How This Former Teacher Went From Earning $500 a Week to Building a $2M Business | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E8 

18:47Hala Taha:They've got all these templates and AI tools. They make payment as easy as just one click. Shopify has been the best business partner for me over the past five years because they're so innovative. They're always thinking of new features from how to make sure that your cart doesn't go abandoned to having things like chatbots and helping you implement chatbots on your store. So please stop reorganizing your business plan for the 17th time. Build a storefront. Put the offer out there. All you need is the idea and Shopify can handle the rest. If you're serious about hearing your first start your free trial at shopify.com slash profiting today.

19:21Hala Taha:You heard that right? Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting.

19:31Hala Taha:Hey, Yapam, this commercial is for my ladies. I don't know about you, but I hate wearing a bra. But sometimes you have to wear a bra, like under a t-shirt. And when I have to wear a bra, I choose Honeylove. Honeylove does not make you choose between feeling supported and feeling comfortable. Their bras are wire-free, but still give you that lifted, flattering, secure feeling. You still get cleavage. And I've especially been loving their new crossover contour bra. It has light foam pads that create a smooth contoured shape under your clothes. And I'm also obsessed with their shapewear. Now, shapewear is so hit or miss.

20:02Hala Taha:I've got a whole drawer full of shapewear that I don't use. I'm sure you can relate. But I always grab their Superpower Short. Honeylove has great sculptwear. It's breathable. It smooths you under your clothes. It doesn't feel like I'm squeezing into something that doesn't fit me. And I can't wait to take it off at the end of the day. Plus, Honeylove is female-founded and designed by women, and you can tell because every detail feels thoughtful. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20 % off at honeylove.com slash profiting. That's honeylove.com slash profiting.

20:33Hala Taha:And after you check out, they'll ask you where you heard about them, and please support our show by telling them that Young and Profiting sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with Honeylove. Go to honeylove.com slash profiting for 20 % off. But I do want to ask you about what you learned. Even though you sunsetted the service part of your business, it really gave you like hands-on knowledge of like different customer types, different problems, how you solve them. So sometimes even though your start of your business isn't where you end up, it's very important for your journey and the knowledge that you gain from the hands-on experience.

21:12A hundred percent. I mean, hands-on experience beats everything. And having done it for six years, like I remember stories about what works and what doesn't work. And having to wrestle through some of those things are really important. Also, you make a lot of money really fast in a service business that really can help you get started. Because I didn't have any money to start my company. I just went from zero to, you know.

21:34Hala Taha:And you don't even need investment. Like you go there. It's the same way when I started my social media services. Like I was writing the posts, you know. Like it's you is the investment. Yeah. And the longer you're in business, I'll be in business 15 years by January, you're going to grow and evolve as a person. Your understanding of the problem you solve is going to grow and evolve. And you should be sunsetting like really big parts of your company every once in a while as you keep growing, pivoting and changing. Yeah, makes sense. OK, so take us back to the kinds of people that you saw when you were organizing.

22:05Hala Taha:Like what are the different like profiles that you saw? Yeah. So when I started organizing, the first package I had was the mommy makeover package because I was a mommy. And so the mommy makeover package was four areas. New boobs, new ass. I didn't know about that then. So it was your laundry room, your closet, your kitchen, and then wherever your home office was. And I would organize those four spaces. And that's where you spent 80 % of your time. And that would really make a marked change for women. But then as I kept going, I started organizing women and men who have been divorced. And so now they're in a house on their own.

22:43In Cincinnati, we have a couple of Fortune 50 companies. And so you'll come into Cincinnati for a period of time from the coasts.

22:49Hala Taha:Yeah. And housing is so cheap in Cincinnati compared to like the coasts. And also, we don't have a good rental market at all. So they'll come in and they'll just buy a house and then they need to set up the house. So these were, you know, corporate women who are coming into Cincinnati with or without their families. and they would just have you set it up because having a professional organizer wasn't a big deal. And then there were a lot of women who were in their later years, you know, 60s, 70s, who maybe had lost a spouse who did a lot of those, or they were just ready for their next act. And they were like, I'm getting all new carpeting, and I'm redoing all this stuff, and I'm getting remarried or like that.

23:24Yeah. And then I organized kids, too. And I would never let the parents in the room when I organized the kids. That was so fun. So all the different ages, different generations, there was a lot of variety.

23:35Hala Taha:How about your ADHD clients? They're probably the best. You make the most money on them because they'll never learn. That's like my, I have a housekeeper and she's probably like, thank God Hala doesn't fold her laundry because it keeps me getting some work. So the ADHD is really, really interesting. When I was a teacher before I had children, I was an intervention specialist. And so often I would get the kids who were having trouble learning whatever it was in the classroom. and I would come up with all these crazy ways to teach them whatever they needed to learn. And eventually, they usually were diagnosed with ADHD.

24:08Then my kids ended up being diagnosed with ADHD and went to a special school in Cincinnati called Springer School and Center. And I learned even more about ADHD and executive function. Then I had an employee say, you know, at least it'd be really funny if we found out that you had ADHD and that the Sunday basket you created was the solution for ADHD. I said, ha ha ha, Monique, that'd be really funny. Well, I then went and got tested and I was like, oh, turns out apparently I do have ADHD. So now I went back to school. I just got my PhD. And my goal with my PhD is to test the Sunday basket and the executive function and see if it does what I think it does.

24:46As a school teacher, how I created it, I created it as an intervention for household managers to be able to organize all the invisible work that we do, just like I would do as an intervention for anyone else who had executive function issues in school. And if we find support for that, it will be the first non-medical intervention for ADHD that will be scientifically shown.

25:07Hala Taha:What would be the intervention? Like, what would you do? The Sunday basket. Oh, the Sunday basket. The school supply. You know, we run our households with no school supplies, with no office supplies, with no operating system. We are 68 % of U.S. GDP, and we have no operating systems. Yeah. Every single person has to create them from scratch. So you want household managers, which are usually women, to feel like they're the CEO of their household. Yeah, the more I've grown Organize 365 and the bigger it's gotten as a company, I've had to grow myself as my understanding of, you know, initially it was just I needed to replace my teaching salary and then I needed to manage people.

