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Kathi Burns  0:04  
Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening then thanks for coming. The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at ThePodcast@OrganizedandEnergized.com.  Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organizing energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi, everyone, this is Kathi and I am back with Gayle Goddard. Gayle spent more than 20 years organizing financial data before turning your skill and passion for conquering clutter into being a professional organizing owner. As an owner of the Clutter Fairy. She's a Board Certified Professional Organizer just like myself. And she coordinates the Houston coaching meetup, a support group that meets every month helping people declutter their life. I love speaking with other professional organizers, so I wanted to have Gayle on the show. So maybe you can get a few extra tips about how to get your life better organized and energized. Hey, Gayle, thanks for so much for being on the show.

Gayle Goddard  1:24  
Of course. Thanks for having me.

Kathi Burns  1:26  
Absolutely. So okay, you were account you were a CPA for years, right? Yeah. So. Okay, what made you shift into becoming a professional organizer.

Gayle Goddard  1:38  
So I had to have a surgery. And I was off for six weeks for the first time since college. And I went to go visit some friends while I was convalescing. And they had to sweep the couch off for me to be able to sit down. And we share a hobby in common of beading. I do beaded jewelry. And they do two which is how we're friends. And so there was beads all over the living room. And as I was sitting on the couch, I was like I could help you guys organize the beads. So we started doing that that summer. For a couple hours on a Friday night or Saturday, we would work on organizing the beads. And there was some point where I was sitting there putting beads into piles, and feeling like I am having so much fun right now this is the coolest thing organizing the beads and I looked up and they were miserable. They were not having fun at all. But it was the my aha moment that Oh, I can do something that I think is fun that other people really don't like to do. And that's how I found naipo and found a local chapter and within six months I'd started my business.

Kathi Burns  2:40  
I absolutely love that story. I had time off. I had a year off to reinvent myself. Not due to an injury. I just had that time and without the space of having like time to get clear and see what you wanted to do. It's hard to shift. And I did the same thing. I started helping girlfriend Declutter. And I'm like, This is really fun. And she's like, oh my god.

Gayle Goddard  3:03  
Oh my god, no.

Kathi Burns  3:08  
It takes weirdos like us to be able to offer that service to the world. Because a lot of people are so intimidated by it. And for us, it just brings us joy, which means we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

Gayle Goddard  3:19  
Right. Exactly.

Kathi Burns  3:21  
That's what it's all about and I love it, beads and beads and beads. Well that takes a while to organize.

Gayle Goddard  3:27  
Right? So it was the perfect project for me to realize. I love beading and sorting the beads is as much fun as doing the beadwork. And for them it was like please kill me now. Why are you still here? Why are we still doing this? So it was a very obvious dichotomy of I'm having fun, and they're not having fun. It was perfect.

Kathi Burns  3:52  
Yeah. And then and then trying to make it fun. It's always about let's make this a game. It's not, it's not like, things are gonna die if you don't get this organized. Let's have some fun doing it. It's all about the creativity. That's a really, really good story. So as an entrepreneur, we first started your business now, were you a CPA working for a firm? Do you have your own business?

Gayle Goddard  4:14  
No, actually, I worked in a corporate environment. So I was working in my last 15 years of my 25 years I was in the cemetery Funeral Home consolidator business. So I worked in a corporate office of a company that bought and sold cemeteries and funeral homes.

Kathi Burns  4:29  
I have a good friend who does that right now. Actually, really? Yeah, small world. So whenever you started your business, what was the biggest challenge that you think you had as you were launching?

Gayle Goddard  4:40  
Oh, it was 100% Fear. It was fear of being self employed. I had worked in corporate offices since I got out of college. I had always been an employee so that the business was somebody else's responsibility. And I spent two years doing organizing in the morning and accounting in the afternoon. And I kept, I was in a mastermind group at the time. And there was this one girl in a mastermind group, Jan, who used to say to me, when you quit your job when you quit your job when you quit your job. And she just said it over and over for months. And finally, around the two year mark, I was like, Okay, I'm terrified. I'm totally terrified. I cannot imagine that I can be a business owner. But I really love this work so much. And I am not going to let that stop me. I cannot let my own terror prevent me from doing this. And I had to tell my mother at the time, because my mother was also like, you're going to be self employed? That's really scary. What if you starve to death, like she was spiraling out about in a mom way about it as well. And I had to have this conversation with my mother and say, Look, I'm scared enough. I cannot be scared for both of us. You have to you have to get on board, because I'm already terrified. And I really want to do this. And, and to her credit, she totally got on board. She's like, Fine, I'm with you. We're doing it. And, and I just took the step into the air. And, and hope that I landed okay. And 15 years later, I'm still here. So it worked out. But it was terrifying. In the moment, you know?

