What Professional Organizers Know About Getting Clients to Maintain the Work

Every service business owner has felt it: you do the work, the client is thrilled, and six months later it's like you were never there. Nikki sits down with two professional organizers: Brittnei Gaudio of wellnested living Co. and AnnMarie Zezima of Organized A to Z Inc. The two of them have spent years solving exactly that problem inside people's homes. The principles they've built their businesses around will sound very familiar.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why Brittnei says the real reason any system fails after she leaves has nothing to do with the system, and everything to do with what the client does the day after
• How AnnMarie's decade buying home organization products for a major Canadian retailer changed the way she thinks about what clients actually need versus what they think they want
• The consult-first philosophy both guests share, and why neither will walk into a client's home without understanding the emotional weight of what they're being asked to do
• What a neutral third party can accomplish that the client absolutely cannot do for themselves, and why that's the whole value proposition

If you've ever delivered excellent work and watched a client slide back to square one, this episode is going to show you exactly where the gap lives.

About My Guests

Brittnei Gaudio

Brittnei Gaudio is a professional organizer, decluttering coach, and owner of wellnested living Co.

As an award-winning home management company, wellnested helps busy families create easy-to-tidy homes through a refreshingly practical approach to decluttering and organization. Their services focus less on perfection and more on systems that actually work in everyday life.

After working in hundreds of homes, Brittnei knows that sustainable organization isn't about achieving a picture-perfect space - it's about creating thoughtful systems that support the life happening inside the home and lighten the mental load for the families living there.

wellnested living Co. offers in-home organization and decluttering, virtual decluttering support, and home management services such as errands, pantry stocking and returns. 

Instagram: @well.nested.living 
Website: wellnestedliving.ca

AnnMarie Zezima

AnnMarie Zezima is the founder of Organized A to Z Inc., a professional organizing and decluttering company based in Toronto serving busy families and older adults across the GTA. Before launching her business, she spent over a decade as a buyer in corporate retail, sourcing home organization products and developing a real understanding of how Canadians actually live, what they're storing, how their homes work, and what they genuinely need. Add two kids, aging parents, and the experience of navigating her mother-in-law's estate, and her personal and professional worlds came together in the best possible way. She knows that the busy mom and the overwhelmed daughter helping a parent downsize are often the same person, and she built her practice around both. Her systems are practical, sustainable, and rooted in real life because that's exactly where she lives too.

Website: www.getorganizedatoz.com
Instagram: @getorganizedatoz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annmariezezima/

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

This is the one I was telling you about. It is the You will not believe this play so that I just found literally a link to literally everyone I know.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Their biggest one. I'm telling everybody about this. Tell them my sentence is my biggest. So good. Girl. 10 out of 10, would recommend. Here's a question I ask myself after every client engagement. Is what we built together still standing? A week later, six months later, six years later. Welcome to Would Recommend. I am Nikki McKnight, a customer experience and operations strategist and founder of The Ops Shop, and this is the show about the businesses customers can't stop talking about and what they actually did to earn it. Today I am sitting down with two professional organizers who have been living inside that same question for years, and they have some things to say about it. Britney Gaudio is the owner of Well Nested Living, an award-winning home management company that helps busy families build systems that actually survive everyday life. Anne-Marie Zezima is the founder of Organized A to Z, a Toronto-based organizing practice built around busy families and older adults, bringing a strong retail merchandising background to home organization. Both Britney and Anne Marie's different approaches to home organization and their client process, and the conversation that comes out of that contrast is so powerful. Because what these two folks know about designing for real humans, building things that last, and staying neutral under emotional pressure is going to apply to every service business in this audience, whether you have ever touched a label maker or not. Let's go. One of the things I really appreciate when people have client facing businesses is you get you kind of have to put yourself in the mind of your client, not only in terms of how do they see things and maybe how many boxes of cornstarch they have in their pantry, but also realizing where they are emotionally. And for both of the businesses y'all have, I feel like letting people see into the mess, into your house, into that pantry, there's gonna come up a lot of emotions for those folks. Maybe it's shame, maybe it's fear of judgment, maybe it's overwhelm. So it's a very personal type of service that y'all offer. How do you approach coming in and being that expert in the room and wanting to help them achieve the outcome that they're seeking and taking care of that person where they are emotionally when you first come in?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

I think that starts with a consult. So it is very rare that I will go into a client's home without having first at least gotten onto a video call with them, if not in their home. Because it is a deeply personal service and you have to feel comfortable with me and my team, but me as a human leading that team. And if you don't, by all means, keep looking and find the right fit for you, because you will not be successful if you are not feeling comfortable. And it's important to me that this is a judgment-free zone and that you can be true and honest, and that you aren't just saying, yes, you can take that, and then having total regrets afterwards, or um, no, I'm totally fine, and you're dying inside. I think that's just something I've learned throughout my many careers of like how to build rapport and how to understand humans and their cues and like the nonverbal and all of those things that is like the magic sauce, I would say, in terms of why someone would want to work with me personally.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