25:41And now I need to think about the fact that I own a company that someday will be sold as a CEO and that the company has value in all those things that I've learned by doing EOS and all these other things that I've done. And I turn around, I look at my household, I go, oh, my gosh, every single person is running a household. Somebody is running every single household responsible for 68 percent of U.S. GDP. You were born and you die in a household like it is it is the economic entity. We don't do planning days. We don't have operational structures. We don't have school supplies like every single person is cobbling together whatever they're doing at home from printables off Pinterest and podcasts.

26:19they're listening to and whatever their girlfriend's doing or what they remember their mom doing or like, how are we doing? I can't believe we're doing it at all, actually.

26:26Hala Taha:Yeah, that's so interesting. We haven't put any of those business principles in the household.

26:33Hala Taha:Young and profiters. It's been over six years since I bet on myself and became a full-time entrepreneur. And if one of my friends came to me today and said, Hala, I'm starting a business. What do I actually need to get started? I would not advise them to start with a logo or a fancy website. You need to focus on the paperwork, the business address, the things that actually make you legit and professional. And for all of that, I'd recommend Northwest Registered Agent. They've been helping entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years with more than 1500 corporate guides who understand local business laws. I recently launched a new LLC on a project that I was kind of procrastinating making it official.

27:07Hala Taha:And I knew I was going to use Northwest Registered Agent. So I went in, it took 10 minutes. I just put the information about the business and I literally had somebody follow up with me and they're like, hey, I need you to go in and fill out more information so we can complete your LLC formation. And that's just amazing that they've got real people that are actually helping you with your business. Northwest helps you build a complete business identity. From day one, you get a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, a registered agent, free guides, and more all in one place.

27:37Hala Taha:The sooner your business has a real foundation, the sooner you can focus on actually growing it. So don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get for free from Northwest. Visit NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash Yap Free and start using their amazing free resources and templates to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash Yap Free. Hey, Yap Gang. As Yap Media has grown, I've learned that communication can get messy fast. Some clients live in Slack. Some clients would rather text all the time. Others just want to call you.

28:13Hala Taha:And when a deal is closing or a new opportunity comes in, I don't want important conversations trapped on somebody's personal phone. I don't want to be blocked. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss an opportunity. Quo gives your team shared business, texting and calling. So if a client reaches out, the right person can jump in, see the conversation history, and then respond quickly. Calls, texts, and voicemails are all in one place, keeping things super organized and making sure that nothing slips through the cracks.

28:42Hala Taha:So if you're growing a business and still managing customer communication from your personal phone, it's probably time for an upgrade. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. That's Q-U-O.com slash profiting. Quo.com slash profiting.

29:05Hala Taha:Hey, young and profiterers, when I think back to the early days of Yap Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public Wi-Fi networks, and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients, and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT &T Business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their internet to work without second guessing it.

29:40Hala Taha:And once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show up fully, close deals, serve your clients and focus on growing your business without any of the stress. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are, like AT &T Business. Built to work, get AT &T Business at business.att.com. That's business.att.com. So the Sunday basket was your first product. What year did you decide to do it? What made you think like this is going to actually work? And it seems like so basically what it is, I looked it up. It's like a bin with like lots of folders.

30:20It's a project management box. It's a weekly planning system.

30:23Hala Taha:As somebody who has ADHD, like I love that. I love like physical. Yes. Like colors, like anything that will like make it like somewhat fun to do the thing that I'm like despising to do. Yeah, I totally trick you. That's my whole goal. So what is the Sunday basket? And talk to us about the evolution of you selling it, how it started, like how much money were you making it? How much like did you invest to create it? How did you talk to somebody in China and get it made? Like what was the story? Okay. So the reason I think you like it and the ADHD people like it is because it is physical. Yeah. Because so much of what we do is cognitive and executive function is cognitive.

31:03So if you can externalize it, which is my thesis, then you can see it, manipulate it outside of your head and you could get more done. So the Sunday basket, I actually created it in 2002 when my kids were two years old and six months old and personally used it. And I taught it to people in direct sales because I couldn't get my consultants in direct sales to be profitable because they were always sidetracked by everything they had to do in their household. So I was like, well, I'll fix the household thing so that you can actually do your job. Yeah. So then when I started the company, when I was 40, I blogged and podcasted about the Sunday basket.

31:35And I created like an e-book right away. And I sold it for like seven bucks. And then people kept coming around to it was the Sunday basket that worked. So I was manufacturing the Sunday basket. Actually, my first manufacturer was in Dallas, Texas. Oh, nice. Yeah. So we made it here in Texas first. And then they said that my expectations were too high, which I've heard before. And we do manufacture it in China now because it's a sewn basket. And a lot of people put like up to 20, 25 pounds worth of paper in it. So it needs to hold that. So, yeah, we decided to manufacture it. So I manufactured it here in Texas.

32:09And I could order small amounts because I was using a product they already had. And I was just making a derivative work off of it. And then when I started manufacturing in China, I actually patented it and started creating it.

32:20Hala Taha:Oh, so nobody, I was going to say, you must have a lot of copycats. No, I don't have any. And I actually have my trademarks in England, the UK, and also Australia already. So this basket is pretty expensive. Like on your website, it's$250. On Amazon, it's like$180. It's two different versions. Yep. Yeah, one I think comes with like accountability. They both have the box and the colored folders that you see, the workbook, the course, and the accountability. The one that's$250 also has some extra office supplies, terrapads and things that you'll see me use in videos. If you don't want to like have to go back to the store and get things, like just get it all at once.

32:55But the$179 one will get you started. It has all the courses, all the accountability. And so I think it's so funny. I'm going to actually push back. Yeah, sure. That you think it's expensive for$179 for a one-time purchase that has lifetime access to co-working. And we've been running the co-working for eight years.

