We were lucky to catch up with Jen Heard recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later
For years, as my young daughter was in school, I told myself I would start my dream business when she graduated college. I didn’t believe I could do it all. She gratuated from Michigan State on a Saturday. On Tuesday I received my EIDL loan from the SBA for $144K, and I was off to the races. Looking back, I wish I had started my business sooner. The money just showed up exactly when I asked for it, and so I am confident that if I had asked sooner, it would have been made available as well. While I am not sure the technology that we are using would have been available, if it had, I would have liked to have been younger than I am now when starting a venture like this.
Often, when a technology company is bootstrapped or started from scratch, the founder gets to wear all of the hats. Not only do they get to do all of the things that take their concept from vision to reality, but they also get to write business plans, perform all of the accounting tasks, wear the marketing and sales hat, write applications for grants and loans, compose emails, create social media, hire personnel, train them and keep track of all of the administrative work associated with their growing business, analyze competitors, find coaching, cost-effective developers, and on top of all this, find classes, mentors and networking opportunities to help them to do all of that better over time.
While I had a ton of boots-on-the-ground business experience with Clean Sweep Consulting, the professional organizing business I founded in 2006, app developing was a whole other level of complication, time-management and extreme expense. I think a younger me may have worked faster, not been the bottle-neck as often, picked up on issues quicker, been more adaptable, not known and have been concerned with so many pitfalls, and I think my young staff members might identify better with me if I were not 55 years old now as I am attempting to launch. And yet I am. And it has been an awesome ride so far.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
When my daughter was 4 years old, I went through a terrible and sudden divorce. I worked 3-4 different jobs just to retain my house, and those jobs were adminstrator at ITT Technical Institute, realtor, real-estate office manager and I also worked at IKEA in Tempe, AZ at around the same time. So I managed to obtain comfort in a technical environment, alongside the ability to know how to prepare homes for sale and all the work that goes into that. I studied for and obtained my real estate license, so I had confidence in my ability to work with homeowners and realtors as well.
I learned the value of building a well-oiled machine and list of contacts and support personnel, which has served me well for years. So, when I moved back to Michigan when my daughter was 6-1/2, I made a list of all of the things I had done in my career, and I gave myself a title and formed my first company. I researched everyone I would need to get the job done and created a terrific resource list.
I wanted to be able to be available for my daughter when she got home from school and to help with homework and drive her to sports. I had family nearby to support us, because not every day worked out that I could leave on time, but I definitely benefited from the flexibility and did my best to always be there for her.
Over the years, in addition to my MBA, I took psychology courses at the masters level, because helping people deal with their stuff has a whole lot of psychological implications. I also worked in a senior care environment for 3 years so that I got to know all about the specific difficulties associated with aging, downsizing and end-of-life decisionmaking. All of these attributes, taken together, make me the perfect storm to be a professional organizer and decluttering coach.
In over 20 years of being an organizer in my life, I have learned patience, persistence, finding joy in small successes and how to coach people to a better life through minimalism and reducing clutter and distractions. That is my favorite thing to do. But then came the COVID crisis, and 2 of my hoarding clients died (while we were working with them) from long-term illnesses that they came down with after living in an unsuitable environment for way too long. I became more and more obsessed with helping people downsize, live simply and minimize their cluttered environments. I have never, in 19 years of having Clean Sweep, charged for taking any items to charities. And I decided to create an app that would teach people how to locate charities, match them and help them provide their extra items in an easier manner so that if they choose they could do what I do themselves. Instead of having to wait for a pro, now they can self-serve and avail themselves of the charity contacts that I am amassing for the entire state, not just a 25-mile radius from where I operate. And we aim to make this available to the entire US in the next year of two.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When the Love Bigger app launched last fall, we thought it would be easy to get charities to sign up to get free stuff from our app. After all, the first interview I did on local TV for 3 minutes gleaned 150 donors signed up and ready to give. The charities were not signing up as quickly as we assumed they would. What we discovered with some discussion and research is that the charities wanted new items as well as used items, and striking a balance would help us to get more charities signed up. So we shifted our efforts to locate retail corporate responsibility partners who would offer free, new items to the charities that they could not sell, but that had plenty of life in them. That way, our pipeline would be full of new AND used items so that everyone would be happy and could get what they need.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
My reputation started when I was in high school and I babysat for 15 families in my local area. When I started my business after my return from living away, I went back to those families and many of them became my clients. I still work for their kids and some of their grandkids today. So investing in being friendly, detail-oriented, hardworking and willing to do tasks they needed, not just what I wanted to do is what gained me long-term clients for life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lovebigger.com and www.cleansweepconsulting.net
- Instagram: @jennnheard @lovebiggerofficial @cleansweepconsulting
- Facebook: https://facebook.co/jenheard also @cleansweepconsulting and @lovebiggercommunity
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/cleansweep
- Twitter: @jenheard
- Youtube: @lovebiggerofficial