I definitely think someone on one time, either by video or in home, like Britt said, is the starting point. You get to see not only the space, but who the person is and really where are they coming from? Is this just an overwhelmed mom who had like three kids in hockey and has to figure out how to get out the door? Or is it, you know, pre-staging for a move and like what's that mentality and timeline and all those things? So I think um that helps set it up. Um, and then I also think to Britt's point about building trust, both her and I, like we get it. We're moms, we're busy. Like, so I think there's a lot of finding that relatable factor and letting them understand. Yes, I do this for a living. And obviously, I've seen many clients and I know what I'm doing, but I also like I have to do this in my own house too, right? And I've got kids that have to get out the door, I've got aging parents that are trying to figure out what to do with their space. So there is that building of rapport and trust also comes from like my personal experience as well as the professional side of things.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I think you've both hit on something that I find fascinating, just about human psychology, which is why I love working with customer experience. We need to create systems that allow the business to function and to function effectively. But at the end of the day, if those systems and processes aren't serving humans, which is not only the client base, it's the people in the business, right? They're a part of this experience just as much as the customer is, then it's not going to function. It has to be an active process on all sides and be it's it's I think it's that interesting balance of being stable and systematized, I'll say, but also being nimble and flexible enough to react in the moment to the person you're with. What I know of home organization really is what I've seen on hoarders, right? It's people in really high-stakes emotional moments where they they they go into a situation going, yes, I want this or I need this, and they go in and then it actually starts happening and they have a moment where they're like, oh no, it is high stress, something has changed. I don't actually want this. So, how do y'all balance, you know, keeping that in mind? You know, we want to be moving things forward, but without feeling like you're railroading or pushing past someone in a vulnerable state or when they're feeling resistance or objections.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Yeah, I think it's a lot about managing expectations. We do this every day. They are not doing it every day. And so it's as simple as saying, okay, here's what's gonna go down. We're gonna tear this thing apart. Everything's coming off every shelf and every drawer, and it's gonna be overwhelming. It's gonna look really chaotic. But I need you to trust that it's gonna get messier before it gets better. And so leave that with me. You don't have to worry about how it's getting all back. That's with me. Helping them understand what's coming will allow them to digest it a little bit before it's visually in their face. And they're like, oh my gosh. I also think there's moments to your point about being flexible. Cleanse all the time, they're like, oh yeah, this is great. I'm feeling so good. And then they get in it and you can just see. If you're perceptive enough, you can just see where the light dims or they're getting overwhelmed or their answers start to get a little bit more snippy, and you pivot and you're like, okay, cool, that's good for now. I'm gonna move on to a different section. You go and have a snack, you go take a walk, whatever you gotta do, come back in 15 minutes and we'll tackle this. I have found I actually keep my sessions to no more than four hours, ideally, if the client is involved, because I have found that's like a sweet spot where decision fatigue starts to set in around that four-hour mark and they're like, get out of my face, stop asking me questions, and I'm overwhelmed. Uh, if we try to stretch past that, is when they start to have regrets about what's leaving, they start to get really snippy or frustrated. Generally, they're leaving the session feeling depleted rather than supported.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I hadn't really thought about that, yeah, after a certain amount of time, even if you have help, like I know when I'm doing it by myself, I get into periods of hyperfocus. And I'm like, absolutely, I'm gonna clean out all seven of the closets in my house and it's eight o'clock at night, and I will just go. And other days, this paper that's on my desk has been here for three weeks and it's likely not going to get it into a bin today. Understanding what those boundaries are and how to see how how to help people see those as a supportive thing rather than a you're not doing this right or you're not doing this well enough. Um Amory, one of the things I think a lot about when it comes to customer experience is it's not about getting the customer to do it right, it's to make it so they can't do it wrong. And in my mind, those are two very different things. So when you approach that initial part of a client or a job, how do you kind of differentiate between that in your mind of like doing it right versus I want to make sure that the customer or the client can never do this wrong and they know that they can't do it wrong?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

I think this is where my retail kind of operational background comes in, is I really do try to break it down. So, like Brit Britt made a good point about like setting it up at the beginning, and then it's about breaking down. And it depends on the client, right? I have quick decision makers who are all in and like, you know, and I'm like taken aback, but then I've got people who have a harder time. So it's listen, it's those listening skills. What is going to be easy for them to start with, or um, you know, especially with the harder jobs or harder decision makers, like let's start with easy stuff, like expired items, right? And so you break it down into digestible chunks of decisions or areas of the home or categories or whatever it is. So you make it and you build that momentum so then they can see the results and be like, oh, okay, I've tackled these things. I can maybe go into my closet and keep going and build that momentum and confidence. It has a lot to do with how confident they are in making decisions that they know. I don't think it's the confidence of knowing they are right or wrong, but knowing that it's leading to that end result that we know they can get to and that they want to get to.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

