Thea Ranney 1 of 3

Adrian Schermer   00:02

Hello future millionaires and welcome back to the get rich slow podcast. We're your hosts Adrian Schermer, Rob Delavan, Mr. Brilliant at the basics Lance Johnson, good morning, gentlemen.

Robert Delavan   00:11

Good morning.

Lance Johnson   00:12

Good morning, Thea I'm excited to have you on today.

Adrian Schermer   00:17

Folks, you can catch us on Apple podcast, Spotify, audible, Amazon Music, YouTube, where we've got video as well and Stitcher, among other platforms. As Lance mentioned today, our special guest is Thea Ranney. Thea, thanks so much for joining us today, how are you doing?

Thea Ranney   00:34

I'm doing great, my pleasure, thanks for having me.

Adrian Schermer   00:36

Awesome and Thea is with Thea's organising Services. Today we're going to talk to her about her business. She's a professional organiser located in the Portland metro and this is another one, I love that we find these jobs that I didn't really know existed in our podcast and I've been amazed the amount of demand that you've just been slammed with, it's really like a high need service.

Thea Ranney   00:59

Yes, we get everything from needing to pack for vacations to moving frantically and an emergency pack out. So I mean, we do everything in between. So it's been crazy busy lately, it's wonderful.

Adrian Schermer   01:11

I love it. Well, let's learn about what made you into the person you are today

Thea Ranney   01:17

I am ready for that. Oh, the compound effect, such a good book if you guys have thought...

Robert Delavan   01:24

Tell us about why you picked this book as an important book that helps you in your life or your business?

Thea Ranney   01:31

So I mean, it's definitely business, but it's all around. Lately, I've been all about just becoming a better person and better at everything that I do, which includes just living and so the compound effect is so wonderful and the majority of the people that I meet, we're all trying to better our lives and make these better progresses and moving forward and all of these things in the compound effect literally just talks to you about doing that and not beating yourself up about all of the little bad choices that you make. But instead giving yourself praise for all of the small, amazing things that you're doing, that are eventually going to change your life down the road because everything's a compound effect together, which is huge and what I do.

Robert Delavan   02:11

But give me an example of the some of the little things that impact your life, like, I'm a financial guy. So I think of financial, but it's not always just financial that that means you're successful. It can be personal things you do and making sure that you leave the house in the morning that everything's cleaned, the dishes are put away the bed is made, just what is it for you?

Thea Ranney   02:33

You know and it's funny that it's about finances because this is one of my best examples is about finances and it's actually if I'm not mistaken, they actually referenced this in the book and I started doing this at home and it was an immediate effect and I hate coffee. I don't know if anyone else out there feels the same way but I iced mocha and so I was buying those from the store every day when I started trying to get caffeinated on a regular basis and was wasting so much money. It was unreal and because we were trying to get a hold of our finances our compound effect was we bought a coffee and iced mocha machine for me to have at home and make iced mocha here every day and the cost is that is by far less than what it was with us going out and actually purchasing iced mocha every day. So that one small thing that we do now every day has a huge compound effect on every day and how our money is managed.

Robert Delavan   03:30

Super simple, I love that.

Lance Johnson   03:37

So I'll kick this off, did you always know you wanted to be a professional organiser or did something hit you?

Thea Ranney   03:45

Well, yes and no. So kind of like I think what Adrian was saying earlier, there's a lot of, you guys are getting people on here, you didn't know that career existed. This career didn't exist. Back in the day when I was younger. I mean, this didn't start until 1984 is when I actually became a profession for people and so when I was growing up, I would organise my friend's house I was always the favourite of all of my friends as parents, we would go and organise their place or do little projects like that around their household and organising has just it's been a part of my life forever. My mother was a realtor and we used to do short sales back in the day and property clear outs and we still do that today, which is super funny and it's just kind of cascaded it seems like into where we are now but back in the day, you know, early 80s this was not a thing and so now it's becoming a lot more prevalent. I remember when I first got started I was really excited. I thought I was gonna be the front runner and I was starting something new and nobody had done it before and that was not the case been around for...

