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Kathi Burns 0:04
Hi there, I'm board-certified professional organizer Kathy 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 organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi, everyone, I'm back. And this is Kathi. And we are here with Melissa. And yes, let's talk about organizing and money and how it all flows together. So welcome to the show.

Melissa Ternes 0:57
Thank you, Kathi, thanks for having me on.

Kathi Burns 0:59
Absolutely. So I know you are a money coach, and you keep we'll get into the flow of things. So tell me a little bit about your backstory. How did this all begin? And why are you here now?

Melissa Ternes 1:13
Right? Don't we all have our own mess that we start with and then we move into business that started. I have an undergraduate in accounting and a master's in business, I was managing a $50 million budget at work to the penny. And one day I woke up and I had $75,000 in what I call random things debt, like that's probably like the junk drawer of debt. It wasn't a mortgage wasn't a car payment and I had no student loans. What I realized very quickly was when I was trying to get out of the debt, that there were lots of cookie-cutter approaches, but none of them actually got down to the root of what was actually going on. So probably very similar for you and your world. When you're like, great, you have a hoarder. We can take all the stuff out of the house., but if we don't fix that piece that's starting and generating the hoarding behavior, we're going to be right back where we were. And that's kind of how I started was it was like, okay, but wait, there's something else going on. I know how to do this, I do this professionally, with an incredibly large number and somehow I'm not able to do it personally. So that is how I started was just getting in the trenches with myself.

Kathi Burns 2:26
Interesting, I find that happens with a lot of clients. I'm gonna turn off my video now because we're having some internet issues. So what I was saying is that oftentimes we're right, brilliant, and our job, our real job, so to speak, and then we get home and what we're able to do at work doesn't really translate into personal. So what did you find out about yourself? How, what was your big aha moment, that helped you shift out of the mess?

Melissa Ternes 2:57
I went and tried everything, tried all these different ways. What I realized is that it was a cycle and until I really got in and addressed what was going on with just basic fight-flight, brain safety, and what was going on with emotions. And then practically, am I spending the kind of time that I did at work in some sliver with my own personal stuff, and I was not. It's like the mechanic whose windshield wipers don't work. So it was that bringing it home part that was okay, how do I do this? What does this look like? And then how do I go out and share this with the world? Because I'm certainly not the only one that struggles with it.

Kathi Burns 3:45
Absolutely. So did you quit your real job, and now you're doing this full time, or what happened with the evolution?

Melissa Ternes 3:52
The evolution of it was I moved out of the position I was in and started working in another business. And then out of that, I started doing this part-time, and I've been doing it for 13 years now. And absolutely love it started out part-time moved full-time five years ago and just love this work. Because it's the place where like you said earlier, when you were reading the bio, when you clean up your money, everything else starts to clean up. Right? I'm sure you see the exact same thing when you clean up the closet or the junk drawer like life gets easier.

Kathi Burns 4:35
Absolutely. Yeah. And everything is a ripple effect, one thing will cause another thing to be better or worse. Right? So really depends. If you were to do this over again, as starting your career, what was there anything that you would change?

Melissa Ternes 4:54
I think I would give myself more slack a whole lot faster. Then really start looking at, in my business starting it over again, the big thing that I would get a handle on first, that was kind of the hardest thing for me was my calendar. Once I got control of my calendar and my time, I started realizing that I could see so much. I had more time for myself, I had more time for my clients, I had more time for my business, and I had more time for fun. I had more time for other people. It was really getting clear on what that meant around my calendar. How I organized it. That really shifted everything for me in terms of what I was enjoying in life, what I was able to do with clients, and all like it was just the huge ripple effect of that.

Kathi Burns 5:53
Yep. parceling out what you're doing when, when, what day what time, so Okay, as an organizer, I have to ask, what calendaring system do you use?