This I think is a really unique space where the outcome is functional, right? Things are cleaned, organized, whatever the goal was with the client in the first place, and there's an emotional goal there. I feel relaxed, I feel less overwhelmed, I feel organized, I feel capable, I feel confident. How do you tell a story of both of those outcomes when you start working with folks? How do you paint a picture for them of yes, functionally, your closet's gonna be cleaned out, or yes, your pantry is gonna be nicely organized? And here's how you may feel, or here's how I want you to feel. How do we draw that picture for people?

SPEAKER_02 10:37

In my experience, I find clients actually lead with the feelings first. Usually I'll find in a consult or as we're kicking off a project, I will start with a question like, what does success look like? At the end of our session together, what does success look like in this space? And it is almost always a feeling. Almost always, I want to feel more relaxed, I want to feel like a weight has been lifted, I want to feel motivated to cook or excited to spend time with my kids. They're calling us because they actually don't know what needs to change functionally or systems-wise in order to get them there. They just know that they're not feeling good and that it's not working for them and they're feeling all the things they don't want to feel.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I'd say it's feeling, then function, and then aesthetics, like all these home edits and like everything else that really focus on the the uh aesthetic of it. It really, and maybe it's like who we work with because we tend to work with families, but um it's never about like the pretty. I mean, obviously everybody wants a labeled bin of rice or cereal or whatever it is, but it's never really about that like picture perfect, everything's in a mason jar and there's no labels anywhere. Like it's really like, yeah, I want my morning to go smoother. I want my kids to know how to make their own breakfast and be able to reach everything. And like, so the the feeling of not being overwhelmed, the feeling of living the life I want to lead, whether it's cooking or whatever it is, and then the function of being able to do those things that to get to that feeling with ease and aesthetics is at the end. I feel so disillusioned now.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

My Pinterest boards are like, no, what do you mean I can't have hand like shock labels? That's like that's what I'm gonna lead with. And if it's not that, I'm failing at home organization. It just occurred to me that, yeah, at the end of the day, this is about creating usable and interactive spaces. None of this stuff is static, especially if you have kids. It's not, I'm gonna create this pantry and it will look gorgeous, and I will take this photo and then I will walk away, and it will still be like this two weeks from now. Probably not so much. People live in these spaces, they interact in these spaces, they do things in these spaces. It probably behooves you to understand how they use those spaces or want to use those spaces before you just organize something. Like it just clicked in my head. I'm like, yeah, clearly I would just remove everything, put fewer things back, and that's how it works. But I was like, there's probably a space in there of how do you use things? How do you want to act in a space? If you had four different clients and they all needed pantries cleaned out, would all of them have the same end setup, or would it really depend on the person? This is what Nikki needs in a pantry, this is what Anne Marie needs in a pantry, and this is what Britt needs in a pantry, and do that accordingly.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Pantries are a really subjective space, I would say. And Anne Marie, I'm interested in your thoughts. I would find there is no one pantry that looks exactly the same because every space functions differently. And to your point, I just want to say one thing that's really important is because of the home edit piece and and all of the different influences we're fed, we are fed that what this means is a perfectly tidy space. And we're constantly changing the radical. Actually, what it is is easy to tidy. Easy to tidy means you have less stuff, everyone, everything has a home, you can reset a space in 15 minutes or less. Not perfectly tidy. Whether you share a space or not and you're living alone, the objective of perfectly tidy is totally unreasonable. And unfortunately has been perpetuated by some of the content that we are fed, but no one ever really wants perfectly tidy because it feels insurmountable and like a standard we can't uphold. Um, where I constantly start is that the idea about friction uh is where it often leads. So I want to understand what kinds of things are you pulling on on a daily basis? What are those things in your pantry? Is it the peanut butter? Is it other spreads? Is it cereal? Is it the lunch snacks? Talk to me about what items are a daily use, what items are like a frequent use, and then what are irregular use items. And that will often help me understand location, placement, visibility, those types of things. And then just walk me through how you use your kitchen. I want to understand, like when you're unloading the dishwasher, how far do you have to walk to go and put away the water bottles or the, you know, I've done a pantry where the pantry itself was like halfway across the house and they had their Christmas serving dishes beside the stove. Like I say, I don't understand. Why are we walking halfway across the house? And it's just because they've never really thought about their space any differently since they moved in. And so often it takes someone to come in with fresh eyes and be like, hmm, why are we doing that? And they'll usually say, I don't know. I've never thought about it. So just walking through their routines, what's working, what's not working, and then making recommendations from there. Some people don't want to decant everything, meaning they don't want to take things out of their original packaging and put them into clear containers because they won't sustain that. They won't do that after we leave, in which case, I don't want to put them in your pantry because it will look nice for my after photos, but after that, they go to waste and your pantry looks like garbage. Uh, I want to understand like what will you maintain and what will function for you long term.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Definitely all the like, how do you cook? What do you cook with? Like all those things Britney said. I think a couple other things are again back to the functionality. So I am a very vertically challenged person. So like I can't, the things I put up high, I don't like I definitely won't use every day, right? Even though my husband thinks I I have his vertical span. But we're um so there like there's those, and there's also for like for some households, you know, is it your nanny cooking or are your kids making their own lunches? How do you use your space and how does everybody else in the house use the space? I love to create spaces where it encourages kids' independence and autonomy, as much as we can put the pre-made snacks down below so the kids can reach it or whatever it is. And the other factor, and this is coming from the small Toronto house, is the size of the pantry, right? So I think all of those physical factors, both from the human and from the space, as well as how do they function within the space, all of those kind of come into play for a pantry and everybody's different.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Home organization, or anytime you it's a service that's like done in the house for the purposes of ameliorating something. I even think I'm looking out my front lawn, I'm going, yeah, I gotta do some landscaping. You know, I have to like make things better. And I think home organization has that in common with landscaping in that I'm gonna hire someone or I'm gonna dedicate time and money to something. It's gonna look good. I'll get that after photo that that Britt mentioned. And then chaos descends and maybe it reverts back, or maybe you just get a lawn covered in dandelions, or the decanted boxes aren't being used anymore. What do you think makes the biggest difference between a transformation or a system that sticks and one that doesn't?

