254 | "It's Been Less Than Ideal!!" Resetting for the Second Half of 2026

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Jul 1

Written By Melissa Klug

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Speakers: Melissa Klug & Cabri Caldwell

Melissa Klug: We're back, and as we're recording this, it's kind of unbelievable to me. You and I had a text exchange last night that had some things that were not fit for public consumption, but basically, how is it July 1st?

Cabri Caldwell: July 1st. Time is moving... yeah, time is moving incredibly fast this year.

Melissa Klug: This year has felt like, alternately, it's gone so fast I don't know what's going on, but then there are some days that feel like dog years. Is that how you feel?

Cabri Caldwell: I can agree, yep.

Melissa Klug: Okay. I just like to know that I'm not alone, basically — that whatever I'm struggling with, someone else is out there struggling with it too.

Cabri Caldwell: Yes. Equal parts moving faster than the speed of light, but equal parts dragging on in the hard parts, I guess. Yeah, I don't know.

Melissa Klug: Yeah, for sure. Well, we just wanted to put a little quickie together because it is officially the first day of the second half of the year, and you and I are both in the same boat — that we would like to acknowledge that the first part of 2026 has been a little rocky.

Is that fair? I mean, we've kind of talked about it before.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah. Less than ideal.

Melissa Klug: Less than ideal. That's just such a nice way to put it.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah, I'm trying to reframe it.

Melissa Klug: Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. And one of the things that we try to do here is I don't believe in sugarcoating things. I don't believe in toxic positivity. I believe in calling things how they are, and I want to be honest.

And the honesty here is — by the way, if you think that we're all doing things perfectly, we're not, and I've had kind of a tough 2026. Cabri's had kind of a tough 2026, and what you and I have said, kind of holding each other accountable, is we're starting over.

We're pretending it's kind of like a new year. The second half of the year is new, and we're, as the youths would say, locking in.

Cabri Caldwell: Yes. I also feel like — so yes, I'll get into the second half of the year situation — but I also have to remind everyone too, if they're in the same boat, that the first half of 2026 has not been ideal.

We're not doing brain surgery. We're not hurting people if we have to reschedule, or if we have to cancel, or if we don't meet all of our goals, or if we didn't hit those revenue numbers, or we didn't hire in the timeline we thought we were going to hire in. Luckily, it's okay. It'll be fine.

We're going to just continue pushing on. But that is a real soundtrack that I have to play in my head constantly.

Melissa Klug: For sure. I feel like I have — and by the way, there's not data for this necessarily, but I feel like I'm letting people down, including myself. And I think you and I sometimes feel like, "Oh, we're letting each other down."

But we're both kind of in the same boat of, "Hey, it's been a crazy year, and I'd rather just acknowledge that these things have happened," and like you said, we are not doing something so insane that the world is going to stop spinning on its axis.

We have the ability to say, "You know what? It hasn't been great. We're going to do a little reboot, and we're going to do better moving forward."

Cabri Caldwell: Yes. Absolutely.

Melissa Klug: And this is a blanket apology to anyone who has been like, "Where's Melissa? How come she's not returned my email?"

Cabri Caldwell: Or if you've sent an email and it has not been responded to.

Melissa Klug: Yeah. Listen, I legitimately — this is my public apology. I will privately apologize to you when I get to it.

But I have had, without going into details, a thousand roadblocks in my way this year, and my job is, from here on out, to try to break those roadblocks down. But it is what it is.

Cabri Caldwell: It is what it is, and it'll be fine. And again, nobody is harmed in our procrastination, or our roadblocks, or our lack of attention, or any of the above. So —

Melissa Klug: And it is also a reminder to everyone that there are seasons, and there are seasons in your business where you can just say, "I need a hot minute."

Cabri Caldwell: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug: And that is okay. And that's kind of where we are. So we just wanted to talk about: what does the second half of the year look like? What should organizers be doing?

