Business Innovators Radio - Gayle Gruenberg: How to Get Organized for Your Best Life and Work Balance

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Gayle is the Chief Executive Organizer of Let’s Get Organized, LLC. She is a Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization, author of “Get the Big O: Organized! 7 Steps to Achieving Calm, Clarity, and Control in Your Space, Mind – and Life!” and the organizing expert with the lifestyle brand Change Your Attitude, Change Your Life.Learn more at: lgorganized.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/gayle-gruenberg-how-to-get-organized-for-your-best-life-and-work-balance

Your Resistance is future. The revolution has begun. We're listening to Revelepreneur Radio, helping you break the rules and build the business you need for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal from somewhere beyond the status quo.

Here's your host, best-selling author, marketing and media strategist, Ralph Brogden. Hello and we. Welcome to Rebel Purdue Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden, especially here at the beginning of the year, but at any time of the year, and whenever you are listening to this, you may be afflicted with a sense that you need to get your stuff together. You need to get your act together. You need to get organized.

Maybe you're overwhelmed. Maybe you have too much clutter. Maybe psychologically you've got too much going on. or maybe in the space that you're living and working in, you have too many things. And so today's guest is going to help us get organized for life and work balance, especially for people, and sometimes that's me, with chronic disorganization. I'm speaking with Gail Gruenberg. She is the chief executive officer of Let's Get Organized LLC.

She is a certified professional organizer in chronic disorganization, author of Get the Big O, organized seven steps to achieving calm, clarity, and control in your space, mind, and life. What a great title for a book. She is the organizing expert with the lifestyle brand, Change Your Attitude, Change Your Life, Gail, Welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. Thank you so much for having me, Ralph. It's really a pleasure to be here with you. I think everybody relates to this on some level.

they feel like, wow, I'm drowning in stuff. So I think this is really especially important for entrepreneurs, for rebelpreneurs, especially for people who are solo operators. And it is so critically important that we are organized, we've got our act together. There's no friction, no static in all of our movements so that we're organized and effective. And yet it's a struggle for a lot of people. Why is that? Well, in my humble opinion, I think that the speed of life has sped up exponentially since many of us started our businesses.

The current atmosphere, we're pulled in so many different directions. I think we all have shiny object syndrome. We have fomo. We are always being bombarded with all of these messages that we need to do this and the latest that. And then we're going to be this way. and we aspire to a certain lifestyle or a certain personality. And we just, we're going off in all directions. So it's difficult to keep all of that straight and still maintain some calm and simplicity at home or at work.

Yeah. And a lot of that is marketing driven, isn't it? Because we get thousands of messages per day, some of them coming from me, but a very small little segment of the thousands of marketing. messages that are going on. And you're right, fear of missing out, the feeling that I need to be everywhere. I need to be doing everything. And that just leads to this place of, it's impossible for us to function. How did you get interested in organization and bringing clarity out of chaos? What's your background? Well, okay, as a professional, well, first I'll back up a minute and

say, I've been organized most of my life. I think I come by it somewhat naturally. So there's a bit of nature and nurture in that I believe I come from a family of organized people. My grandmother on my mother's side was what we call a pack rat or she was called the mothball kid actually. She had everything in order and it was all labeled. So my mother grew up in that home and my dad is an architect and a planner. So he's very linear. And I think I'm just linear by nature as well as, so sorry, as well as just the way I grew up. But the way I got to the profession of organizing is I'm still, I think I'm fully now recovered as a CPA, a certified public accountant for a while. Okay.

And I, of course, that requires having everything in order and, you know, dotting your eyes and crossing your. your T's and making sure your decimal point is in the right place and all your number. And not just for you, but for your clients. I mean, it's like you mess up that. So you had to be organized, not just for you, but for all the people that you're working for. So that's even more pressure. Yes, yes. And I took great pride in finding every single penny so that my balance sheet always balanced.