SPEAKER_02 17:57

You are only going for aesthetics, that's where it can fail. I would also say that often what fails is that we aren't continually managing what's coming into the home. So often a space is set to accommodate the inventory that remains. We declutter, we make decisions about our inventory, and we establish homes for that inventory. And then after we leave, they continue to buy and order on Amazon and things continue to come into the house and they're missing the step of actually letting go of things. So one of the biggest maintenance tools we say is like the one-in-one-out rule. So you order something, something comes into the home, something has to leave the home. That is the only way that you're gonna be able to maintain the systems that we've integrated because they're not meant to accommodate excess inventory. Um, and if you want to be someone of excess and you just want a lot of things, then you need to plan accordingly for that in your session. And we need to make sure that we're leaving lots of empty space and empty shelves. And you're doing this on an ongoing basis so that you can continually edit with support if that's what you're looking for. But often it's going for aesthetics and not going for function off the get-go and not managing your inventory long term afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I'm learning so much. I hadn't even thought about after you leave, I'm gonna keep buying things. Amazon literally just delivered a package to my house. Andrea, I'm curious because you do have that retail operational background. And I spent many, many years working in retail and merchandising, and it was like, okay, we have constraint in that we have this space or we have this amount of product. And I imagine that serves you well in something like this. So, how do you approach maybe bringing in some retail concepts or structures to a very personal space like someone's home?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I think there's like this visual that I create, which is like the planogram, right? Like there's only so much shelf space, and you can only turn it so many times a year. So that's, I think instinctively without realizing that that's where my head goes when I see like a shelf space or a pantry or something, is just what's gonna go in here for me. Um, and I think for most organizers, but maybe it comes for me for the retail, is that seasonal change of things, right? I have space for everything in my hallway right now, but in six months there's gonna be snow pants and other things. And like, so how do we make sure that space can accommodate the next season, the next set of sports, and keep that in mind? And that's where, again, where all that like pre-listening and consultation work comes in. I've got three kids in hockey who also play this at the same time, but in the summer it's baseball, and so you think it's less stuff, but it's not. So it's just like keeping it as a I guess an annual view of things, but not just currently like I'm here for four days during the summer. That's not what the house is always gonna look like. Looking forward from a like that retail perspective and that line review process or whatever it is, a seasonal changeover. Um that kind of is where my head goes when I'm when I'm in a home, especially that's multiple people living in the same space.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Oh, yeah. The seasonality of something I think is really interesting to think about because I I often think about success in client-facing business, where people are like, what KPIs do I measure? There's so many things. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of service businesses, it's about stickiness. The stickiness of the things we've done is what we've worked on together and what you've paid me for still going to be applicable six months from now, three years from now. Some things it's four days later. And if it's not, then that's likely a problem or a difficulty because it's probably not getting to the root of what is actually needed at this time. Because if you're constantly switching things or having to burn everything down and start from scratch again rather than evolving into a next phase, I don't think that necessarily serves a customer well either. Either or you as the service provider, if you have to constantly keep redoing things and reinventing and reinvigorating and redoing versus thinking about it, yeah, as like a seasonal planogram. I know I need watermelons four months from now. So I talked to the farmer a year and a half ago, and they planted watermelon just for me, was a real life thing I had to go through. Great times working in agriculture.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