33:12Hala Taha:Well, I didn't know that the run 80 has. I think to me, the basket feels expensive, but the whole offering is not because it's lifetime access. Yes. And I upgrade it all the time. I upgrade the course and all of that. But I only push back because this is my biggest marketing hurdle is we households are responsible for 68 percent of U.S. GDP. When you say that, what do you mean? I mean that of the amount of money that moves in the United States, 68 percent comes from households spending. Because like the rest is government and military. And cleaning supplies. Is that what you mean? Yep. The government, military, and us.

33:51That is what is our economy. That's why we get stimulus. That's why we reduce. Like if the household stops spending, the world shuts down. So the household is, we move the world. Yeah. And yet$179 is too much to externalize the invisible load of the head of household and all the projects that usually she does, the bill pay, the menu planning, the mail, this kid's school stuff, all of that. It's a one-time purchase. So I only say that because I truly would like to know, you know what the alternative is? Paying nothing and just using your brain and forgetting things and just running around like - Yeah, living like a hot mess, like so many people are.

34:31Yeah, and so we started a study right as COVID started, and I'm going to get it started again soon. but we have anecdotally found that the Sunday basket saves you five hours per week every week. We just passed 15 million hours saved just with the baskets that have been purchased, and most people DIY it.

34:48Hala Taha:Okay, let's talk about like why the Sunday basket works. Why is it so important to take what is in your head and externalize it? And like what are the different categories in the basket that make it easy? Okay, so I'm going to play a trick on you. Okay. You I'm just coming home from work. Okay. I'm pulling in the driveway. I've got to change the laundry, grab something for dinner, and put my Pilates clothes on. So I grab the mail as I'm walking in the house because, I mean, I'm walking by it anyway. I start flipping through. I'm like, I should really recycle what I need to recycle. You don't want to bring that into the house, right?

35:19That's a productivity hack. So I get in the kitchen. I've recycled what I need to recycle. I put the mail down. I grab what I need to eat. I go change for Pilates. I get in the car. What did I forget to do?

35:30Hala Taha:Telling about dinner? No. I grab my dinner. Everyone I've done this with can't remember. It was change the laundry. Now I'm on my way to Pilates and I have forgotten to change my laundry. This is why you need a Sunday basket. We have a to-do list. We know what we're doing. We have a plan for our day. And all of the other things like the text message that comes in, the phone call, the getting the mail, the kids ask you a request, the dog is barking, needs to go out. All of these things derail us from what we're already doing. And you can only remember so many things in your working memory, usually about three.

36:03So when you picked up the mail, you dropped the laundry. And the laundry was the thing you actually needed to do today. The mail can wait till Sunday.

36:11Hala Taha:Yeah. So the mail all just goes in the Sunday basket. Then people think, well, the Sunday basket is only a mail. I would never open up the Sunday basket. I'd be like, I'll see you next year. That's like the easiest example. That's the easiest example. Once you start using the Sunday basket, you realize, oh my gosh, there's so many things I'm trying to hold on to in my head. Like, so for example, I get this sourdough bread delivered, but I don't, I need to change the delivery date because I don't need more sourdough bread or I get water delivered to the house and I'm out of water. So I need to speed up when I'm going to get that water.

36:40Like we're trying to remember all of these things. I just write all these notes to myself, throw it in the Sunday basket. And just like you plan in business every week, you should plan at home

36:49Hala Taha:every week. So every week, the things that everybody does is whatever's important, the phone calls you have to make, the bills you need to pay, the ordering, the groceries, getting ready for errands for the week. Anything that's done that needs to go into a binder will go in a separate section. And then whatever the other projects are, are going to be you dependent. And there are four categories. Anything related to your house. So like maintenance or getting money for the person that's gonna clean it, all of that. Anything related to the people, including pets that live with you and what are they gonna need for the week.

37:18Anything financial related. And then the one that I always created for and didn't really start until this year is anything related to you. What do you want to do? And we're so busy always checking things off the list. We don't actually get around to anything we want to do at home.

37:32Hala Taha:I have such bad ADHD. I'm going to just share this with my listeners that I didn't check my mail for like four months and I had a$40 ,000 check in the mail that got like expired because I waited over 180 days and I got another$40 ,000 check, thank God, that got resend to me. but that's how, like, what if you can't even check your mail? Well, a lot of people are overwhelmed. ADHD, not ADHD, almost everyone, especially every woman today is overwhelmed. So the Sunday basket usually takes about six weeks to set it up. And then beginning, all you're doing is going, oh my gosh, I can't believe I missed this.

38:12Oh my gosh, how can I be this disorganized? I can't believe, you know, everybody has that same story. But after about six weeks, you go, okay, I'm kind of on top of the fires. My dumpster fire is smaller now. Yeah. It's in a Sunday basket. and I'm just going to pull out and tackle whatever I can each week. And then you start to realize, you know what, this to-do list is never going to go away. So I need a better perpetual to-do list where I could pull things out as I could do them instead of just trying to make a really big list and check it all off.

38:38Hala Taha:What was any like hurdles or challenges in relation to actually making the basket? We don't have enough time. So when we were making the basket here in Texas, It was actually a paper over cardboard box that was glued together. And they do actually manufacture in China. They just bring it in here. Well, China's really bad with glue. So then like the third version, like we're like, this would be cute. We're going to do like a lattice pattern. Well, whatever we did on that pattern made the glue not stick. So then all the boxes were like coming apart. The colored slash pockets that come in it, the first four orders were all wrong.

39:13And the first order was like 100 % defective, like 100 % defective. It was so much money. So I just went live in Facebook and I was like, OK, so good news. The slash pockets are here. Bad news are all defective. And I'd already collected money. I said, so here's what we're going to do. You're going to get two for the price of one. I'm shipping them all out anyway. And we're just going to go with it. And my audience has always been so supportive. They were like, yeah, we got double the slash pockets.

39:39Hala Taha:But like the holes weren't punched right. Whatever. They like just took it and they went with it. But the funny thing about if you do do physical organizing or physical products, the first thing that I did was one set, the rainbow set of slash pockets. And I had those shipped to my house because, I mean, I worked from home. So the truck came. And there were a lot of boxes, which filled my garage. And the other order was coming, which was four times the size. And I had not, when you think about doubling a business, well, if you're doubling an online business, whatever, get more customer service people.

