From Chaos To Calm with Jess Reed Green Mountain Space

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm Bill Gilliland, your host. I am the owner of Action Coach Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. But this is not about me and Action Coach. This is about our guest. And today I'm super pumped. We have a repeat guest. We haven't had a repeat guest in a while. Well, maybe you might be the second one ever. So that's pretty exciting. I've got Jess Reed from Green Mountain Space. So Jess, tell us a little bit about you, your company, and what your services are to our community. Absolutely.

1:19Thank you so much, Bill, for having me on again. It's always nice to see you. We are a professional luxury organizing company. We're based here in Western North Carolina. We do serve seven counties. We do have a team of professional organizers that includes two project managers, lead organizers, and assistant organizers, and an inventory manager. We specialize in transforming homes through concierge-level moves, organizing, packing, unpacking. We do small business organizing. We do holiday setup and holiday teardown. And then we also have renovation support services. Wow, you've come a long way.

2:02I couldn't count. I couldn't keep up with it all. I mean, you were like, oh, we do this, we do that, we do this. Yeah, I love it. So what does it mean to be a luxury service? So as far as the, we call it a luxury service because we try to keep everything here in-house, meaning that organizers run businesses differently. Most organizers that I know of that have a really great relationship with, they have more attainable purchasing options. And so with that, they're able to go to the client house. They are able to leave the house, go buy a product. And we just don't have that luxury here in Western North Carolina.

2:47So we try to get everything ready before we enter into your home. So we have all of the products. if your project needs a vendor meaning a painter a real estate agent a mover a donation specialist if you need a foundation which a lot of people are needing foundation specialists right now even a year after the hurricane hopefully we don't have to bring that up because I know a lot of people are still traumatized about that but that is again part of our service so we just try to keep everything in-house. So we are the one-stop shop for all of the things regarding organizing because our ultimate goal is to help you save time and help you save energy.

3:29Love it. I'm save energy. So when you said we don't, we can't do that in Western North Carolina, is that because of the distance that we have to travel to get things? We're not like in a, in like an urban area. Yeah. Correct. Correct. So most of the time what our clients want, we can't go to the store and get. And so we purchase materials and we have a warehouse that we manage. That's our inventory manager that she takes that on. And our goal is to be able, and we do this very often, depending on the volume of items that we're organizing, depending on how large the space is. If we're doing multi-spaces, our goal is to do that one day transformation.

4:14Because if you can think of an area in your home that is just feeling really chaotic, that you just feel like you just can't get to because life is getting in the way, we want to offer and we do offer that one day transformation where you're instantly organized. Wow. So you'll clean out any space. I mean, you clean out garages, dens, it doesn't matter. It's just, yeah, okay. Get it organized. I love that. I love that. All right. Well, let's switch gears a little bit, talk a little bit about business here. So, you know, when I first met you, you were kind of just getting really off the ground. So if you had to start over again, what would you do differently?

4:58Oh, Lord.

5:02I think starting over, my apologies. So sorry, somebody just called our business plan. I'm going to take that down. We have a project manager that's answering the phone. I would say documentation of SOPs and then more regular audits. And I think that is just in the midst of what I'm doing right now, because as I started adding team members and as I started to grow, I oftentimes ask for feedback from them and I say, what's working, what's not working, what feels messy, but it's about having the key players to help me develop those processes. And so the actual written documentation is not always on me because right now that's where we're at if I had to start it.

5:57So I would have found Loom a whole lot earlier because Loom is like my best friend. I'm just in the midst of right now of revamping two trainings for our lead organizer and our project manager, because those are the two positions that we're in desperate need of. Yeah, if you're not familiar with Loom, Loom is a great program where you can record yourself and your computer. You can use it for sending a video email, but you can also do it to record standard operating procedures or any kind of systems or anything where you can need to show somebody else how to do it so you can do it once. So yeah, Loom's awesome.

6:41So it's a great software that's multiple uses. So what have been a learning or two that you've had as an owner and employer since you started? So I would say the number one way to expand your business, I would say, is through networking. And I have a partner that always invites me to things. She gives us so much opportunity and so much exposure that to really have those key partners to take care of them in such a way that you want to take care of your vendors just as important as taking care of your team because your vendors are going to be also out there speaking about you top of mind. And they, I feel like, ultimately help our business grow.

7:39So I would say that that's been one of my biggest key learnings as far as marketing. And I would say also evaluating your time and your capacity. I am, I'm the number one person with shiny squirrel syndrome is what I call it. It's like, you know, this is a really great idea. Let's develop it. But then it's really nice to put that in a holding place where you can constantly reference and you can constantly go back to whenever you do have really great ideas, but you don't have the time to develop it. So I make it an active practice because since we've met, we had a baby. She's 10 months. Oh, congratulations.

8:28Thank you. That's exciting. Yeah. So the biggest thing is what is my goals? What are my goals for the year? And how much time am I actually devoting to reach those goals? And there is a thing about goal setting and writing everything down of all the things that you want to do. But attaching that to time is really, it's kind of what makes or breaks you, at least what I think in business and entrepreneurship. I love it. Yeah, attaching a time to the goal or a task. Yeah, a lot of people skip that step. They write down the task, get the to-do list, but they don't put the time that it's going to take to do it.