If you're in the same boat as us, awesome, let's chat about it. And if you are absolutely killing it, keep killing it. 'Cause I do know some people that are killing it this year.

Cabri Caldwell: Absolutely. I am so proud of those people. They haven't let anything stand in their way, and I'm a little envious.

Melissa Klug: I mean, we know people in IO and in IO Teams that are well on track to have half-a-million-dollar-plus years, and they are just absolutely killing it.

One of my friends the other day had five different projects going on in the same day.

Cabri Caldwell: Cheers to normalizing that, and also cheers to making that a reality for other people to be led by example.

Melissa Klug: Yeah, absolutely. Now, we also want to say, I know that's not every single person. So if you're out there going, "Well, I'm glad for that person, but I haven't had inquiries in a while, I haven't done anything" — we're going to talk about that a little bit more too.

So tell me a little bit about what are some of the things that you guys are doing at Minimize Then Organize for the balance of the year? What are some things that you're working on?

Cabri Caldwell: So I think — I was actually working on this last night, and this is one of those things that I have to come in and update — but it's just goal-setting. So I have my yearly goals; January 1st rolls around, and I have expectations and things.

This point, this middle-of-the-year point, typically acts as some sort of recalibration. So it's, okay, love those goals that you set back in January, but it's not happening. And so it's like, that's okay. We can still do better than we've done before. We don't have to go crazy, balls to the walls, what I was hoping for and planning for.

But it just serves as, let's reset, let's see what the numbers actually tell us, where we've actually been. And I still like to push. So, for example, if the goal was half a million dollars in revenue, great, fabulous. Well, right now I think for Minimize and Organize we're tracking closer to $310,000 this year.

And so I'm like, okay, so we can back off that goal, but maybe we can hit $350,000. That'll still be more than what we did last year. Our profitability will be up. I'm still happy with that. But this is a gut check. January Cabri is very audacious and very big —

Melissa Klug: That's what I was wondering — do you look at January Cabri and go, "Who is she?"

Cabri Caldwell: I do, I do. She's — she is me, but she is always very audacious, very vision-minded, very big goals, very big ideas. July Cabri is very like, "Okay, let's be a little realistic about what's going to happen in the next six months."

Melissa Klug: Yeah. Where do you — okay, 'cause you are very good at goal-setting — where do you balance the audacious... years ago I read a book that talked about BHAGs, big hairy audacious goals. So they were like, "What's your BHAG?" So how do you measure between the audacious goal and then the realistic? Where does that go for you?

Cabri Caldwell: I don't — okay, so I always go for the big, audacious goal, with the intent of failing, because even when I fail the big, audacious goal, I almost always surpass previous expectations, or previous plateaus, thresholds, glass ceilings even.

If there's a specific revenue number that we've just kind of sat at, or a specific profit number that we've sat at, even with a big, crazy goal, a lot of times I will pass that realistic piece but maybe not reach the crazy audacious one either. So it's a balance.

And I also am like — it doesn't work for some people, that specific type of goal-setting, because it feels like failure. And so when you can reframe it —

Melissa Klug: That's what I was going to say.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah, if you can reframe it into not a failure, just feedback, just trying again, it becomes easier, and less likely to just be deleted from your mind and moved on from, I guess.

Melissa Klug: Yeah, no, I like that, because I do think that a lot of people — and I think especially organizers, because we tend to be, you know, in the perfectionism category, we do want to attain those goals — that if you set that out there, then if you, quote, "fail," even if you don't make it by $10 — let's say you said half a million dollars and you're at $490,000 — you'd be like, "Well, I didn't make it," instead of celebrating that $490,000.

So I like the idea of reframing. Reframing is actually a word that I have been trying to use a lot more. I have been trying so hard in my own brain to reframe just the way that I look at things or think about things. And by the way, this goes for even just normal things, like how I'd normally go about my day.

But I'm like, "Wait, instead of being upset about this, how can I reframe it, and how can I say this is an opportunity, not a challenge?" That has been something I am actively working on, but it's hard.