Kathi Burns  6:20  
Yeah, absolutely. And you and I kind of started around the same time, I've been doing it about 17 years. And when I when I came home and said, I know what I'm going to be I'm going to be a professional organizer and image consultant. And my husband is looking at me like I'm crazy.

Gayle Goddard  6:35  
Like, what?

Kathi Burns  6:36  
Really? What, what is that a job? I'm like, yeah, it's a job, actually. And it was right when I clean sweep was coming out, you know, yeah, was out. And so people finally knew what maybe a professional organizer was. So that was really good timing.

Gayle Goddard  6:52  
That's part of what will be on a two because although I had been watching those shows, and I was fascinated with the organizer on the show, and I hadn't, but I never made the leap from watching them to I could do that. Until I tried to help my friend. Okay. Part of the gel, right that they put it out there in the in the television shows to show us it was a possibility.

Kathi Burns  7:13  
Yeah, we were really, really blessed, that people actually knew what we were becoming as it was an industry thing, and now nape is going really strong, of course, and a lot of us are more and more, you know, more of us are board certified. So that's fantastic, right? Yeah. So if you had to, there's so many women, I don't know if you read this in Forbes, but 60% of women in corporate America, women are thinking about leaving their job leaving their jobs. And branching out is a big huge act. What are they? They're calling a grand exit or something? Right. So if you had to give a piece of advice to owners looking to get out of corporate just like you did, what would you what would you say to them? What would be their first step that you would recommend?

Gayle Goddard  8:00  
I think the first step is reach out to all of your network. Because you're not as alone as you think you are. And there are people that will be in a mastermind group with you. Are there people that will counsel you at church? Are there people that you know, that are your friends that will support you in doing something like this, and I, I think as women, we get taught to be paralyzed by fear. Instead of being fearful and taking action anyway, men get taught to be afraid and shut up and be a man and do it anyway. They tell men to launch. And they tell women to panic. And I think it's part of our cultural programming as women that we have to be convinced that it's okay for us to go and do something like that. And I'm here to tell you, I have not regretted it. As terrified as I was when I thought I was going to leave corporate and go do this work. I have never regretted it for a minute. Even you know, in year three, when I had a month where I had no clients for a whole month and I thought I wasn't going to be able to pay the rent. And even in that moment, I wasn't wishing I could go back to my old job. And so I think whatever it takes to reach out to the people that can be supportive, and help you feel in the things that you think that are missing, to give you guidance about how to go forward so that you can get past you're paralyzed by fear and be fearful and do it anyway.

Kathi Burns  9:34  
I love that and you did it. You did it the way a lot of people do where you do have time in halftime,  you're you're launching your job on the side, I tell people that all the time.  You don't have to go cold turkey.

Gayle Goddard  9:45  
Right? You don't have to run in and quit your job and stomp your foot and say forget you people I'm leaving.

Kathi Burns  9:52  
Right, right, right. Or  you can just do that and just do it. We just what I did, but you know I missed serial entrepreneurs. So I've always been working for myself anyhow.

Gayle Goddard  10:03  
Well, and the other thing I'll say, too, is that I think we keep waiting to arrive at the perfect place where we've got all of the things in place. And when I went from, hey, I want to be an organizer to having my first workshop. I didn't have it all together, I didn't know everything yet. I just wrote a workshop and went put it out there. And that is no different than built in building the first apple in the garage. Right? Exactly. You don't have to have all your ducks 100% in a row, and it doesn't have to be perfect before you launch. And if you wait for that perfection, you will never go and act like you can't be so terrified of what might happen. And maybe you've missed something. Or maybe you didn't do it, right. Like, who cares, you just got to get there and do it, and keep refining it, because you will keep growing and getting better all the time anyway. And that's definitely gonna happen at the beginning, just like it does in the middle, right?

Kathi Burns  11:03  
There's always gonna be something that happens when I wrote my first book, one of my mantras was, Perfection is overrated, and simply not worth it. You just can't get stuck trying to make everything perfect. Because Nothing's ever perfect anyhow. And even if it is perfect today, it might not be perfect tomorrow, because everything changes. So. So I think that's really good advice. Don't get stuck in that. And, and ladies, if you're listening out there, and you want to jump, just jump, what's the worst that can happen? I don't know, you fall on your face, and you get another corporate job. But you won't, because you end up saying, oh my gosh, this is so much fun. Once you find what you want to do, that means you joy, you know, whatever brings you joy, I think is what we're here to do in life.

Gayle Goddard  11:51  
I think that's one of the one of the clues about self employment to like, you better be loving it. You don't want to just launch a self employed, you don't want to start this business and be in charge to like, sell insurance unless you love selling insurance. Right? Yeah, it needs to be something that you have a great passion for. And if you don't know what that is yet, then it's not quite time to leave.