40:13If you're doubling a physical products business, I was like, I need a place right away. So we got a 250-square-foot place. Two months later, we're in 400 square feet. Six months later, we're in 1 ,500 square feet. I was like, wow, this doubling thing really takes up a lot of space.

40:28Hala Taha:Yeah. So you have to charge a lot for it and include the other services. So at what point did you always have the other services involved with it? Yep. Okay. So that was a start into courses and programs. Yeah. So because I was a teacher, I really love physical products and apparently ADHD. So I really like physical products. And what I know to be true in organizing is that you learn organization best in analog. Digitization is increasing productivity and individual of the person. But analog is universal. Everybody can sort paper. But when you go to digital, it's like, well, what kind of phone do you have?

41:05What kind of cloud service do you have? Like, it's all very different. But paper is paper is paper. So I love taking it to that basic level. And I like office supplies. Like when my mom would take me to OfficeMax as a kid, I didn't want to go to the mall. I wanted to go to the office supply store. So I like office supplies. And office supplies over time have really gone downhill. They weren't as bad when I started making them. But now, like, they're bad if you look. Like they have not been improved.

41:31Hala Taha:Yeah. They're basic. And since COVID, like half of the binder manufacturers have gone out of business. Because for a while, like nobody was using planners or binders. I literally just bought a new weekly planner and it's like super colorful and I use it every day and I love it. And I'm like, I can't believe I wasn't writing anything down anymore. And I feel so much more productive now that I'm actually writing things down. It's pretty crazy how much more productive you can get just by writing things down. Well, I think when we first went digital, we were more productive digital because we had so many analog systems.

42:04We were like, we were putting it all into one thing. We're putting it all into a Google Calendar or all into a Word document or whatever. But now, I mean, there are so many digital things that I use. I can't remember where anything is. So now paper seems more simple. Like everything kind of goes around. So crazy.

42:19Hala Taha:Okay, let's talk about your audience and your marketing channel. So you've got a great podcast, 25 million downloads. I'm going to try to have you in my network and get you some sponsorship money maybe one day. You've accumulated this audience and what you do is so visual. So I would assume that you would want to show everything and be visual, but you've had really great success just talking to people. Why is that? Well, one, I don't want the complexity of digital. Like to have to have your hair done and then are you going to wear the same outfit? Yeah, it's a pain in the ass. Yeah. And once you get your house organized, what am I going to do?

42:55Make a mess to then show you how to make it clean. And then whenever you're thinking about visual for me, okay, I was a stay-at-home mom. Now I'm in a multi-generational family. My grandkids live with me. Like I share all that information. But 60 % of my audience is not married with kids under the age of 18. And once I found that out, I was like, whoa. Really? Yeah. Now that I have my PhD, I know that it is 81 % of Americans are not married with children under the age of 18. It's only 17.9%. So I want to help any person of any age, anywhere in the world, in any size dwelling get organized. And so I don't have a mommy makeover package anymore.

43:38I'm really getting down to what are the basics of what we need to get organized. We have housework. We have organizational work. We have invisible work that goes in the Sunday basket, which is administrative. We have information work. And then we have the work of self-actualization in a home. That is my theoretical orientation that I'm going to be doing research on.

43:55Hala Taha:Okay. Everything else, like if you have kids, if you're a caregiver, if you're settling in a state, if you're planning for the holidays, some people do all of those things, but not everybody does all of those things. So what are the universal things we need to organize as humans that are lacking? And then what are the things that are extra that you can add on for your family? Okay, so you feel like because you're just a voice, you can speak to everyone. Yes, and I talk much more theoretical and big picture and teaching you how to think about things, teaching you how to think about your time, think about productivity, how to reorganize your house for the phase of life that you're in versus how the house was designed to be used.

44:36Hala Taha:Let's stick on that for a moment because I feel like people are curious about like, how can I get better organized? How can I better manage my household? what are like the top three things you could recommend for somebody to do right now or today or this week to get better organized what are three things they can do okay number one stop doing your housework hidden so like step on a stage and do your housework if you live with people they should be watching you vacuum fold laundry do dishes like don't do it when they all go off to work and soccer or wherever they go and you're like, oh, finally, the house is quiet.

45:14I'm going to do the dishes. Don't do that. I know it's great.

45:17Hala Taha:So don't make it invisible. You call it invisible labor. Yeah. If everybody else is having fun, you have fun, too. Like, and when everybody else is here, do the housework with them. They can help or not, but at least they'll see that it's getting done. So that's number one. Why, though? Because then it makes it more appreciative or? Well, it makes it not invisible because when you do it, when everybody else is not in the house and then everybody else is in the house and they're doing leisure and you don't feel like you have time to do leisure because you need to do other things, then you are frustrated with them and they don't understand what the big deal is.

45:49Got it, yeah, okay. So that'd be number one. Number two, organize your spaces first. Organize your closet, your bedroom, your backpack, your laundry, like whatever impacts you organize that first because number one, it will stay organized a lot longer than any of the family spaces. And number two, you will start living an organized life and so you will feel better. Because we default to everybody else around us and organizing all of them. And then they don't appreciate it. It gets unorganized. And then again, we get frustrated. Yeah. And they're like, why are you mad? Okay.

46:17Hala Taha:Okay. So that'd be the second one. And the third one is, what is the one thing that has just been bothering you? And you're like, if I just had time to work on this thing, like use paper plates in order, take out in, and then work on that thing. So like for me right now, it's my nutrition, my wellness. So I'm really trying to dial in like, now I'm hungry and I want to eat, but now I know all the food is bad, so I don't have any of the good foods. And then I just don't even know what to eat. So I really need to take some time to figure out what to eat because I could be hungry. Yeah. So we talked about this word, invisible labor.

