Profile

My work used to be organizing clients’ homes and offices in person. Now I have a program online where we teach people to do this for themselves.

I work at home and have a virtual team that I interact with daily.

Technical consultants, my assistant, my PR firm, and other experts/authors. The members of our online program are typically women age 30 and above, mostly from North America.

I love that my days have a lot of variety. I am often writing, interviewing with the media, speaking, traveling, and collaborating on the phone.

Communication, both written and spoken, and the ability to build relationships.  As a writer, you have to constantly practice to improve. My blog, the clutterdietblog.com, helps me do that, where I write twice a week. Doing the blog since 2006 gave me enough practice and content to write my book, "The Clutter Diet:  The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life," which was published in 2009.

I get up between 5-6AM, work out, and then work until about 6:00PM. I try to have one day per week that I don’t work at all, usually on the weekends, and I love and value the flexibility that I have.

Yes, once or twice per month. It’s just enough to be interesting and fun.

Variety, flexibility and creativity.

Feeling like I am responsible for everything 100% of the time. I can’t just walk away, even if I wanted to.

Other people’s stories of overcoming adversity. I love reading Success Magazine for that reason.

There are so many who have influenced me in various areas of my life... motherhood, career, etc. If forced to choose I would say Tony Robbins.

This Marianne Williamson quote (abridged): “Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you… as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

“Networking is a waste of time.” Couldn’t be further from the truth! And I LOVE meeting people!

Figure out how to make money doing what you LOVE to do and are best at doing. It might take you a while to figure this out, and you’ll need to get experience to find out what you like to do as well as what you DON’T like to do.

Walk, read books, go to movies, cook, get together with friends

LEARNING! Also living healthfully, and contributing

Yes, I would have gotten funding for my business. It was gratifying to self-finance, but I could have gone farther, faster, with backing. I didn’t know how this worked before.

Working from home has provided me the flexibility I need to make this all work.

I took risks. I started a business without knowing how exactly but knew I would figure it out. I followed my instincts into growing the business and learned all I could to help me make better decisions. I saw an opportunity for taking my expertise into another realm (online vs. in person) and I took more risks to make that happen. Taking risks and overcoming fears are big themes for me and my path, and doing those is made possible only by believing in yourself.

I thought about what I enjoyed doing as a child. When I was 10 years old I saved up my allowance to buy a label maker. Around that same age my teacher would ask me to stay in from recess to help other kids organize their desks. After spending time in the corporate world learning what I don’t like to do, then moving 11 times and building 4 homes, it became obvious to me that I should become a professional organizer.

Many of the challenges in my business have had to do with partnering or staffing with the wrong people. I have had to learn a lot about trust and judgment.