Setting Up a Successful Business based on Your Personal Values with Dorothy the Organizer

Kathi: Hi, I'm back and I am with Dorothy Breininger, my friend. Dorothy is known as the most innovative professional organizer and she fearlessly endeavors to help people get organized. She is a producer of the Hoarders show, which you probably know her from, but she has a new book, Face Your Stuff or Stuff Your Face, which I think is fantastic. She's also just launched her professional Boss Organizers program. So if you're interested in becoming a professional organizer, you need to hang out with her, too. Dorothy is such a well-known expert. She's been on everything, Dr. Phil, you name it. I could go on and on about that, but you can read her bio. She is the girl to know and I am just pleased and honored that she's here. So thank you, Dorothy, for giving me your time and being on the show.

Dorothy: Oh, I'm a definite yes for you. We go so far back, Kathi. I see Master Your Muck back there and I remember when you were writing that. I'm happy to be here. Are you kidding?

Kathi: Aw, I love it. I love it. Okay, so you have done many things in your lifetime, right? So what did you do before you became a professional organizer?

Dorothy: Oh, you sneaky dog, you. Actually, I was working at a university, first at Northeastern University in Boston, and then I was working at UCLA, and both times I was working as an executive assistant to the dean. And that's a key part of how I became a professional organizer.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be super organized to keep the deans under control, I'm sure.

Dorothy: Absolutely.

Kathi: Oh, that's great. So what do you feel is the main challenge that you're solving right now for clients? You've been through so many iterations of what you do with your career. Right now, what are you focusing on helping your clients solve?

Dorothy: I think, Kathi, everybody calls for professional organizing. That's what they're calling or emailing about. And it's never about the stuff. It's always about something else that's going on. So the challenge is really for me to understand them, to leave them feeling understood. Yeah, we do the organizing, but if people don't feel understood, that stuff will keep coming back up again. Whether it's hoarding or depression or a feeling of poor mental health or weight gain or divorce or losing a job, I could go on and on about what it is. It's never about the stuff. It's always about this other thing. And so what people need, what they want, what they're asking for, it's not even a challenge. They are desperately wanting to be understood, especially in a time of chaos.

It's never about the stuff. It's always about something else that's going on.

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Kathi: Yeah. And the thing is, if we can understand them, we can mirror back to them what they're feeling. Because oftentimes they're so stuck in the muck of their stuff that they don't even understand what's happening in their life. And we can mirror it back to them and say, "Well, this is the way that I see you." It's true, we can't see what we most need to see oftentimes. So I think in our profession, that's what we do.

Dorothy: And I know earlier when we were talking about special gifts, what it is we have as a special gift, that is one of them: to clearly see these things that go on and create this chaos, which can turn to clutter in our minds or bodies or in our space, right? So even something like an earthquake from 1992, people are still bringing it up as an issue that has been a scary thing, and they've not been able to get their life back since then. Fear of flying, or an extraordinary divorce. For me, I've had a lot of these experiences. So when you say mirror back, it's not only mirroring, Kathi. I have had these experiences. I don't know if I want to call myself blessed to have had all of these really tragic circumstances occur in my life, but I've been able to use those as a way to relate to my clients. And I think that's one of the valuable keys about being an entrepreneur: to really take those experiences and use them to connect with clients.

Kathi: Mhm. I totally agree. And we are our own best teachers. Oftentimes what I find in the field, and you probably find this as well, is that we're teaching what we need to be reminded about as well. And it's funny how the universe works that way for us, especially in our profession.

Dorothy: Yeah, either what we need to be reminded about currently, or what we've just gone through. For example, when my sister passed away. She was a young woman when she passed away a few years ago, and I said, with my organizing specialty, what can I do for you? Yes, I can help organize medications, doctor visits, all of that. But what about the rest of your life? And she said, "I've always wanted to see the Pope." And I thought, okay, that's an organizing gig I've not done. That's how we take on the possibility of doing something extravagant, big, huge for somebody else. And I talked to so many people and wrote letters, and by golly, not only did she see the Pope, but we were in Rome, in Vatican City, in the first row. She was terminally ill, but she met the Pope and shook hands with him. And it was such an amazing thing that out of organization, and the desire to really find what somebody wants in their life and understanding them, we can make a whole lot happen. And people can do it in any profession.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. We can all do it. And we all have connections of connections of connections that can get the person to where they want to go, even if we have no idea.

