64. SPECIAL GUEST SERIES 2 OF 3 – GETTING STARTED WITH ORGANIZATION WITH THEA RANNEY

Thea Ranny 2 of 3

Adrian Schermer   00:02

Hello future millionaires and welcome back to the get rich slow podcasts. We are your hosts Adrian Schermer, Rob Delavan and Lance Johnson. Good morning, gentlemen.

Robert Delavan   00:11

Good morning.

Lance Johnson   00:12

Good morning, everybody.

Adrian Schermer   00:14

You can find us online at Apple podcast, Spotify, audible, Amazon music, YouTube, Stitcher and other streaming platforms. So feel free to use the one that you like the most or check us out on YouTube if you want to see our smiling faces. Today we are entering episode two of three, Thea Ranney and her business thea’s organizing services. Morning with Thea, how’re you doing?

Thea Ranney   00:35

I’m doing great, how are you guys doing?

Adrian Schermer   00:37

Very good, thanks for joining us again. So, thea’s organising services as an organising business, there’s many facets to what tier or level that can be in your life, we’re going to get to know a little more about her business and what sets her apart in the market and for those who are on the video, we get some great visual aid sometimes we try to add some of the stuff in the show notes as well as we continue to hone up our podcast as a whole but the this before and after just speaks volumes. It’s a garage for those just listening but it’s the classic garage full with you know piles of boxes. This has happened to me before too, you get a little bit of a mess and then you’re like, I have nowhere to put something so you just start stacking it and stacking and then one day your garage…

Robert Delavan   01:26

Door going into the house…

Adrian Schermer   01:27

I mean you don’t even want to open your garage door you don’t want your neighbors to see this…

Robert Delavan   01:35

The picture’s worth 1000 words in that sense for you listeners, you know I’m going to rub salt in the wound but yeah, this is fun to look at is the before and after of thea’s work, it’s pretty incredible.

Adrian Schermer   01:47

Some of these on your social media to Thea if someone wants to just check out this picture so yeah, check the show notes, you’ll get a link to Thea’s…

Thea Ranney   01:52

If we have permission from our clients, they are on social media most definitely. The organized mind is such a good book. So psychologically, this book is amazing. It’s very technical. So if you’re not one of those people who are like, really into technical things, it’s not for you. But the organized mind is a book that literally shows you and teaches and explains how our brains have organized information from caveman status until now, like human language, that’s just a form of organization. We had to organize these thoughts and find a way to do that and we did that by naming things and using words. So everything that we know is actually organization, we just don’t know it and this book kind of brings that to light.

Robert Delavan   02:48

That’s a fun one. We’ll have to check that out and we’ll add that to our reading list on the associated websites.

Thea Ranney   02:55

Please do, it’s great.

Lance Johnson   02:59

All right, let me kick this off. So what’s the number one question you get to asked by your clients?

Thea Ranney   03:07

Where do I start? How do I start? There’s so much stuff, I don’t know where to start and then I come in and we just start and run, and how do you do that? So not everyone needs…

03:21

[Mixed Voices 03:19]

Thea Ranney   03:23

Things can be overwhelming. It’s real, especially when it’s your own stuff. That’s no joke. It is even my own stuff, when we were moving. I’m like, oh my god, let’s just hire an organizer because I don’t want to deal with it and it’s one of those things even for us dealing with our own stuff. It sucks, you guys it’s real and so, if you’re working on your own and you’re doing your project the way to answer this question, and how do I start? Start, that’s all you have to do. There’s no wrong way to do anything in regards to organizing there’s just not, stay in one room. Do not be like, oh, I’m gonna do the whole main floor. No, that’s my job. Your job is to stay in one room. Do the things that are in this room. Always start with removing all of your trash first. That is the biggest hindrance, the biggest thing that’s going to be on your way after you remove all of your visual trash, throw some boxes together, some large boxes and start sorting things clothes with clothes, purses, with purses and wherever space that you’re organizing, all of your glasses together, all your plates together, start organizing sorting your things and then work through a purging phase. If you’re trying to do trash sorting and purging at once, which is what most people do, that’s where the serious overwhelm factor comes in and that’s when everybody stops and that’s when you get like the garage that we just ended up seeing and by the way, the biggest factor of it’s not running out of places, places to put things in, you’re just setting it down. It’s you’re looking for something you have made inaccessible to you and you’re pulling everything out in front of it and as soon as you see the thing you need, you grab it and you go without putting any of that stuff back. That’s the biggest cause.