Kathi Burns  12:12  
Yeah, and if you do find something that you're like, I love doing this. That's probably what you should be doing for a job. Right? I'm with you on that. And once you start your job, I think the tip that I would give people is,  well just take for instances as professional organizers. We all start as generalists. And then we figure out what little niche we want to go into and who we want to work with. Who do we like to work with? Do we like sorting beads, I personally love sorting beads. I also like working in garages, but I also love working in the closet. But some people would say I don't do garages. I don't do beads, I do corporate, right. So whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. You just model your business as you go. And as you learn what you really love to do within each profession that you choose to jump into. That's what it's all about, you know, making it your own. Right?

Gayle Goddard  13:04  
Exactly. And I every story of a successful entrepreneur starts with, well, we had this idea and we threw it out there and this bombed and that bombed and we borrowed money, we mortgage the house and that bombed and we talked to this guy and that bombed and then we hit like, it's never a straight perfect path and waiting for that perfect path. Is is not gonna work. It's never gonna happen. And I think organizers in general, a lot of us are a little perfectionist. That's part of what makes us good organizers. Right? But that it also can be the Achilles heel that prevents you from launching into the next cool thing that you want to do.

Kathi Burns  13:43  
Yeah, yeah. And whoever you are out there listening to this, you don't have to become pro organizer, obviously. Right, right. Ever, whatever makes you feel joy. That's what it's all about. So think about what you like to do in your pastime. Think about what you do for your friends. They're like, you're really good at this. And you're like, this was a blast. I love that. That's how I started. It sounds like that's how you started, helping helping a girlfriend clear her clutter. And she's like, you're really good at this. And I'm like, Oh, wow, yeah, this is just natural. This is fun. And she's like, No, not loving it at all. And that Oh, going?

Gayle Goddard  14:25  
I have I was in that moment of I've been doing accounting for 25 years. I am. I'm good at it. But I don't love it. It's not you know, it's like it's just this job that I go to every day. And God I would I did everything that I could to make it more palatable and it just was not. And I didn't know until I knew, right. I didn't have any idea that organizing was coming down the track to find me. So I didn't start my work until I was 45. So, you know, I was a late bloomer. I didn't like I mean I've always been organized. I was doing it when I was a little kid. But it never gelled as a business idea for me until I was in my middle ages, right. And so it wasn't that I was watching that, that path come down the road towards me, I had no clue until I had a clue. And so I remember being very, very discouraged with, this can't be my life, I cannot be doing this for the rest of my life. I am not happy doing this all the time. It makes me crazy. And I but I didn't know what else to do. And eventually, it appeared for me. And that was been grateful for that moment, ever since. Because there's a difference between doing what you're good at and doing what you love to do. And I now know the difference of this is really a passion for me instead of a skill that I have. It's, I mean, I have the skill, but it is a passion that I enjoy every day. And even when the day sucks, I still go back to it haven't thinking it's a good day.

Kathi Burns  16:01  
Yeah, in what you said there, it leads me to something that I think a lot whenever I work with my entrepreneurial clients that your skills are generally what I say a god gift and and it's generally your skills are something that you really enjoy doing. So if you if you have the skill set that also makes you happy when you do it, then that that's that's your golden ticket right there to whatever business you want to start.

Gayle Goddard  16:29  
Right. Exactly. That's totally it. Yeah. And it's what it's what will keep you going. As you try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, you're still love doing it, and you're still you're gonna keep trying to hit it until you get the sweet spot that works for you. And absolutely, you need that wow, to feel you passed, right?

Kathi Burns  16:50  
That's right, you gotta feel it, man. That's what keeps you energized as you're going through a business, you know, because we there's always stumbling blocks. And the question is, how do you remain? How do you keep your energy? When you're feeling like, oh, you know, can't you just go back to what you started your business to begin with? And see if you're still doing that. Or if you got waylaid by a bunch of other stuff.  Like you're not delegating out the QuickBooks, you're not delegating out the the tech stuff. At the beginning of my career, I couldn't delegate out my tech stuff. And that and I'm terrible at it. I could can't do it. So now that I have a team that does it, I'm like, Oh, my God. I'm free. All I have to do is talk right. Yay. Yeah, exactly.

Gayle Goddard  17:35  
That's 100% True. Yeah, I couldn't do it without my tech guy either. Because I do not do all the stuff that I that happens is all stuff he does in the back end like I don't I just show up and talk. Right?

Kathi Burns  17:49  
Beautiful thing is that we're helping those people as entrepreneurs do what they love to do, you know, absolutely. Tech wizard loves tech. She just lives for it. So it's like, Yay, someone likes to do it. Not me. Not me. Thank God. That's so this has been such a pleasure speaking with you. And I really, really appreciate your time and giving us some insight into what it's like to jump off that corporate America bridge. And obviously, you've done it right. You know, you're the Clutter Fairy. So, thank you.

Gayle Goddard  18:23  
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Kathi Burns  18:25  
Take care of yourself and thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. Okay, bye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you, to me have a stellar day.