Raising industry awareness opens new client base for professional organizer

Showcasing experienced entrepreneurs offers an added marketing communications or social media element to help promote their businesses. In addition, it provides a forum through which they can share solutions to unique business challenges that might be the answer to a similar challenge with which yet another entrepreneur is struggling. This openness of information flows with the following story offered by

Pooja Gugnani, owner
Organizing With You, Inc.
www.organizingwithyou.com
pooja@organizingwithyou.com
312-282-8280

ABOUT MY BUSINESS
I am an expert professional organizer who offers residential and business organizing services. Simply put, I help people gain control of their environments by eliminating existing chaos and by creating functional organizing systems for them. However, it doesn’t end there. The systems that I develop are customized to the needs of the person so that he or she can easily maintain them after I’ve come and gone.

MY UNIQUENESS
There are many principles loosely applied to organizing projects across the industry, however, what makes me different from those who subscribe to the “one size fits all” theory is,again, that I customize every project. I spend a great deal of time interviewing my clients in order to learn as much about their processes and exactly what their vision is of the space in which they function. Equally unique, is that I realize I am not going to change people, so I actually incorporate some of their bad habits into their newly designed systems in an effort to have them gradually realize that the new process is more efficient. This often leads to their phasing out these inefficient habits on their own.

MY IDEAL CLIENT
Ideal clients for Organizing With You begin with your busy executive who needs to get his or her own space and daily processes in order. Then there are business owners who want to get their employees organized for better productivity which many major corporations across the country are now doing. And, thirdly, there is the busy mom who needs help in establishing better family-management processes for the home.

UNIQUE CHALLENGE
At the beginning of building my business, my biggest challenge was creating awareness of my services and the overall value of professional organizing as a whole. People were always quick to hire professionals in other fields, but at the time, they really didn’t understand what a professional organizer was let alone what benefits they provided. That has changed over the past few years with our profession being featured through various forms of popular media. But, in the beginning, creating awareness and recognition of my business was my greatest challenge.

EFFECTIVE RESOLUTION
To raise awareness, I began attending a number of business events at which I did a lot of networking and connecting with people who could leverage their connections to help me get the right introductions. In addition, I began utilizing social media, offering organizing tips on blog posts, writing articles for local publications which led to being featured in a Chicago-area business publication. As a result of this awareness push, my business began making great strides. As recently as last summer, I started partnering with healthcare professionals who work with both psychologically and physically-challenged people. I work with them to create more organized environments that help to make their patients’ daily lives more stress-free and manageable. I attribute this new client market to the time and effort I spent promoting organizing awareness along with the benefits offered to people in all walks of life by professional organizing companies like Organizing With You.

Investing in experts increases sales

Showcasing experienced entrepreneurs offers an added marketing communications or social media element to help promote their businesses. In addition, it provides a forum through which they can share solutions to unique business challenges that might be the answer to a similar challenge with which yet another entrepreneur is struggling. This openness of information flows with the following story offered by

Sue Becker, Founder and Owner
From Piles to Smiles®
www.pilestosmiles.com
http://www.pilestosmiles.com/blog/
http://www.facebook.com/FromPilestoSmiles
http://twitter.com/suebecker
http://www.linkedin.com/in/suebeckercpocd
sue@pilestosmiles.com - 630-724-1111

MY BUSINESS
I have been helping residential and business clients create substantial change by organizing and simplifying their lives since 2000. I have helped thousands of people around the world create customized systems to overcome their overwhelming paperwork, clutter, and schedules. My passion is helping people grow and thrive in the life they were meant to live by conquering the disorganization that holds them back. I specialize in helping people who are chronically disorganized - those for whom disorganization has been a lifelong struggle that negatively impacts every aspect of their life. I love helping people live a better life and educating them to make them self-sufficient. My tagline is "Simplicity • Harmony • Freedom."

MY UNIQUENESS
What sets me apart from other Professional Organizers? I’m highly credentialed – Illinois’ first Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization, and an ADD Specialist. I have the patience, knowledge, experience, and creativity to work with “hopeless” clients. I’m well-educated – CPA, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. I really care about my clients – I follow up with them to support and encourage them. My goal is to transfer my organizing skills, not to have people become reliant on me. I can help people in person or over the phone. And, I offer a number of products to assist people who want to get organized on their own http://www.pilestosmiles.com/products.htm.

THE IDEAL CLIENT REFERRAL
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, people who work from home, and employees who need help organizing their paperwork and managing their time - People whose homes are in disarray due to clutter, poor time management skills, and poor delegation of chores - Organizations that need a speaker on workplace organization, time management, home organization, organizing kids, or organizing students - Therapists, especially those who work with people with AD/HD.

CORE BUSINESS CHALLENGE
I have developed a number of products to help people get organized. I have invested a lot (I mean a lot) of time developing these products, and for one of them, I have also invested a lot of money (for a virtual assistant, graphic designer and printing). I thought I had enough traffic to my website and enough readers of my monthly newsletter (where I feature a different product each month) to drive sales, but orders were simply not coming in.

EFFECTIVE RESOLUTION
I hired a business coach to help me determine how to proceed. She convinced me that I needed to be more involved in social media. So, with much kicking and screaming, I started a blog and Facebook® Fan Page, got more engaged in LinkedIn® and started using Twitter®. I have been able to use these forums to demonstrate my expertise, and to offer examples of how my products can be of help to people. Since I didn’t have the expertise, and wasn’t particularly interested in spending the time to develop it, I hired someone to set up my Fan page and blog. I have sold more products in the 4 months I’ve been actively engaged in social media than in the entire prior year. Lessons learned: invest in experts to help you in areas where you don’t possess the needed skills.