Lance Johnson   05:03

All right, so being an organiser, give us some examples of how you really impacted people's lives. So you got into this career, it's a professional thing, you know, where's the win for you, that you see that just get you up in the morning.

Thea Ranney   05:23

My when is when, so we're getting ready to actually do very emotional job coming up and it's not necessarily hoarding by any means, however, this woman is, so an emotionally broken down because of the state of her house and it is just emotionally done so much to her and when I went and did our consultation, I was there for two hours, which a lot of people know is very long time for consultation just to do a walkthrough and by the time we were done, she was bawling. As soon as I told her, I was like, no, we got this, we can handle this for you and get your life back in the way that your brain will appreciate it and she just melted and started bawling and that's why I do what I do 1,000% it is a need but it's absolutely a need, it's not a luxury and it needs to be treated like that for sure.

Adrian Schermer   06:26

Okay, I like this one because I feel like the answers can vary a lot depends on who you are, what advice would you give your younger self?

Thea Ranney   06:39

So much of my life, I have not trusted myself or trusted my thoughts or the way that I would do things because we're kind of taught growing up that there's a right way to do this and that's the right way and that's the only way and that's not really true and I really wish that when I was younger, I would have trusted the things that I knew to be true a lot more and that's without a doubt the biggest thing I would have told myself growing up is just to trust who you are and the thoughts that you have and all the things that you want to do as stupid as they sound just do them and it's okay and everything's going to turn out fine.

Robert Delavan   07:18

You know, there's a theme there, like this morning, Lance talked about, just trust the process of going through a bathroom remodel, I talked about, just trust the model, it takes me two to five years to get people to where I think they would be financially and they're savers instead of spenders and you just got to trust the progress. It just that some people can do it in two years, some people it takes five years. I think it's great advice is understand the process and trust is a hard thing. Especially if you're a distrustful person, I'm not saying you are anything but people are but once you can get there, the process is half the battle on everything we do.

Lance Johnson   08:01

That's a big deal with, it starts with that self-trust, right and then you put the people in place that around you that you can rely on to.

Adrian Schermer   08:18

That's why we do pauses because one of us was talking so yeah, we can have this slice and dice out.

Lance Johnson   08:23

Well, it's just moved to the next question and we can...

08:29

[Adrian, Lance and Rob talking to each other 08:29 - 14:18]

Robert Delavan   14:19

Okay, the last question we have for you today Thea is what kind of schooling education did you endure and I think we carefully use that word endure to get you on the path you're on now.

Thea Ranney   14:46

None, so there is now, there is schooling that you can do to become nationally certified, which means you're allowed to work in every major city in the United States. I am like to 10 hours away from being certified in every state, which is super awesome but in regards to schooling to prepare you for this no, there's nothing. I feel that all I've had, I have a very eclectic background in my professional history and I feel that I did accounting and payroll for the state, I feel like that I can handle any office and any amount of paperwork that you throw at me. I also used to do audit preparations for small businesses. So I would go from business to business, go through all of their past files for like seven years and organize them and do all of the things and then when growing up my like I said earlier, my mother and my grandmother were real estate agents and they were the top realtors in the state of Oregon and a super small town for like four years running and working alongside a realtor as a child, you learn all kinds of things that random people just don't know and that's a very real thing and so yeah, I just I have an extremely eclectic background and that's what really allows me to work with the serious variety of clientele that I have and be able to help them in all the different kinds of ways and phases that I do. So there is schooling, there was not schooling when I decided to embark on this professionally, but there is now.

Robert Delavan   16:25

So you're 10 hours away, what does that look like? What did you have to go through on that side of things, was it an hourly X number of hours or organizing board?

Thea Ranney   16:38

Yes, there is so it's called NAPO. National Association of Professional Organization and so it's just to become a professional organizer, you have to have 1500 hours of paid organizing work and then once you have that and you can prove that, then you can actually take their courses and start learning about specialty skills. So, which I plan on doing all of them, I believe there's about 50 different programs that you can actually get signed up for and target. I have a lot of my clients, I work with a lot of hoarding clients and I've been obsessed with psychology most of my life. So that's going to be a huge thing that we embark on once we get to that stage for sure, but there's ADHD stuff for you to really focus on there. There are so many different classifications of specialties that you can do with organizing; it's something a lot of people don't know.