Kathi: Well, you've done so much and you have so many irons in the fire at all times. Every time I look and see what Dorothy's up to, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how did she even do this?" So what do you do whenever you're starting to feel burnt out and overwhelmed? What's your remedy for yourself as an entrepreneur?

Dorothy: Well, there's the remedy that I need every week or every month. And then I also need one for the bigger picture, when it's completely out of whack, right? So when I need something in a temporary mode, the first thing I do is go to bed at 8:00 p.m. I can stay up till 12:00 or 1:00 with the best of you, but I shift it and I make myself go to bed. Everybody I talked to said, "Oh, that's ridiculous. How terrible. It would be awful." And there I am, just decompressing. No screen time. I can meditate. I can read. I can do crossword puzzles, anything but screens. I fall asleep around 10:00 and then I'm up at 4:00 or 4:30, and at that time I can meditate and put right what has been out of whack for the week or the month. So it's bedtime for me. That's what it is. You go to bed early and you're going to be inspired and ready again to readjust what you thought you had to do the next day, which isn't what we have to do if you just take a moment to breathe.

Dorothy: And it's that same kind of remedy that I use when life is overwhelming. When I did have a divorce, when my sister was dying and I had to commute back and forth, I had to cancel all of my speaking gigs. It's the same as going to bed at 8:00, except it's on a bigger scale. It's stopping work for about a week, putting everybody on alert to say I have to regroup, and I bring out the calendar and I put in all that self-care time. Morning walks get entered back in again, meditations brought back up again. Just level it back out and get healthy, and then I can regroup and go again.

Kathi: I love that. Put yourself in time out. Say, "Done." Do you get up every morning at 4:30 usually?

Dorothy: No, I'm a 6:00 person, sometimes a 7:00 person. But if I go to bed at 8:00, that's 8 hours. I slept, but it's the good sleep, and then I get that extra time in the morning. It's just automatically there because I went to bed early. Now it's there for me to really look at how I need to shift and manage the overwhelm.

Kathi: I love it. So if you had to give a piece of advice or an organizing hack to entrepreneurs who are stuck in it and feel like they're not free anymore, they're at the grindstone, beating themselves up, overwhelmed, they even forgot their why, why they started their business. Do you have an organizing hack or a little sneaky trick you would tell them?

Dorothy: Yes, I do have a hack for you, and I do this with myself. Just as there are three different stages of life, we have three different stages of organizing, and it applies to business as well. The first part of business is all about collecting. We're trying to get our clients. We're trying to collect money. We're trying to collect ideas. We're trying to do as many courses as we can. That's the first stage of business. And then we move into managing all of that.

Kathi: Yeah.

Dorothy: And how much do we really want to manage? There's so much, and we get tired in that management stage, right? So moving into the reducing stage, or the very focused stage, the sooner you can get into that stage, the better. That's where I'm at, and I'm guessing you're at, because we become very focused. It becomes really clear what our gifts are and what it is we want to do. We understand our own needs for time better. We know that we can charge more because of our long experience, with less work. There's such an advantage to being able to focus and reduce that flood that's coming at us from what we built. So sometimes we just need to look at those three stages, even when we're at the early stages of being an entrepreneur. Am I still building when I should be managing? Am I still taking more courses? Am I still adding more clients? Do I really need all that stuff? Or do I just need to manage it? Or do I even need to reduce and focus? By looking at which stage you want to be in, you can go in and out of those stages.

There's such an advantage to being able to focus and reduce.

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Kathi: Mhm. And recognizing what stage you're in definitely helps you. That's so succinct. I just love that. So you're either collecting, bringing things all to you, or you're managing, or you're reducing and saying, "I don't want to manage that. I'm going to delegate, delegate, delegate," or just eliminate it altogether.

Dorothy: Yeah, because many of us in this industry and others say, "Okay, I'm just going to take what I get in the beginning. Anything that comes to me, I'll take it. I'll try it. I'll do it." I know I did that. I was doing all sorts of organizing in the field and speaking gigs and on and on. Which of these things become most important, to reduce it back to where I need to focus?

Kathi: Brilliant. That's good advice for all of you out there who are entrepreneurs right now and feeling like you're stuck. Figure out what phase you're in. I love that. Okay, so what's the one lesson in all your careers? I just call it careers as a professional organizer because I've seen you in so many iterations. What's the lesson that this business has taught you?

Dorothy: I'm going to think about that. I wrote a few things down. The lesson in all of this is the intuition that I would ignore. That I would ignore. And that's where I was in those three stages. When you get to reducing or focusing on the one, maybe two things. Oh, you know what? I have another one after this, too.

