How To Start An Organizing Business

Starting any business can be hard. So if you are ready to take the leap and start your own professional organizing business, I have tips for you. Learn how to start an organizing business from someone who has been building her business since 2013!

the organized mama on computer in living room

Before you do anything else, you need to start with a business plan. I promise you this will be game-changing for your business.

The reason being is that a business plan will walk you through actually setting the foundation for your business. The plan can include your brand colors, your business name, and your social media handles. But is also includes what products and services you sell, how you are going to sell those products and services, and who your target audience is.

All of this should be written up in a business plan. Now there are a lot of ideas about best practices for business plans. What I found is that using business plans specific for professional organizers is helpful to getting really clear on your plans.

I have templates in the Organizing Experts Starter Kit.

Company Overview

When you start creating your business plan, you want to get all the information for your company by creating a company overview. This is where you can add your bio, your company’s name, brand colors, mission statement, and vision statements. You can also include your company goals.

Basically this is the piece of the business plan where most beginner business owners spend too much time. They get overly fixated on color choices and font styles. But if you look at your entire business plan, this is only a small fraction of the pie.

While your brand colors and font choices do make a big impact, they aren’t where you should spend too much time. Those things can change. And change they do!

I have had about 6 different logos for The Organized Mama since I started. My colors have drastically changed over the years.

So instead of focusing so much on picking the perfect color, spend more time on the next few tasks in your business plan.

You can also include your social media handles and website in the company overview.

Problem and Solution

Every business solves a problem. Because if you didn’t solve a problem, then what is the point of your business?

Let’s look at clothing stores. They sell their products because without clothes, everyone would be a nudist. So they solve the problem of living in the nude.

Professional organizers solve the problem of messy homes. That is what all organizers do. But how they do it is what makes them different from one another. Just like clothing stores, they all have their “special sauce”.

The thing that makes them different from the next store. Some sell high-end clothing, others sell clothing for cheap, while others focus on a particular style of clothing like tweens or babies.

So your problem and solution is going to go hand-in-hand with your target market.

client project before playroom toys all over

Your Target Market

Your target market is the people you are trying to get to buy your services or products. This is where you can get really detailed and it will help you figure out exactly how to reach that audience. Because when you market your stuff to the masses, you aren’t going to find success. You have to market to a select few who will actually benefit from your services. Not everyone!

Let me tell you a story. Back when I first started organizing, I thought my audience was the “Pinterest mom”. They wanted their homes set up to look just like the magazines. I thought that because my first few clients wanted that look without spending a ton of money hiring a more seasoned organized. So that is who I started creating as my target market.

But then I was getting all the families who didn’t want “Pinterest perfect”, they wanted real life functional. So I had to change my target market to match who was actually hiring me. And when I did that, I was unstoppable!

So look at who you want to serve along with who you are already serving. Use that to create the target market of people you can help get organized and market your products and services to them…not everyone!

Products + Services For Your Organizing Business

Since you know your target market, you can create products and services that will support their needs. Specific to them. So they will buy from you!

This is the portion of business plan where you create what services you provide and pricing. You can create your plan for what you charge now and what you plan to charge in the future!

When I first started, I was charging $50 an hour to organize areas of people’s homes and $20 an hour for weekly maintenance of people’s homes. Then as I started getting more clients, I felt confident to increase my pricing. Now I charge $150 an hour for my time. Because I have experience to do so along with the portfolio to back up my work.

organizing kids toys with mess around The Organized Mama in playroom

Know Your Costs

With any business, there are costs. So you need to know what those costs are in order to create a successful plan for your finances. Since you are starting, there may be some startup costs that are one-time fees. There could also be ongoing fees that you need to budget for as well.

When I first started, I paid for my domain name, website, and business insurance. I also joined the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals. All these are startup costs and some are reoccurring costs as you still have to pay for them. As my business grew, I started paying for scheduling programs like later.com for scheduling my Instagram and Facebook posts.

Then I started investing in conferences and events where I could network with others in the industry. I also invested in coaching services, a virtual assistant, and expanding my team of in-home organizers. All of these were costs that I was happy to make but did change my numbers on what I was able to bring home versus put back into the business.

You need to look at everything you are spending money on in your business to determine if you are actually making money or if it is just a hobby! Businesses make money. Hobby’s are for fun!