Robert Delavan   17:36

So this concept and we've talked about this on other episodes, but this concept of like, you learn certain things in school, or trainings or what have you and then really, you don't get into the meat of it until you really do it right? You got to get into the deep end and keep your head above water. So that background that you have, which is incredible. I know you've run other businesses. I mean, it allows you to empathize with whatever problem you're solving, you know tackling for the client.

Thea Ranney   18:15

Oh, yeah 1,000% I have I mean, [Inaudible 18:20] company for 10 years. So plumbing issues we deal with a lot shockingly enough with what I do. I did disaster restoration for a few years so especially living in Pacific Northwest that comes in handy a lot because it's amazing how often I go into someone's house and then like you have mould damage, there's been water damage around here and you need to call your insurance company and actually help walk them through how to deal with their insurance company dealing with an insurance claim. So yeah, I'm one of those people I'm a very firm believer in college. I think that it's my mother was like a professional student she wanted she went to college for everything she just wanted to learn and the stuff that she knew is it's unsurpassable by the amount of people that I've met, she knew so much stuff, so much random stuff and had such deep knowledge of so many different things. She was able to help almost anyone that came around her and I feel like that's definitely a big portion of how I live my life. It seems like but firm believer in college, if you are going to go to college for something specific my advice as someone who has, I'm also a licensed massage therapist. Something that goes with that is interning, if you guys are going to college for something specific please intern while you're going to school because you will learn more from that then you will, you need to know the basics and that stuff you learn in school and that's super important but learning the job is entirely different than school, entirely different.

Robert Delavan   19:56

So what you're saying is you don't want recommend somebody getting out of college with no job experience and $100,000 worth of student loan debt and starting a business?

Thea Ranney   20:06

No

Robert Delavan   20:08

Like I don't actually like this work...

Thea Ranney   20:12

My husband's a prime example of that. My husband is a trained chef by trade. He went to culinary school for a while and it wasn't until he got into the intern portion of that entire program that he's like, I hate this and by then, he had already signed over all of his contracts, all of his student loans and didn't want to finish after that, because he hated it so much. It's important, whatever you guys are wanting to do before you go and you just go bankrupt, trying to go to college for it, in turn first somewhere and make sure it's something you really enjoy because there's a million different aspects to whatever career path it is you're choosing and making sure you like 90% of them is pretty important.

Robert Delavan   20:56

Novel idea, I didn't know that we would meander our way into college counts career counseling, but here we are incredibly valuable, especially for our younger listeners.

Thea Ranney   21:12

Yeah, I went to school for cosmetology, for massage therapy, for accounting and I can tell you right now, I like being a business owner, regardless of what that means in regards to what I went to school for. So, look into stuff before you just go there, it's important.

Adrian Schermer   21:36

All right, the wonderful introduction to you and what you do and your theories on life really enjoyed hearing how education is more than just where you went to school too, you're drawing on a lot of different life experiences. Where can folks find you and your business?

Thea Ranney   21:52

Everywhere, I'm everywhere, on Facebook, you can find us at Thea's organizing services and hauling, yes, we have hauling services on our businesses as well, which is why we changed how it looks on Facebook. On Instagram we're @Theasorganising and then we have of course, our website Theasorganisingservices.com and my email, which honestly I need to say this out loud. I was super shocked about this. So it's TheasOS@outlook, it's also [email protected] and then my phone number is 541-806-4734 and I answer day and night, so call me if you ever need me.