Rob Delavan   05:07

Oh, I feel personally attacked by that

Lance Johnson   05:10

Okay, now one thing my wife got on is actually is pretty funny, as I told my wife about your services when you joined BNI and then we started watching some of those shows of organizing and one of the things they say is you, you almost have to remove everything, get rid of the trash, sort the stuff and then you could look at the space in a different manner, like, I see that, you put before and after you put for the tools, you put a section over there, that’s all together and hangings and then, you can see the bins were turned differently for space and then the cabinet on the right is turned a little bit and or the doors closed and you almost have to bring everything out and then kind of, they say go back, what’s your emotional attachment to this piece? You know and then where does it go in your organization, but you almost have to remove everything and then start putting it back organized and then you’re left with those things that clutter space, but like, you don’t have an emotional attachment, you haven’t used in 10 years and you have to make some hard decisions about whether or not to get rid of it, to donate it or to organize it.

Thea Ranney   05:15

Exactly and, you know it’s one of those things, a lot of people, they end up looking at their space and you’re right, if you remove everything from the space, you do get to see it with fresh eyes and get some different ideas. The one thing that’s really challenging is when people are like, oh, well, I have this tiny amount of craft stuff. So I want to have this whole big crafting zone, when in reality, you don’t craft a whole lot but instead you have a whole bunch of tools that need to be dealt with. So instead of trying to make this huge space for something that you have very little of what you want to do more of you need to make the space for the things you have a lot of that you’re keeping and try to keep those reality goals in check a little bit, which is why like in the picture we had to go out and buy organizers to install on the wall for all of his power tools and then we had to install an entire pegboard system and have it extremely detailed laid out because he does electrical, he does plumbing, he does this and anyone who does a lot of different varying types of work like that you understand that those tools are very different and so being able to break things up properly to make your life easier is a really important part of organizing for sure.

Lance Johnson   06:32

And I love in the pictures if you go back to the picture is the clock and dustpan, are the same in both pictures.

Thea Ranney   07:57

Oh, yeah, we got to leave something that’s just recognizable.

Adrian Schermer   08:02

That’s awesome. I love that, all right, Thea my question for you is, what is your clients number one fear?

Thea Ranney   08:18

So, there’s two actually so and they’re very much equal. So I get two main fears whenever it comes to working with a client, the biggest one obviously, is judgment. A lot of people absolutely fear judgment. I’m working with a woman right now. She is amazing and if you went into her house, beautiful, pristine open floor penthouse. If you went to her house, you would think that it was Pinterest perfect. Because if you don’t dive into the cabinets, or the drawers or anything, that’s what it looks like. It’s very minimalistic, almost like a stage type of feel, beautiful house and we’re going through yesterday doing some of her purging and obviously, there’s not piles of things anywhere or anything like that. But we’re going through cabinets, pulling things out and I’m like, Okay, do you want to keep this? And she’s like, yes. Does that make me a hoarder? No, it doesn’t not in any way, shape or form. So, there’s a big stigma of like hiring an organizer and it being just this big judgmental thing. It’s not, I’ve literally seen houses from the outside splitting at the same work because they’re so full of things like you can’t show me anything that would make me judge you. So that’s a big one. The the other one I hear a lot is, I don’t want you to make me get rid of my stuff. That’s fine. That’s not my job. My job is not to make you get rid of your stuff. My job is to organize the stuff that’s important to you that you want to keep and have it actually feel important to you. I relate it to kind of like kids is rooms right? You go in there all their stuff is on their floor. Something that they got that’s extremely important to them is on their floor under their bed, under shoes and muddy shoes at that and all the things and you go in there and you’re like, well, we need to get rid of this, obviously, it’s not important to you. It’s the same kind of concept. But what we do is we make sure to take that thing that’s been on the floor and been tarnished, that you want to keep and we make sure that it’s actually important to you and we keep it up to where it can be taken care of.

