Interview with Melisa Celikel, Founder & CEO of Let’s Get You Organized. Let's Get You Organized is a small business consultancy with programs designed to aid small businesses.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women and women-identified entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia, and today I'm sitting down with Melisa Celikel. She is the founder and CEO of Let's Get You Organized. Let's get you organized as a small business consultancy with programs designed to aid small businesses.
So welcome, Melisa. Thank you so much, Patricia. It's so great to be here. I'm so glad to have you. And a really quick bio on Melisa for those of you listening.
She's a San Diego native and a direct, strategic and organized consultant that is heavily involved in the startup ecosystem and America's finest city, that is San Diego. Melisa graduated magna cum laude from California State University, San Marcos, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. She has furthered her studies in human behavior by obtaining an LP certification that's a neurolinguistic programing and is currently working toward her art certification, which is a professional in human resources. Melisa consulted in the employee relations space for five years at several Fortune 500 companies, including Roach, Abbott and GE. She has spent the last two years consulting for small businesses, evolving their organizational procedures with her company called Let's Get You Organized. She is a master of productivity, time management and process improvement. You can find her at Mellissa at let's get you started on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Plus, you can jump on our email list at DOT. Let's get you organized, dot biz. So just for everyone listening really quickly, a roadmap of today's podcast is that I'm going to reach into Melisa's academic background and early professional life and then we'll drop straight into the backbone of let's get you organized with the one what, when, where, why, funding everything when it was founded, all of that good stuff. And then we'll launch straight into the different facets of it and the program, the structure of let's get you organized, kind of the ethos behind the company culture. And then we will get into goals that Melisa has over the next three years, kind of the idealism, including the realistic, which is scaling and things of that nature will wrap up everything by asking Melisa about the advice that she has for those looking to mirror what she does or even just get involved with her and her company with where it's at right now. So, Melisa, we drop a straight into any particulars that are you find relevant with your academic background and early professional life?
Definitely, yeah. So my bachelor's degrees in sociology right after that, I drove into human resources where I handled everything from payroll administration to employee benefits, recruiting, onboarding, as well as affording, making tough decisions when it came time to reductions in force that those large Fortune 500 companies and basically after little over five years, I just kind of burnt out and decided that I wanted to do my own thing and dove into entrepreneurship.
Nice, so you kind of got a peppering of larger corporate and then decided that you were going to do your own thing, did you have any roadmap or guidelines or mentorship that helped you when you first started doing that?
I didn't. I originally launched Let's Get You Organized as a residential home organization company, so considered myself to be a professional organizer where I was de cluttering the homes of San Diego residents.
Nice. And I kind of hustled with that during my career and are on nights and weekends or for friends and family. I had a Craigslist ad up for ten dollars an hour, services, Vistaprint business cards and a little blogspot blog and all those little kind of bootstrap type things when you're side hustling. And the infrastructure was there for me in that regard when I did decide to go full time.
But then it was a matter of elevating all of the processes and services to be actually scalable and monetize it.
That's cool.
I've spoken to a lot of founders recently that kind of develop the egos, the small ecosystem, if you will, the ecosystem with Meetup events and pop up events where they can kind of do what it sounds like you did, which is via a different avenue, which is, you know, develop that that presence, be it on things like Craigslist and stuff like that, to kind of start developing an environment and customer base there in. When did you launch Let's get you organized.
So legally and officially, it was launched January of twenty eighteen site hustling, bootstrapping way back in twenty eleven by twenty eighteen was when I went full throttle and created an LLC and got all my business licensing and insurance in, in my hand.
I got you. So it sounds like it started out with like actual tactile Marie Kondo kind of organization. Like you actually took it very literal and it's morphed into like programs and structuring of how you can help different businesses. Can you explain some of the set up of how the company is right now?
Today, for sure, yeah. So it definitely started as that residential de cluttering and then it morphed into online education with the launch of my courses.
That includes a mentorship program for aspiring professional organizers that are curious how to build a business like mine. And from there, I realized how much I loved helping others build businesses, not just necessarily in that professional organizer industry. So I launched a one on one consulting program for new business owners.
