We recently connected with Allison Rothwell and have shared our conversation below.

Allison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

During the pandemic, I was home trying to work my office job remotely with a one year old and a three year old. My job as an administrative assistant for a CPA firm is a lot easier to do in person during tax season so I was struggling mentally. I felt like the toys were overrunning our living room and I was feeling very overwhelmed by everything in our house. I started googling “decluttering” and “organizing” and I found lots of interesting podcasts to start listening to and books to read. I started decluttering my home almost immediately and when I went back into the office in July of 2020, I saw that our supply closet was super disorganized. I took a before photo and got to work! The after photo was amazing and inspired me. I told my husband that I thought l could help other moms do this; a business was born!

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?

I am a certified declutter coach and organizational specialist. I am certified and trained by two YouTubers who are very big in the organizing world-Dana K. White and Cas Aarrssen. I go into peoples home and I coach them through Dana’s Five Step No Mess Method and I help them get organized after we pare down. We never make a bigger mess in the progress by following Dana’s method so even if we only work for an hour, we have made progress! I also coach people virtually through Zoom. I especially love helping busy moms like myself!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I am lucky because the primary part of my business is me! My hands, feet and mouth are all I really need while coaching. I help people physically put things in trash bags and donate boxes with my hands. My feet bring me to places in the house to place the items within the home that had previously been stranded in piles. I coach with my words and I never run out of those! My business started with zero capital. A simple business page on Facebook is really how it all started. I also don’t have any products or anything similar to keep stock of so my basic expenses now are running my website, printing business cards as needed and paying to keep my credentials up each year.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I first started by advertising on local mom pages on Facebook. My kids were young at the time so I had access to lots of other mothers who were feeling overwhelmed in their homes. A simple page on a social media site is really all you need to get started. From there, I joined Instagram and TikTok. It can be scary to put yourself out there on social media and be vulnerable especially if you aren’t comfortable sharing parts of your life online, but that is how we grow as individuals-by taking risks. Eventually my jobs started coming in from word of mouth recommendations from past clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rothwellorganized.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rothwellorganized/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063821452399
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rothwellorganized/?viewAsMember=true
• Other: TikTok

  https://www.tiktok.com/@rothwellorganized

Image Credits

Headshot by Paul Vicario, Massachusetts