46:49Hala Taha:And I noticed that you create a lot of like terms in your marketing, things that I've never heard of before, and you coin them. And I'm curious how that impacts your stickiness to your audience, the way that they resonate with you. Like, why do you come up with all these terms? And give us some examples. Okay, great. So invisible labor is definitely an academic term. It's not my own. So I just want to make clear about that one. But I think it's just the teacher. Like, how do you, through a podcast, help someone who's in their own home think about their home differently so that they can make decisions and make change?

47:25So I have to, like, explain and give examples of other households that might be similar to yours and then give you a business analogy or a different analogy and then apply it to the home. So one would be Swiss cheese organizing. So Swiss cheese organizing actually came from when my kids were at this learning disability school. And they talked about how an ADHD brain has Swiss cheese learning because of the executive function deficits. Like one day the student will know their colors and the next day they won't. And that's, you know, Swiss cheese learning was coined by one of the teachers there.

47:56So I took that and I applied it to organizing. And I was like, OK, well, women, we're like, I'm going to take my house back. And I organize the kitchen and the toy room and the family room. And I do it all weekend long. And then I get to Monday. I'm like, house looks great. And then next Friday, it's a mess again because you're organizing spaces that aren't going to stay organized. But if you organize your bathroom, your bedroom, your closet, those spaces will stay organized. And now you can get your whole house organized in a year. You have an order of operations problem, not an effort problem.

48:27So I'm pulling that in from being a math teacher. Like, you remember Order of Operations? Like the pandas thing? Yeah. So I'm applying that. And then I did a whole series on that where I was like, you must subtract, which is declutter. And then you must add. And then you must, you know, organization multiplies your time. And I did all these little analogies around math. Another one is golden windows. So I talk about when there are these unique periods of time where everybody wants to get organized. September, January. Yep. When you turn a milestone birthday, like 40. Spring cleaning. Have a baby.

48:56all that stuff. So some are universal, like everybody wants to get organized in September and some are unique to you. You're getting married and you're turning 40 and you're having a baby or whatever it is. And you can stack these golden windows and then you have a lot of energy. And this is when you should really go deep on getting organized.

49:12Hala Taha:Why is it that sometimes like I'm in the mood to clean and I'll notice that there's stuff everywhere. And then other times, like I don't even notice that it's messy, like as an ADHD brain. I don't know, but I could guess. So I'll just say for myself, sometimes it's like, okay, it's messy, but I really don't have the energy or I'm really excited about something I'm doing in business. So I'm like, whatever. And then other times maybe it'll be like, I'm stuck on something at work or I'll be like, I really need to figure this out, but I can't figure it out. And I'll come home and I'll be like, this place is a mess.

49:45And I'll put all my energy into organizing the house. And as I do that, I get the breakthrough for the business. And so I find that a lot of times when we do some of that kinesthetic work, at least for myself personally. I'll make breakthroughs in other areas. Yeah.

49:58Hala Taha:How are people finding you mostly? Like, how are you getting your sales? Where are the different channels? We talked about your podcast. Like, if you could break down, like, where you get a majority of your sales or the different channels. I don't know. You don't know? I don't know. Oh, my God. She just was like, I just make two million. I don't know. I don't know. So, I'm on Instagram. I pulled everybody onto my own app. So, we're not on Facebook. I mean, I have accounts on Facebook, but I haven't been on Facebook in like six years because people like to organize in private. Yeah. And people don't want like Facebook having all their information.

50:30So I have my own app. I have a custom coded website. Like I'm not on Shopify. I'm not I am in Amazon just for one product. So, yeah, I'm not in a lot of the places all the other people are. So that's kind of a problem. I do have the podcast and people do refer to the podcast. I have books. People will find me when I'm on other podcasts like yours or I do a summit or things like that. But no, I've never been able to like dial it in. This is how you like. Really? What

50:57Hala Taha:about SEO from your website? It's so like word heavy. I'm assuming you get a lot of traffic from there. You don't know? People will say they find me somehow they end up on the podcast and that's where they want to grow. Like, do you care about growing? Yes. Yes. So when you want to grow, what do you do? So, yeah, that's a great question. The only time I ever ran ads was we were running ads in February of 2020 and we ran them until May of 2020, I do think they kind of worked. But just like you said, I mean, you've looked at everything in the company and you're like, the Sunday basket is too expensive.

51:29Well, an ad, I mean, you see what I'm saying? On Facebook, that's not people aren't going to buy$179 basket. No, yeah, you need to build,

51:35Hala Taha:the podcast works for you because you're building trust. Yes. You're getting people to like, listen to your voice, feel connected with you, listen to you every day until finally they're like, Lisa's giving me so much advice. I'm going to buy her$250 basket and get this started. And at least I get something physical in the process. It's probably easier to make the course sale in 2026 with a physical product, to be honest, because courses are kind of going a little downhill. But talk to us about your model of your course, because it's actually, you're involved. It's more of a, is it like live kind of, like group coaching?

52:13Yeah. So I didn't finish that earlier, there's always three components to anything that we sell. There's a physical product. There's an online course, like an on-demand course. And then there's some kind of a co-working. So in the Sunday basket, you get the Sunday basket, you get the online course, and then about 40 out of 52 Sundays from 5 to 6.30 Eastern, there's one of two people that'll lead a Sunday basket club. The Productive Home Solution, we don't have a physical product anymore, but that's our whole system to organize your entire house. And then Tanya on Thursday will lead you in like, what does that look like in her house with twins that are 12?

52:46Whereas I am, you know, an empty nester now. And then my live components are when I do planning days. So now I'm taking you up to that level five CEO thinking leader of the house.

52:56Hala Taha:VIP premium package. So how much is somebody spending on that? So the planning day right now is$250 per session. Okay. It's a live event. So we just charge. And once you're in that, you can get the subscription, which drops it a little bit. And many people can join that. Many people can join that. We have a thousand people in it. You have a thousand people in it and a thousand people join the call? A thousand people are in the subscription plan and they have been for like five years. Okay, cool. We have very, very little churn. And they show up on Sundays and do it with you. So this is the planning day.

