Online Organizing.com

1) To provide everything that a person could need to get organized in any area of life (paper, time, space, finances, kids, simplifying life, etc.) at home or work – and that means organizing products, do-it-yourself information, referrals to professionals, support communities, and motivation to keep going – all in one place on the web.

2) To provide professional organizers with everything they need (training, continuing education, support communities, professional resources, client referrals, etc.) to be more “professional” organizers and to succeed in this industry.

What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your company):

We sell all types of organizing and business development products (list of categories available at: http://www.onlineorganizing.com/Products.asp, offer referrals to professional organizers and speakers around the world, provide two free monthly newsletters, have tons of free content about how to get organized, over 3,000 links to other websites that can also help you get your life in order, an online training program for new organizers, and much more.

Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were some of your previous jobs / companies?

Actually no. I was a solid bleeding heart liberal and got my bachelors in Social Work and a Masters in Urban Planning – my intention was to house the homeless for the rest of my life. I started out working at the Atlanta Housing Authority – where I did casework for Section 8 certification, then helped with relocation (moving families from public housing to Section 8 as the city tore down its public housing to be re-built as mixed use housing), and then running a welfare-to-work Family Self-Sufficiency program.

When I finally got fed up with the bureaucracy of working for government (and your total inability to actually help anyone improve their situation in life with all the red tape), I decided to go to work for myself – but still wanted to be in a helping profession. And I’ve always been anal retentive and teased by friends and family about my wanting everything organized. I had even done organizing for friends before I knew it was a profession. So that’s when I became a professional organizer – and my years organizing clients in their homes and offices led me to create.

OnlineOrganizing.com, allowing me to serve an even larger population.

Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself academically?

College degrees mentioned above – Social Work was an excellent background for organizing, teaching me how to hunt out resources for people, help folks overcome roadblocks to success, and develop the necessary rapport with my clients that would allow them to really open up with me and share their problems. I also believe that in my industry experience is the best training – so my first-hand knowledge of what both clients and organizers need to succeed has helped me to develop a comprehensive web business – and one that is both financially successful and respected by my clients and colleagues.

How / when did the idea of your website / company come about?

I had been organizing since 1998, and was getting really frustrated with the web. There were all these great resources out there for helping people get organized – and for helping new organizers get started – but good luck finding them. You could waste hours searching and still not come up with the right solution – and that’s not something an overwhelmed person or an organizer has any interest in doing. So I came up with the idea of creating a web-based “one-stop-shop” for everything related to organizing – and with the help of my husband who does all of my web graphics and programming, started OnlineOrganizing.com in 2000.

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