Cabri Caldwell: It is hard. And it also helps — so, setting goals for me is my North Star. So again, setting big, audacious goals helps me stay on track and in line with my goals and expectations. And so again, if I'm failing, it's okay, because the consistency and the habits needed to achieve that goal are still going to push me farther.

So, one of the big goals right now is just holding onto cash. Navigating cash flow so well that I can hold onto cash. It's not something — this is a vulnerability thing — but it's not something I do well, ever. It has never been one of those things for me.

And so even if I fail, even if I don't make that number, even if I don't hold onto it for the amount of time I think I have, I'm still practicing that muscle and flexing that muscle on how to do it better in the future. I can live with that. I can totally live with that.

Melissa Klug: No, I really like that. And I think that a lot of times, too, we talk about financial goals a lot because we want people to have thriving businesses. But I think especially with financial stuff, it's really easy to go, "I don't know what my margin is, I don't know what my revenue is, I don't know what..." You don't want to look at those numbers sometimes, and they're incredibly important.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Klug: But it's also — there are other things too that are important to look at, like: what are some other things that you're doing to drive your business forward? And a lot of those are intangible as well, and have nothing to do with revenue. Do you have the right processes in place? How are your business foundations?

You know, the number of times per week we're like, "When was the last time you wrote a blog?" "Ooh, I don't know." Someone that we were talking to last night was just like, "Well, I haven't sent an email in forever." Guess who else hasn't sent an email in forever? Me. Pro Organizer Studio.

I haven't sent an email in forever, right? I go, oh my gosh, yes — there are some of those things that if I held myself accountable, what could I be getting done?

Cabri Caldwell: Yes, yes. So this is a new thing that I have never tried before, but I think last night kind of triggered it with our coaching call. I want to go through and schedule out posts every three days for Minimize and Organize and for Pro Organizer Studio, Organizer in Me. I want to schedule everything out so that we have one post every three days for the next quarter.

If I can dedicate that time — and that is literally probably sitting in front of the TV watching TV tonight or tomorrow night, or whatever — it is a handful of hours of just monotonous, tedious, "I don't have to have a lot of thought-provoking things." I can do it as I'm watching TV, or as things are happening in the background.

But it would literally just take a handful of hours, and I would be done with it for the next three months, and I just need that right now. I need that batching. I need that time back. I need to know that it's handled, and it's not just lingering in my brain as a forever-ongoing to-do. And so that's going to happen this week, plain and simple.

Melissa Klug: Yes. Well, and I'm in the same boat of — what I have been trying to do to reset myself for this next six months is, what are some of those things that I can batch and get off of my brain? Because I really think that part of my thing this year has been there are 80 billion things going on.

I get extremely overwhelmed. You get into some sort of functional freeze, and this is very common in everybody's business. There are a lot of things going on. We had a long talk last night about AI — what are all the AI things that I could be doing to leverage that tool to try to get some of these other things done, to get them off of my brain, to free that time up, to free that space up for the big things, or the thinking, or the things that could really help people?

So — okay, in terms of the second half of the year, you just said you're going to be batching content. For you, or for you and us, what does that look like? Google Business, Instagram, Facebook — tell me what the lay of the land is on that.

Cabri Caldwell: So I am using OneUpApp.io for everything. I tell everyone — I tell everyone, I don't know why I am almost ashamed to admit that you told me about it for months, and I was like, "Oh, I don't need it, oh we've got a planner, we've got a scheduler." And here I am. I got a thing. It's my favorite thing, and they just released new updates that actually make it easier.

So for me, it is creating, essentially — let's round out and say ten pieces of content. They're probably going to be single photo, graphics, whatever. It's going to be posted Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, pushed to Pinterest. That is just my bare minimum of what I feel needs to be done.