Lance Johnson   10:22

Is there ever a situation where like, in some of the houses that are being built, there’s so economise, there’s like no storage and it’s like you accumulate all this stuff over time. Like, it’s always amazing when I was in college, I go with one carload and at the end of the college year, I have three and a half car loads because every game every time I came back and then you’re like, holy crap, how do I get all this stuff home now or I’d have to actually rent the storage because I know what you back in college and there’s like houses like is as big as my house is when we moved in and I had no storage and then I did a remodel to the house that created some storage space for us to store Christmas stuff, you know Halloween stuff, kid’s stuff?

Thea Ranney   11:18

Oh, yeah and that’s a big part of things as well, especially, I mean, obviously we start going into houses that are, you know, 100 years old back, then we don’t have a lot of stuff. So there’s zero storage and all of those types of houses and the fact of the matter is, you can always embellish the lack of storage there is, there’s always going to be another way. The problem is that normally when we go into a house or we’re moving into a small apartment, which is another huge storage issue, right? We look at a closet that is a coat closet that has one bar and one shelf and we’re like, okay, so what can I do to make that work, I might be able to just put like a shoe rack at the bottom or something and that might help a little bit. If you guys have five people on your house and all of your coat closets are supposed to be stored in this space, one rod isn’t going to be enough. Let’s raise it and install another one down below. So now you have two racks to be able to hang all of your jackets and your coats and it’s about repurposing the spaces that you already currently have for organizing and for storage. You have to repurpose them. We’ve had some clients where we’ve had, where I mean we’ve brought in construction crews before and built closets. We’ve built pantries before, whatever that needs to be done to emphasize and embellish the storage is already there, and we’ll do 1,000%.

Lance Johnson   12:44

Yeah and there’s a creativity to that and obviously Thea you have it and it comes from you know, you do something 1000 times you usually get pretty good at it

Thea Ranney   12:54

I tell everyone I have great spatial awareness and that’s kind of the best way that I can put that…

Adrian Schermer   13:02

How are your Tetris skills?

Thea Ranney   13:04

I have a Tetris gone on me, I haven’t decided where, I haven’t decided how it’s going to look yet but I am absolutely getting Tetris God with Tetris tattooed on me somewhere, it’s going to be a thing, it’s gonna be great.

Adrian Schermer   13:16

I love it, I think this is so important and there’s a huge mental health factor here. You know, I read this article to tie these things together. I read this article about how if you have a traumatic event, like you get in a car crash or something or someone passes away, people who played Tetris within the 24 hours after had a better mental organizing basically, it helps their mind do this. So when you talk about these fears, it’s kind of to overcome the initial fear, the shame and everything that comes along with having a messy space like this. But then the joy that seems to follow for your clients, I think is fantastic. So you get that other side of it to the fear and then the…

Thea Ranney   13:54

Oh yeah, I call it mental freedom and clarity and that’s exactly what it is and a lot of people they’re like, oh, God, you know, I’m just not the person who can be Pinterest perfect. Good, most people aren’t. Don’t be Pinterest perfect. It’s like living in a staged house. It is unbelievably difficult, especially if you have children. You can still be organized and have chaos around you and all of the things but it’s how our brains internalize that organization. Everybody is different. Every person functions differently inside and outside of their home. The trick is to start making how you function start working for you. That is the biggest trick by far and it’s just taking a look at your positive habits and embellishing them, same with your space.

