Do your organizing systems work well for some clients, but not others? Organizing strategies are more likely to be effective when they take your client’s personality type into account. You can therefore do your clients a great service by familiarizing yourself with the various personality types, the challenges they face in terms of organizing, and the solutions most likely to be helpful.
Before writing the exam to become certified or recertified by The Board of Certification for Professional Organizers, you must meet certain eligibility requirements in terms of education and experience. Whether you are planning to write the exam or not, it is recommended that you continually read materials that will help you build upon your existing knowledge base.
There are a lot of organizing books on the market, but as a professional organizer, you don’t need to read about the same strategies over and over again. I’ve always found that the most valuable books are those that acknowledge that organizing systems need to be tailored to the unique style and personality of your client. Organizing Outside the Box by Hellen Buttigieg is such a book.
As promised, I’m back today for the second part of the January Professional Organizers Blog Carnival. If you’re not familiar with this feature, it’s a monthly collection of blog posts submitted by our readers. On Monday, we read about Christmas, New Year’s Resolutions, and time management, and today we’re going to learn about a few other topics to help you and your business.
There is a ton of information online, including this blog, to help you start or grow a professional organizing business, but spending time researching various topics and sifting through all the search results can be very time-consuming. Even if you have lots of time on your hands, if you don’t know that you need to learn about a particular subject, how can you even begin to explore it?
Through our wonderful guest bloggers, we’ve had the pleasure of vicariously attending several major professional organizer conferences this year. We don’t hear quite so much about the smaller events, so I was quite pleased when Liz Jenkins of a fresh space agreed to tell us about the 11th Annual NAPO-WDC Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference for Professional Organizers held recently.
A reader sent me the following question: There are a decent number of people in my town with good income, but the majority are low income, and I am concerned with getting paid. How do you go about getting a deposit up front? Is there some way to ensure that you get paid for your services?
I think there are basically two types of bloggers: those who are enthusiastic and have lots of ideas, possibly more than they have time to write about, and those who’ve started a blog because someone like me told them it was a good idea, but then struggle to come up with topics to write about. Fortunately, there are some great resources out there to help you with your blogging challenges.
For many organizing clients, books are one of the hardest things to part with. Story books are often associated with childhood memories; they might want to read their favorite novels again someday; and they just never know when they might need to look something up in one of those non-fiction books! You can use your skills as a professional organizer to help them see the benefits of letting go, and to guide them through the decision-making process, but then what? What to do with all those books?!?
June has been designated as Entrepreneurs “Do It Yourself” Marketing Month, a special event that honors small businesses and entrepreneurs who develop and implement their own marketing and public relations campaigns. There are loads of strategies you can put into action yourself without breaking the bank, which is especially good news for new professional organizers and those who are feeling a pinch in the current economy. Here are just seven:
