We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tracy Paye a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tracy , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
I have seen firsthand how clutter and disorganization can destroy lives. It can tear relationships and families apart, drive businesses to the ground, create sickness and mental health problems, lower self esteem and negatively affect finances. But, it’s the impact it has on children that drives me to do what I do. The success of a child starts in the home and if the home is mired with clutter and chaos, the child’s chances of success severely diminish.
When first starting on my career path my intention was to work with kids. I just love being around children and they love being around me. I’m like a kid whisperer. No matter what their age, I just seem to have the gift of being able to talk to them and relate to their way of thinking. A kid at heart, in college my teachers would get upset with me that I wasn’t sitting back and observing the kids but instead playing with them in the sand and on the monkey bars while laughing, smiling and having fun with them.
Beginning my journey by working in a couple day cares, I was saddened to discover that working with children wasn’t easily going to pay the bills and found myself veering off the path of working with kids.
Fast forward to my career as an professional organizer and I have found a way to work with kids by not only organizing their spaces but teaching them organizing skills and helping their parents become role models of organization.
It brings me incredible joy to watch a child thrive in their home, in school and in their lives once their spaces have become organized and clutter free. Knowing I may have played a role in setting them on a path to success comes with such a feeling of satisfaction that it’s sometimes hard to describe.
Tracy , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Organizing since the age of 12, after watching the show Mission Organization on HGTV in 2012, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there was a career in professional organizing. Six months later I opened Miss Organized and have organized hundreds of homes and transformed thousands of lives since then. Throughout the years, I have added feng shui consulting and productivity coaching to my repertoire of services.
I’ve had amazing opportunities to share my knowledge and passion for organizing on local and national news stations including Fox 5, NBC and San Diego 6 as well as the TV shows Face the Truth and This Is San Diego. Miss Organized has been featured in local and national publications including Good Housekeeping, Cooking Light, Ranch and Coast magazine, The Union Tribune and SD Voyager. As a public speaker, I’ve spoken at large conventions including The Southern California Mothers of Twins and Triplets and Fortune 500 companies including Morgan Stanley and Northrop Grumman. As a webinar speaker, I’ve had the great fortune to share my feng shui knowledge with companies such as Taco Bell, Wrike and Cetera Financial.
One of my greatest achievements is becoming an author of the book, “If Clutter Could Talk….The Stories It Would Tell” which which was added to the beautiful downtown San Diego library and creating my podcast The Miss Organized Show which led to several guest appearances on other podcasting shows.
What sets me apart as a professional organizer is my in-depth knowledge and first hand experience of brain based conditions such as ADHD, OCD and Autism. As someone who has worked tirelessly to understand and manage my own ADHD and OCD, I’ve been able to share what I have learned with my clients who also struggle with brain based conditions. I teach them the tools to not only get through the organizing process but develop lifelong skills to manage their condition with greater ease and compassion.
Ultimately, my goal is to provide healing to those struggling with clutter, disorganization and chaos with the intention of not only positively affecting their lives, but creating a ripple effect of healing in their families, their workplaces, their communities and the whole world.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
Like many entrepreneurs starting a business I had to continue to work in a fulltime job just to make ends meet until my business got to a place where I wouldn’t have to work in a job anymore. Temp work, full time jobs, subcontracting gigs you name it I did it. Every time I would get brave and start to venture out of my comfort zone and solely rely on my business income, my bills would be a reminder that I wasn’t ready yet to take the scary leap into full time entrepreneurship yet.
This went on for six years until that one fateful day when I was butting heads with my boss at the time. As I was looking him in the eyes, my mind was swirling round and round with the thought, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” It was in that moment I realized I was never going to get my business to a financially sustainable place until I had the guts to risk it all, stop working for others and start working for myself exclusively.
With that, I committed myself 100% to my business. From there, new opportunities sprung up, I created my brand that attracted my target demographic and my sales grew.
Has it been a rise to the top ever since? Absolutely not. Although I’ve made tremendous strides as a business owner and have accomplished things I didn’t know were possible, I’ve also had many setbacks too. But, through it all I’ve proven to myself what a fully committed mindset can accomplish, I’m more resilient than I thought I was and strengthened my character with skills and traits that will last a lifetime.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
My first attempts at marketing myself was advertising on Craigslist, attending networking groups and events, leaving my business cards in random places like Jamba Juice (which led to meeting one of my best friends and contributor to my book), word of mouth and small speaking gigs. Eventually I created a Yelp account but never paid much attention to it until I got a lead from a potential client who told me she was interested in my services but disappointed I had no reviews. As a result, I lost a potential client. That’s when I realized the importance of getting online reviews.
From that point forward, I focused on letting my clients know I was on Yelp. At the same time, I had become completely burnt out on all my other ways of marketing and decided to focus exclusively on online marketing. The more reviews I got on Yelp, the more my online reputation grew. Several years later I created a Google My Business listing and hired a SEO company to get my business ranked at the top of Google.
Along with that, I created a brand that’s easily identifiable by the hot pink, black and white colors I use. Based on the feedback I have received, some people have done business with me because they were attracted to my colors. It’s as if my colors attracted the demographic that I now mostly service. I even wear these colors when I do news appearances. Once I didn’t wear my colors and someone actually pointed it out to me and said, “Where’s your hot pink?” People also love my logo, which many people have told me it reminds them of the television show Bewitched.
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