Lance Johnson   14:43

Okay, so Thea for networking and growing your business, what do you do and how do you do it? Drop it on us

Thea Ranney   14:52

I am very loud and obnoxious. I consider that to be a very good thing and my biggest goal on networking, honestly and growing my business is to find people that are loud and obnoxious. So I mean, 2020 happened hit and what all did we have to do? I had nothing to do because I’m a service business. So I did nothing but network and talk with people and there’s a difference between just talking with people, meeting them one time, getting names, oh, what do you do? How’s that that’s nice, but then you never hear from them again, that is not networking. In my opinion, it’s not. I’ve met with all kinds of people like that and I can’t tell you a single one of their names. The way that I network is I create friends, as much as possible, I don’t want to meet you once, I want to meet you twice and if we can meet one of those times over a drink, awesome, that’s how I’m gonna get to know you really well and see who I can actually really push you to because energy is everything. So getting to know people how they really are, for me is super important. BNI has been huge, absolutely huge. I absolutely love our BNI chapter because we’re all loud and obnoxious and I love that and I think that’s an extremely positive thing,

Lance Johnson   16:07

We have our moments.

Thea Ranney   16:12

But yeah, just being able to build friendships with other business owners is the biggest thing in the world and that’s how we grow our business and have grown our business. It’s how I get phone calls from all different types of people saying, oh, this realtor referred me to you, never heard of them. Awesome, let’s keep going and so and that’s kind of how that works. So creating positive relationships with people without word spreads, even if you don’t have that relationship with them, you’re super positive person with a great connection with this person that I’m close with. So you’re good and that’s kind of how that spectrum of the world works.

Lance Johnson   16:54

The transition of rapport from, one person to the other, it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s like the piece of tape that you can’t get off your finger and all of a sudden, the next person has a right. This concept of, you know, knowing and then actually, what I’m hearing you say it is, then you actually start to, as you get to know them, you regardless of what background people are coming from, you get to know them, you’re focused on business and growing each other’s business, then the liking and the trusting are just a natural follow up of that.

Thea Ranney   17:27

Absolutely, I mean, it’s a natural following and then I mean, obviously the others what I do and Rob with what you do, as well, we deal with a million different types of personalities. I am not going to fit everybody’s type of personality and that’s okay. But I know other organizers that will and that is the important piece, knowing the people that will fit the people that you know and that is that other important piece.

Adrian Schermer   17:59

Wonderful, thank you so much, Thea, where can we find you?

Thea Ranney   18:03

Oh, again, everywhere. So I am on Facebook. I’m on Instagram, both of which if you type theasorganizing, you’ll find me and then our email is a great way to reach out to me as well as phone, text, I’m cleaning communication. So [email protected] is my email, feel free to send me an email or give me a call, text or anything on any one of our social media platforms.

Adrian Schermer   18:33

Excellent and as always, you can find Rob Lance and I check in the show notes. You’ll get a link through to our websites. You’ll also find theasorganizingservices.com that link there and hopefully you can jump on the social media at least and see some of these before and after pictures, which are fantastic. Roi-fa.com/events is where you can find out what we’re doing locally. We’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up sipping mingles, we got to learn and grow on August 12th, summer bash on the 20th and there’s some photos with Santa a little later on November 12th and Thea thank you again for being here with us to explore what it means to run a business like yours. I hope that our listeners have gained some valuable information. I know I certainly have learned a lot about what you actually do and what kind of impact it has on folk’s lives. Next episode, we will explore where you’re headed next. This is part two of a three part series. The next one will be the last and we’ll kind of close out figuring out what the future looks like for you and your organizing services company.

Thea Ranney   19:36

Awesome, looking forward to it

Lance Johnson   19:38

I look forward to it and thank you for listening to our audience.