How Your Home Affects Your Day | With Layne Brookshire

Layne Brookshire of Ms. Placed Professional Organizing joins the show.  We discuss how your home being disorganized affects not only you but those around you and the rest of your day.  We also talk about ways to get more organized that are easy but why it's not always possible to do it alone and how that is okay too. 

 

Troy: Hope everyone's having a great day. Today on the Real Estate Insights Podcast, I am joined by Laney Brookshire of misplaced professional organizing.

How's it going today?

Layne: It's going great, Troy. Thanks for having.

Troy: Great. Glad that we could have you on and hopefully get some insights on the organization world, because I know most of us can use a little bit more organizing in.

Layne: Yeah. I think that's true even for organizers. It's really easy for us to organize other people's stuff, and when it comes to your own things for your own projects. For instance, I've been needing to hang a curtain there for the longest time and you just, you get to everyone else's projects before you get to your own.

It's important to be able to carve that time out. And that's something that we're really lucky and is a big part of our service, is that we're able to. Be really great at what we do, but we also offer accountability and we're selling to our clients that we are going to get the projects done that have usually been on their plate for a really long time, or it's an upcoming project that is causing stress or overwhelm or has got an approaching deadline that they really need help just getting it done and getting it.

Troy: Yeah, that happens a lot, right? Like there, there's only so many hours in a day. And as busy and even on the productive days as good as things go, there's usually stuff that doesn't get done in everyone's day and un. . Fortunately, in a lot of cases it's you tend to prioritize the stuff that you feel impacts others, work-wise, family-wise, those kind of things, and sometimes will neglect the things that might be impacting you.

Even though working on those as much or if not more, will also a lot of times impact how well you can help others in your life.

Layne: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know what the disconnect is because you're right. It's like we do the things that impact other people and not what impacts ourselves, but. Let's say you're someone who lives alone or you're somebody who's a part of a family unit. Our spaces really do still impact those on, in the next level, whether it's our family or it's our coworkers that we're going to meet to be at the office or whatever.

It impacts our time and our routine at home in getting ready. More than that, it impacts our stress level and our mindset of how we're beginning and starting our day. Are you feeling rushed to get out the door? Are you feeling like you're getting hung up in your closet, you're tripping over stuff, or you can't find what you need for an interview or just for your workday?

How's your routine in your flow happening in your kitchen when you're making breakfast getting ready? Are you eating breakfast? That kind of stuff. Are you looking for your keys? Is it difficult for you to gather the stuff you need to get out the door? Or is that streamlined and simplified and you know where everything is and you know what your morning routine is?

And in some ways like you said, we aren't necessarily prioritizing the things that impact us, but if we can shift that to realize that, , those are the first things that should be addressed so that the rest of our day is set up really well. And so that the rest of the people that we interact with on a business or a personal level get to benefit from how we set up our day intentionally, how we set up our spaces and our routines.

Troy: And like I said, there's so many things in our days that are outside of our control. You mentioned we were talk, chatting just a bit before we actually started recording about having a . It sounded like a fun day today and a lot of that stuff I'm sure was outta your control and not expected when you first woke up this morning, but by.

Being able to be more intentional in the things we can control. It's going to make you know that part of life less stressful, which hopefully, again impacts your ability to handle the stressful and unexpected moments better.

Layne: Oh yeah. And you nailed it right there. It's like there's, I always say that to our clients, there is so much in the world that is out of our. and whatever happens inside the walls of our home does not have to be one of those spaces, right? It doesn't have to be one of those things that's out of our control.

To a certain extent, you can't control your kids. You can't control your spouse, your roommate, your pets, even to a certain extent, but you can set up where things are, how much you have. What you're bringing in, how conscious of a consumer you're being, what you're doing with it. Once it's in, are you getting rid of the stuff that's going out or are are you in the habit of regularly going through those things and really taking care of what you have?

And being honest with yourself about what that looks like, because we live in the age of Amazon Prime and everybody's guilty of, I'll just buy a new one because I saw an ad for it, or Instagram just makes it so easy to buy things and they save your address, they save your credit card. Whatever platform you're purchasing things from and even if you just can't find something and you order it again, because in Austin it can be their same day.