If we want to go further, bigger and beyond, when it comes to podcasts or reels, we've got some software opportunities and some AI opportunities to chop up the podcast and be like, "Here's a clip, here's a blurb, here's a whatever." And again, those can just rinse and repeat — Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, Pinterest.

But I just want some of the bare minimums done, and then I'm hopeful and optimistic that if I can get some of those nagging tasks out of my head and out of my brain, it will actually allow me some additional room to think, and be creative and strategic, for other things that I haven't even had the brainpower, the bandwidth, the capacity to explore.

Melissa Klug: Fully with you on that. And again, leverage the tools. I am very much someone who built my organizing business by the bootstraps. I really am a DIY-er at heart, you know? I like doing my own website, I like doing my own things. But there are times — and the number of times that I hear from people like, "Oh, is it free?"

No, it's not free. It's $12 a month. That's literally, at this point, one latte from Starbucks, because everything at Starbucks is very expensive. But please use tools that are out there, because what I see sometimes is people will go, "Oh, 1Up is $12 a month, I'm just going to do it on my own," and then they don't do it on their own.

So I'm not trying to push 1Up. I don't get anything from 1Up. I just think it's a tool that is so valuable that you are crazy not to be using it. By the way, it doesn't have to be 1Up. There are a ton of other tools.

But please find a tool that will do the things for you, and $144 is an hour and a half of organizing, if you are priced correctly — which is another thing we're going to start yelling at you about. Y'all aren't ready for it. Anyway, that's another podcast. Raise your prices. But that is a tiny amount of money for an immense amount of work, an immense amount of reach.

Cabri Caldwell: Yes.

Melissa Klug: So.

Cabri Caldwell: That's the biggest thing that I feel like people don't get — they're like, "Oh, I have to do this for Instagram, I have to do this for Facebook, I have to do something for Pinterest." I'm like, "No, you can definitely use the same piece of content, cross-contaminate it over all of it, and it will be fine."

You can also go back and take content from three years ago and repost it, and I promise nobody's going to call you out on it.

Melissa Klug: No, literally no one knows. Literally no one. So — I am cracking up just for a brief moment. You said "cross-contaminate," and you meant "cross-pollinate," but I like "cross-contaminate" a lot better. I'm going to use that all the time, and I don't actually know the difference between the two. It's perfect, I love it, I think it's fantastic.

But yeah — use the same piece of content. I have shouted this from the rooftops for years: reuse content that already exists. If you look back through my Instagram, other things, you will see the same things start to pop up.

The statistics are that about 10% of your followers might see it, and they're definitely not going to remember it, 'cause we all have the attention span of a mosquito. You could probably repost the same thing two weeks from now and no one's going to remember it.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah.

Melissa Klug: Go do it. Also, use AI to the extent that you are comfortable — actually, to the extent that you're uncomfortable. I'm going to change that phrase: use AI to the extent that you are uncomfortable, to try to do some of this work for you. So give it some content and say, "Can you make this into two Instagram reels," blah, blah, blah, a blog post, whatever. Please use those tools.

Cabri Caldwell: There are so many available at our disposal — Canva has AI, we have all these standalone chat AI platforms that we can use. It's just out there for the taking. There's probably more that I don't even know about. I just found out what Gamma was.

Melissa Klug: Oh, I don't know what Gamma is.

Cabri Caldwell: Well, I'm not cool. It's like what the young kids are calling a slideshow. A Gamma deck is the thing. I didn't know what it was, but it'll make content for me. Let's go.

Melissa Klug: You've taught me something new today. Love it. Never heard of it.

Cabri Caldwell: Love it.

Melissa Klug: Never heard of it. We did have a long conversation last night on our coaching call about Claude specifically. I'm a Claude devotee. I have fully switched over from ChatGPT. Would really encourage you to give it a chance.

This is another one — it's worth the $20 a month. Please go find those things in your budget. I guarantee that you can figure it out. I have two children in college, and I still happily pay Claude $20 a month to do all the things. So just go and play around and start utilizing those things.