See, what I do when I can't get it to work, I just make an adjustment. And I figure at the end of the year, the, the, credits and the debits are going to balance themselves out some way or the other, and that's how I deal with it, but that's probably not the best way of dealing with it. So what got you out of the CPA world and into professional organizing? Well, I'm glad to ask that. Toward the end of my life as a CPA, my children were small, and I just, I kind of topped out. you know, I will, I'll give permission to myself and to any of your listeners to say that I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. And I thought, oh, gosh, there's got to be a better way. I am going to die if I stay in this career. I was just completely miserable. I didn't know what season it was. My kids were small. I didn't have time with them. It was just, it was misery. Not a good fit for me. So I reached out to a former colleague who had been with the firm where I was. And she said, you know, Gail, I'm in this network. working group and I know a professional organizer, I think you'd be really, really good at that.

Like, of course, that's exactly what I need to do. It was like lightning hit. So ironically, that this was at the end of 2003. And ironically, in 1992, I had been at another professional crossroads. So I had registered the name of my company, Let's Get Organized. So when my colleague suggested this, I thought, oh, gosh, yeah. So I resurrected the company name, formed an entity, reached out to everybody I knew, and had a pro bono client within about 12 hours. Yeah, because there's something, I think it's universal. Some people, they just have the gift of having everything in place, and maybe that's the top 2%.

Then you have people that are disorganized at the bottom 2%, and no matter what you do, they're going to be in chaos. then you've got the big people in the middle, and that sounds like who you're working with, but people who have at least come to the awareness that, wow, I'm out of control. I need some help, and you're the one to help me. So how does that conversation work? Who are your ideal clients and prospects for what you do? That's a great question. Well, I am a certified professional organizer in chronic disorganization, which means that I work with people living with brain

based challenges that affect their executive function of which organizing is one. And the textbook definition of someone who's chronically disorganized is someone who's been disorganized most of their lives. They have a history of failed self-help attempts. There is an expectation of continuing to be disorganized without some kind of outside intervention. And disorganization negatively impacts them on a daily basis. So some of these brain-based challenges may be a. D, H.D., OCD, depression, anxiety, the whole alphabet soup of mental health.

Okay. So it's not necessarily our fault. It could be a symptom of a deeper issue that requires intervention one way or the other. Your mode of operation is to intervene and to help people with organization. So you mentioned in your book, it's about achieving calm, clarity, and control. which is, that's great. I love the assimilation there. In your space, your mind, and your life. So that sounds like three areas of domain. Walk us through those three areas that you're helping clients to get that calm, clarity, and control that they need.

Well, as you mentioned my book, there is a seven-step process that I liked to take my clients through. And it's somewhat organic. It's not, you know, you must do this this way and you must do this in this order. or excuse me, no, what I try to do with my clients is we talk. We start out just by talking, having a conversation, getting to know one another. The most important thing that I can learn from my clients is what is their big why? Why do they want to get organized?

It's usually not because they just like their space to look pretty. Sometimes, yes, more often than not, no. they want some kind of a big change. They might be just tired of living in chaos and clutter. And they want to, I was going to kind of leave this a bit for the end, but my mantra is make space for blessings, my tagline. And each individual's blessings will be different. So I walk them through these seven steps, all beginning with the letter C, it's the seven C's of organizing, that literally,

holding them by the hand, we go through a process for anything that they need to organize, whether it's paper or a room or a time management or sometimes their finances, but not so much because I've totally washed my hands of that. Relationships sometimes, you know, sometimes they just need to talk it out and have somebody there who understands and doesn't judge and can really show them, you know, this is how we're going to do it and we're going to do it together. So you're not alone. I'm your raft. I'm your bridge. We've got this. Yeah. And it can be done. It's not, we're not talking about lifting a thousand pounds. That's impossible. It's something that can be done. You just need the extra help, the extra support.