53:27It's kind of like quarterly planning and business. It's kind of modeled after the EOS model. So it's a two-day event, a Thursday and a Friday. Thursday, we prep and we get ready and we pull all of our resources, clean out our Sunday basket and get all our binders ready. and then I do a four-hour live and there's a six-week replay where we go through like thinking through our time and thinking through our housework and our goals and objectives and plan out our house, all the things we want to do in our house for the next 120 days. So we do this three times a year. Got it. Okay.

53:55Hala Taha:I feel like we need this like more broken down. I don't get what you do yet. So what is the... Maybe this is my problem. Welcome to How We Profit Therapy. I'm just kidding. Yes, thank you. Product ladder. Tell us your product ladder. Like, what is the lowest entry point to work with you to the highest? Sunday Basket,$179. Okay. The Productive Home Solution is$12.50. That's organizing your house. Somebody goes and organizes your house? No, you have to organize your own house. I teach you how. I know. It's a 52-week never-ending program. I'm too rich for that. Yeah, exactly. And there is a good point to that.

54:32So this is not designed for people who are too rich for that. Like that's what in-home professional organizers are for. This is for the people who are like, I don't have$75 an hour to pay a professional organizer, but I will learn the skill. And also just getting back to like, we're running an enterprise. Like we are running the household engine. And this is the, like, if you are an entrepreneur and I said, okay, it's going to be like$3 ,000 for you to get all the operating systems you need. You'd be like, where can I sign up? But when we're talking about a household, we're like$750 to do all the information management.

55:06That's so much money. Aren't those just binders? No, they're like the life, like they're the operating system. They KPIs, the processes that you would have in business for your household. They will help you if somebody has to step in as power of attorney, power of health care, settle your estate. Like these are real things that are going to happen in all households.

55:23Hala Taha:Yeah, and help save you time and efficiency so that you can make more money, do whatever you need to do. Okay, so we're on the second stage. Yeah, so it's Sunday basket, organizing the house, the productive home solution. The paper solution is$750. And then you go to planning days. So we have a monthly and a quarterly planning. And you pay$250 a week. $250 per planning session. They're only three a year, so$750 a year. Got it. $750 a year, and it's a planning session with you involved. Yes. It's really cool. you're helping people, and you're making money doing it. And so you've got a pretty small team, right?

56:00Hala Taha:You've got nine people you mentioned. What are all the different roles that you have right now? So we have full-time graphic designer, a full-time finance, one that's part-time finance and warehouse. I have a chief of staff. I have an executive assistant. I have somebody else who works in the warehouse. Customer service. There's me. There's me. It sounds like you need a marketing person. Yes. We had a marketing person. We probably do need a marketing person. Marketing is me right now. And something that I heard you say earlier in the conversation is that you've never been viral. You're like, I did this all.

56:33Hala Taha:You have like a two million dollar business. You've never been viral. You've got a great podcast, though, which is really great long form content. You built a great blog. What are your thoughts around the fact that you've never gone viral, but you still have a successful business? Yeah, I'm not really sure. Um, when I started the PhD, we're a$2.5 million company and we maintained that for four years before we sunset our work product. And now we're at 2 million. And it's really the customers, once they really buy into doing the products, like they, once you have the Sunday basket, then you want to make all the other things.

57:08And then you just run your own loss away. Got it. So you have really great LTV. Oh, yeah. It's incredible.

57:11Hala Taha:So your customers are really going up the product ladder. And they're just buying more office supplies. Interesting. And they're using this system in other ways. Awesome. And do you think there's a lot of word of mouth happening? No. You know why? People don't want to tell people when they're doing organizing and or if you tell other people when you're doing organizing, people are like, yeah, have her come to my house. She doesn't come to her house. Never mind. That sounds like work. So what I realized is a lot of people don't want to do the work of getting organized. But the people who do are usually leaders in their other roles.

57:43And so they see the value of getting this organized because it will give them time so they can have more time for what they're uniquely gifted and created to do, which may be volunteering, it may be growing a business, it may be leading in corporate America or whatever, but they know that they've been organized and successful over here, so they need to be organized and successful over here.

58:01Hala Taha:And I don't think you have a lot of competition. I can't imagine that there's a ton of courses available for organization. Am I right? Most of the courses that are out there aren't as complete and they focus on one niche, which is mostly married women with children. So they're not looking at a woman that is not married. Or you go into the productivity space or time management space and they can teach you a time management or a journal or some systems, but they don't have the home organization piece. Okay. So you have like a more holistic approach to manage the entire household. Yeah. So you were also selling work systems and organization.

58:40Hala Taha:Why did you decide to sunset that part of your business? Especially if it was making, I guess, how much money? A million dollars a year. It was making a million dollars a year. It was making a million dollars a year. So I was doing these home planning days three times a year, trimester, and I was doing quarterly planning days with people in work. Okay. So that was a recurring product. And then the Sunday basket, same exact product, we called it a Friday Workbox. And that is the box I originally created back when I was doing direct sales. And now I had my whole team profitable because I taught them that pink leads to purple, leads to blue, leads to green.

59:13So marketing pink leads to purple products and customers, leads to team members to support those, leads to revenue. And so once you learned that in direct sales, you made money. But if you didn't learn that, like you only focused on one color and you never had a well-rounded a business enough to make money. So I moved that into Organize 365. But the problem was I had eight of these boxes, all things I had done. Entrepreneur, direct sales, teacher, corporate, like everything I've done. So I was teaching it that way. Then I made it just one box, but I'm an entrepreneur. So when you are an entrepreneur, pink leads to purple, leads to blue, leads to green.

59:52When you are an employee, green leads to blue, leads to purple, leads to pink, because the entrepreneur is the one that comes up with the ideas and the marketing and the new. And as an employee, you have administrative tasks that you work with a team on to create the product that fulfills the CEO's vision. And to truly make that line what it needed to be, I needed to create two products, one entrepreneurial and one employee. And I could have done it. But what I found was I was spending so much time figuring that out that I was not iterating on the home.