Melissa Ternes 6:02
I use Acuity as the scheduler and in that, I have all it set up. There are different types of appointments. There are different time links, they have different spaces between them, and they can be scheduled on different days. So, Mondays are my days that I work with my business on my business. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I work with clients, Friday is the day that I have meetings out in person, or you know, different things like that, the more social day. So setting those up in that way means that Monday I'm doing the things that I need to do on my business. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm in my business, and then Friday, I am out in some way, networking, socializing, those types of things. That freed up so much time, because when you put things like things together, but all like things together in a bin and it works. I know it was and it really became, what I realized was that when I got control of my calendar, I got control of my time, which also meant, time is money. Time is freedom time is enjoyment. And so it really began to shift the rest of the things, because then I wasn't rushing to get from one to another, like, why on earth did I do this to myself? Y'all do that in business? Why did I do this to myself? I don't know.

Kathi Burns 6:03
Yeah, exactly. I always say if you don't know what you should be doing, you know what you don't know what you didn't do. So some type of strategy and the overall idea of what you're doing with your week is so huge and so powerful. Meaning you can get so much more done, if you just simply do that plan in advance, even if things don't come through because everybody has the best-laid plans and they all fall away sometimes. But again, if you know what you should have been doing, you know what you didn't do and then you can catch up do that.

Melissa Ternes 8:07
I love giving structure to it. And if the structure, the structure is just kind of a loose structure. And then the things get moved around because that's life.

Kathi Burns 8:18
Yeah, that's life. A lot of entrepreneurs are Nonconformist, and they don't want to blow by blow minute by minute thing, we just want an overall arching idea of what should we be doing right now. I notice because most of my clients are artistic creatives, and they struggle with the calendar thing, I absolutely love the idea that you use one day for out and make it a Friday. That's perfect. Seeing all your outside appointments together. So you're on the ball girl. So what's the best piece of advice that anybody's ever given you when it comes down to business or even personal life?

Melissa Ternes 8:54
Well, I think it is understanding the value that each of us brings to the world just by being ourselves. And by being ourselves, then we get to go and do the things that we want to do. I think it's the value piece that I see most often in clients, where they are not understanding their value not charging their value not being in their value as themselves personally, and then adding the value that they bring from their work on top of that.

Kathi Burns 9:23
I am in total agreement with that. You have to think about what is my hourly rate before you decide if you're going to do that specific type of task or if that's something that is below your pay grade. And I find that even people who don't work as housewives, totally undervalue their time and what their time is really worth for themselves, which is why a lot of them are running around burnout. So okay, so you use a blend of science behavior, emotions and understanding so talk to me about the process when people work with you what happens?

Melissa Ternes 9:54
So we look at it because nothing is in and of itself individual. So when we look at like things that are going on for us with money, we have all the patterns that we grew up with. We have all of the brain patterns, which is when we look at fight flight freeze, what's going on, when we go into fight flight freeze, our whole prefrontal cortex goes dark. So we have no executive function, we have no logic, which is how we get, you know, we're like, Why did I do that? I don't know why I made that choice. And what happens is, that all of our logic goes offline. So when we can regulate the autonomic nervous system, in that brain science side of things, then we can make better choices. So that's a big piece of this. And then we look at what are the emotions around money. And how are those influencing how we feel about things like if we really desire relational security, we make bad financial choices, based on trying to make someone else in our relational circle feel better. So we start looking at the emotions of it, and then we get really just into the practical, what are the numbers, what's coming in what's going out? And I think that's the holistic approach. Whereas most, most times when you come and step in to say, Okay, I need to figure out my money, they're like, spend less and save more, just spend less and save more, Kathi, it's fine, just, you know, just do that. And actually, I say, Well, you know, we have a very equivalent to spend less and save more, and that's eating less and exercising more. And that obviously doesn't work, because we have a multibillion-dollar diet industry. And if that worked, then it would work. But it doesn't work. And so when we look at money, we need to take a look at it from a more comprehensive approach.

Kathi Burns 11:49
Yeah, I'm in total agreement with that. Definitely. I love the idea of let's talk about the autonomic surface, your system, like, what state are you in when you're making these decisions is so very important. Are you tapping into your inner voice or your outer voice? Are you trying to please people? What's it all about?