And so are we really looking for the things that we know we already own, or are we carving out the time to hire organizers or do it ourselves on the weekend? To look for. Where are all the batteries? Cuz we have some in the utility room, we have some in the kitchen, we have some in the bathroom under the sink.

Let's call them all together and have a battery zone or even better a home utility zone. That usually makes a lot of sense in the laundry room so that when we need to access those things, they have a specific home in the house.

Troy: Yeah. So being this is the first time that you're on the podcast, what, give us maybe a little bit about your backstory, how you got started with the business and what you know, I don't know. a lot of people that necessarily grew up wanting to be professional organizers, but at the same point in time, it's definitely a trait that you've probably had for a long time.

I also don't think that you suddenly get to, college and suddenly be like, I'm suddenly gonna be organized. That's probably something that has been a part of your D N A for a while.

Layne: Ye yes and no, right? I think for me, organization, it comes down to control in a certain sense, and then I have to unpack the control. Why do I want control? And then it comes back to anxiety. So for me as a kid, I didn't always have, like my parents will joke, your room wasn't perfectly clean and organized growing up.

So how did this become your career? I would let it get to a certain point, and then on the weekends I would just go crazy and not every weekend, but I would totally rearrange my room and I would reorganize everything and it felt really good to. Meditative even because my brain could be thinking about stuff while my hands stayed busy and it freed up my mind to think on other things.

So fast forward to college and I don't know anybody who didn't feel wildly uncomfortable in their first year of college. Even if everybody was faking it. It's who am I? Who are my friends gonna be? What do I wanna be? What am I outside of what I've known my whole life? And I found that was a way that kind of calmed my. Whether it was about being uncomfortable in a new circle or whatever, schoolwork I was procrastinating paper, whatever. I would reorganize my dorm and then I would reorganize my roommate's side of it and with their permission. And then other people would ask if I could help them do stuff like that.

And then I also nad for families and when the kids would go to sleep, , I am by nature, a paranoid person. And I always thought what if they have cameras? What if they just see me sitting on their couch watching Bravo? I better be doing something else, or stay busy. So I would still have Bravo on, but I would be organizing their pantry, or I would be, cleaning out under their sink.

And people started saying, Hey, I really loved what you did in the pantry. Could you come back this weekend and maybe do our garage and we'll pay you for that? And I, at the time was like, what? Yes, absolutely. I would love to do that. And I do love kids, but the other side of that was like, cool. And I don't have to be with your kids at the same time.

Even

Troy: I can just focus on this and

Layne: Yeah. Yeah. So it just became a thing, and I remember when I was, I went to school in Santa. And that's really where I got started because I was working as a family, as a personal assistant or for a family as a personal assistant. And they were getting a divorce at the time.

And they had hired a professional organizer, which I didn't even know was a thing yet. I just thought I was helping people with whatever they needed. And I'll jokingly still say to people like, whatever your request is, as long as it's not illegal, I will find a way to figure it out. Like I will find a way to do it for you and your family.

And they hired an organizer and had me. Alongside her and it just made a lot of sense to me and she started inviting me on some side gigs with her. And then honestly, that family that got divorced, I would work for the wife and I would work for the husband because I also still nad for their daughter.

But they both had tons of organizing jobs on the side and it just snowballed from there. Getting started in Santa Barbara, in the Montecito area in general is just like such a niche. Clientele. And they ha they have a lot of resources. They have a lot of stuff. And so they're really able to keep an organizing gig going for quite a while.

And I was able to build my skill and realize, Hey, there's a thing, there's an organization of organizers. Imagine that. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. . And I remember when I moved to Austin in 2014 I started the business in 2010, but I moved to Austin in 2014 and re relaunched it, re actually branded it, actually chose a business name and wasn't just doing this side thing anymore and started taking it seriously.

And had to figure out what's my clientele what's the other competition? I didn't see anyone at the time. Targeting the same clientele that I was familiar with, working with and very comfortable working with which we work with all levels of clients, but we really specialize in a high-end done for you luxury service.

And so whenever I was in, that organization of organizers and I was talking about what my service was, I remember people saying, nobody's gonna pay you for that. And I. it sounds like. I don't have any competition. , it sounds like there's nobody going at my market and, I'm motivated by let the haters be your motivators.