We have resources — I will link them in the show notes. Cabri and I did a very exhaustive AI overview. We did a podcast, we did YouTube, we did all sorts of things that go through the basics. We will be updating those in the next few weeks too, because things change every two minutes, so we want to make sure everyone has the most updated information. But these are tools that are so, so, so easy to use.

Cabri Caldwell: Yep. I'm tying this back to goals, because this is how my brain works, and part of probably why I set these big, crazy, audacious goals — but I know I can't accomplish it on my own. When I set a big, crazy goal, it forces me to delegate, or find the people, or find the tools, find the resources I need. This is also that conversation.

It's not just, "Oh, hey, I just want to go use AI for all the things." It's like, "No, I'm using AI to buy back my time, and either reinvest it in the business to continue growing, or so I can enjoy my family life." And those are all valid reasons. But I think there's a little bit of mental chaos when it comes to, "Oh, I just have to use AI for everything."

And no — use AI because your family's important, and your marriage is important, and not being burnt out is also important, and growing your business is also important. Those can all exist at the same time. But utilizing those tools is going to help make your life easier when it comes to balancing all of those things.

Melissa Klug: 100%. And the other day, I'm just going to give you the silliest example of how I used it. So my older daughter — the one that's in Arizona — she has been asking me, "Hey, is there anything I can do for Pro Organizer Studio to make a little extra money?" Yes, indeed there are.

So I gave her a bunch of jobs, things that were genuinely helpful, and then there was one that I was going to give her that I'm like, "Oh, this is going to take her hours and hours." And not that she cares, but I was like, okay, this is going to take her a really long time, and it's also taking her away from some other things that I think would be helpful for her to do.

Long story short, it was just an extremely tedious task of going into all of our courses and saying exactly how many minutes of content are in there — which might seem crazy, but a lot of people want to know: how many hours of content are in there, what do you have, what do you offer? And our software that we use for hosting our programs doesn't have that natively. You have to literally go into every single lesson and look at how long the video is. Extremely tedious.

I had this epiphany — I go, "Why don't I ask Claude to do this for me?" And Claude had it done. It took Claude a while, so if it takes a supercomputer a long time to do it, imagine how long it would've taken a human. But that's not necessarily — it's an important task. I would like to know how many hours of content we have in Inspired Organizer.

Claude did it, I have an exact answer, and I would've probably had to pay Riley ten hours' worth of time to do that. So — it just, some of those tedious things that are important, yet also tedious, get it off your plate.

Cabri Caldwell: Yep.

Melissa Klug: So go use it, figure it out. So what kind of other things are you thinking about for your organizing business? Let me just say, globally, what do you think is happening in the organizing industry, and what kind of trends do we need to be thinking about?

Cabri Caldwell: Oof. I think this comes up on every single coaching call we do, but the conversation around move management —

Melissa Klug: Oh, yes.

Cabri Caldwell: — it's a huge one. I know summertime it becomes more prevalent, 'cause it's typically when people move. But move management is not going away. I would recommend learning about it, offering it.

Even if you can't go in and offer immediately, "Hey, here's white-glove concierge moving services," you can say, "Hey, we'll come help you declutter before you move, and hey, we'll come help you unpack and place stuff after your move." You can kind of dip your toes into it. So move management, that's a big one.

Organizing in the industry in general — I just think we're also a tool for a lot of people, and so being found, a lot of the things that we're working on is just the content, the Google Business posts, writing blogs that are actually relevant to the day and age and the services that we offer. That's where a lot of our time is going to be spent in the next six months.

Melissa Klug: So I want to talk about services really quickly, and this is also going to be a longer podcast. But one of the things that is increasingly important in the age of AI — I'm not even talking about using AI for your business, I'm talking about how other people are using AI to find your business.

Becoming findable on all of these AI tools is increasingly absolutely critical for your business, and one of the key ways you have to do that is by talking very specifically about the services that you offer. We can't be broad anymore — we need to be very specific. "I want to work with you if you have ADHD. I want to work with you if your kids have ADHD. I want to work with you if XYZ."