And what I'm finding is that small businesses on their way to growing and scaling are also in need of our support. So in a way, my journey here has kind of come full circle from those Fortune 500 companies to literally down in the dirt of garages, cluttering and organizing to then online education, the business consulting.
And now I'm finding myself probably moving into a season where I'm going to be consulting for small business, H.R. so like outsourced fractional H.R. support.
And is that in this same kind of organizational tactic realm and Vegan helping people kind of streamline their processes by getting organized?
Exactly. It basically moved from physical organization of stuff and clutter to more process organization, systems, organization, automation, setup and process improvement, trying to find where there were bottlenecks in small businesses procedures.
Interesting.
So with within the development, since you kind of it sounds like a soft launch, you've changed. You've massaged, if you will, the genre and the playing field for how you're organizing and coming into things since its inception. What so let's go further back than just its technical launch in twenty eighteen. But since the beginning of doing what you do, would you think the greatest growth moment and or struggle there in was like it was it this new transformation or was it earlier on. What's been the most difficult part about it?
I think for me it was quieting the doubters. When I left my six figure corporate career at age twenty eight, I was living that quote unquote dream life of the corner office and the six figure career at a Fortune one hundred company at the time. My dad has a PhD in molecular biophysics and my mom has her master's in special education research. So I come from a very academic family and was urged to go on to get my master's degree or even a doctorate. And I declined and I said, I'm just going to do this H.R. thing. And then I sort of became the black sheep of my family because there are zero entrepreneurs in my family and I love that corporate world. I'm also a first generation immigrant.
So I'm from Turkey. Originally, I'm born in L.A., but my whole family pretty much lives in Turkey, so that was another quieting the doubters moment, so to speak, of kind of getting them on board like, hey, I'm not going to die if I don't have a paycheck, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think is difficult for any age as well. It seems more acceptable from someone in their 20s or their teens. But absolutely. I just podcast with someone who is in her 10th year of her startup, and she still has to kind of get away from the societies of people that say that's really not going to work, even though it has been working for a decade. So I think it's a good point.
Can you kind of now climb into like the areas and the programs of what you have, like a little bit of the structure so people can get a feel for the different aspects on your website, you've got different different genres from accelerator to the courses that you have your academy in the four week mentorship of through some of those.
Yeah, definitely.
So I do I do still have a team of home organizers here in San Diego, basically a burnt out after a full year of helping over two hundred and fifty clients on my own. And I realized I'm a burned out of this. And B, I need to be able to grow this and scale that. So I created that academy for professional organizers or for people that have never started their own business, but want to become a professional organizer. And that being said, I happen to have a few people in my warm market here locally that were interested. I had four women go through the program but now have all of their own businesses. So there are basically ten, ninety nine contractors through my company, which no longer is solely home organizing or really home organizing at all. And so they are able to get dispatched out to these various jobs around the county, which has created sort of a passive model for me where I can step out of the actual labor and home organization and move into the things that spark joy, if you will.
Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. This kind of certification model, I think is really fascinating, too, and kind of taking off with people who have been established and developing the industry. I think it's a really key, unique new Slaínte over the past five about training and the training model and how to kind of get your own thing up and coming and having someone show people the ropes.
It feels like kind of the old school, like mentor or apprenticeship that used to happen where you could go and study under someone and kind of get the nuts and bolts of what you wanted to do before you went off and did it.
So that's really cool. Thank you. Yeah.
What about so when you look forward, like over the next three years, I always ask this and people kind of can get caught up in the technical or the philosophical, but let's combine both of those together over the next three years.
What do you want to see happen with let's get you organized as well as like your own personal endeavors within that?
Yeah, I love that question. It's always important to be looking forward and be moving that needle forward and have those goals, long term vision goals. I just read a book, I'm sure you've read it, too, called Traction and trying to kind of set those bigger picture, those 90 days, those one years, those three years, those five years.