Melissa Ternes 12:09
All of that, then is how your brain is keeping you safe. When we step back and say, Okay, I made these choices, they're not the choices I would make again, right now. But when we can see that when we were making that choice, we were in fight-flight, and our brain was simply trying to keep us safe, then we can take that layer of shame and guilt off of the choice. And when we can take the shame and the guilt off of the choice, or where we are right now or what's happened, then we start from a much higher place of okay, look, that was my brain trying to keep me safe. Now, that I know that let me let me figure out how to make better choices. In that, yeah, I mean, it's like, I'm sure when you're working with someone helping them organize, and they have like, six staplers. And they're like, why don't you know, there can be a lot of guilt and shame that comes with it. And if you're like, okay, great, you just weren't organized. Now you're organized, you know, you only need one of these fives, these six staplers, and that kind of thing, then you are allowing them to make different choices after the fact. And you don't have to carry the guilt with it.

Kathi Burns 13:23
There's no judgment. I mean, life happens and we all flow into different types of situations in our life. That's what this podcast is all about. We all have something that we've overcome and it's just what it is. The big question is, what do you do with it? How do you transform beyond the muck that you get stuck in so to speak, right? So you're talking about schedule. So what do you do for your morning routine? What gets you up and going in the mornings and focused?

Melissa Ternes 13:58
So I love it. So my morning routine is waking up to not an alarm clock. That was one of the things that was like, Okay, if if I lived a life that I that was absolutely perfect, I would not wake up with an alarm clock. I would just start my day in a very meandering kind of way, rather than like, Oh, get up, gotta go gotta you know, like, have to do all these things. So my morning routine just starts by waking up when I wake up. That may be early that may be eight o'clock that maybe nine o'clock. It's funny, because when I started waking up without an alarm clock, now if I have to set an alarm, I usually wake up like a minute or two before the alarm goes off. It's really a comical kind of thing. But in the mornings, I get up I kind of wander around, do some writing, sometimes do some reading sometimes. I'm a big audible person, so I may turn on an audible book while I have breakfast. It is a very leisurely morning. So I am not super structured in I get up and I do this and this and this and this. I am that entrepreneur that's like, you're not gonna tell me what to do, you're not going to tell me that I have to do all the things before I go do this. It's funny because it's when I realized that, the less I tried to force myself to do those things, the more I just allowed whatever to happen to happen. As I started my day, I did the things that I wanted to do. When I took the force piece out of it, you have to do this. I mean, it's like they told me I couldn't. That's why I did. And the reverse of that is also true for me. They told me I had to, so I didn't. That freedom means everything. Absolutely.

Kathi Burns 15:47
And you know, I've I haven't used an alarm clock forever, I set my head is what I say. And just like you when you set the alarm when I set my head, I always wake up five minutes before my head tells me it's the alarm. What's up with that? With that you don't really need an alarm clock, you can absolutely just set your intention when you go to sleep. And when you're gonna wake up, wake up on the hour and be great, but five till is always a little bit. Why did I do that? But that's just the way my head works. Maybe I should start saying, Okay, I'm gonna get a bit 805 and see if I actually wake up at 8am. I have to do that experiment.

Melissa Ternes 16:27
Try it out tomorrow morning.

Kathi Burns 16:29
That's right. Okay, so do you have a favorite life hack that you use?

Melissa Ternes 16:36
I do. It is my calendar. And I color code everything. So I have a whole stack of colored pens. Everything gets color coded. So that would be the thing that it's color-coded in my acuity calendar, it's color-coded in my calendar, it's color-coded, and I with all the calendars coming together they're all color coded. That way I know when I just glance at it, you know what each color means and that kind of gives me the breakdown of my day.

Kathi Burns 17:12
I love it. And then you use paper somewhat as well since you have the markers there.