Literally discussing the specific instances in which someone could seek your services, not in a broad way, but in a very granular, down-on-the-ground way — increasingly important to being found.

Cabri Caldwell: Yes. I think, too, a good rule of thumb: if you have a service, you should probably have three to five blogs with different points of view around that specific service. And then for every single blog you have, that should generate at least ten pieces of content going out into the interwebs, in a variety of formats, so that people can find you and you can build an audience from it.

Melissa Klug: Yeah. And I want to go back and echo what you said about moves. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, but honestly, I would really encourage you — if you do not offer any sort of move management, look into it, because it is incredibly lucrative, and it's a service that people really need.

Cabri Caldwell: Absolutely.

Melissa Klug: And trying to get them to declutter before they move, as much as possible. So —

Cabri Caldwell: You know, I've almost gotten to the point where I'm like, "You know what, just take it. I know it's going to cost us more money in boxes, and the movers are going to charge you more, but let's just take it," because it's something about seeing it in the setting. They're like, "Oh, well maybe it'll fit in the new house," and I'm like, "It's not. I know."

Melissa Klug: It's not.

Cabri Caldwell: I have eyeballs. I know, I do this for a living. It's not going to fit, but I'll let you think that. And then they see it in the space, and I'm like, "Oh, it's a little dated," or, "Oh, it's not quite the same color, or the same style," or, "I don't like it as much." I'm like, "Great, let's just throw it all for you right now."

Melissa Klug: Well, and you're bringing up a good point, which is: no matter what a client wants to do in the moving process, whether they hire you to declutter before, and then — I've had all of those different versions, declutter before, then pack, move it all, and declutter afterward, whatever — the point is, you are creating a life cycle of that customer that is way beyond just that one specific move.

Cabri Caldwell: Oh, yeah. And once they —

Melissa Klug: You're creating a repeat...

Cabri Caldwell: Once they recognize the stress that you take off of them by being the person who can handle all the questions, help them declutter, do all the things — whenever life gets out of hand, you know, in three to six months, as it will —

Melissa Klug: Three to six months? Three weeks.

Cabri Caldwell: Well, they're going to call and be like, "Okay, closets are out of hand." You know, kiddos have changed sizing again because they're growing like weeds, "I need your help again." And so that's the lifetime value of the customer. Very important. Not something we talk about a ton, but — keeping people in your ecosystem, and having referrals and retention, is an absolutely fabulous way to increase your profitability, lower your customer acquisition costs, add revenue, add profit, all of the above. So —

Melissa Klug: Any huge business, any Fortune 500 business, would tell you — and there are different statistics — but it is infinitely more expensive to acquire a new customer, and the work you have to do to acquire a new client, versus someone that already exists, already knows, likes, trusts you. This is a thing we preach from the mountaintops: go re-engage prior clients.

If you haven't seen them in three months, if you haven't seen them in six months, if you haven't seen them in a year, if you haven't seen them in two years — I have been cleaning up all my photos, and I went back, and I have some photos from the early days of my business that I've been cleaning out, and I can still go, "Oh, that's Heidi's house. She lived in Hastings, we did blah, blah, blah. Oh, look, Eileen. I haven't thought about her in years. I bet I could call Eileen up and be like, 'Oh my gosh, hey girl, just wanted to reconnect, how you doing?'"

Make those things happen, and you're going to get those clients back. So if you're not doing that, put it on top of your list.

Cabri Caldwell: I would also say that is a solid follow-up strategy that does not have to feel salesy and does not have to feel pressure-y — you can literally just reach out to people and be like, "Hi, haven't talked to you in a while, how's life? How are things going?" And they're going to be like — "How's the new house?" — "Great, marriage is fabulous, business is going well, kiddos are growing, they're in school. By the way, can you come organize my garage?"