I used to be the home org buyer, and we used to joke that we were selling people shit to put the shit that we sold and to find out by a shelf from us that you can put all these other tchotkis from us on the shelf.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

So it goes in the house. Yes, no, I get that. I do get that.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, so there's also that in me is like, oh, please don't buy like four saws. Like, you don't need that. And even just from a customer mindset. It's interesting now, like, you know, you get so much in customer research when you're at the national level, and then when you go down to this level, like there are definitely synergies, but there's also like just every person's different, and you know, a different product especially will work for different people.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

About seasonality, the sports thing really came up for me because my brother and I played opposite sports. I was a winter sports kid, he was a summer sports kid. I feel so bad for my mother. But it was also just occurring to me about buy-in, right? When you have like a service type business or even like a product, if you're if you're going to invest in a lawnmower, there probably should be buy-in from the people in the house that, like, yes, that is the lawnmower we're going to get. So when it comes to home organization, you're helping someone set up a system. So you're probably not working with every single person in the family at the same level. You know, you might consult kids on how they use their space, but it's probably the parents that are doing the most of the decision making. Going back to this idea of expectation and function and systems, how do you begin to approach that when there are multiple people involved that are not only gonna be talking to you or working with you at the beginning, but also they're the multiple personalities, they're gonna have to manage that later.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Yeah. Yeah, I would say as much as possible, if it is a zone that multiple people are using, that there is that involvement from those folks. Usually there's one person in a in a partnership who cooks the most. That's the person who should be advising on how the kitchen functions. But I also want to understand, okay, so when your partner unloads a dishwasher, what are the things that drive you nuts? Well, because they always put the bowls here, but the bowls actually go there. And like, okay, the question actually should be when you look at this bowl, where's the first place you're looking for it? Where's the first person place your partner's looking for it? So let's talk about the things that people are touching and putting away in the wrong places and understand how everyone's using the space. Often where I run into a lot of issues is like the garage or the basement where multiple people are storing their inventory and it's usually keepsakes or sentimentals, and everyone has a different opinion about how much you should keep and what should be kept and what's important and what's not important. I have one rule is that I don't get rid of inventory without the person who owns its buy-in. But that's really important to me. I am not throwing out someone's hockey jerseys from their childhood without them being there. That's not only like death by hockey jersey, but it's just not a great client experience. And so there's some inventory that everyone needs to be involved in. But when it comes to systems, usually you can suss out what the friction points are and how you can make them function for everyone. I work with a lot of kids in the kids' spaces. I am the one in the internet saying we don't need to hide the giveaway bag of toys from our kids. They can be involved in the process, they are fully capable of making decisions related to it. We as adults need to be comfortable having difficult conversations, but we don't need to hide it from them. And so there's ways of involving everyone in the process. But I'm not really interested in surprise and delight when it comes to people's personal items.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

By that way, that tie from like 1987 that went away. Oh, I didn't know that was like a keepsake you actually wanted to keep. Oopsie. Right. Not that that was my mom and dad a couple months ago.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Also, like a wife will say, Oh, my husband's such a pack rat, he'll never get rid of anything. And often, actually, what it takes is a third party coming in and someone being neutral and not pressuring at all, but saying, like, okay, you're keeping that. Talk to me about why. What does that bring up for you? Is there something else that could like memorialize that season of life? And I think what we often find is that the wife thinks the husband's not gonna get rid of anything. And I've had a husband go from like seven bins of keepsakes down to one on his own accord. And the wife was like, jaw on the floor, had no idea. And and the other way around, the husband's like, Oh, this is gonna be such a waste of money. I don't know why. Like, she's she's you know, hired you, but she's never gonna get anywhere. And we absolutely get somewhere. So the power of what we do is often that we are neutral, we're unbiased to the inventory and to the existing relationships, and we can do a lot more than they can do together.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

100%. And I think that goes for multi-generational conversations as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Yes. Parents and children can never get as far as an organizer and a parent.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

But I also find sometimes when they can get the story out about the hockey jersey, and then it's out there and like it's you know, they've made peace with it and or the chotchka or whatever it is. It's just like somebody neutral has to hear why I was keeping this, and now I'm fine to let it go. And I've yeah, actually been pretty surprised that I'm like, oh, okay, like that's great. But you just needed to talk about it or that moment in your life and that victory, and we're okay to move on from there.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

So I'd love to hear from both of you a little bit about your most challenging job, whether it was because of the space and what was present, or maybe it was because the clients were in a place that they needed. I don't want to say hand holding because it feels a little like paternalistic, but they needed additional support. And how did you navigate going through something that's maybe a little bit more challenging in terms of the project you were working on?

