I opened up my screen time and I said, yesterday I got 270 text messages. I'm really sorry that I didn't see yours or I spaced on it it's not personal. I'm really sorry. I just get a lot of texts and you might be saying, uh, 7, 270 texts a girl. I got 780 yesterday. I don't know what it looks like for you, but the point of my story is you are probably going to find things that are going to be shocking. Like, oh my gosh, I spent three hours putting together a lookbook for a client and I'm not getting paid for my time.

The next thing I want you to do after your time audit is, two questions I want you to ask. What am I not getting paid for? And are there things that I am doing too much? If I don't believe that I'm doing too much, what can I do to make sure I'm getting compensated for that time? Now, it's not necessarily that you're going to say, oh, I'm gonna start charging the client for every single minute I'm gonna start billing like a lawyer does.

It might be that you tell a client I would be happy to do a comprehensive space plan for you. I bill that out at $75 an hour, and then you say to the client, if you'd like to put a cap on the amount of time I spend on that, that's fine.

Let me know what you're thinking. It could be that you say you are going to raise your hourly rates. You're going to say, I'm gonna raise my hourly rate $15 an hour so I can account for some of this extra time that I spend on my back end. I feel like I'll be getting paid for that. It might make you feel better if you could feel like you're starting to get compensated for some of that.

Is this thing that I'm doing that's taking this much time, is it actually providing value or revenue? Is it necessary? Does the client think it's necessary? Is it truly necessary to do my job? I will tell you that I personally do almost none of this, and I'm doing just fine.

It might not work for your process, it might not work for you in your business, for your brand, for your, uh, team, anything like that. But I will tell you based on working with all different kinds of people in all different kinds of situations, in all different kinds of organizing business, almost everyone has things that they're resentful of doing because it's taking a lot of time away, and I'm not entirely sure that all those things are actually value added.

Is what I'm doing. Taking time away from other revenue producing activities is another question I wanna ask you. So as an example, if you're spending three hours on a space plan for one client who probably isn't even expecting something as extensive as a giving them.

If that three hours could have been done in 30 minutes and a one pager, and then you spend two and a half hours working on your SEO, I would argue that is revenue producing activity. Small ball versus big ball is something that I want you to think about. Am I playing small and working on something for one client, or could I be working on something that might impact a lot of other clients and a bigger part of my business?

One thing that I hear all the time is I don't have time to blog when I tell people it's important to blog for SEO, I don't have time to blog. So then I just sometimes ask, how many reels did you do this week? How long did it take you to do those reels? Uh, the, that can be time that is hidden or you think is, uh, you know, valuable time on your business.

Is all of the stuff that I'm doing driving my business forward, or is it just a check the box activity?

Here's another thing I want to throw in here that I want you to think about. If you are a person that does a lot of product with clients and you find yourself going, we're spending so much time, I'm giving them six different options for every single space, and it's taking them a long time to decide.

Now they're texting me all the time. I want you to simplify that process. As well. In the Organizing Essentials course, I created a sample lookbook that people can use. And what I recommend is if you're on a product heavy project, you give it to clients and you start to get an idea of their aesthetic, um, you know, the things that they like, that type of thing.

And I find when you give clients too many choices, it reminds me of a time. I had a client who had a huge attic playroom, and it was basically like a Toys R Us was in there. There. I have never seen so many toys and so many things. I mean, just really, really crazy amount of toys.

And she was so angry because she said, my kids constantly tell me they're bored. And I'm like, yeah, 'cause they have too many things here and they're overwhelmed and they. Are bored because they have too much choice. So our clients are the same way. Again, we don't want them to be fused and overwhelmed by 700 choices for their product.

Create a lookbook, get an idea of the aesthetic, and then you can nail down what are the specifics. But if you have something where you need to give them a choice, I would suggest three choices. One, two or three. Okay. And you might do good, better, best, uh, you know, you know your clients better and everyone's gonna be different, do fewer things, and get better results.

Another thing that we covered on a call recently is someone was having scope creep on a project, so this is another thing that can really steal your time. So scope creep in this case was she had gone to a client and she said, okay, here are some things you can choose from. This is what I recommend you buy for the project.

And she gave her a comprehensive list of the things that she thought the client needed. All the client needed to do is say, check. I'm good with the budget, I'm good with the client. I'm good with the products. The client has now spent hours and hours searching for her own stuff. She has decided she wants to do a search for her own things and she keeps emailing and texting the organizer saying, what about this bin? What about this bin? What about this basket? The organizer was starting to get overwhelmed 'cause it was just. Text after text. By the way, clients often think they're the only client that we're working with and they don't realize that they might be one of 10 clients we're working with at that time. So if you're texting me, 10 other people might be texting me too.

I just said, you gotta, you gotta stop this right now and you need to tell that client, okay, we just need to do a quick process check. So what's included in your package or what is included in my services is what I sent you. That's the list of things that I recommend. And if you don't want to use those things, if you want to go out and buy things on your own, totally fine.

But you'll need to procure those on your own. And if you want me to start giving input, I'm happy to do that, but I will have to start the clock on these conversations. Okay? So what's gonna happen otherwise, and what was happening with this organizer is she was spending an inordinate amount of time going back and forth with a client and not getting paid for it, and it was not adding value to the project.

Scope creep can be a lot of things. It can be that a client starts to push boundaries a little bit. It can be that you're starting to be asked things that are not part of the package that they got, um, and you might feel, you know, compelled to do them. That can take a lot of different forms, but I want you to make sure that you are not allowing scope creep to also take revenue away from your business.

I will also tell you if you're really nervous, like if you're someone who's like, Melissa, I write a five page proposal and you're telling me not to, and I think that this is, this is wrong and you're an idiot. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to do a little A/B test, okay? So maybe on your next five inquiries, three of them, try the new process.

Two of them keep your existing process catalog, the amount of time, detail your conversion rate. Also, I want you to think about your comfort level. If you've listened to all this and you've said, I don't think Melissa's right. I think I really, really, really wanna do X, Y, Z thing, even though it takes a long time.

Then go about it gratefully and happily. But then don't complain about the amount of time that it takes, or that you're taking time away from other things you want to be doing in your business, or you're, you don't have time to write a blog, or you don't have time to do some of the really important backend things on your business.

Google Business, SEO, blogging. Make sure that you are making time for those backend things that matter versus the things that might not. I just want you to do a little test. What if I dial down the amount of things I'm doing for my clients in terms of the, the backend processes, and is it still successful with the clients?

If you really want to do these things, do them gratefully, don't complain about them. If you are complaining about them, if you're resentful about them, if you find yourself going, man, I'm spending so much time on this and it's not even helping my clients, it's time to think about something different. I hope this is helpful, and I hope that you're able to find some time sucks in your business and I'm guessing that there are people that are gonna find 10 or more hours in their week because they stopped doing something. Yeah, and if you take that 10 hours and you go get a pedicure and you watch something on tv, that's awesome. Go do that. It will also make me happy if you use three of those 10 extra hours to say, I worked on my SEO, I wrote blog posts for the year.

I did a bunch of Google Business posts that would make me even happier. So go find that time in your business. And I'd love to hear about it. Have a great week, organizers.