Melissa Klug: Yeah, 100%. It's very easy, and again, it's not salesy — it's just reaching out to be like, "Hey, I just was thinking about you today, just wanted to see how things are going. You know, the team was at a house in your neighborhood recently," or whatever. Don't make it super, super salesy, just make it a connection. We have people that utilize that strategy really well, and it's very effective.

Cabri Caldwell: Very effective. It needs to be talked about more. We don't talk about it enough.

Melissa Klug: Yeah. So we're kind of — we're telling you a bunch of things, but just in general, one of the things I could tell you that's really helpful to do with your business is — and especially in summer, some people are crazy busy right now, some people are a little slower because sometimes summer slows down.

If you are in one of those slower periods, just go through and brainstorm some of these things. When was the last time I did an email? When was the last time I looked at my email list? When was the last time I updated my list to make sure that I had captured every client I've had in the last two years?

Do some data cleanup, think about how you can go target those people, whether it's a quick text, an email, something like that. Just think about your processes, and then go think about, hey, what are some things I can do to automate these? What are some things I haven't done in a while that I need to catch up on? I'm doing that for my own — I'm doing that at Pro Organizer Studio — and it's a good thing for organizers to do, too.

Cabri Caldwell: If you could give ideal metrics, what would you say those numbers are? Like, if you said, "In each month, you should be doing this, this many times" — do you have specific numbers for basics, for beginners, of what that looks like?

Melissa Klug: Yes. Okay, so let me give you a couple of different thoughts. If you have not been a regular emailer — let's just talk about email marketing — if you are one of those people that's like, "Boy, can't even remember the last time I sent an email," you might want to just think, "I want to send one email this month."

So the month of July — today, you've got 30... 30 days has September, April, June, and November, all the rest have — you have 31 days in the month of July. So during this month, I want you to send one email blast. And please, do not do the thing of, "It's been forever since I've emailed you." Nope. Just send the email. Do not make excuses, don't talk about it, just send the email.

Then I want you to start a more regular cadence and say, what's realistic for you? Two emails a month is more than plenty for a general organizing business. If you want to just do one a month, that's great. I would honestly do — I'm going to say something crazy — one every three weeks. So it's not on a monthly cadence, it's more on a every-three-week cadence.

That gets you to more than one a month on average, and it gives you a good look at your clients. If you are a regular emailer, if you are regularly doing one email a month to your list, knock it up to two. Nothing can be wrong with it.

Now, I'm also — I'm just talking about a blanket email to your whole list. I also want you to, at least once per month, do some sort of look and say, when was the last time I talked to clients that I've had in the last month, three months, six months, one year? Whatever — every business is going to be different.

But if you have not re-engaged with clients whose projects you have finished, I want you to say to yourself and set a goal: what is my re-engagement strategy? Set up a system: in one month, I'm going to send this email. At three months, I'm going to put a calendar reminder to follow up with them on XYZ. In six months, I'm going to do something, in nine months, and in one year.

Set that strategy, and then go abide by it. That's what I would say. What do you guys do?

Cabri Caldwell: I have not been consistent with email, and so I definitely want to get back in the swing of that. We did do our donation drive, though, and so that sent out a lot of emails, but not quite in the same capacity. And so I like one to two emails a month — for us, anything more than that feels like too much.

Melissa Klug: I think more than two emails a month for organizers is too much.

Cabri Caldwell: Yes, yeah, no, I agree. So, getting back on the train with emails. I haven't updated our blogs recently, and so — there's a couple that we were talking about that tie directly, very closely, into the move management side of things.

We also talked about last night having a resource — whether that's a page on your website or a blog — of just, "Here's where you can take things to donate." Even if those people don't ever hire you to work, you become a trusted resource. It's going to help your SEO. It's going to make sure that all of the internet crawlers know that you're local, because that's what you're promoting. And so, we have one — it's probably two years old and needs to be updated.