And my dad, not that they were haters, but my dad was also like, nobody's gonna pay you for this. You have a college education and you wanna organize people's homes. And I'm like Yes, but I wanna turn it into a business too, and I wanna grow it. So anyways, here we are 13 years later and it's working and we've got a team and it's paying the bills and it's it's a huge passion of mine.

I think if I could do it for free, I totally would. But what, I was on the phone yesterday with a

Troy: We won't let anyone. We won't let anyone know

Layne: No, I know. I wanna get to a place where we could do passion projects too, at least like once a year. Because I would do it for single mother. Who are working multiple jobs and just need their house to make more sense for their families.

I was talking to a client yesterday who's an older gentleman and they just moved from Houston and he said, Laney, I was so on the fence about this service. I couldn't understand the price. I couldn't understand. How it was more expensive than the move from Houston. And on the other end of it, I am wowed.

I am happy to pay the price of what you guys delivered for us because the biggest value as he saw it was we got him up and moving in a matter of two days fully in his house instead of, he said, what would be 60 days for he and his wife to fully unpack everything and get going. And honestly, 60 days. A positive outlook on it. I think most people get what they have to have unpacked, and the rest of it stays packed or gets shoved in the guest room in closets or garages or whatever, and it just doesn't get touched. And this was an unpacked job that we did for them. So it's not just unpacking the boxes, it's fully outfitting the space with organizing products.

The perfect Tetris arrangement in a drawer in all drawers really. You can do that in deep drawers and kitchens. We see a lot of the deep drawers, storage and kitchens in the newer builds and remodels these days. To your closets, to all of your cabinets, to your linen closets that usually just become a graveyard or dumping zone of what size sheet is this?

Where's the fitted, where's the pillowcases? All that stuff. And it's a, it's about knowing where your stuff is, but it's also coupling it with function and a beautiful aesthetic because when a space looks really pretty, it gives you energy and it also gives you motivation to keep it that. . And when a space doesn't look pretty, it drains your energy and you think, what's the point?

I'm gonna shove it in there and close the door before it falls out on top of me because I have to like fully revamp this entire thing. And I don't have time for that, or I do have time for that, but I don't wanna fight with my spouse over the weekend trying to figure out who's gonna. Get rid of their favorite college t-shirt or I just don't wanna do that over the weekend.

You know what I mean? It's like we live in the world of being able to outsource stuff or ask an expert for help, so it can be fully outsourced to us. Or you can say, I just want some help getting it done. Which is funny because usually when somebody says they want help, . And when we come in and say, we can do it all for you, they're like, oh, okay.

I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna get my nails done, or I'm gonna, whatever. If you can really do it all, be my guest. Here's the key. See you later, . And that's awesome too cuz we get to deliver a transformative space to the client and they're involved in the investment. but then we take care of all the details and then we can literally give them a tour of how to use their space which works really well if they've been in the house for a while.

And they have to relearn a little bit where stuff is, if you were used to the top right drawer being where your ladle was forever but we put it in the space where it makes more sense for how you use and flow in the kitchen. It works really well for remodeled spaces or new homes in general because you're, start.

The routine's off right from day one instead of just being in a hurry to unpack your boxes and have the movers take the moving materials, it's unpacking them methodically and really thinking about how you use a space.

Troy: do you find that it's easier or I don't wanna say better, a better type of job, but you mentioned someone saying, Hey, here, oh, I need your help. Oh, you'll just do it. Great. I can do that. Versus someone that wants to, or thinks they need to be involved. And I could see where both could be helpful that, again, obviously, potentially some, Probably is gonna lead to a client liking the space better than maybe you just completely redoing it.

And them not, even though it's truly a better space, they may not like it because their lads in a different drawer kind of thing. But is it, does one tend to work better than the other generally?

Layne: I think that's a great question. When I first got started, it was just me. So it was a lot of one-on-one work. And it wasn't just organizing, it was like therapy because people were wanting to dive into their spaces. But often you're that close to somebody for hours at a time, one-on-one.

It's taking. , it's taking longer with one person for more days, even though it's the same amount of hours. If four people are there for a full day, we're getting in that many more hours and a single day and making that much more progress. So the one-on-one at this point, we don't do one-on-one anymore.

