Ep 008 - Get Your Home Organized - Susie Hayman from NAPO

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where we talk about as many things to help you be a better homeowner. And we will talk about all different kinds of topics related to home management. Today we have a guest, and that guest is Susie Heyman. Let me tell you a little bit about Susie. Susie is the founder and owner of In Your Business. She helps small business owners, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits be more productive by giving them the tools to efficiently manage their people, processes, time, and stuff. She works with business owners, managers, and employees to develop the systems and processes they need to be successful. She has 19 years of experience in the organizing and productivity profession. Susie has increased employee productivity and organizational efficiency for small businesses, retailers, nonprofit organizations, and home offices. As a graduate of the University of Georgia, Susie currently serves as past president of NAPO, the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, a 3,300-member association. She is the recipient of a 2017 NAPO Founder Award, a 15-year Golden Circle member, and holds a NAPO Specialist Certificate in Workplace Productivity. What a perfect way to talk about organizing your home and organizing productivity is by having Susie here to help us talk about that. Welcome, Susie, and thank you for joining us.

Hey, Beth, it's so good to see you. Thanks for having me.

You too. Now tell me a little bit more about what you do and how we actually met, because we had some fun times. But tell us a little bit more about what your profession is and then exactly how we met and why we're here.

Well, when I started my business in 2002, things were a lot different. Everything was paper-based. So I did a lot of work with small business owners helping them with their paper filing systems. And Boy, have things changed. I mean, the internet wasn't even around in— hardly in 2002. I started my business then, and I really haven't looked back. The first thing I did when I started my business was to join NAPO, which, as you mentioned, is the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals. And I started volunteering on the local level for many years. And then moved up to the national level serving as secretary. And that's when I met you, Beth, when we were both serving on the NAPO board somewhere around 2015, I believe.

That's right.

I probably had met you before, but I didn't really know you. And as you mentioned, we had some fun times together, both in the boardroom and outside of the boardroom. And we always enjoyed talking football as an aside. Go Dawgs, by the way. Anyway, our— NAPO's vision is to be a world in which everyone understands and values the expertise of productivity and organizing professionals. And our mission is to enable those productivity and organizing professionals to create successful careers and grow thriving businesses that bring order and efficiency to our clients' lives. And I think one of the things that we're really trying to do is make the public aware that this is a growing profession and that it is a real profession, and you can actually make a living doing it. As Beth mentioned, NAPO has over 3,300 members worldwide, all dedicated to helping people and organizations bring order and efficiency to their lives. We provide membership to professionals working in the industry. We offer continuing education and professional development credentialing through the Board of Certification for Professional Organizers. We have an annual conference. We provide information on what it's like to work with organizing and productivity professionals, and we have an online professional member directory, which I'll talk more about later. So basically, whether someone's wanting to enter this profession, expand their knowledge, grow their business, or just benefit from the services of a professional organizer or productivity consultant, NAPO has something for them.

That's fantastic. And we did have such a great time on that board. It was a, it was a really great experience for me understanding more about the professions. of those people in productivity and organizing, and that it reaches businesses, homes, all different kinds of skill sets that people need to gather and learn in order to help humans be better organized. And one of the things that I wanted to have you on is January is GO Month, or what they refer to as Get Organized Month. Could you speak a little bit more about this initiative And why NAPO has chosen to produce this and really push it to the public to help people.

Yes, sure. January is always an exciting time, and it's generally the time where people are setting goals for the new year and setting New Year's resolutions. We used to have a Get Organized Week, I believe, somewhere in the fall, and we Several years ago, we made January Get Organized and Be Productive Month, and this is an annual initiative, as Beth mentioned, sponsored by NAPO. And the month-long event celebrates how NAPO members improve the lives of their clients by helping them create environments that support productivity, general health, and well-being. And this year we've done a lot of videos for the month representing just different aspects of what our professionals do for their clients, whether it's moving, whether it's technology help, whether it's residential help in the kitchen. We're going to have videos that sort of illustrate all of those things that we do for our clients, and you can see this page. is going to have all of those videos eventually on it. So if you go to it after the, after the podcast, it'll have more information there.

Yeah.