You need a system. You need the seven Cs. Now, I don't want you to give away your entire book and give us your whole system of seven Cs. But if this resonates with our listeners, and I'm sure it does, probably 85% of them and the other 10% are liars. What are some tips you could give us to get started, maybe down that road and hopefully get us to a place where we're beginning to see some results just by following some basic advice. Do you have anything like that? I would be more than happy to share a few of the seas.

Wonderful. As I mentioned, the first one is. It's consult. It's that conversation. The next is consider. And we consider all kinds of things. All challenges, all strength, all talents. What is innate to that client? So I like to say that we organize to someone's core values. So if you can keep your core values in mind and make decisions according to those, then your organizing systems have a better chance of sticking. So once we consult and consider, then we can start to clear a space. or a calendar or whatever it is that someone is dealing with. And then we categorize to see like, okay, this fits my life. This does not fit my life. And then we contain. So those are the first five.

And for instance, if we were to organize a paper system because many people call and say, I'm inundated with paper, I don't know what to do, I go blind in the face of paper, help. So what I would say is start with today and work backwards. So today, when the mail comes, bring it in, sort it out. Set aside the junk mail. Open the envelopes of the important things like bills, invitations, whatever else comes in that you know you need to hold on to. Get rid of the junk and the envelopes and all the inserts that come in that you don't need. And now you're left with the really important stuff.

So that can be a crucial point because that's where decisions have to be made. And sometimes people with brain-based challenges have a difficult time making decisions because the choices are infinite. But what I would say is put the important male in the place where it's going to be acted on. And I'm saying mail because people will tend to have piles all over their homes and their offices. It's a lot. Yeah. So even if you put physical mail into a small desktop file box, it's one of my favorite items, with just a few hanging PendaFlex folders, very low tech, with proper labels on them,

like the action item, read it, pay it, delegate it, file it, whatever. Then it's at least in a place where you can come. back to it if you have to. And there's that Ohio only handle it once. I think it's a myth. I like that acronym. I think is it, is it Alan Lakean maybe? He had the thing about do, defer, delegate, or delete.

I think I heard from him or read in his book, something of what you were saying, Ohio, only handle it once. And that's fine in principle, fine as an ideal, but most of the time, when I get the mail, for example, and this, well, I want to go to email at some point here because getting control of our digital inbox is also a big frustration for people. Oh, it's awful. Usually when I'm receiving inputs, it's not necessarily the time when I need to. to be acting on the inputs. So I'd like your way of saying, all right, let's, and I call it processing.

Let's process the inbox. And that's where we delete the junk we don't want. We set aside the things that are important. And maybe you don't take action on it right then, but at least you file it someplace that says, okay, I'm going to do this. And at some point, and it may not be right then, but at some point you schedule to say, all right, I'm going to go through my mail, and I'm going to deal with the things I needed to deal with then. But now I'm in control, not the post office. And I think you can draw a similar analogy to email. If you have your email open, I'll let you give us the wisdom. But my experience is if you have your email open all day and you're just reacting every time an email comes,

that's like reacting every time the postman or postman. postal service person shows up with mail and you just stop everything, go out there and get it, except this one is showing up every two or three minutes, and that's not sustainable. So help us translate those steps, those thoughts into how do we get control of our digital inbox and emails? Well, I agree with everything you've just said, and I tell you, I will be honest, I struggle with it myself. organizers are not perfect, we're human, and we have foibles. But you're absolutely right.

I do feel that the process is similar. I am personally trying to stay on top of it much more often than I have in the past because exactly, as you said, it comes in every two or three minutes, and I would do absolutely nothing else other than manage my email. So I think the process would be the same, start with today and work backwards. flag it, color code it, schedule it. I'm a humongous fan of color coding, if at all possible. So if there's a way to say in Google Mail, you can choose the color of your star for it to indicate like maybe this is business related, maybe this is financial, maybe this is client,

and then definitely, definitely schedule when to act on it because, you know, in a week, you could have 2,000 unanswered emails. Yeah, and do what you can to eliminate those inputs as much as possible. You don't need to be subscribed to 10,000 marketing things. If you're subscribed to a couple of things that really speak to you and really help you where you are great. But back again to FOMO, fear of missing out. You don't have to be subscribed to everything.