We always send at least a minimum of two organizers. Because it was harder to accurately estimate how the job would go because it was completely up to the client's ability to make decisions and the pace they wanted to go, which was okay if we continued charging them hourly for the project. Now we do it more as a project estimate, so we can tell you here's what the total project cost plus our materials allowance.

We wanna give you the bottom line as much as we can, so there's no surprise costs. And I think in today's world, especially in Austin, anyways, people are just so busy. And time is the most valuable resource, right? That's not renewable. And so that's what everybody in some way is selling, is what can you provide a service that gives me back something that I'm desperately lacking it when?

And it's usually time. We're busy with work or we're busy with our kids, or we wanna travel or we wanna, whatever else. And this doesn't feel. A place people wanna spend their time unless they're neurotic. Like me and my team , we love it. And so we definitely need clients input on certain spaces, offices when it comes to paper organizing and routines and how they prefer their space to be.

But what we try to do is really ask all the right questions upfront, starting with our phone consult, and then we do a really thorough in-home consult as well. That's with our project manager and with our client. And we try to ask all those questions on the front end so that we can learn about their routines and learn about their spaces.

And then as we begin the actual sessions, We will group our questions for them. So we're gonna take everything out, we're gonna get started, and then we'll come to you with questions at, we'll give them a time. A lot of people are working from home now, and so that's, that works for them too.

They may have morning appointments and then we'll meet around lunch and ask the questions that we need them to decide on. And that works really well because we can group items together. So let's use a closet for an example. If we're just starting in the closet at the beginning of the day and we pull out an item and say, do you wanna keep this one?

it can be really overwhelming for people. So they, first of all, it's very vulnerable and people are worried about what we're gonna think. Are they gonna judge me? Oh my gosh, they can't believe I live this way. We don't judge at all. I don't think any organizing companies do, but if they do, you shouldn't be working with them.

This is job security for us through and through. And I will say that as a joke, but I also mean it very seriously. If we judged your spaces, we would be out of the job, right? We're here to help you because we look at your space and I can visually see the potential that it. Before we even get started, which is what makes me so excited about being able to help people that feel like their space is hopeless, right?

Or I just don't know what to do. Or I, sometimes it is we have to get rid of some stuff to make space for what you want or so that you can actually use it. But we really talk 'em through it. Back to the closet. Let's say we pull out one thing and say, do you wanna keep this? I don't know.

I know I have another black sweater, and that's one black sweater. It can very quickly become this long drawn out process versus give us a couple hours in there. We're gonna pull everything out. We're gonna group all the black sweaters together, all the black t-shirts together, all the black tank tops together, get it in zones and categories, and then we're gonna ask you to make decisions on that zone.

Here's all your black sweaters. There's 10 of them. Five of them have stains, three of them have. Oh my gosh, I didn't even know I had those five with stains. The three with holes can absolutely go The five with stains. Let me try to work on those or Yes, those can go too. The others that remain. Absolutely.

I wanna keep 'em. It's easier to make decisions on a group, a category, or a group of items than it is to constantly switch from tank top, sweater, shirt, dress shoes, like it's a lot of decision making. And then decision making fatigue real quick. And then the client isn't feeling motivated or they're feeling overwhelmed.

And so we wanna simplify that process as much as possible to make the process for them feel easier. We want them to feel good with the service, right? Not only so that they enjoy their experience with us. We hope for repeat business. We hope for referrals. We hope really for trans transformed spaces for them in their home.

And we wanna give them confidence in their space. They can maintain it. Not that we just were able to create it for them, and then they're paralyzed moving forward. We want them to feel like they understand the system that was created for them, why we made the changes that we made, and we wanna empower them to feel like they can be an organized person.

Because everybody can be an organized person. It doesn't have to be your spiritual gift, but if you can bring the experts in to create the system, then our goal is that we create a system that anybody can.

Troy: Hey, you want the repeat business, but you don't want it weekly. Repeat business from the same person you'd like for them to

Layne: It depends.