And so, just little stuff like that. My goal is the basic foundations — a lot of Google Business–type content that will also just be pushed to social. And then a regular cadence of emails, a more regular cadence of blogs, and I'm okay with that for right this minute. I don't know if we'll go much further in our business than just that, because we're doing a lot more things internally, and so those outwardly-focused, outwardly-pushing things — that's enough. It's sufficient.

Melissa Klug: Yeah, that's fine. And honestly, that's it — I'm not asking you to do 612,000 things.

Cabri Caldwell: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug: I just want us all, including myself, to get back a little bit to the foundations.

Cabri Caldwell: Yeah.

Melissa Klug: And if you do that, if you set it up — that's what I would love for your July to be. So, July, we're calling Foundations Month. How's that?

Cabri Caldwell: Love it. Love it. I love foundations.

Melissa Klug: We're going to set some concrete — we're going to set ourselves a nice little concrete pad to build up for the rest of the year.

Cabri Caldwell: Yep.

Melissa Klug: Fabulous. Perfect. What are you excited about for the rest of the year?

Cabri Caldwell: Ooh, I don't have anything specific that I'm excited about. I just feel — I don't know — like I have had a little bit of time to breathe, and I have done some very heavy delegation, some heavy optimization, just to buy back some of my time.

And I'm already feeling the creative juices, and I'm already feeling the energy, and I don't know — I'm just excited. So I'm ready to dish off some of this other stuff that I'm not good at, or the things that I don't enjoy doing, so that I can focus on the fun things — the things that are — I mean, I've said this a bajillion times, we have so much stuff banked for Pro Organizer Studio that there has literally not been time to focus on.

And I'm like, it's needed, it's needed resources, and people will love it whenever it's available to them. And so, just resituating my time, my energy, getting excited about some of those things.

I'm also a dreamer — y'all know this — big, hairy, audacious goals, dreaming, that's my thing. And so I just want a little bit more time to dream and see. I feel like I have good downloads whenever I give myself the bandwidth to do that. And so it's like, how can I squeeze that in? It may be a walk — we may go to the pool sometime this week — just a couple hours here and there to, I don't know, feel refreshed.

Melissa Klug: Enjoy your life. Yeah. That's actually one of the conversations I've had with myself — is I haven't really been enjoying my life, and I really want to change that.

And so that's one of the things — I want to get re-energized about work and all the things that I am excited about, but I also want to say downtime is important. I need to rest. I am going to dust off the funk, and I really want to do some things that are generally just enjoyable and have nothing to do with productivity, efficiency — any — I do not have to sit in front of my computer all the time.

I can go enjoy my life. So I want that — and I want that for everyone.

Cabri Caldwell: Well, what's the point? What's the point of revenue, and profit, and all the things we — like, why are we growing businesses if we are burnt out and hate our lives and don't even get to enjoy them?

Melissa Klug: Yeah. It's not —

Cabri Caldwell: — winter. It's not winter.

Melissa Klug: I'm totally with you. And, you know, I was just in Japan recently, and one of the things that hit me like a ton of bricks was — you walk around, no matter where you are, people are so joyful and happy.

And I'm not saying everyone in Japan is living an amazing — you know, people in Japan have stress, people in Japan have jobs, people in Japan have kids. But everyone just generally is so much more joyful about how they approach things, and I just keep telling myself, "I need to bring some of that magic into my life."

And I would like to be living like that more, for myself, and to try to inspire other people. So that's my hope for the rest of the year — just a little more joy.

Cabri Caldwell: No, I love it. I think it's perfect.

Melissa Klug: So, all right — well, this is your little "let's go, July." Second half of the year, we're ready to go. I'm ready, I'm seriously excited and ready to go.

Cabri Caldwell: I am, too. It's going to be a good second half of the year.

Melissa Klug: Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you. Nice to see you, as always.

Cabri Caldwell: Of course. So, thank you. Not like you don't get to see me all the time.

Melissa Klug: I know. I get to see you all the time, which I'm very lucky. All right.