So for me, particularly, the the home organization is passive for me. Now, the mentorship program is passive. I have one other clutter coaching course, which is like a seven or practically a freebie course that just kind of teaches people how to get organized on their own if they can't afford a professional organizer. So all of that is running in the background. And my family does live in Turkey. I would like to sort of take this more online. So I did just create a profitably productive program, which is sort of that accelerator model that I was using for one on one business consulting. But now it's more of that passive model where it's more of a course outline instead of that one on one coaching support that I was providing before. And what I noticed in that was I was starting to burn out with that, too. When you're giving so much time and so much energy to your clients and you might have 10 clients at once and all in different stages of growth in different stages of the program, it's a little bit daunting. So I'm all for that passive model at this point.
So absolutely trying to kind of push that profitably productive program more so than my one on one services so that I can step away to live my life and have that work life balance.
Yeah. How are you dealing with new client acquisition? Are you dealing with targeted ads? Is it mainly on social Facebook and stuff like how are you kind of getting the right information out to the right people?
Yeah, so I run a local networking group here in San Diego. It's kind of I call it the anti networking networking group. So it's.
Or, you know, the maybe nontraditional sort of industry disruptors and other black sheep in my community, in my tribe here, and that has really been the biggest weed source for me, having that as a very warm funnel, if you will, where it's not these cold emails.
I hate those. I hate cold emails. I hate cold calls.
I that's not my style. Personally, I'm not a sales person. I wouldn't ever say I'd be the best lead generation or business development person by any means. What I found is most of my leads come in through that warm, warm network where they already know me and like me and trust me. And the group has been great for that.
That's wonderful. Did you start the group?
I did. I only started it six months ago and we have over two hundred members at this point.
That's fascinating. You must have garnered like a serious pocket of people who I think that with meet ups or any kind of a social networking group like that, it really comes across in the clarity of the verbiage from the get go, from the introduction, you know for sure.
And there are so many Meetup groups here in San Diego and many of the entrepreneur groups are either very expensive or, from what I've noticed, full of that kind of frothy, sugar-coated nonsense.
So I found a hole in the market and basically wanted to create my own group as a place for new business owners that are typically solo partners who need guidance and support in their business. And the meet ups are free. So that's another perk where most of these meet ups that I've been going to are. Twenty five dollars for an evening or forty five dollars for an evening and totally free when you're in that bootstrapping mode as a solo partner. I think that's important to figure out what's going to give you an hour away. And then if you're willing to invest in the higher ticket items, go for it. But you don't need to be wasting your money on all these little events here and there.
Absolutely. That's fantastic. And it is I think it is a very specific Slaínte. I agree with you that meet ups, the charging and the things like that, I'm not sure where it's all headed. I know people started to use Meetup as a marketing platform, but then when they started charging for it, it seemed to fight against itself. I don't know. I think there's going to be a new meetup, like a dark sheep meetup that's going to follow suit with what you're doing there.
Yeah, hopefully offline. I have contacts right now in Orange County and L.A. that are wanting to open their own chapters.
So that's kind of my vision for for the group is to be in 15 major cities in the US. And that's kind of the big, big dream. That's like the ten year dream.
That's cool. What is the name of your meetup at? Well, am I allowed to swear on your podcast? You're OK. It's called Networking for Assholes. There you go. I love it.
And you know, one of your programs is Get Shit Done Accelerator. Like, I love it. I think it's got it's got a lot of cash to say, a lot of cash to say what it really is and drop it. I think that enough of us are very blunt in our descriptions. So networking for assholes sounds fantastic.
I like that a lot.
What about so if you run into a young woman or a woman identified individual in a couple of days that walked up and said, listen, I got my sociology degree, I'm going to go jump into doing some businesses, but I'm really interested in getting my own startup off the ground, knowing what you know.
Now, over the past decade of work that you've done, what are the three top pieces of advice that you would give her?
Yeah, I'm all about that term, The Zone of Genius. I reference another book called The Big Leap by Vegan Hendrix. And I read that book years ago and realized a lot of the stuff that I was focusing on as a newbie business owner, a new startup was I was focusing on stuff that I wasn't good at and stuff that was better suited to be outsourced to either a VA or somebody hiring a marketing agency or hiring a salesperson or hiring an accountant or legal counsel, for example.