Troy: actually, again, and be able to kinda keep it some, to some degree. Be able to keep the space organized. So one of the other things that you mentioned, which I think is takes me back to the real estate side of things.

how you guys, you walk in, people may feel like you're judging, but you can just see what the space would look. , but you can have that, have vision as a real estate agent. That's something that we run into all the time with people trying to sell their home or someone trying to buy a home is can they they have a much harder time seeing what the home could be if the home isn't staged properly.

If it isn't, if

Layne: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Troy: and it looks like it's cluttered how could this look like a really nice home? Because it's cluttered world. If we take all that stuff out, if we take down the old pictures, if we repaint, if we do all this. And so it's one of the reasons that staging a.

Is helpful because it's for whatever reason it's just a lot harder to imagine what that space can look like. And I get it right, like you're, you do it all the time. So it's, you've seen those transformations happen all the time, so it's a lot easier for you as someone who's been in hundreds of homes, thousands of homes, like you can understand how that could look, would look different or someone who is only dealing with that once every couple of years just has a much harder time.

Also, when they have the. Half a million million, couple million dollar investment into the property. There's additional stress that makes it sometimes hard to see some of those things as well too.

Layne: Yeah. And like you're saying, people that are moving every couple of years have a better skill of that than people who are moving every 10, 20, 30 years. And like you said, all the stress that goes into that, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're visually creative. They're able to see past that and it can make or break a sale.

Right.

Troy: Yep. Going back to what you said early on was an organization of organizers, which I find hilarious in my

Layne: I know.

Troy: kinda way. You mentioned that you were looking at doing, that you found, found a niche in that group that others didn't see. In that regard, was that specifically just working with more, a higher net worth clientele to do those white glove services?

Or what was the traditional organizer doing instead then in that,

Layne: It was it, yes, it's the high end, the done for you, the white glove service, and I was a higher price. And whereas a lot of other people were charging like 20 or $25 an hour. And this, this was in 2014. This was before the home edit came out on Netflix. This was before Marie Condo was on Netflix.

Which really brought a lot of awareness to the industry. It had already existed for, I don't even know how many years, but more than 20 this organization did. And they just, I think it. The best way I know how to explain it is that the other people that were in the group at that time, there was maybe a handful of people in the Austin chapter that were around my age and I was 26 when I moved to Austin.

But everyone else was from my perspective, was in the second phase of their career or maybe they had a career that they retired from and they were getting started with this kind of on the side, or not to say as a hobby, cuz I think they did want it to turn into something, but they weren't charging.

In my opinion, at a rate that was going to be able to sustain an actual business. And what that looked like for me was not just charging for my time on the job. If you're doing product sourcing, you're doing the admin side of it. You really have to think about what's your overhead and how many hours are actually going into the planning for me to be at your house for, four to eight hours a day.

When I started it, I think I was doing three hour sessions because I also had to do the shopping and everything else outside of it. And I just didn't see how that was sustainable. And I also wanted to be able to reach a different market. And I was offering it, the service was matching the price that I was Asking for, but I wasn't seeing other people want that price and they were really wanting to do that one-on-one work.

And I reached a point where I loved the relationships that I built with the one-on-one work, but I wasn't able to see the transformations that I wanted to with the one-on-one work. Because I would come back and let's say we'd worked in an office for three hours and I was coming back the next time at whatever interval, I wasn't scheduling them in back-to-back projects like we are now.

Like we, we wanna finish a. In consecutive days. Now that's what people want. They want a a transformation and they want it to be complete and they wanna move on. Not to say they don't enjoy their relationship with us and vice versa, but in and out because it's a lot to have people in your home, right?

And same for real estate transactions, as smooth as you can make it for them, it's a better experience for everybody all around. When I would come to do the office for three hours and then I'd come back at the next scheduled. , it may have been undone a little bit or they may have just said, Hey, that's good enough for now.

Let's go onto the guest room cuz my mother-in-law's coming. And I'm like, no, it's not good enough. We need to finish the system. Because I wanna show you what I can do for you. I also wanna take after photos for my portfolio. And that's my reputation in there. If you tell somebody that I worked for you and that is not a complete project.

So I really figured out how to. What my service offering was to really give the client what they didn't know they were asking for. And that was incoming in. And instead of saying, you can buy three hours at a time, I'll quote out your project, you tell me the spaces that you're interested in and I'll tell you what it takes to do that.