NAPO professional organizers and productivity consultants during this month host different events in their communities. Sometimes they're in person. However, I think quite a few of them are now online. because of COVID to showcase how they empower individuals, families, businesses, and organizations to regain control over their surroundings, their time, and their possessions.

So speaking of that, you know, you bring up a good point as it relates to virtual or digital. You know, when we talk about the home on our side at HomeZada, we talk about the actual physical space and the digital components that make up that space. And for us, The home space is simple. It's the actual structure. It's the buildings that are around your home. It's your yards, etc., and the things and the contents within the space. When it comes to digital, we also talk about the documents that you need to manage your home. Maybe you have contracts or maintenance calendars, or maybe you have owner's manuals or invoices from The service providers you use, and a variety of other digital components. When it comes to physical organization and digital organization, can you give us a bit more of an overview of the difference from the NAPO perspective and your perspective, and how that can actually impact, um, people whether they're at home or they're in businesses? Because let's face it, a lot of people are now working from home. So they have to actually change their home into a virtual office.

And I think you hit the nail on the head when you differentiated the two, Beth, because physical organization in the organizing world, to go a little deeper, is everything about that space that you're talking about, whether it's the home or whether it's the office and what's contained in that space. So it's everything from furniture, accessories, papers, to what's inside a closet, what's in a cabinet, and what's in a drawer. And whereas the digital organization is really focusing on keeping track of those things, either through an app or some other, like HomeZada, or in the cloud. And this often involves a lot of time management. and learning how to schedule. And I think there are a lot of ways that our members go into the homes and help homeowners in trying to do both of these, particularly the digital pieces or the parts that don't involve the space, because there's so much more that we do other than helping you decide what to donate and what to give away and, and what to dispose of. We understand all the emotional attachments to items. And believe it or not, people are attached to items and they're attached to papers and they're attached to digital things sometimes. So not only can we help people become more organized, we can offer strategies for maintaining that organization. Because we, in addition to the stuff, as I mentioned, we help our client— clients manage all aspects of their households and their businesses, from organizing spaces to packing and moving to photos, memorabilia, banking and financial assets, retirement, insurance. And all kinds of insurance, whether it's life, home liability, health. We help them with home inventories. We help them with maintenance and home improvement, health, their estate, all these vital documents, even passwords and social media. I'm sure there's a lot more. However, we've seen it all.

Yeah, I mean, that's, and that's one of the things that, that really brought me and really encouraged me to be a board member of NAPO is that it did have so many touch points to humans and how easily getting disorganized can actually cause problems with people. Maybe they don't do anything, they can go into debt, they can run into problems with their stress levels because they just aren't organized. So let's talk a little bit about some of the benefits of being organized? Because we talked about the different types of organization that NAPO members can provide. What are the type of benefits that really people can gain from just being organized around their home, around their life?

Well, one big thing is it saves you time and it saves you money if you know where things are, whether it's something physical or whether it's something digital. Because you're not going to buy it again, and you're going to be able to find it easily. So it's going to save you time and money, and time is giving you back time to do those things you want to do. It also helps restore a sense of order and control. Because you have more time, because you know where things are, you feel more control, and hopefully you're happier, and thus you reduce your level of stress. You get rid of that horrible feeling of overwhelm. And you're more efficient and productive in everything you do.

You know, and because we're talking about efficiency and productivity, and that's also a big skill set of your specific business, in your business, with people moving to their homes and doing more virtual work, are you seeing an uptick Of the need for organization in homes with regards to home offices, because maybe people hadn't had them set up before, or maybe they got in there and they only use their home offices occasionally, but now they have to use them more frequently and they've now got to set up a new system. Do you find that the members are seeing an uptick in that? And if so, what types of tricks are they offering? to their customers to help them become better organized with their home offices?

We're definitely seeing an uptick in this. We're seeing an uptick not only in the home office from a business standpoint, we're seeing it from a personal standpoint. And what we're also seeing is the need to have things documented much more so than before. I personally consider myself fairly organized and fairly well documented. We're seeing more and more people who are wanting to do, do more things because they've realized during this whole pandemic that life's too short. They've realized what is really important to them in life. And they're looking at things like, does my family know where this is?

Sure.