Kathi: Okay, good. One more after this.

Dorothy: But just getting focused on the one or two things, because I was spread so thin. I had satellite offices. There were so many things going on, and all of them were working, but it was workaholism that allowed it all to stay intact, which makes no room for a healthy body, makes no room for healthy relationships, all of that. So that's the lesson: get really focused on the one or two things at a time that you want to be doing. I'll leave that one for right now, and I'll have another one shortly. Actually, I could do it right now.

It was workaholism that allowed it all to stay intact, which makes no room for a healthy body, makes no room for healthy relationships.

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Kathi: Okay, let's hear it.

Dorothy: Okay, so the other one is, I was always a lone ranger. Because I'm organized and determined and have a certain level of drive, I can do just about anything by myself, including changing a tire. And again, I've had to learn everything the hard way. I've had to make a lot of apologies to some of my own colleagues. I wasn't up for partnering and learning and doing things with other organizers or with other business partners, and that has completely changed, and it's so much better.

Kathi: Yeah, it's better with others. I have that same kind of obstacle myself, wanting to be the solopreneur, the autonomous person that doesn't need anybody to do anything, and it doesn't work that well. So I'm in the process of learning that as well, and that's part of the reason why I'm doing the podcast: collaborating, getting juice from other people, connecting other people as well, and learning that I'm not alone. Because everything that's been happening on this podcast is things that have happened to me. Everything that happens to us is generally happening to other people as well. So there's a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of input that we need, and support, right?

Dorothy: Yes. We need it.

Kathi: So what did you do to overcome being a lone ranger? I want to know this. How do you break out of that, Dorothy?

Dorothy: This one was a tough one, because when you have it all like that, somebody's got to help pry it open. And if somebody else isn't helping you pry it open, you've got to do it for yourself. So I made a decision that I was going to share my company. I was going to share in the financial success, share in the decision-making. I brought in a lot of people. I have a CEO of my company, instead of me being the CEO, the founder, the owner, the organizer.

Kathi: Right. Come on, Dorothy. Stop it.

Dorothy: I brought somebody in to do that. Yes, I have an assistant. I've always had one, but this one is in the realm of doing it for the business, not just for Dorothy. So the whole thing to overcome it was for me to open up and say, here I have built 25 years of organizing. I will give you a piece of what I have if you will work with me. And that is quite humbling to do.

Kathi: It is absolutely. And just like with clients, you say let go, let go, let go, and they're like, "No, I can't let go." And then once you start letting go, you're like, "Take more, have more, take it. This is wonderful. I'm so free." It's an analogy. See, organizing is everything.

Dorothy: Yeah. Letting go is a muscle, and letting go of control and sharing.

Letting go is a muscle.

Kathi: I'm actually in the process of doing that as well with my company, sharing the proceeds, sharing the business. We don't have to be alone. We just like to be sometimes. But in the phase of releasing and focusing on what makes us happy now, it's not the same as it was probably 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 years ago. Totally different thing, right?

Dorothy: And you know what? I am 58 years old, and that whole thing about not sharing, I actually learned from my mother when I was 14. I remember when I learned how to not share. I was a gymnast, and I would win a lot of the gymnastics meets. I had my competitor. We were both really, really good and always competed. She was on another team in high school, and one time between the events she and I went back there and started teaching each other some tumbling moves that we thought we saw in the Olympics. And my mother caught me doing that. "You don't share that kind of stuff. You'll never win if you share." I carried that around all these years. I know she was trying to protect me on the one hand, but it was the wrong advice.

Kathi: Yeah, it's the not-enough syndrome, right? Oh boy. Well, I'm glad you overcame that one. That's a good one to overcome for sure. I wish I knew where I got mine, but I'll do some exploring on that one.

Dorothy: Call me, I'll let you know.

Kathi: So what's the best piece of advice that you would have for entrepreneurs who want to create more freedom within their business?

Dorothy: This is one of my favorite questions, because for me, I like to build business around my personal values. So my advice is to decide what these areas of life are. We all know areas of life, things like family or making money or going back to school or spirituality or traveling or public speaking. Whatever it is that you want for yourself on a personal level. For me, I've had a few at different times. One was always making money. Now it's health and travel. Those are the two things that personally I want. So if I take what I want personally and move that into my business goals and say, I want to do business as a healthy woman who travels, now I have my focus. I have my understanding that when I travel, I'm always going to be carrying a laptop. I'm going to be looking ahead for clients. When I went to Belize with my husband in October, I looked ahead, got the clients in place, so that I was organizing while I was there and I was teaching from there back to my students here in the US. So for me, it's picking one or two of the things you value personally and designing them into your business. Anything can be designed into your business, because guess what? We're entrepreneurs. We can do whatever the heck we want, as long as our boss isn't too mean to us.