Melissa Ternes 17:17
I do I do. I wrote a book, The Aligned Money Life Activator. That is like it's part calendar, it's part like work through your money stuff, being you know, attentive to the things that you want in a day. And so that's where the paper comes in for me. So my calendar is fully digital. And then each week, I go in and in the book, lay out what my week looks like because I am such a paper person that it was the hardest thing for me was to go digital and do the Acuity calendar. And then it was like, okay, but I still need that paper piece because I'm very tactile in that. And, again, there's brain science behind that what you write down physically on pen and paper just goes into your brain in a different way. I do both in a kind of modified way. So it only gets to the paper like the week of.

Kathi Burns 18:16
Right that way, it's not confusing. All these extra miscellaneous duplications of things.

Melissa Ternes 18:23
Yeah, when an appointment changes and everything is just changed. And then there during the week, it's like, okay, this is what I'm working on. This is what's important to me. These are the pieces that matter today.

Kathi Burns 18:38
That's great. Okay, so speaking of things like that, you have something that you're going to offer the guests here, I'm going to try to turn on my video, see if it will actually work, we'll see. What are you going to offer, the guests or the listeners?

Melissa Ternes 18:53
I have a profitable calendar checklist. That gives you a layout of what to think about in like using a calendar like acuity or laying out your calendar, so that you have a way to kind of think through the things that most people are not thinking through when it's time to go from paper, or, you know, go from just individual there on your phone to sharing your calendar out in the world. And it's just a super easy checklist to go down. It's things like, you know, are you blocking out holidays on your calendar? Right? Because as soon as you share your calendar with the world, that gives people the ability to like put time slots in and like how far out do you want to do those? And, you know, like, can they schedule this afternoon? No, that's not a wise choice and how to kind of, but because I mean, when you start doing it, you don't know what you don't know. And then it's like, oh, well, if I block this day as my day and this day is the day out this day is oh, well this is much easier, right? It begins to lay out just how you like to walk through deciding those things. Are you better in the morning? Are you better on the afternoon, right? If you're like sharpest first thing in the morning, and that's when you want to meet with clients, great, then do all the other stuff in the afternoon, if vice versa. And so it gives, it's just a nice, easy checklist to walk through the steps of like, what do you need to think about when you're setting up that calendar to make it profitable for your business.

Kathi Burns 20:27
Yeah, that's wonderful, because everybody should use an online calendaring program like Calendly or Acuity, whatever it is. You're right, if you don't really think about it, then Oh, someone pops him for 15 minutes in the middle of a big project that you're doing. Or most importantly, for me, I want to make sure that I can get to my Pilates when I'm supposed to get to my Pilates. So I'm gonna cut off appointments at a specific time or then health just goes away. So I think the checklist is super valuable. I would recommend everybody download it, even if you're using something like that because I think it's going to tick in your brain, maybe something that you might have forgotten about what to do to protect yourself on your calendar, because a calendar is a huge tool when used properly, and you don't get any prizes.

Melissa Ternes 21:13
But it's either a tool, or it's a way that you are abusing yourself because you don't realize, oh, well, you know, I blocked this here and this here. Now I'm driving 30 minutes that way, and I'm driving 45 minutes that way. Once you figure out okay, here are great things to think about, then the calendar actually becomes part of your profitability instead of a liability.

Kathi Burns 21:42
That's a good quote right there. There you go.

Melissa Ternes 21:45
Calendar be profitable. Because that I mean, that's the thing is left unmanaged, it becomes a liability rather than an asset.

Kathi Burns 21:55
Yes, absolutely as do most things. We can take that all.

Melissa Ternes 22:01
Very, very true.

Kathi Burns 22:02
Yeah, well, make sure to download this checklist. I think it's going to help you a lot. I really appreciate your time. It was even very generous. And I love some of the quotes, we'll put them in down below. We'll also put a link to the website for the downloads so you can get to know Melissa a little bit more. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Melissa Ternes 22:22
Thank you. It's great to be here with you.

Kathi Burns 22:24
Absolutely. Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe to 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.