1:00:24Hala Taha:and there are thousands of people who do this and I'm the only person that does the home at the level that I do it and so I burned the boats just like I got rid of the in-home organizing when it was making almost half a million dollars to start something that was making nothing I did it again and now I'm like okay I see we need monthly CEO sessions I see we need a planner I'm coming out with the planner next month I see we need a state course so I'm like I see now the pieces that are already missing and what I'm creating because we still have so much work at home that is not operationalized. Yeah.

1:00:55Hala Taha:Yeah. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. So even though it was making money, it was profitable. Was it profitable? Yeah. Okay. You still shut it down because you felt like it was slowing you down with your core competency. And eventually, like, you want to make 5 million, 10 million, more millions on your organization business. That's interesting. It is interesting. Well, you can only do so much. Like, you as the individual CEO, visionary, creator can only do so much. Yeah, you got to focus. That's the name of the game. So it's like if you're losing focus, trying to develop something that you aren't even necessarily like the top expert in the world on, that's probably also what you're feeling.

1:01:33Hala Taha:You're like, I know how to organize. I had that business. Now you're getting your PhD to learn more about that. How do you think your PhD is actually going to help you in your business? Yeah, my husband asked that question often. That's why we're coming out with this Productive Home CEO theoretical framework. It's a podcast series now. It'll be a book next year. And then that will be the theory that I ground all my research in. So to have research theory, you have to have a book. So I'm going to create the book and then I'm going to go and run a lot of studies. So I'm going to self-fund my studies and get them published in academia and elsewhere.

1:02:11Hala Taha:And that will be like IP that you can sell with your business, right? So once you publish it in academia, they own it. Kind of like if you traditionally publish a book, But yes, it is IP. And this is taking household management to a level that's never been studied before. The last time psychologists studied household management in this way was all the way back in the 30s and 40s when Lillian Gilbreth did efficiency studies. She was the cheaper by the dozen lady. She was a psychologist. And so she studied household efficiency. And then academia moved into economics. And that's where we were in the 60s and 70s.

1:02:45And that's when consumer packaged kids were like, yeah, let's target that homemaker. And they created the homemaker out of scratch. Like it was a marketing gimmick, the stay-at-home mom, which I bought into hook, line, and sinker and loved it. And then we've moved into the feminist, you know, women are doing more labor, invisible labor, the burnout and the mental load of women, which is real and definitely needs to be studied in academia. We've been studying that since the mid 80s.

1:03:10Hala Taha:Okay. My thing is, okay, yeah, that's true. But I can't get my husband to do something different. I can't get my kids to do something different. I can only impact me. And so me as the head of my household, how can I support myself other than just downloading Pinterest printables and things like that? Like I need an operating system. I need a way to operationalize what I'm doing. I need a way that I have a system that I can put in place in our parents' homes, that I can put in place in my kids' homes, that I can put in place in my sister's home if I need to step in and be her power of attorney or her power of healthcare as opposed to running all their households on all their systems.

1:03:47So that's really what I'm going to focus on.

1:03:49Hala Taha:So let's talk about margins, profitability. So right now, you're not doing the home services anymore. You really got your products that you just went over. What is your margin on all this? Like how much profit? How much are you spending? What is your biggest cost centers and doing all these different courses? is. An interesting thing about my company that I realized is because I am the manufacturer and I'm the distributor in one company, we actually don't do markup between manufacturer to distributor to end user. Okay. But I could. Like if we were to end up like in Target or something, we would have the manufacturing, we would package that and then there'd be a, you know, cost for that product.

1:04:33We just go straight from manufacturing to end use. So it looks like there's a lot more margin than there is. And because a lot of it is online, you know, I already made the course. So what's there is no hard cost in that anymore. I continue to update it, but there isn't a hard cost.

1:04:48Hala Taha:Other than like you and other people that have to show up on the Sunday planning days and stuff. Yeah. So when you look at the P &L, like the actual physical products is low, like 10 to 15 percent. Shipping is like 7 percent. So you're like, oh, my gosh, you have like 80 % margins. No, you don't because we have warehouse fees. We have warehouse employees. We have customer service. So then you take it down to like, okay, we can lump all that into operating expense. And that's probably like 40%. So we're still 60 % profitable. But if I'm the face of the brand and I'm creating everything, I'm not in that.

1:05:20I'm over in GNA. Research is down in GNA. You know, all the other team members are down in GNA. So how they do it on a P &L, like what's considered profit and not profit. We were profitable the last two years enough that we could do profit sharing, which I really loved doing for my team. It was great. This year, we weren't as profitable.

1:05:40Hala Taha:Because you're developing because you dropped that product. We're still profitable, but not. Oh, that's amazing that you did profit sharing with your employees. Can you share a little bit about that, like how you actually did it? Yeah. So again, back to that C Corp and S Corp. So the S Corp can have retained earnings at the end of the year, whatever the profit is, like in an S-corp, it would just flow through to the business owner or they could distribute it if they want to. But if they don't, it'll just flow through to them. When you're in a C-corp, you have to make a decision like I pull a W-2 salary.

1:06:08I also get royalties. And then at the end of the year, what is the profit? So I think each year we had like$200 ,000 in profit. So then when you have that$200 ,000 in profit, you could pay your 21 % tax,$42 ,000, and then just keep the rest of the$160 ,000 in the company and just add it so that you can use it to buy things. Okay. Or you can distribute it to yourself. Like as a business owner, you could just do that. Or you could do what's called profit sharing. So when you do profit sharing, that's going to be means tested, which means that we have a 401k. We do a company match of 4%. So we already checked the box of one of the means testing.

1:06:44And then they look at the entire employees, everyone that qualifies, and they do all these actuarial things. And they come back and they say, okay, if you distribute$100 ,000, this is how it would break out. If you distribute 150, this is how it would all break out. And I remember when my husband got two profit-sharing distributions probably 20 years ago, the company he was with was bought, and it was about to be sold. And so the business owners wanted to take money out of the company, and it was advantageous to them to do it as a profit-sharing. So he got like, it was a lot of money, like$20 ,000 or something like that in one year in profit-sharing, which all goes into your 401k.