It's picking one or two of the things you value personally and designing them into your business.

Kathi: I'd say my boss is so mean.

Dorothy: Me, too. I know. It's been this way forever. 25 years. Same old story. "Work, Dorothy, work."

Kathi: I love Belize, though. Boy, what a good idea to go to Belize and organize at the same time.

Dorothy: Thank God for Zoom. We can do a lot of stuff now. That's been a huge blessing for all of us.

Kathi: Yeah. Every one of our businesses can benefit from using Zoom.

Dorothy: Absolutely.

Kathi: Okay, so now you have shifted into a new thing where you're going to help newbies become organizers. I'm so excited about that. Tell me a little bit about your training program and what you're doing.

Dorothy: I will, and that also happens to be one of the valuable resources. What do you call it? The VFR?

Kathi: Yeah, valuable free resource.

Dorothy: So that ties into the same thing, Kathi. When I look back, it's been 25 years of professional organizing, and I've designed my own systems. I also belong to a lot of groups like NAPO, which I love. I'm still a member and I support it. And the ICD, still a member and still support it. But becoming a Boss Organizer is completely different, because it's this personality. If you like this personality, then you would want to train with me. If you don't, then you wouldn't want to train with me. There's a certain style and certain things that I teach that are completely different from where we all might have gotten our education in the past. So it's definitely not a competitive thing. It's an additive thing, and it's wonderful. We've got 500 Boss Organizers, slated to go to 1,000 this year, and the community is huge. Many of the organizers who get certified also come on the Hoarders television show with me when I'm doing the show. You have to be certified to do that. So the community is interesting, because, Kathi, there was such a shift. People were losing their jobs, or became unemployed last year because they walked off their jobs. It's one of the two, right? We are in what's called the Great Resignation, and they're resigning so that they can go to something else. And the something else lives under the umbrella of professional organizing.

Kathi: Mhm.

Dorothy: And so what we do is take your talent and turn it into professional organizing for you. That's what it is. It's pretty cool. And it's a wonderful career. It's been so rewarding for all of us that are doing it.

Kathi: So what is the valuable free resource then that they can download?

Dorothy: We do this all year long, so it doesn't matter when you decide to join us or not, but go to bossorganizer.com, and we have a 90-minute session that you can come to, to learn whether or not you want to become a professional organizer, and also learn some organizing tips and tricks. Plus, we have holiday events that are free to the public. So we give away a lot of content. I know you do that as well. It's so that you out there can understand whether you want to become a professional organizer, what it takes, what you could potentially make. Although we can't discuss fees and things, we can share with you how you can use a formula to come up with your own. That's what it's all about. We have a lot of people who are real estate agents and nurses and dental hygienists and teachers who have all been taking this on.

Kathi: It's perfect for any business. Okay, so what is the one question, my friend, that I should have asked you that I did not? I could talk to you forever, but tell me something good.

Dorothy: I think the question is, what's in your gut?

Kathi: Ah.

Dorothy: So what's in your gut is the question. That means, what are you feeling? What is it you really want to be doing? It ties into all the other questions that you asked, but if you're concerned whether you're going down the right path or the wrong path, whatever it is, what is your gut telling you? Should you have your mother move in with you or not? Do you really want to stay married to that person? Whatever these things are, what is in your gut? So you take what you think in your gut, you really truly want to marry that person, divorce that person, and you send it to your heart, and you know you're happy. That's what you use instead of your brain. Don't use your brain to make those decisions. Go to your gut first, and your heart, whether it's business or personal. I know you asked me what the question is, but I guess I'm turning it around and putting it out to your listeners and viewers. Check with your gut.

Kathi: Yeah, I love that. We can't go wrong if we check with our gut and our heart. Because our gut could be saying flee and our heart could be saying, but I really want to do it, right? So both of those checkpoints are the perfect way to go. Well, I hope that you have great success. In fact, I know that you're going to have great success with your school and your trainees, and I know your people are having lots of fun dancing around. So make sure that you join in to one of Dorothy's free sessions so that you can check out whether you want to be a professional organizer. I'll tell you what, it's a great career. So thank you, everyone, for joining us, and thanks so much, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Thank you. Thanks, Kathi.