I was trying to do all of that myself and where all of those hats. So I would say no one is stay in your zone of genius. And you created this business most likely because of a passion, because of a natural gift and talent that you have. So try to stay in that as much as possible to keep the business going. Otherwise potential burnout could ensue.
Number two, I would say stay organized as a business owner.
I think many of us, as creative entrepreneurs can get a little disorganized and a little bit. Yeah, that shiny object syndrome where focus is lacking. So I think staying organized, being productive, knowing how to manage your time effectively, knowing what to prioritize, what are your main needle movers and focusing on those instead of focusing on what everybody else on Instagram is.
So that would be number two, and then I'd say number three is don't be afraid to pivot.
Clearly, I've pivoted like four times at this point.
And that's that's the beauty of entrepreneurship and that's the beauty of owning your own businesses. And I kind of joke that I'm unemployable. I've been fired from many a job or burned bridges, and I'm not proud of those things. But I really feel like I get bored easily. And so when something doesn't suit me anymore, I'm not challenged. I can still make money from it, like creating those passive courses or doing that certification model with my organizers.
And they'll still be there and they'll still add to my income streams.
But I'm not afraid to pivot and start new programs and move forward with other things like the networking group.
Yeah, absolutely. Evolve or die, publish or perish. Every industry has got their own way of saying it, right. I like that. So it's a danger zone of stay organized and don't be afraid to pivot. Exactly. Those are strong. You and gay Hendrick's to totally hang out together.
I liked that book myself as well. And I refer to a zone of genius as a catch phrase. And I don't usually use other people's terminology because I like my words better nine times out of ten.
But I do believe his clarity. And because he has different zones of talking about you, you could do something very, very well. But that is not necessarily what qualifies you for your zone of genius, which is kind of like what you were put on this earth to do. That doesn't feel like work. It's work that propagates better things. For those of you listening, we've just given him a plug. You're welcome.
But that's awesome. I like those three pieces of advice at time. What do you think? That if you are looking back and giving yourself kind of advice as to something that you should have left off your plate or done a little differently or outsourced more or whatever, what would what would those things we can do?
Like two of them?
Yeah, I would say getting my accounting structures in place sooner rather than later.
I my first year was just a hot mess and having now I have an accountant, a CPA bookkeeper and the whole nine yards and it's great because I that's totally not my term again and I have no idea what can I deduct and am I going to go to jail and holy crap, am I doing this wrong.
And it's scary. It's daunting when you're, when you're such a new business owner. And I didn't go to business school like I my degree is in sociology. I know people I know are not. I never really looked at myself as a business person. And now obviously I'm evolving in that direction. But I think having that that team of of counsel on your side, especially in accounting, is important.
Absolutely. Did you get reference to one like one specifically for startups, or did you just kind of open up the proverbial yellow book and go to town?
Yeah, I definitely got a referral and I absolutely love her. We've actually become friends and we'll go hiking together and all kinds of things. And she she's awesome.
It's so good. Synchronistic relationship.
Absolutely. Did you reach out for the referral or was it just something that landed in your lap?
I did. I think I just did one of those Facebook ask for recommendations.
And I'm lucky to have all of these people in my community supporting me in watching my entrepreneurial journey. So somebody just reached out with with a name and I went with that one.
Yeah, it's so smart. I always tell people like even if it's someone that through someone that you met at some startup entrepreneur, like there's industry specific people as well, picking an accountant because it's who aren't soozie users is not always the best thing. It's there's very specific people that you can get through referrals based on people you don't really know.
So if you attend a startup event and you're looking for people always looking for legal advice, especially in the state of California, we have a lot of mandates changing for different employee regulations and things like that. And I always tell people like if you don't know a good startup player, attend a startup event because they should have a booth. And even if you don't choose that one, you can kind of get your feet wet in the industry or ask that particular lawyer for an accountant referral things of that nature, because there are people who know the ecosystem and people who are there, like putting in the time. So that's awesome that you did that occur to me to get referrals on the Facebook. But it would work, especially if people were really invested in your journey as they have them with you. Can you think of anything else that you outsourced that you wish you had sooner?
Hmm.
