What a year it's been for Declutter Bee! It started with relaunching in Austin and joining a networking community that inspires growth every day. To get the name out there, we participated in a Community Expo in March, showing the outcome of our organizing services through a before-and-after display of a linen closet, which earned the Best Booth prize. That booth led to a lot of new contacts, and an email marketing campaign that tripled the email list within two months.
In an effort to grow and help people further, we studied and completed Strengths Based Coaching to integrate into the business as a value-add for clients, and received glowing feedback about how it improved clients' self-esteem, an extremely gratifying and humbling experience. In May, persistent networking paid off: Redfin featured Declutter Bee's ideas in their blog, and a local newsletter ran an interview as well.
We've learned a lot and drawn a lot of inspiration from NAPO, so we started volunteering with the NAPO Membership committee and hosted a couple of book clubs, including mediating a discussion with the author of “Pursuit of Badasserie.” Growing a network and referral sources is a constant endeavor, and one referral led to an event coordination project: organizing a wedding with more than 340 guests in Austin, which required hiring a team of three to help.
Highlights toward the end of the year included having clients consistently five to six days a week for multiple months, working with 25 new clients, getting featured in a local magazine published by Stroll, and hiring a virtual assistant to help with daily non-client tasks.
Looking Forward
To grow the business to the next level, the plan is to automate some business processes that currently take up a lot of time, and to hire two to three team members to help with larger projects so more time can go toward working one-on-one with clients. We're also looking to keep growing our network by networking twice a week and continuing to collaborate with complementary businesses, and to get certified by the Institute for Chronic Disorganization to work with clients who have ADD/ADHD.