And I aligned it with, if you ask for your bathroom to be remodeled, and the contractor comes back, he's not gonna say, oh here's what it would be for three hours, or Here's what it would be for this whole project. He would say, here's what's gonna cost to remodel your bathroom.

We can get into the nitty gritty of what materials we end up using, but this is how you get what you're asking for. And I saw a really big change in that. I'm trying to, brevity's not really my

I'm trying to think what the original question was.

Troy: no part of what I asked again early on about like someone being there, someone not, cuz it does take me to the remodel side of things where a lot of people, may have to live in their home while they're getting a room remodeled or something.

And that can be. Challenging for the remodeler because then they're pointing out stuff that the modeler knows and he is gonna get to, but it's not necessarily there's a process that they have where, hey, this goes, this, A happens and B happens and C happens. And then we can go back and straight fi figure, Get the final product all leveled out.

Whereas when someone's there and the honoring model kind of thing then they notice all these things that are just a natural part of the process. And I would imagine that there's some similarities in organized too of you'd mentioned the sweaters or whatever. If someone's, looking over your shoulder hypothetically at the top that you're taking out of clauses and.

Drawers in different places, it gets we need that. You can't let that go. I need that, even though I haven't used it in eight months or

Years, or whatever it may be.

Layne: Yeah, and we do run into that and it's I don't mean it to sound like we're not patient with that because, you're inviting us into your home. At the end of the day, it's your house. What you choose, you wanna keep. We're here to honor that. We're here to figure out a way that we can meet what your goals are.

And if it's a client that is having a hard time letting go of certain stuff, then we wanna keep reminding them of their why. Why did you hire us? Why are you feeling overwhelmed? Why are you, why is your space not working for you now? And how can we help it work? Because we see so many clients that are working around their home instead of finding ways to help their home work for them whether that is just little changes like remodeling a closet or investing in hangers that help you save space, the slim line hangers, they really do go a long way in allowing you to keep more items if you'll switch the hangar section there we do have clients.

Less so now, I feel because it is such a trendy thing right now. Organizing is trendy that people wanna just hand it off. But if they are looking over the shoulder or as we're starting to put things in and they'll say, oh I don't really like that there. Or, why'd you move that there?

And it's okay. We can slow down and explain that to them. Sometimes we don't know yet. Like we can plan. 80% of the project, but, or maybe not even that much really, because we can do the project planning and the product planning and we can get a good idea of what we saw from the consultation. Which is usually around an hour and a half.

And we have photos that we study and we've talked about the details of it with the client. But until we open the drawers and start opening the boxes, we don't really know the minutiae of what's inside there. So it's it's trial and error. It's Tetris. until it's not. We have all these options of what we can use.

We're gonna plug this in. Oh, we thought that was gonna work there, but there's a half inch lip on this side and it's not on the other side. And so we just explained to the client like, oh, absolutely, yeah we wanna incorporate that. Here's why we're trying this. And we wanna slow down and explain it to the client if they're interested, because we want them to feel confident in their investment.

We don't want them to feel like we're saying, Hey, leave us alone. I have told people, Very politely, you're hiring us in the best way possible. We want you to step aside so we can do what we're really great at, and we're always gonna pull you. When we have questions and when we know a certain space is really important to you or sensitive to you for whatever reason, whether that's somebody has recently passed in your family people hire us for all kinds of reasons.

So we wanna learn as much as we can about our client on the front end so that when we're doing the install, we're sensitive to all of that. And we can meet their client, meet our client where they are. A lot of what we do It's taking care of people, like it's not just organizing, it's doing for them what they want to be able to do for their space.

Maybe they don't have the time, maybe they don't have the actual skillset. It's not rocket science, but it can be to people that aren't, to people that have a d d. It is rocket science. They can't finish that project. And some, you never know if, like a husband and wife situation. The wife is, maybe she is a stay-at-home mom and she feels like she should be able to get to this on her own.

So she's beating herself up for the fact that she has to call and help. Maybe she has a full-time job and she's a mom and she feels like I should be able to do it all. So there's a lot of shame around that for a lot of people that reach out. And we just wanna be there to support 'em and say, you can still take credit for this because you picked up the.

they don't have to know that we did it. You can say that you did it all without having to be the one who does it all.