1:07:21And he talks about that all the time and how meaningful it was. So I was like, I want to do that with my employees one day. So we did that two years in a row. And sometimes people won't see that as a real benefit because they're like, well, but that's in my 401k. I can't spend it today, especially if they're younger, even though it'll grow so much bigger. So I also try to do bonuses as well because it's like money now, money later.

1:07:41Hala Taha:Yeah, really great. Where do you think you're the strongest in your business? I think the fact that I am research back, going to do my own research, that I understand the entire lifespan of the adult cycle, that I have a complete from decluttering to organizing to increasing productivity and beyond scope. Like the depth of my researches and my knowledge is really strong. I also think one of your strengths is just your journey. Like the fact that you're a teacher, so you're really good at teaching. You can come up with words and analogies. And then you did the like physical organizing for people.

1:08:17Hala Taha:So I feel like it's also your journey, which I think is the case for a lot of entrepreneurs. Like your journey is also your strength. All right. Next is weaknesses. What do you think your biggest weaknesses are? I think one of my biggest weaknesses is I don't know how people find me and I don't know how to have more people find me. You definitely need to think about how are you going to create marketing channels, especially with a 60 percent margin. It's like, how are you just going to get more customers in the door? and I think honestly like as a marketer myself yeah I think it means you've got to like actually lean into social media and get on camera yeah or you don't even need to necessarily get on camera it could be writing on social media like I don't know but I just feel like you need to embrace the fact that everyone's on Instagram and oh I'm on Instagram every day you're on Instagram every day I'm not doing a good job of it, obviously.

1:09:12Hala Taha:And it's like you need to be like DMing people and bringing them into your world and having webinars. And it's really cool that you've got this podcast. And I think that's working. But if you want to like 2x, 3x, 5x the business, I think it's really about getting out there. Yep. Agreed. Yeah. So I'm in Austin. Yeah. I mean, she's getting out here right now. All right. Opportunities. Where do you think your biggest opportunities lie? I think that there are a lot of opportunities and I try, even though I like to go after every shiny penny, I'm trying to be very strategic with what I say yes to and what channels we go to next.

1:09:52We could do brand partnerships. You know, I could start speaking on stages. I already have six books, but I plan on continuing to publish about a book a year. So we have a lot of opportunities. I think research is probably the biggest one, though, when we can start having some academic support for these products specifically in the home, like you do for any other thing that's in a business. You know, those all have academic testing behind them. I want to do the study, find support, replicate my own study, and then offer my products to independent researchers to be able to see if they can also replicate the study to see if there's support for these.

1:10:28Hala Taha:I think like an ADHD line, products, courses just for them, like I think that could work really, really well. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs with a lot of money who have ADHD. Okay, threats. What's your biggest threat? My company will have to be sold. Like it's not going to go to my kids. But I want to work till I'm 80. Martha Stewart was 80 when I made that goal. I think she's 83 now. Dan Sullivan is 82 or whatever. I'm like, okay, well, if they can make it to 80, I can make it to 80. So that's 26 more years. Like I have quite a few years of working. But if you're the face of the company, how is that going to work?

1:11:03We're creating an AI right now. I'm doing that Delphi AI and I'm creating two of them, one for our home, our home-based products and one for the CEO line. And so you're going to be able to voice chat with that 24-7. So that's one way.

1:11:17Hala Taha:Yeah. Who knows what are going to be opportunities? Maybe like Dave Ramsey approach, like get other like faces in there. So I did. You did? I did. Yep, I tried it. It didn't go well. I mean, your intellectual property is your intellectual property. Everybody's going to put their spin on things. And when you create something that's truly unique like I've created, people want you. Like, is there a second Oprah? I'm not saying I'm Oprah. I'm just saying, you know, is there a second Brene Brown? Is there a second Mel Robbins? No. I mean, people want that person who's created that, you know, community or that feeling or that intellectual property.

1:11:52I don't think it's something that you could just like democratize.

1:11:55Hala Taha:Yeah. So when you go to sell your company, it will be like all the courses and the materials and the content, essentially. Yeah. So Franklin Covey is now a public company. Okay. But back in the day, you know, it was the Covey books and the Covey planner. But now it's like multiple hundreds of million dollar company and it's no longer associated with the person. Got it. But I've been really good at making sure that I have patents and trademarks and copyrights and all of that kind of thing. So I think as far as that goes, that's not a threat. My biggest threat is people just don't want to do work at home.

1:12:32They just don't want to do it.

1:12:33Hala Taha:People want to pay for it. But if you can't pay for it, you got to learn. Well, they don't even want to pay for it. They just want it to like magically go away or not be a thing or. AI robots. Yeah. Hopefully. Which don't work. But anyway. Yeah. Well, this has been such an awesome conversation. I feel like we learned so much about your business. My last question to you is, if you wanted to double the size of your business, what steps would you take today? So doubling the size of the business, I just did a reader survey, finding out what my audience wanted, and then I reverse engineered how can we give them what they want.

1:13:08Hala Taha:Because you find the value in existing clients. You know that. And how do you reach these existing clients? Do you have like an email list that you target? I do have an email list. We have a private app. So every course has its own thing inside of the app. And then you can also get in the app for free. I'm on Instagram. I do podcast episodes. So they hear me there. But our email list is really engaged. So I got a lot of responses from the reader survey. Very cool. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on How We Profit. Where can everybody learn about you and everything that you do? Thank you so much for having me.

1:13:45The website is Organize365.com. I'm Organize365 on Instagram, and the podcast is Organize365.

1:13:53Hala Taha:Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on How We Profit. Thank you. And that, Yap Fam, is how Lisa and Organize365 profits. What stood out to me today is that Lisa is not just selling organization. She's naming a problem millions of people feel, the invisible work, the paper piles, the mental load, and the overwhelm of running a home. And when a founder can name the problem better than anyone else, create a system around it, and build trust through the years with teaching and podcasting, that becomes a real moat. Thanks for listening to How We Profit Wednesdays, the Young and Profiting series where real entrepreneurs share real numbers, real margins, and the real story of how their businesses actually work.

1:14:35Hala Taha:I'm Hala Taha, and I'll see you next time.