Does my family know where that is? Does my business owner know where this is? Just recently, I myself realized that I needed to document when— I pay all the bills in the family. And it's just my husband and I, but I figured I needed to document, you know, how I received those bills. Some of them come in the mail, some of them come in email, some of them are automatic. So I, I did find the need to have to document some of that. People are using password managers more than ever to keep track of their, their passwords.

Okay.

Their home inventory.

Yep.

They're taking pictures, they're, you know, keeping track of things. There are things improve— home improvements that they make. There are just so many things that are there that NAPO members can do to offer you, the public, or The professional an extra level of confidence.

So that that does touch base on you've touched base on so many different areas of tracking details, and whether it's the physical structure of the home like we just talked about, or whether it's how you actually do something. And you explained a lot of processes that you're also documenting. Excuse me, you're documenting some processes. Because one member of a household takes the primary responsibility and others may not do that. And that's normal in a lot of family structures. So with that said, would an individual— this is a great— this is a question that I actually have as well. Would an individual in, let's say, a home hire one professional organizer/productivity specialist to perform these types of tasks, or could they actually hire multiple different types?

I think it depends, Beth, on the skill set that's needed. There are times when someone might hire someone to do— actually do financial management for them, and that requires a different skill set than somebody who could Possibly, you know, set up a process for paying bills, for example.

Sure.

You know, what, what I'm seeing and what I'm feeling too, and maybe it's because I'm getting older, maybe it's because of COVID maybe it's a combination of all of the above. We're all so fragile. In terms of, of how we, how we live and when we live. And I think sometimes, you know, we start thinking about things like, what happens if I get sick and can't pay the bills?

Mm-hmm.

What happens if I don't have a will? What happens to my social media accounts when I pass away? There, there's so many things that need to be documented. And I think, you know, HomeZada is, is probably one of the best things to, to sort of help document that blueprint of our lives, both for ourselves and our family members. Granted, it might be more about what's in your home and that, and that kind of thing. However, I think that there's so many pieces of that that are important that people want to refer to and have at their fingertips when they need them. I mean, you know, 10 years from now, what color did I use to paint the bathroom? I may not have the can of paint because it may have gone bad. I may have a swatch in my HomeZada app to tell me.

Yes, that's correct. That is correct. Yeah, no, we do want to make things easier for homeowners in every possible way we can. And I really appreciate the thoughts that you're providing on all of this as well, because People, I think, get overwhelmed and then don't start organizing. And one of the things I did love about the latest strategy on Go Month is that the Naple organization is breaking it down into weekly initiatives as well, which I thought was fabulous. But we all know that getting organized in January is valuable. It's very important. It's the start of the year. But what could we do throughout the year to continue to stay organized? 'Cause what we've been talking about, you and I, is you can document a lot of things in the home, you can document a lot of processes, you may not get it all done in January, and many people may feel like they've failed, but I don't think that's the case. What can they do throughout the year to make sure that they continue to stay organized?

I think just having a, having a process is step one for doing it. Having a schedule to do it, blocking time on your schedule for certain things. And it doesn't have to be an all-day event. It can be, you know, the first week in January, I'm going to go through X, Y, and Z and pull out my information I need for taxes, whether it's, you know, online or whether it's physical paper. It can be, I'm going to clean out one drawer a week. It can be, I'm going to try to go through One shelf in my pantry for outdated items. It doesn't have to be. I think you're saying you go through the entire pantry and and fix it overnight.

So basically, what you're trying to say too is that people need to take small steps and not feel overwhelmed on I have to do all of it. Immediately, just take one step at a time, one small portion at a time, and see those little wins, and then continue to do it throughout the year.

Exactly. You know, it's the, it's the discussion of why people don't complete their New Year's resolutions. It's because they're not really goals. They're like big global things. Like, I want to lose weight. Okay, well, maybe set a goal. You know, I'm gonna try to lose 5 pounds in the first 6 months of the year, or something like that. Um, or I'm gonna organize my closet in my child's bedroom.

That's a good one.

Not, I'm going to get organized in every room of my house.

So yeah, taking small steps.

So taking baby steps. Yeah. And setting small goals that are achievable and that are manageable. You know, sometimes our own expectations of ourselves are so outrageous. That we could never possibly do all that.

Yeah. So it sounds like you're also saying be kind to yourself.