Robert Delavan   22:37

Unless you're trying to sell you a home Auto Warranty

Adrian Schermer   22:42

Awesome theasorganizingservices, you can find our websites. Me and Rob and Lance are available in the show notes of the link you through. Again, thanks so much Thea for your time. This is episode one of three. We're going to be continuing this series on the next two episodes learning more about where your business is at now and where it's headed in the future and coming up for events, again, our site ROI-fa.com/events that'll bounce you through Lance's site, where we post all of our calendar events coming up. I know there's a learning grow on August 12th, summer bash on August 20, some photos with Santa on the 12th and there's always some sippin mingle events and they're too great opportunity to network and meet people and we usually do some educational stuff in there as well with different speakers, just adding value.

Robert Delavan   23:35

Well, thank you so much for listening. This was episode one of three with Thea and we'll look forward to number two and getting to know you better Thea, thank you.

Thea Ranney   23:45

Thank you

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.

Thea ranney 3 of 3

Adrian Schermer   00:02

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

Robert Delavan   00:10

Good morning.

Lance Johnson   00:12

Good morning, everybody.

Adrian Schermer   00:13

You can find us online at Apple podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon music, YouTube with video and Stitcher, among other streaming services. Today is episode three of three in our series with Thea Ranney, hi, Thea, how you doing?

Thea Ranney   00:28

I'm doing good, how are you guys doing?

Adrian Schermer   00:32

Thea is the owner of Thea's organizing services and the powerhouse behind it and today's episode is all about the future for her and her company and we got another beautiful visual aid to tie in here. It's been a blast having you on the show. Today's the final one and boy, here's another just great before and after a kid's room.

Thea Ranney   00:55

This was one of the most emotional jobs I've done. So the picture on top for the people who can see the visual portion of this feed is, the picture on top is something a lot of people don't like to talk about. But this is hoarding. This is very typical standard hoarding. Walking into this little girl's room, mom's clothes were a little bit higher than my kneecap. The door where it is, it stayed there, it did not open did not close and a big part of doing this process was working extremely closely for months with the mom on downsizing and getting rid of stuff and then working on storage solutions to actually give her daughter her room back, which was her only goal and so it was amazing and I was actually lucky enough to be able to go back out this year and be able to do. This picture is about a year and a half old and we went back out in May just to do another quick purge. She was freaked out that it had gotten just as bad before it was nothing even near she barely had anything on the floor. But they just needed to have a refresher and just kind of go back through and get rid of the other things that we had set aside where if they didn't use it in six months that needed to go. So we actually were able to get rid of those things because they weren't used, which was amazing. So seeing the transformation in this one is huge for me, definitely and it's even better now.

Robert Delavan   02:36

And for reference, how old was the little girl here?

Thea Ranney   02:39

When we started she was six.

Lance Johnson   02:43

She had like a bunk bed and you had to repurchase a new...

Thea Ranney   02:52

We bought a new bed, she really wanted to make this her daughter's space because she had overtaken it for so long and just so other, hoarding is a topic of today. So just so everybody kind of knows my consultation with her when we first met. She was absolutely bawling to me because my biggest question working with anyone who's hoarding is why are we taking this step now? And it's not an insult? It's a real question that I want to know the answer to. Her response to me and this is when she started crying was my daughter wakes up every morning, super excited because we've planned to clean and we've planned to get the house together that day and then by the end of the day, it doesn't happen and by five o'clock, she is in my arms bawling to me that we couldn't do this and we couldn't make this happen and we didn't clean the house and that's why she actually reached out to me. So it may be hard to reach out when you have a situation like this and you feel at fault but it's okay because that's what we're here to help fix.

Lance Johnson   04:00

All right, so Thea tell us about this book. So you've had two good books in the previous episode. Why is this one so important?

Thea Ranney   04:08

Because it is so good, again, hoarding is a big topic today. So Trevor Noah went through, he overcame so much to get to where he is, he literally started absolutely nothing and was thrown from moving vehicles and like all of these crazy things that happened to him just to try to keep him safe on a daily basis. So this book is amazing for overcoming any kind of personal obstacle in your life. It's just an amazing thing to listen to.

Robert Delavan   04:41

It's "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah

Lance Johnson   04:52

All right, so let me kick us off is first question, what are your three biggest goals for personally any business, you take it where you want to go.