I have hired multiple views that are helping with Pinterest and blogging and just kind of the nitty gritty of social media and content that that's being repurposed. I like to create my own content. So I think that might have been a hold up at the beginning and sort of letting the baby go to daycare and not being so constricting of of the activities that the outsourced. I was working on I think we're usually inclined to kind of be so prideful of our work and the innovative and so on of a kind, and it's like, OK, I can I can hire somebody for 15 bucks an hour to help me with this stuff.
Yeah, Vegan an interesting industry.
I mean, I feel like they're just getting there. People are actually just beginning to get firms of VCs and actually make them like more of a commodity and a service that they can vouch for in the states. But virtual assistants, I find that people either use them or are terrified to use them and everyone knows of them. But how did you come into contact? Like, did someone reference one to you or did you just kind of back into the idea of it? Do you can you share that experience at all?
Of course, yeah. So I both, again, were from my warm network. I don't tend to go into the cold, dark depths of the ocean to find really anything including like bakeries.
But yeah, both of the girls I worked with, one was actually a neighbor who was a military spouse. I used to live up by Camp Pendleton, large military base here in San Diego.
And she was just kind of looking for some ad hoc work in between being the mother of four children and a military spouse. She had a background in admin and sort of secretarial work. And I said, hey, you've got great grammar. You you've got great appearance and work ethic and seems responsible enough to be able to keep four humans alive.
So I hired her and she was my first.
And then she ended up moving and didn't want to continue like a virtual arrangement. So she was more of, I guess, less of a virtual assistant and more of just an actual assistant. And then the second was somebody that went through my mentorship program up in the Bay Area, but realized we talked a little bit about validating your market and trying to kind of figure out at a low cost if it's something you even want to do in an apprenticeship type relationship. And she, at the end of the program, decided she didn't like doing it. She got her first few clients and just said, hey, this isn't for me. I actually want to be a virtual assistant and not a home organizer.
And I said, well, can I be your first client? So that was how I found her.
Nice. That's fantastic.
Yeah, it's a very married and those are always the best relationships, you know, the ones that come via like a different route. I think that that's the testimony to the ever giving testimony of built in referral systems and networking. God help me for using that term, you know, but it's built in and social networking.
I mean, it's the reason why anything all of social networking right now even exists or works because it does work, referral based human beings and things evolve out of other things. And we've just taken a century to really grasp that and put it to some good. I work, but I agree.
And I think that those are great stories. And I think that a lot of people haven't really gotten on the bandwagon yet.
And I think Vas well, I believe in most of the people that I've spoken to that they would be most useful. It takes a lot of upfront work, especially when you have them outsourced to we. I've interviewed someone who's got kind of a an infrastructure going in for Vas in the Philippines and while there would be a lot of upfront exploratory explanation and boilerplate, if you will, kind of getting those people on board, I think it's a crucial area that a lot of, especially startups and young entrepreneurs can benefit from, because time is money and you can spend 20 to 30 hours a week on just developing some things that you could easily outsource to eBay. And like you said, it's treating every single tweet as though it were.
Shakespeare is a little precious of let go of some of those areas. But female founders are designed to do that, where we fought fifty times as hard to get to where we're at. And so everything is considered and reconsidered and tortured to death. And that's part of the beauty. But, yeah, I think it's an awesome area for people to start on and look at. Well, I love to circle back around. It seems like you're really in a really interesting growth stage. I look forward to. I really am going to find you again and convince you I'll harass you into hanging out with us again and speaking to us because I look forward to this kind of networking for assholes and the universe you're going to create.
And that I think it's going to be if it just started, I imagine it will take off to be its own beast within a year. And I would love to circle back around and get into that with you as well as where other your other passive sources of income are headed.
That would be awesome. Yeah. Hopefully this time next year we're in at least five cities. That's sort of the plan for four year one. So I am onward and upward with this thing.
It's moving and grooving and I absolutely have no doubt. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today, I. You're busy and I really appreciate you speaking with us.
Of course, and thank you so much for having me.
Absolutely. And for everyone listening, thanks for giving me your ear. And until we talk again next time, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.
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