Yep. Absolutely. Be kind to yourself and manage those own expectations of yourself.

That's fabulous. And so small steps definitely—

It's progress, not perfection. Yeah.

There we go. Progress, not perfection. It's perfect. Yeah, step one step at a time. And we encourage the same thing at HomeZada because I think people get overwhelmed equally because their houses are large structures made up of a lot of little details.

Sure.

And different people live in them, you buy different things. But, um, that's fabulous. So I absolutely love the fact that organizing is key to saving money. And saving time because you can spend so much time just hunting for things and it is such a waste. And, um, there was a statistic that I read and I'm gonna read it for you because I thought it was fascinating. Napo actually put this out and, um, I thought this was fun. Men who organize their home offices are more likely to spend time playing with their children than men who have home offices in disarray. So they definitely bought time back just by having an organized home office. It's fabulous. Fabulous. So as we close this out a little bit, where can people find a Napo professional that can help them perform the tasks that maybe they struggle to do or maybe they don't have time to do?

We have a function on our website on napo.net, napo.net, called Find a Pro. And it is actually a directory of organizing professionals, all of whom are NAPO members. And you can actually pick not only the location that you want to have somebody work with you from. You can also pick the specialty that you're interested in. So if you're interested in someone who is going to help you organize your digital life, you can select that and get someone who specializes in that area. If you want someone who's good at packing and moving because you've got a big move coming up, you can get someone who has that expertise. If you need somebody who works with people who have, who are chronically disorganized, then you can find somebody who's used to working with those people. The screen just showed that Find a Pro directory. But it's very easy to use. And I encourage you, if you feel like you'd like to have additional help, to go there to find someone in your area.

And Susie, I mean, because I know this, but I wanted just to confirm with you and the audience here, there are NAPO members across the country who provide a variety of services. So there is someone for everyone everywhere across the country. And that's why there are 3,300 members to actually provide all these different skills to all these different types of individuals that may need different things. True. Absolutely perfect.

You can find somebody for whatever.

It's amazing. And I have— I wanted to bring you on as well because I talk to a lot of homeowners, and they really—they don't realize that there are professionals out there who can help them performing many of these organizing tasks around their home. Because I get a lot of calls saying, "Well, I'm just not an organized individual." I'm like, "But you could get help doing that." And so I'm so glad you are here so that we can point that out to the audience and to so many other people out there. who may need the help that they need.

Exactly. And I think too, it's so much more than just the stuff or the things in your home. I think that, you know, oftentimes, even if people know that professional organizers and productivity consultants exist, they don't really understand what it is they can do to help them. And they think that most of what we do is what you see on TV, which is we'll put everything in a pretty little box and it'll look nice. However, a lot of times there are no pretty little boxes, and the pretty little boxes don't always work for everyone. So one of the, I think, unique things about all of us is that when we work with clients, We work with them in terms of where they are, what they need, and and what will make their life easier. And everybody is different. There's no one size fits all in this profession.

Yes, I love that part of the Napo organization and the members they bring to the table. It's absolutely amazing, and I'm glad you touched base on that point because it's important for people to understand that. So I want to say thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me on this call and for us supporting the NapoGo Month initiative. So if people want to use your services personally, where can they find you and how can they get in touch with you? And tell us a little bit more about specifically the businesses that you would support.

A lot of what I do and the businesses I work with are small businesses, family-owned businesses. where there's a great deal of family dynamic. And because I like the people interaction, and I work a lot with people management in small businesses, everything from helping them with job descriptions to processes in between and among employees. I think, you know, the best way to get me is probably through my website, which is inyourbizness.com, spelled B-I-Z-N-E-S-S dot com, or on LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn with a fairly strong presence there, and I just like to talk to people who want to grow their small business, make it better, and be more successful in what they do.

Thank you so much. I— we really appreciate you joining us today. I cannot get over it. I'm so excited that we got to do this because we've always had so much fun talking about just helping people, which is amazing. So, um, for everyone else in the audience, we hope you enjoyed this episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. Please feel free, if you did enjoy it, to share it with your friends and family. Please make sure you like it and rate us, and then also check us out on all the major podcasts for our next upcoming episodes. Have a great day and be the best homeowner you can be.

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