With little more than a dream, you’ve started your professional organizing business. You’ve worked hard, booked clients, organized your butt off, and have found your path. You’ve grown your little business to what it is today, but you’ve maxed out your time and your earning potential. It may be time to hire help as a professional organizer.
Side note: If you’re having the opposite problem, here are 25 tasks you can do when your schedule is slow!
Why to Hire Help?
If you’ve always been a one (wo)man show, you may struggle with the idea of hiring someone. It’s hard to relinquish control of your professional organizing baby business, but if your business has seen success, it can be as stressful as it is satisfying. The pressure is all on you, you can never take a day off, and for every hour you spend organizing a client’s home, you spend at least that much time behind the scenes.
When you hire help as a professional organizer, you can get more done in the same, or even less, time. You can carry donations out to your car faster, have a second set of hands to stop at the store and grab those bins you need, someone else can make a donation run if your session ran over and you’ve got to grab your kids from school, and you’ve got another set of eyes to bounce organizing solutions off of.
Spending less time on the job means you can work through jobs faster, get home to your family sooner, and take breaks when you need to.
Yes, relinquishing control can be scary, but it can also do amazing things for your business.
So how do you know it’s time?
Signs You Should Hire Help as a Professional Organizer
Here are 9 signs it may be time to hire help as a professional organizer:
1. You have more work than you can handle alone.
Business is booming and many of your clients want their entire homes overhauled. You’re happy to do it, but booking one client for 40 hours is going to eat up weeks of your time, leaving you with little time or attention for other clients.
Depending on the help you hire, you can either allow you to get two jobs done at the same time or get those big jobs done faster, allowing for more time for other clients.
2. Your calendar is booked out for weeks or months.
Having a full calendar is fantastic, but it’s also a lot of pressure and may leave your clients hanging for quite a while. It can also be overwhelming since you know there’s no time for an injury, illness, or even a vacation.
Having an assistant on the job or creating an entire second team of organizers can help you get through those clients faster, giving you some free time or allowing you to book clients faster.
3. You are losing clients because of your long waitlist.
You want your business to be successful, but what happens if it’s so successful that it hurts you? Having TOO long of a waitlist can lead some clients to walk away and find other businesses that can help them (although they certainly won’t do as good a job as you!).
4. You need a break, but can’t take one.
When was the last time you took a vacation? How about even one day away from your business? Burnout is no joke — it’s enough to make you want to quit. If you’re doing everything on your own and never taking a break, you aren’t doing yourself or your business any favors.
5. You are spending valuable time doing menial tasks.
There’s a lot about organizing that’s important and essential for a space, but then there are tasks that take a lot of time and not necessarily a lot of skill. If you’re spending hours of a kitchen organizing job pouring spices into glass jars, washing out canisters so you can decant food, or crushing cardboard boxes, consider bringing an assistant along who can do these tasks while you do some of the bigger organizing.
6. Your time is spent doing tasks you dislike.
What do you hate to do in your business that takes a long time? Dropping off donations? Vacuuming the floor of the space you’ve just finished working in? Washing and drying canisters?
You’re the boss. Hire someone who can do what you hate while you do what you enjoy (and are great at). Your work will only improve with your attention to what you’re enthusiastic about.
7. You’re receiving inquiries outside your service area.
You love what you do and hate to say no to potential clients, but you are getting inquiries in areas that are just too far for you to commute. The travel time would be too restrictive and cut into the organizing session — if this happens regularly and consistently in a specific area, consider hiring a team to take those jobs.
You can be involved virtually in the planning and your team can do the in-home work. You can be a phone call away for any issues that arise.
Investing in an additional team can help you earn a lot more money with just a little more work. If the team is successful, they may get referrals and stay quite busy, continuing to earn your business additional income.
8. Your clients let you organize alone.
Your client trust you to work alone. It’s wonderful that they trust you, but it can also be a lot of pressure. Having another set of eyes and another logical viewpoint can make an amazing difference in the quality of your work.
If clients want to be hands off, it’s likely that they’re willing to pay for an additional person to be hands-on if that’s what will help get the job done.
9. You don’t have time for essential tasks.
Building a website, developing a contract, building furniture for client spaces, sharing on social media, paying for insurance, invoicing clients, scheduling consultations… all these tasks take time on top of in-home organizing and you’re maxed out. Consider hiring help as a social media manager, a lawyer, a handyperson, an accountant, bookkeeper, virtual assistant, or whatever else can make your life easier and allow you to grow your business.
Related Post: Why Professional Organizers Need Contracts
Investing In Your Professional Organizing Business
Investing in your business may be scary and seem like an unnecessary expense, but you need to spend money to make money and spending it in ways that allow you to get more done in less time while focusing on your strengths is a smart business plan.
When you hire help as a professional organizer, you’re making a move that will benefit you in the long run.