SPEAKER_02 28:00

A lot of people will say, like, such a hoarder, or my husband's such a hoarder. And that, like that identification is thrown around a lot. But proper hoarding, as it would be diagnosed, is one thing I have learned in my career that I will not do independently without a mental health professional on site. To be honest, it was actually like a very seasoned professional organizer who kind of gave me that tip and suggestion early on in my career. And I was like, thing about us is we are chasing transformation. So the the more the messier the better is like, it's like crack for us. But uh, there's so much mental health underneath of it that you can't possibly be successful. And so I think a lot of my learnings early on came from wading into projects where I really needed a mental health professional on site to properly support. So there was um what you find in those types of situations is often like really gung-ho during the process. And then afterwards, a lot of replaying in their brain of like, oh, I I didn't want to donate at that, or I didn't want to throw that out. And I saw this in that bag and it went in that space, and I really want it back. It's like, well, actually, um, we made those decisions together. You know, you signed off on what left, it's now been donated, it's now moved on. And so there's a lot of panic around the situation. So I have one in particular who probably hired me 10 times last year. And this woman is a single mom, really challenging parenting journey, and she wants the help and loves the support, but will not maintain. As soon as I'm gone, there's five packages of Amazon at the front door. I had to say, this is not the best use of your money at this point. I love, I love to support you and I love to come into these spaces. Um, but unfortunately, until we get our shopping situation under wraps, this can't be effective for you. You're just not going to see the long-term effects of it. Um and I think that was like the probably the trickiest piece for me. And it took me a while to have that difficult conversation and to turn down business, to be honest, um, for what was right for the client.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

I've surprisingly I've walked into situations where there is a question of hoarding, and I've been surprised, and I'm not going to diagnose, but on the spectrum, I'd say possibly more ADHD. And it was the amount of stuff was quite overwhelming when you walked in the room. But just sitting with the client and her having that body double, the speed in which she made decisions when she had a coach with her was eye-opening to me. I could not believe the speed. The assumptions I made walking into the room definitely changed as we started working together and how fast she could go through stuff. Or to my the my point before, like she had to tell the story about the stuffy that was won at the carnival. But once she told the story, it could go out the window. There's challenging situations, but there's also surprising situations. And people, um, especially with ADHD, are very motivated. They just to like don't know how to get started or are overwhelmed by um the amount of stuff or the weight in which to attack it.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

I think when it comes to customer experience and and having a customer-focused business, we tend to think about things like a brand promise, which is not purpose. A brand purpose is like your big why. It's the mission statement, it's the vision. But a brand promise is more of an operational decision. This is the standard that anybody who comes in contact with me before they buy, after they buy, at any point in their relationship with me, this is what they can expect to know, to feel, to go through, et cetera, et cetera. So when you look at your business and and the world that you're in of organization and helping folks balance the function and the aesthetics, as it were, what how do you think about that promise that you're making to people about this? Is what you can expect from me and how I work.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

I go into it as a partnership. That's what I always say. This is something we're doing together, to Britney's point. Like, I'm never gonna throw anything out that we haven't had a conversation about or you haven't made a decision on. So um this is a partnership, and I will help you make the decisions in order to get to the goals you want to get to. And my goal is that at the end of it, you will be able to maintain what we have created together.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah, I would say we we back into the promise that we help you create easy to tidy homes so that you can focus more on what matters. And so I think understanding what that what matters to our clients is really important to us, and I want that to come through in the way that we interact with our clients, the way that we start to understand them and then the systems we we implement. That piece of like ease and easy to tidy is important, just as much as important as like understanding what matters most. So, where are they going to be throwing their energy instead of maintaining their home? Where are they gonna want to pour into? Uh and knowing the full human as part of the experience is really important to me. I came from corporate and from the executive level, where it was like, oh, it's just business, just business spread. And I'm like, hmm, it's actually not just business to me as this business owner. It's actually quite personal. And sure, it's a personal business. Um, but it's really important to me that I understand the personal.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah, for sure. Like the that vulnerability of letting people in your space and touching things. I think that's a big hurdle, right? To deal with humans as humans and to remember that people are individuals and how I feel in one moment, it can be different from what I feel the next day. And how do we kind of keep that in mind so that we don't just say we are human-focused, customer-centered, and then when something changes, be like, but that's not how I, but that's not how I do it. It's like, no, these are humans, they're going to be doing different things. For each of you, how can people get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Um, so uh my you can get in contact with me at www.getorganizedat.com. So get organized a to Z.com. Um, that's my website. Handles the same for Instagram. We've talked a lot about busy families, also working with older adults. Um, or you know, I kind of say that busy mom is the overwhelmed daughter. So if you've got parents that are trying to write-sized, those are kind of my other group through their families or directly with older adults.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