Thea Ranney   05:03

So most of our goals are business wise because that allows us to do everything our personal life, so a big one is we are huge, actually, all of our goals are community related. We're huge into the community and last year, we added hauling services on to what we do. We haul trash and donations and appliances and electronics and just literally everything and so a big thing that we are wanting to do because we are also friends with other small hauling companies is we want to yearly start getting together and rallying all of the small hauling businesses together and start doing a community cleanup once a year on areas that just seriously need to be cleaned up and with us living around Portland, that's super easy for us to be able to do so. It'll be great once that starts. Another one is and this one's not community related, but we have two patents that we want to open up later for products related to the business. So we'll be working on that and then the next one is our big end goal is we basically want to set up a giant warehouse, donations are the driving force behind our business, we are one of the few companies that will take away your donations without a fee. Unless it's a big call, that's a little different. But in general, we really want to make sure that the donations remain just that we want to make sure they remain a donation and so we have all kinds of fun outsourcing them currently, however, what we would like to do is be able to obtain a warehouse and create a non-profit and basically create a free store for anyone who can show that they're having any kind of hardship and I say it that way because I don't want it to just feel like low income communities are the only ones that would be welcomed. It's not if you have a fire and you lost everything in your house, come see us, if you are a DV survivor and you're starting over new, come shop at our store. Don't just settle for the free stuff that people give you, feel free to come and shop for the things that you want to have in your home. It is such a huge thing mentally when you're already dealing with something you feel super, super hard to be able to choose those things, super important. So that's our third and biggest one for sure is we want to have that non-profit.

Lance Johnson   07:37

So you glossed over a little bit, not everybody our listeners know what DV stands for?

Thea Ranney   07:44

Domestic violence, men and women and children who have all been victims of DV, we want to make sure that since they've gotten out of this extremely hard situation that they have the opportunity to feel good about themselves moving forward and already dealing with all the turmoil they're dealing with and choosing the things that surround you instead of selling those crap people give you is a big part of that, definitely.

Lance Johnson   08:11

So go through your three biggest goals just in a short.

Thea Ranney   08:14

So we want to do, I'm calling it the nonprofit warehouse, the store that's the big one. We want to do community cleanup annually with other trash hauling companies and create a huge movement for that and then we have two products that we want to get patent, it'll probably be next year by the time we get them patent and then really have those out on the market.

Adrian Schermer   08:46

All right, Thea what would you do if you knew you would not fail?

Thea Ranney   08:50

The warehouse store without question it would be opened yesterday if I knew it would be done without fail.

Robert Delavan   08:58

Interesting, what are some of the concerns there or fears?

Thea Ranney   09:03

Fears are, I have ran a lot of businesses, however, non-profit is not any of the ones on that spectrum and it is a whole different beast and being someone who's done businesses and I've seen a lot of them fail as well, not my own just in general seeing businesses fail. It's I think with the warehouse being our biggest end goal for sure if that failed, that would be a very hard thing to take. So taking my time making sure that it's done properly and started the right way is worth it.

Robert Delavan   09:49

Okay, so last question we have for Thea is what are your plans here moving forward for growth?

Thea Ranney   09:58

To continue to be loud and obnoxious

Robert Delavan   10:03

You probably got that covered; you might have a couple of fellow customers here too, maybe even three...

Thea Ranney   10:12

Maybe but it's one of those things where my biggest plans for growth, there's two and one of them is to continue to network the way that it happen; so BNI as well as popping in on chamber meetings and doing all of the networking through Facebook that you can do, but actually creating connections and talking with people. By far, that's the best way for anybody to grow their business, especially if you're a service business, there's nothing better you can do than that. But the other thing is that once we are officially fully nationally certified and everything else, we really want to start doing seminars and classes for hoarding. We want to make sure that we can bring a lot of awareness to the different types of hoarding, the different levels of hoarding and depending on what profession you're and the different ways to actually deal with someone who hoards because I mean, I'm sure Rob is a realtor you know, as well hoarding all kinds of different service providers deal with people who hoard and it's important to know how to do that in the right way and not be quote unquote grossed out by what you're saying and typically, there's nothing gross there to begin with. So that's another big portion and if nothing else, that's just for the stop the stigma, thought process that I have about hoarding and moving forward and people understanding how that looks.