And just by noticing, being mindful, noticing what's coming in and saying, I'm just going just going to unsubscribe from this and kind of get control. Another thing that has helped me is when I get too overwhelmed, I just take everything in the inbox and I put it in a folder that says reply later and I declare email bankruptcy. I don't know if you've heard that expression or not, but it's just like, you know what? I give up. If anyone wrote me in the last six months and I never wrote back if it's important, they'll write me again. I'm not. I'm not going to worry about it anymore. And sometimes you just have to, haven't had to do that, but maybe once in the last couple of years. But for some people, that might help them take the first

step toward getting control. I agree 100%. And there's another acronym I'm happy to share with you. And it's also in the book. It's Deer. It's DEA-R. Delegate, automate, eliminate, and re-evaluate. And it's very much in line with what you're saying. You know, if someone else, Like, I would love a VA who could come in and just take care of my email. Free me up so I can do other things. Eliminate, unsubscribe, automate, create a rule, send it into a folder. Well, re-evaluate. See, you know, does this still work for me?

Do I still need to keep this? And periodically just go like you said, go in and just get rid of it. Yeah, yeah. I want to circle back to something that you mentioned under step two, consider. And you said organize. to your core values. Give us an example of what that looks like. Oh, yes. That I feel is important, but it can be very difficult. Because often we don't give too much thought and time to what are our core values.

We don't usually stop and think about them. But if we do take a little bit of consideration and think, like, okay, what is most important to me. Who is most important to me? You know, what type of life do I want to live? I think that helps to determine, and I like to use the metaphor of the bumpers in a bowling alley. You know, these are our core values, are the bumpers. And if something doesn't necessarily fit within those guidelines, then, you know, it's kind of easy to say, no, thank you. I don't want this in my life, whether it's something physical, a relationship, a time commitment, paper, whatever it is. So some examples of core values may be like maybe faith is really important to somebody or family or charity or leadership.

You know, I have a whole list and it's certainly not an exhaustive list. But if we think about the life we want to be living and we realize that, we are cluttering it up with things that don't really fit that, that vision, then I think it's easier to say, you know, goodbye. I don't need this anymore. Yeah, that's so true. Stephen Covey said it's easier to say no when you have a burning yes on the inside. When you know what you're standing for, it's easier to say, that's not me. That's outside of the alley here, the, the bumpers that we've established of values.

wonderful, wonderful advice. What are you working on right now, Gail, that's got you really excited? Well, I am very excited that the book is launched. There is an interactive PDF available. It's on my website on Amazon and the audio book is in the works and the print version is in the works. And there will be a course that goes with it as well. So good stuff coming. So you can work with people online. It doesn't have to be in person. but it can be online. You've got self-study. You've got the book.

So people at whatever modality, whatever level they're at, they can interact with you and get the benefit. Absolutely. I'm also a certified virtual organizing professional. Wow. I love my initials. I'm an initial junkie. Well, that's helpful. And very useful for our listeners.

The website is LGorganized.com, as in let's get organized. but it's LG Organized.com, where you can find out more about Gail and about her company, her book. She's the author of Get the Big O Organized, Seven Steps to Achieving Calm, Clarity, and Control in your space, mind, and life. Gail, any final thoughts or words of wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners because I think these tips have been very wise already. but what is a final thought that you would leave us with?

Thank you. Well, I'd like to reiterate the tagline of Make Space for Blessings, because that is exactly what we do when we organize. We move the energy around. We make good decisions, and we decide, you know, what are the good things I really want to bring into my life? So make space for blessings. Wonderful.

Wonderful. Gail Gruenberg, thank you so much for being on the program today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelproneur.com.