I'm most active on Instagram, so it's at well.nested. And wellnestedliving.ca is our website. Um, we serve busy people generally. So that's usually busy families, busy professionals, uh, and we support in-home as well as virtually so we can help you from afar.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

All right. Well, I'm gonna ask now the final question that I like to ask everybody. We've been talking a lot about customer experience and how you become the business that people would recommend. What is the best customer experience you've ever had that you would recommend?

SPEAKER_00 35:44

So we're renovating our home and we have to pick plumbing fixtures for the entire and we went to a showroom and the woman who helped us, I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was going to be, right? And because you think about the aesthetics, back to our business, right? Like I wanted to look pretty. Well, you know, how is it how does it feel in my hand? What are the ergonomics? Where's it coming out of the wall? Is it in the sink or wall mounted? And then she was like, Well, how are you gonna clean it? Anyway, just very overwhelmed. But she walked us through this decision process and every single room in our house so effortlessly, in 90 minutes, we had the entire house picked out. And by the time we got home, the quote was in our mailbox to talk about frictionless, like exactly how we as a service-based business would want to operate, like just made the decision making easy. We weren't overwhelmed, we agreed on everything, was able to navigate both myself and my husband through the process. And just I was in awe of how well this woman was able to manage us and then get us the information we needed in order to make decisions.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

What would you recommend? So I would say what stands out for me in like the client experience is um similar to Anne-Marie, I would say I'm someone who really values efficiency and doing what you say you're gonna do. So that probably comes as no surprise to anyone, especially if you know me. Um, but I expect a response pretty promptly if I am reaching out to you for a quote or an inquiry. Um, I expect you to follow up with me promptly after you say you're going to send me something. Um and I expect you to stand by your service. So the top customer experiences for me where I come through, come back to them over and over again is Dyson vacuum. I had a vacuum that I got for my wedding eight years ago. And I just bought my first new one because Dyson kept sending me new parts and new vacuums to stand by their vacuum. And I will forever buy a Dyson vacuum because of that experience, because they stood by their product and they wanted to stand by that experience and it was quick and it was prompt, and they recognized that I could not go very long without a vacuum because I have dogs and everything was very efficient, and that was really important to me. I also find when customer experience is like if I order something and it doesn't fit, they recognize that it's actually really annoying for me to go and find a package and print out a mailing label and send it back to them, and they're not going to do anything with it. So they say, keep it and give it to someone who could use it and we'll send you a new one. Um, those types of things in the client experience are incredibly impactful for me as a consumer. And I try to translate those into my customer experience of and I hear it from clients who are like, you were the first one to get back to me from an inquiry. I reached out to five different organizers. The other thing I would say, I and any opportunity I try on a soapbox is as a business or a brand, stop trying to shove branded stuff down to your consumers. They don't want it. And I'm just throwing it out.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Uh I love that you mentioned this. I've been going to trade shows and conventions since I was a kid because my dad was a high up exec in retail my entire childhood. So I would always go to these conventions and I would get swag bags, and I'm like, 98% of that shit gets left into a tourum because it's garbage. So now I'm like, anytime any of my clients want to do swag, I'm like, I hear you. They need to be something useful, and your brand really shouldn't be on it at all. Because if I like it, I'm gonna remember where I got it from. But I don't want like a Donald's baseball cup or like a you know, even a Disney. I got I'm a Disney kid. I'm like, I don't need Disney World or Orlando on the shirt. I'm like, give me a Mickey with no words, I'll wear it more. I'm throwing it out.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Trust me when I say I'm throwing it out. And so it's better for our planet, it's better for your budget. Just lean in. So I mean give more to your client experience where you would print a printed lanyard or a mug or a hat or whatever it is you're doing, and lean into what your customers are experiencing when they're with you and not the crap. Our client gift is a shower steamer because it literally disappears.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Yes, it disappears. I think it's awesome. I love this. I love this so much. Okay, we're taking things up because it goes back to your like one in one out, or what is the strategy going forward? Everybody who's doing branded swag, honestly, I know how expensive it is. I've worked in branded swag and manufacturing for a long time. I'm like, put it down. Stop it down.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

