Stand Out

Today’s show we welcome newbie, Mary Jo Contello. After working in the corporate world for almost 20 years, MJ decided to leave an entire career behind to start her own business, Organized by MJ. In this episode, we really dissect MJ’s journey in her first years of being a professional organizer and recognizing that still being in those beginning stages is okay.

Learn more at napo.net

Do you ever feel like your life has been something of a crooked path? It is safe to say we have all been there. My guest is very familiar with curves in the road, and she has learned how to navigate them well. Her latest life turn is as a career and life coach.

In this episode, my guest Allison Task and I discuss the power of believing that dreams can come true. Allison has made a career out of guiding people through their thought processes and into the answers they already know. She likes to say, “You have answers, I have questions.” Those questions have served her and her clients well.

Allison Task is a career and life coach who has helped hundreds of people transform their lives. By actively pursuing meaningful personal and career goals, Allison’s clients have changed careers, launched companies, retired early, moved their families across the country — and around the world.

Prior to coaching, Allison was an on-camera cooking host, cookbook author, and marketing executive. She was the host of Yahoo’s Blue Ribbon Hunter, Lifetime’s Cook Yourself Thin and TLC’s Home Made Simple.

Allison has a degree in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University, a coaching certificate and Master’s Degree from New York University, and a culinary degree from the Institute of Culinary Education. Her latest book is Personal (R)evolution: How To Be Happy, Change Your Life, and Do That Thing You’ve Always Wanted To Do.

• How working in a dreams-come-true environment can have a huge impact on your attitude and how you approach challenges and opportunity
• Why asking a life coach about ROI is an important and legitimate question
• How coaching is about helping people process what they already know
• Why hiring different coaches for different decisions or challenges can be the smart move
• How, why and when to break up with a coach
• The difference between a life coach, a career coach, and a therapist
• Why, if you are not at baseline mentally, you need a therapist before you need a coach
• How life coaching looks beyond career, as important as career is, to satisfaction with your whole life

Many of us work with individuals on organizing in the home. Maybe you’ve thought about working on a larger scale – with an individual or department in a big company. And maybe that feels a bit overwhelming! It definitely does not have to. Guest Heather Cocozza worked in the corporate setting for several years before starting out as a productivity and organizing professional. She started out working in homes – like many of us – but has found a nice niche in assisting corporate clients. And there’s no reason you can’t enter this space as well.

Heather Cocozza is the owner of Cocozza Organizing & Design, LLC which serves business and residential clients. She has been organizing for 12 years, and her clients include large establishments such as the Smithsonian Institution and National Institute of Health (NIH). She is a Certified Professional Organizer® (CPO®) and a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Cocozza has participated in the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) in numerous capacities, from teaching to D.C. area chapter president.

Prior to entering the organizing industry, Cocozza worked at IBM / PricewaterhouseCoopers as an ERP project manager on financial system integration projects for 13 years. She managed teams of up to 40 people. In 2005, she left the life of a road warrior, traveling full-time, and became an entrepreneur with the launch of Cocozza Organizing & Design, LLC in 2006.

Through her paid and volunteer work, Cocozza strives to enrich the work and personal lives of the members of her community, citizens living and working in the nation’s capital, and colleagues that participate in the larger, global world.

• How to expand your business to serve corporate clients
• Multiple ways our guest found NAPO to be a resource and a springboard for her career
• The role of strategic partnerships in business development
• How to leverage small corporate jobs into larger scale work
• The many benefits of project management certification
• Why volunteering to lead a group is a perfect way to start in project management
• How becoming a Certified Professional Organizer can be a great first step toward project management certification
• How to think bigger and dream bigger when it comes to your own business goals
• The reason listening for client pain points is the best way to prepare a work proposal
• How to scale your business up or down depending on the scale work at any given time

Shawndra Holmberg, CPO-CD, is the owner of Dhucks. She signs her emails with the title: Primary Instigator of Productivity & Organization for Writers, Creatives, & Dreamers. Holmberg understands the challenges and triumphs of being a writer. Her fourth book, 31 Small Steps to Organize for Emergencies, was just published in February. Shawndra has been in business for 12 years and has lately turned her passion to guiding, mentoring, and coaching fellow writers with a new business, HYH Book Coach. She’ll inspire you to share your message and get your book(s) into the hands of readers everywhere

On her journey to becoming an organizing & productivity consultant, author, and book coach, Shawndra Holmberg tackled jobs as varied as bioterrorism preparedness planner for the Hawaii State Department of Health on the Big Island, coordinated environmental and safety training on Johnston Atoll (approximately 850 miles southwest of Hawaii), and handled health and safety issues for a year at the South Pole station, Antarctica, with temperatures ranging from a balmy -7 °F to a chilling -112 °F.

• There are many great reasons to write a book – and why you can definitely do it
• Why marketing your business is not a sprint – keep up the activities because they will pay off in the long run
• The vital importance of adapting your business for economic upturns and downturns
• Overcoming anxiety around networking
• How to repurpose existing content to grow your audience
• There’s not just one format for sharing your words – use books, blogs, vlogs, newsletters – whatever works for you
• How to adapt to the always changing world of self-publishing
• Editing is organizing for words.
• Why it’s important to set smaller, doable goals.

John Hunt is the senior manager of digital marketing content and e-commerce for Smead Manufacturing. Mr. Hunt has over 25-years of experience in both traditional and non-traditional media including digital strategy content creation and new product development.

He also is the host of Keeping You Organized, the weekly webcast that often features NAPO organizers and is now in its fifth season. Produced by Smead a leader in office filing products and records management systems for over 100 years that has had a long term relationship with NAPO. Through Hunt’s leadership, Smead focuses on creating solutions-based content creation that builds goodwill with professional organizer and productivity consultant communities.

John is going to help us understand how organizers and productivity consultants can take this model and apply it to their own businesses.

• How to build on marketing assets you already have
• Ways in which NAPO partners with companies large and small
• The benefits of strong relationships between service providers and product providers
• The importance of developing your unique selling proposition – your niche and what makes you stand out
• Using seminars to add value and capture prospects already expressing an interest in your service
• Steps in nurturing a sales relationship from initial inquiry, to gathering contact, to soft touches and offering things of value, to sale
• How selling starts with proving to people you can deliver, not just telling them
• Why “I want to promote my (fill in the blank)!” is not the best sales pitch to get in front of an audience.
• Staying ahead of the transition from a paper to a digital world