If you’ve been around my little corner for a while you’re probably familiar with my business: Pretty Neat. This organizing business has been a labor of love that I truly enjoy and am so blessed to have.
However, what you might not know is how and why I started this business. Today on the blog I wanted to pull back the curtain on my business. I wanted to share more about me, and why I started Pretty Neat. If you’re interested in learning more about my journey as a professional organizer keep on reading!
Before Pretty Neat
While I can’t imagine doing anything other than organizing, I didn’t always work in the industry. In fact, I started my career as a Physical Therapist. For more than 12 years I treated my patients in their homes.
While I enjoyed my work, I always had an interest in starting my own business but just wasn’t sure what that looked like. I knew regardless of the business or industry I worked in, I wanted to continue to serve others.
Sometimes the best ideas are staring us right in the face. It just takes the help of someone else to point it out. That’s exactly how it happened for me. A friend suggested I start an organizing business because of how organized my own home was.
That was a lightbulb moment and got me researching if professional organizing was a real thing. The more I looked into organizing, the more I found an unexpected link between a cluttered and chaotic environment and how it impacts us negatively in our health and well-being. This organizing business felt like a perfect fit to utilize my medical background and continue helping others live a better life.
In February of 2018 Pretty Neat: An Organizational Solution was born!
Building Pretty Neat
Starting and building a business are two very different things. Starting a business is a decision, but building & running a successful business is not. Its countless hours of research, second guessing yourself, learning a lot of new things, and making plenty of mistakes.
I quickly realized just how much I needed to learn if I wanted Pretty Neat to be successful. That’s when I purchased an organizing course called Inspired Organizer. This taught me how to run the business side of an organizing business.
In addition to taking courses, I also met with other business owners who were willing, and asked many questions. I tried to soak up any information that I could to have a plan for how I would run my business and what I needed to do to serve my clients well.
The first year was slow and took a lot of consistency, hard work, and tenacity. Slowly but surely I was getting contacted by clients to help them with their spaces. I didn’t always feel like I knew what I was doing but I worked hard and figured it out. My mantra quickly became: do things scared. That is the only way to learn and grow in business even though it was uncomfortable.
After 12-18 months, I was so busy that I left my full-time physical therapy job and pursued professional organizing full time. After that I added team members to help because we got busy enough that I couldn’t do it all on my own.
How Things Look Today
After more than 4 years in business, we are better than ever. We have grown year after year in revenue and in the number of home organizing hours we have completed. I have a great team of 6 organizers, and will be looking to add even more in the future.
As the business grows, I am personally seeing clients face to face a few days less and working on the business more. I handle all the daily calls, consults, invoicing, paying team members, scheduling, marketing, and everything else that helps the business continue to grow and serve clients.
If I have learned nothing else in the past 4 years, it’s that there is a great need for professional organizing services.
Fun Facts About Audra
Favorite space to organize Closet
Favorite Organizing Product Lazy Susan
Born and raised? I was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma (Go Cowboys!) and raised most of my life in Claremore, Oklahoma.
A cool or interesting fact about you I was an high level gymnast for 14 years of my life where I traveled all over the world competing
What do you like to do in your spare time? Hang with my family and watch my kids play soccer
Looking for Professional Organizing Help?
If you are interested in getting your home organized contact us today to request a free consultation. We would be honored to serve you!
Looking to Start a Professional Organizing Business?
If you are interested in starting a professional organizing business you can learn more about my business journey here.