After expired items, it's the next on my list.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Oh my gosh, this totally makes sense. Okay, real quick, if we have time, I'm like, what are the top one, two, three things that you see the most like that go? Like expired items, shitty branded swag. But what are the other kind of like reusable grocery bags? Oh, okay. Yep. So many.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Yeah. So many. So many. We don't need any more. We just need to figure out a way to remember together. We have. Yeah. That too. Put them in a place while you remember to use them and stop getting more. Just use your hands. Do multiple trips. Stop buying them.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

But I would say that I'm often getting rid of reusable garbage bags, lots of like little toys, like trinket toys, dollar store crap, uh McDonald's happy meal toys. Happy Meals, anything free being from an arcade. Usually end up at the bottom of the bucket. But yeah, the long story short is we need less than we have, and we use 20% of 80% of what we own. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

So I need to go clean things. Welcome to the Would Recommend After Show. It's just me, Nikki, reflecting back on another epic discussion on the show and pulling some stuff out for you, my listening audience of business besties, on how we can apply some of the techniques, the processes, the decision-making filters from Britney and Anne-Marie into our own businesses. The first thing I'm going to pull out is what I'm going to call the maintenance question. Brittany told a story about how a client she'd worked with multiple times who couldn't stop the shopping that was undoing or would, I guess, corrupt every system that she built. And Britney had to have that conversation of this isn't the best use of your money right now to work with me, to hire me, because until the behavior changes, the work can't hold. And not only is that a hard conversation to have with a person, with a human, with a client of, I'm so sorry we can't work together anymore, or this is not a good time because you have to do something. It's also a deeply client-focused decision because she's essentially saying, I care more about your outcome than the invoice or the money in my bank. So here's the translation for your business stickiness is a KPI. Many, many years ago, when I went back to running my own business, I really struggled with what are my KPIs? What do I want to track or use as my own personal version of success? Yes, there's revenue, yes, there's profitability, yes, there's take home. But if I want to truly track the impact being made, what can that look like for me? And I ultimately landed on stickiness. And this is not client retention in that how long do they stick around? It is whether the work that I did with my clients is still being used six months after we wrapped. If I create an offer, if I create a system, if I build out a certain way of running a business, and then I check in later and none of it is still running, or none of it is being used, then I didn't really do my job as well as I could have. Maybe the system was wrong for how they actually operate, and maybe I missed a maintenance step, or or maybe I built something for the ideal version of their business and what they told me it was instead of the real one. But that gap is on me just as much as it's on them. And I think our two guests today would say something similar. So stickiness as a KP. If the impact that you create is still around several months, several weeks, several days, several years after you've worked with someone, is that a true representation of the impact that you had with that client? The second one I want to reflect back on is neutrality as a service. Both Britney and Anne-Marie talked about being the third party in the room, the person who isn't emotionally attached to the hockey jersey or to the seven bins of keepsakes and 20 years of your child's art, and how that can change what is possible for their clients. Clients can let go of things with a professional organizer that they cannot let go of with their partner or their kids because there's no relationship history in the room. There's no score being kept. There's no judgment on why didn't you throw out your 75 ties that you haven't worn in 20 years before now? In your business, that is safety. That's the neutrality. That's what you are providing when a client hires you instead of trying to figure out something themselves or with their internal team. You are the person who can ask the question that nobody inside the business wants to ask. You can name the thing that everyone has been tiptoeing around. You can say, I don't think this is working, without the conversation becoming about who was right or who is dealing with the unsaid history in the room. And honestly, that's not a soft benefit of working with someone like an organizer. That is the product. And I think if you're not actively communicating that you are a safe space for them, you are a neutral party to deal with hard truths, then you could potentially be leaving an extremely valuable part of your offer completely invisible. So those are your two takeaways for today. Number one, design for maintenance and stickiness as a KPI, not just a singular transformation. And two, neutrality isn't a personality trait, it's a deliverable. If this episode resonated with you, the most useful thing you can do right now is rate, review, and subscribe to Would Recommend wherever you are listening. It takes about 90 seconds and it genuinely helps more founders find the show. You could also send it to your business bestie. Maybe send it to them with the message of, I would recommend this episode because what these folks said about safety is so true for you and your business. I think you should take it a listen. It's that easy. You could recommend, would recommend. There's something poetic about that, I think. If you would like a free framework for building a client experience worth talking about, you can grab the would recommend standard. It is linked in the show notes. It's free and it's the five principles behind some of the most successful brands in the world and how they think about their customers. And if something we talked about today has you thinking about your own client experience, I'd love to dig into that with you. You can book a spark session at the link in the show notes. 90 minutes, your actual business, no fluff. We're gonna get things done. We're gonna get, I was gonna say we're gonna get sticky, but no, that's not exactly where I want to go with that. Anyway, 90 minutes, your business, no fluff. It's a spark session. We're fanning the spark, it's going on. This is Would Recommend. I am Nikki McKnight, and we are gonna see you next week.