Lance Johnson   11:49

Rob, I thought you could sell a house with hoarding.

Robert Delavan   11:54

I can and we have, but exactly, it's definitely not top dollar is the problem and typically the input in my experience, the input for the cost and time and so forth with somebody like Thea, is well worth the higher sales price.

Thea Ranney   12:18

Absolutely and it's one of those things where, you know while we're going through dealing with hoard, we donate absolutely everything that's worth being able to be donated, versus everything being trashed, which is extremely common with those situations. It's a very different beast, for sure. I actually go out with realtors regularly when they get that dreaded phone call of please don't judge my house and please don't judge me. If you get that phone call, call me because I'll go with you and while you assess the house, I assess the hoard and those are two very different things and making someone feel comfortable with anybody walking in their house. I mean, you're just destined to have a good outcome from there

Lance Johnson   13:00

This isn't a question, please don't judge me but I'm looking for top dollar.

Thea Ranney   13:06

Pretty much a big problem is that depending on the kind of Ford you'll have a lot of structural damage when it comes to hoarding. Like I said before, you know I've seen houses from the outside splitting at the same and that's a very real thing and that's very severe structural damage, still needs to be dealt with, still needs to be looked at and make sure that people know, but selling a house like that is a lot more complicated for sure.

Lance Johnson   13:30

So just the follow up on this for growth, is your plans to scale and you can't be everywhere and how does that work and...

Thea Ranney   13:40

We can, too; so I mean, as of right now, we already travel all along the Western sea line and doing what I do. We were done in Arizona last year in California and Washington a lot. So there's myself, my husband works for me full time our children are involved on projects that are safe for them to do and then we also have a team of several people that can come and help us deal with larger project jobs and we definitely want to be having I mean, if I could have a team of 20 people to do local work with that would be absolutely fantastic. So that's what we're building towards right now, for sure.

Lance Johnson   14:20

Awesome

Robert Delavan   14:21

Yeah, the scaling that's gonna be really interesting, where you convert your passion for what you do and you're giddy up being the horsepower driven business owner...

Thea Ranney   14:35

That's the most accurate way to put that 1,000% I was like half asleep last night still writing down lists of things that need to be done, my husband just looked at me like he can't stop counting no,

Robert Delavan   14:47

Looking forward to incredible things and I just hope to continue to be a little bit on long for the ride.

Thea Ranney   14:56

I don't see that changing anytime soon, should be fine.

Adrian Schermer   15:01

All right, Thea thank you again this is episode three of three so we're gonna have to say goodbye to you for now we'll probably end up having you back though in the future. As we see your business grows. You're getting pretty exponential results right now I know you're super busy but if people want to get a hold, do where can they do that?

Thea Ranney   15:18

Everywhere 1,000%, queen of communication, so phone, call, text, email, all the random things through social media and my website, they all have different ways to reach out to me so theasorganizingservices.com is my email either one of our social media platforms if you go to @theasorganizing you'll find us and then also our email which is amazingly comical [email protected].

Adrian Schermer   15:48

Love it, fantastic, as always, you can find more information about our companies as well in the show notes if you'd like to reach out to me or Rob and Lance and then there's links to Thea's websites and social media on there as well go ahead and take a look at some of these before and after’s, they're fantastic. Go to ROI-fa.com/events. To learn about what we're doing locally. We've got our mix and mingle events, wine and mingle events, I should say. There's a learn and grow on August 12th, a summer bash on the 20th and then later down the road. We're gonna have some photos with Santa on the 12th of November. Thanks again, as always, for joining us on the get rich slow podcast. We look forward to seeing you next time, folks.

Lance Johnson   16:30

Thank you so much.

Robert Delavan   16:30

Thank you

Thea Ranney   16:32

Thank you

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Episode 63 - Past

Episode 64 - Present

Episode 65 - Future