Before Clutter Cutter
It all began with an intuition. I knew it was time for a shift. I wanted something new. But what?
On May 19, 2021, I joined a 90 minute long event hosted through the Park Slope Parent group: Reclaim Your Career Workshop with career and leadership coach, Rachel Garrett. I knew nothing about her before I joined, but left knowing three things. 1) I wanted to work in an environment where my values wouldn’t be compromised; 2) be at a job that sparked joy; 3) having flexibility was a must.
I was still in a corporate mindset back then, and explored the idea of moving to human resources. That grew into looking into becoming a teacher. Then a project manager. And finally, after so many friends and family telling me over the years how incredibly good I was at organizing and how efficiently I could manage my time, I thought of becoming a professional organizer.
I had no clue where to start and bought a book Born to Organize by Sara Pedersen. It made it so clear and easy. I now had a plan to start a new journey. In fact I had a double plan. Well, make that a triple plan. I would work on launching my business as a professional organizer while also pursuing back up plans should it didn’t work and continue to look for work in financial planning, just in case I found the right family to join, study to take my project management certification, so that if I didn’t get the financial planning job I liked, I could have that as a back up to start a new career path in corporate… this plan was a messy one. I wasn’t committed to anything and as a result it didn’t get me anywhere but to keep spinning around.
It took a series of fortunate events in a short time for me to see a clear path forward. 1) A friend taking a picture of my well organized linen closet; 2) my acknowledging I was scared to start my own business… what if I failed?; 3) a friend telling me to give myself permission to have fun; 4) turning 50; 5) a friend encouraging me to focus solely on launching my business; 6) and finally listening to an episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show.
That last one was the catalyst I must admit. It was Sunday March 6, 2022. I was folding laundry and I decided to give a shot a the Jordan Harbinger show my husband recommended. I selected his March 3, 2022 repeat episode titled Give Yourself the Gift of Done. His guest was Jon Acuff and the topics were around his latest book Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done. Turned out he wrote this as a response to readers reaction to his previous book Start: many had no issue starting a project or whatnot, the problem was finishing what they started. The episode addressed some key issues that I immediately identified with, mainly the harm of perfectionism.
It hit me. I was sabotaging myself with my perfectionism. I was incapable to launch my business because I needed for everything to be perfectly done before I could do so. I needed to already be a perfect legitimate professional organizer, with a perfect site, a perfect mission, a perfect font, perfect before and after pictures, perfect company name, press release, social media pages… have read all the books about professional organizing before I could launch my business. I was never going to launch my business that way. I needed to embrace imperfection, the unknown and just move forward.
Jordan Harbinger and his guest both shared how they started… basically they just started without too much thought and explored where their journey took them. Each step was a learning experience and a way to organically grow and get better. Better. Not perfect.
For 10 days I battled with the notion of embracing imperfection. I was supposed to just launch my company and not think about it. I didn’t need a site. I could just be a sole proprietor… it was so uncomfortable. I had excuses for not being ready left, right and center. I felt scared and alone. That’s when I decided to call onto a group of friends to help me feel less alone in this journey and who could also help keep me accountable. On March 16 I emailed them “In need of your creative brains - I need some inspiration to help me find a name for the company I want to launch. Will you come help me? I will tell you all about it. I thought maybe we could do a "HouseParty" with a glass of wine in hand and brainstorm? I have a fun proposition in exchange for your creative brains.” Four of them responded and we met on Sunday March 20 at 5pm. Two came to my home, two were on Google Meet (turned out HouseParty was no more).
I share my ideas, my aspirations… I can’t tell you how bless and supported I felt to be surrounded by these incredible women who believed in me and challenged me. And without their initial support, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to move forward and take this leap of faith.