Seminar Client Practicum Experience

These four brave women L-R Marcia (CO), Kelly (CO), Wendy (OR) and Cristin (WA) endured SNOW, RAIN, WIND, BITTER COLD to organize a garage for their client practicum project last week. The client made smart and courageous decisions and released 90% of what was on her garage floor and another 20% on the shelves (we didn't get to everything). Please welcome Marcia, Kelly, Wendy and Cristin to the Professional Organizer community!

Here's what Wendy had to say about her training experience this past week, "Anne, participating in the Professional Organizer Training Institute's program was very exciting for me. I came away with valuable information that I will be able to begin using right away and throughout my career as a Professional Organizer. Being able to work on an actual organizing project has provided skills that may not have been gained by just the classroom presentation. Even the snow, rain, wind and cold will not detour me from continuing to help clients with their organizing needs. Well done!"

Marcia commented, "The training experience was very eye opening. In learning how to deal with clients, the stages they go through, how to setup a system, to help the client. Learning how to setup your system to be able to clean out an area, the follow up with the client afterwards, and starting a business the correct way, legally."

And, the client had this to say about the practicum experience, "Totally awesome group of women. Everyone stayed so upbeat despite the cold. I'm so grateful and exhausted. I finally dealt with stuff that I had put off making decisions about for ten years. It is so freeing. Thank you!!"

Comments

Professional Organizers are Starting Their Career Younger!

Blessing McKenzie I had the fantastic opportunity to have Blessing McKenzie, a high school Junior, job shadow me yesterday. Blessing is considering a career as a professional organizer! I think that speaks volumes to where our industry is headed. She also interviewed me for her school project and agreed to let me blog about her questions and my answers. What are some of the biggest challenges that you face for this job? If you are a business owner, I would say the biggest challenge you face is finding clients, or rather clients finding you. That’s the simple answer. The fact is, the biggest problem is having the education and experience to work with chronically disorganized (CD) clients. What is one thing that surprised you about this career? What surprised me about this career was discovering people are chronically disorganized rather than situationally disorganized. When I first started my career, I thought I woul...

Grow Your Business - Writing

Never in my wildest dreams did I dream of being a published author, because I didn’t think I had the skills to write a book. This is why I did write a book . From 2009 to 2011 professional organizers in the United States were in make-or-break years. In 2008 and 2009, the United States labor market lost 8.4 million jobs. People were cutting out all discretionary expenses, and that included professional organizing services. My phone was not ringing, and people were not signing up for my webinars, online training, or live seminars. Many professional organizers left the industry because they were experiencing the same and needed to find employment to pay their bills. Or, if they did not provide the primary source of income for their family and that person lost his or her job, they now needed to find a way to have a steady income. Interestingly though, many people who lost their jobs and couldn’t find employment wanted to start their own business. They had time on their hands and ...

Accountability Activity: Multitasking

What's the secret to effective multitasking? Not doing it. Any time you do more than one thing at a time, you delay the completion of both tasks. The key is to focus on ONE thing and ONE thing only, until completion. If you're in the habit of multi-tasking throughout your day, I challenge you to go for one day focusing on one thing at a time--and observe how much more productive you actually are, and, how much more you get done. Try it and see how much more you check off your list today. Leave a post and let me know if you were more productive by not multitasking.

Search This Blog