Troy: Yeah. Now I say, I think the popularity and or the fact that say a lot of it's more mainstream allows people to have just more confidence in the ti in the service in general, period. It's the same way in. Tech, a lot of the technology spaces of stuff, like someone coming in and building a website for somebody, like you don't feel like you have to look over someone's shoulder because you're like, oh, this is stuff that happens quite regularly.

And they generally know, hopefully you're hiring someone that knows what they're doing because otherwise why did you hire them? And hire someone who knows what they're doing and let them put their professional service to use. And you sit back and reap the.

Layne: And I've noticed that with that particular clientele that is used to paying a premium price for a service. They expect a really great finished product and they don't micromanage. But if they don't have that finished product, you'll hear about it. This is what I expected, this is why I paid for it, and I handed it over to the experts.

And so we see a lot of that with that type of client. They are prepared to have their expectations exceeded.

Troy: Sure. Yeah. Yeah it's, yeah. And that can be a little challenging, I'm sure sometimes because, not that you want them to micromanage, but. Because you're not necessarily getting some of that feedback along the way. It's something where you get the project basically finished and then find out, oh, hey, we need to redo, X, Y, and Z because it wasn't, didn't quite meet what they were anticipating.

Layne: Yeah. Which is doable. And I think that's all about how we manage our time and our communications with our client. So our project manager is, Fantastic personality and she's very on top of staying in communication with the client, making sure they feel updated throughout the project, finding out how involved they do wanna be and chatting with them throughout the project.

So typically they're still living in the house when we're doing the projects, and so they can walk through the space together at the end of each day. How are you liking things? Is there anything that you want changed here? If they do want changes, we can take care of those the next day. Sometimes we have people who let's say, They only wanted to move forward with two of the four spaces that we quoted after the first day.

They're like, oh, we wanna go all in. Let's do all four. We love this. Oh my gosh. Or maybe they were a little more hesitant on the materials allowance, and so we scaled back a little bit. We can still create good spaces with that, but I try to tell people, what you were attracted to about our company was the overall aesthetic, and when we cut back on the materials allowance, it is going to affect the finished.

Can we still do a great job and get creative on the resources? Absolutely. But once we're able to show them that, I would say maybe that's about 50% of our clients is that they are a little more hesitant on the materials piece. And I try to tell them that the materials, they're an investment in your space because it's containing things.

And the containers. Boundaries. So let's say you put your snacks in a bin in the pantry instead of just on the shelf, or even worse in the original packaging. I think the original packaging is it's visually cluttered. It's visually overwhelming because they're all different textures.

It's all different colors, fonts, branding, and you walk in there and your eyes just, they're just overwhelmed. Like a, in a Vegas. Room with all the slot machine. Yeah. In the casino. And you just all the things and all the stimulation, which in Vegas that's what they want you to feel in your pantry.

You wanna be like, here's what I wanna eat, or here's how I'm gonna cook or whatever. Here's what I need to buy because I can see what's empty. So if you put the snacks in a bin, it keeps them contained and it has a boundary here on the left and a boundary here on the right instead of. Seeping into everything else, and then a new snack comes in and buries it, and now you have expired things.

When this snack bin is empty or whatever is there, you know that on your grocery list, I need to buy more of that snack because you can see it, especially for people who buy the same stuff regularly and that really is most people. We like the stuff that we, we could stay generic with the label and it can say snacks because you may eat the same thing for a while and then get something else, but that space is already reserved in your pantry. That particular zone. And so people see that and they start to see the value of the products and they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I let's up the materials budget and we expect that some clients will feel that way. So we've found a way to, to do that. And okay, here's what that looks like. Here's where we can maybe accomplish it within the time that we're already scheduled to be here, or here's when we can come back to.

Troy: Nice. I'm sure we'll have the opportunity. About a lot more organizing stuff because it's a never-ending job for ev all of us living in our homes and for you, especially since it is your job. But yeah. It's with that though, let's hope everyone on the podcast has a wonderful day and if they found some value hopefully they give us a listen to some more episodes.

So I appreciate appreciate your time.

Layne: me too, Troy. Thank you.

Troy: Thanks a lot.