9:11So they end up with a to-do list that's pretty deep and pretty long and pretty hard to actually live into. So, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the baby. That's fun. Thank you. That's fun. A 10-month-old is fun. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah. So, given all that, what are some of the common misconceptions about running a business?

9:44Ooh.

9:48You know, I'm going to have to think about that. I don't know. What are some of the others? Maybe if you share with me some of your other. Oh, yeah. The one I always get is that the business owner is rich or that, well, like, you know, that the employees all think the resident got it made or that it's easy. That's the one, you know, that because it, you know, the owner's got it made because it yet. So there's a lot of other ones, but those are the two biggest ones that I hear. So, yeah. So I would say it's definitely not easy. I think it's just, oh Lord, I think it's just something that you just have to be excruciatingly passionate about and you have to be able to work at it every day.

10:43And common misconceptions, I think, you know, rich? No, no. I am, I barely, you know, in transparency, I barely took a paycheck my first three years because I reinvested, I reinvested everything. I reinvested into my team. I reinvested into building our warehouse and having a personal cushion allowed me to do that. um so a common misconception is you have to invest all of your money no but you are going to make some sort of investment whether if it's you know finance or time and what i had was time i had a little bit of money but you know and i would think that even as a business owner because i'm looking at the sheet on the back, I would say I'm probably at like the maybe manager stage, maybe self-employed.

11:43I would say I'm like teetering in between that. That if you're going to do, if you are going to be an entrepreneur, you have to play the long game. Yeah, no, I love that. A lot of people don't realize that. Or the other thing that happens is after business owners and entrepreneurs are successful, people tend to forget that there was the three years of no paychecks. There was the small paychecks or getting by or squeaking by or trying to – I remember writing payrolls on Friday and hoping that I could cover it by Monday when the checks were all going to clear. So interesting. Yeah, it's back in the day when there was a little bit of float.

12:30So, yeah, it's good. So what do you attribute your growth to?

12:38I would say compassion. If I had to sum it up in one word, it would probably be compassion. You know, we are a team of women. My husband is the part owner for, you know, legal and financial reasons. He's 49 % and I'm 51. But I call him our HR because whenever I have, you know, certain dynamics and situations, like he is always there to support me. Um, but with being a primarily, you know, women-based, um, woman-based company and knowing that everybody either has a partner or, you know, maybe they have a child, um, having compassion whenever they come to me and they say, Hey, like I, I either need a break or today was a really hard day, or I have things that are going on personally.

13:36I don't ever make them feel like they can't come to me because I never make them feel bad for going through things because we're all human. And I want people to really love their work. I want because to hire an organizer, you are extremely vulnerable, you know, from a client perspective. And then from an organizer's perspective, you're going in and you're helping by helping a person go through something. We do position ourselves as lifestyle organizers. So what a lot of people hire us for is because a life event happened or a series of life event happens and things just became really chaotic and they just don't even know where to start.

14:18And so I think that I have hired a team of compassionate people in order to hold space for our clients. And we do we hold space for them no matter what. we hold space for them in their consult. You know, we follow back up with them. If they say, oh, my daughter's getting married in October. Well, we make sure that we send emails out or we send out a text message. And I'm like, hey, I hope you have a really great weekend. We've had clients be with us. We're about to be in year five. We've had clients still with us from the beginning because we make an investment of who they are as a person. Because again, And what people want most in this world is time.

15:03More valuable than money, that's for sure. Yeah. So we give people back their time. And I think that's what really, you know, attributes to our growth and our success in that as a team, we're constantly evolving. It's one of our core values is through education. So our core values are, they spell the word peace because, yes, I came from a corporate background and so acronyms are just ingrained in me. But so P is for people. So you have to put people first before anything, because if we don't have people, then we don't have a business and we don't have each other. So it's people before anything.

15:48Next is education. The A is for accountability. having personal accountability for ourselves and being okay being wrong being okay and like celebrating being right you know we can celebrate accountability too c is for communication i'm a hyper communicator and so i think that more information is better than not enough information especially whenever it comes to client development client experience team member development and team member experience. And then the last E is for evolve. If we do all of those things, then we can evolve as a company, but we can also evolve as people. Love it. Love it.

16:34Peace. People, education, accountability, communication evolve. I love that. I love that. So you've got a family. How do you balance your personal life with demands of running the business? A lot of calendaring. A lot of calendaring. So I, and it's taken me about four years, especially now that we have a child in the mix, is I found that even with nap times, I'm like, okay, what can I get done in two hours? You know, am I focusing on my business today or am I focusing on my house today? You know, or am I focusing on myself? And so I think the balance of that and really being regimented about my schedule and having very firm boundaries that my family does come first and then my work family comes second.

17:46I think what has helped me a lot is releasing and delegating, a lot of delegating. And my team really stepped up for me. Like I was, I came back, you know, this is the not glorious side of entrepreneurship and being a mom, I came back at two weeks. I was only two weeks postpartum and I came back because there was just a lot of change and a lot of growth and we were converting to employees. And I was like, okay, I got to get all of this stuff to the bookkeeper. And so, because I want to progress every year, but look at me going on a tangent because I typically tend to do that sorry um but i would say what has helped me balance the most time is i update my calendar for what my plan is for the week but then at the end of every day i actually update it for what happened and then if i couldn't get to something then i just move it to the next available slot and sometimes that's three weeks from now love it Love it.

18:56Yeah. Well, it's good for an organizer to be organized. So and the best way to get organized is with a calendar. So well done on that. So what qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive and productive work environment? You've touched on this a bit already, but I'd like to hear a little more in depth. OK, so can you repeat the question one more time? Sorry. What qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive and productive work environment? So I would say one of the number one qualities that we need is adaptability.

19:39Because we are dealing, yes, with things whenever we are in client homes, but we're also dealing with emotions. so what for example what a client may say to us during a consult um yes i'm ready to get rid of this we can show up on the very on the day of organizing and they're like oh no i changed my mind or oh no my my partner is not ready to let this go um or oh i'm selling it to somebody but they're not going to come and get it for a couple weeks so i think adaptability and being able to go with the flow is our number one trait and being able to receive feedback and being able to give feedback.

20:24Like I ask for feedback all the time. And I think that's that open communication and fostering that with our team has been really helpful because people can call me out and I'm not going to be mad at them. And I'm like, okay. So I think that, um, and then that compassion piece and knowing that everybody is going through something. And just because, you know, if somebody, we never want to, you know, accept people that are being rude, but, um, Jefferson Fisher, If you know him, his book, The Next Conversation, is really helpful when knowing how to respond to someone going through something that's emotional because most of the time it's not really tacked to you.

21:15And then the next one was about teams, right? Sorry. I mean, you've answered the question. I think you're good. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think you've answered it. So we also have an acronym, and you've heard it from me probably, BEPIC. And so I want to get – this is a quick fire round. So a couple of sentences or words about each one. And so, B, bring the energy. Okay. Yes. So what are a couple of sentences or words or your thoughts on bringing energy? Bringing energy? as the owner, you set the tone. Love it. How about you've got in your acronym and my acronym, we both have education.

22:06So give me a quick education thing. Make it consistent. Love that. How about P planning? I think everybody should plan in October for the following year. yeah i would agree october november december somewhere before the end of the year love it i inspiration

22:32walk the walk i love that and c is commitment you're only as good as your most committed team member wow that's big that's a big deal you're only as good as your most committed team member. That's right. It's the weakest link thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. So thank you for that. You're welcome. So what words of advice would you offer other business owners who are looking to grow?

23:08I would say words of advice would probably have a brain dump list of all of your hopes and dreams. And keep it regularly available. Keep it at the forefront of your mind. If it's on your notes app, if it's somewhere on a Trello board, if it's in a Google Doc, if it's handwritten, keep it regularly available because things are going to creep in. And also journal daily, whether it's tactfully or digitally. because not only you're taking time in order to decompress so you can have that separation from business and home and business and life, I feel like you just got to get it out sometimes, you know, and it's really hard for entrepreneurs to put it down.

24:04You have to equally, yes, schedule everything out, but you also have to schedule joy and happiness and fun. And, you know, like Jesse or is it Jesse Itzer? I can't ever. Yeah. Yeah. So the big, so the big guys calendar, like schedule, schedule your fun. That's important. Yeah. I actually had to make it one of my three big goal categories because I would have just worked all the time. So, because work was fun, but it was for me, but it there's, you know, that doesn't work. for everybody in my family. So, yeah, it's an interesting thing. So maybe I'm going to get one of those things on the brain dump hopes and dreams list here.

24:52But what's the next big thing for Jess in Green Mountain Space? I would say the biggest thing right now, aside from solidifying our positions within our training and developing our team members, we would love to expand to Hendersonville. And have a team.

25:15Because what we have found in traveling, I would love me personally. One of my big dreams is I want to just travel. I want to travel and organize and travel for fun. But not everybody wants that. And so I think our next step is to build out a team in Hendersonville. because the drive out there sometimes to like flat rock and it's just a, it makes for a very long day. And so I think having a team out there is going to be our next step. So. Love it. Love it. So last thing, what's the best way for someone to find you? Um, best way to find us is, um, two platforms. Uh, one is Instagram. So I do try to share what the team is up to almost every day.

26:11Um, sometimes it ends up being a little bit late and I would say our website. Um, so that way you can see about all of the services that we offer and you can also contact us, um, directly from there. What's the website? It is greenmountainspace.com. Nice. Okay. It's easy enough. Greenmountainspace.com. You heard it there. Or check her out on Instagram. Hey, thank you. Thanks for being part of this community. We appreciate all you're doing. Really know you're going to continue to grow and be successful. Yeah, you're doing the things you need to do. You're learning and you're growing. So that's what it takes.

26:50So appreciate you being part of our community. Thank you so much. I appreciate you too. And until next time, all the best.

27:27Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.