We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Drew Price a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Drew, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back at the decisions you made early in your career, particularly whether to join a firm or start your own, do you feel you made the right choice for that stage of your career?

I founded Drew Price Organizing in 2021 because I knew I wanted to work by myself and for myself. I’ve worked as an employee for someone else since I graduated college, and I found myself craving flexibility and more time just to live life– go for walks with my dogs, cook things for my friends and loved ones, work out and take care of my health, or take off for a trip when the opportunity arose. You never hear anyone who regrets not working enough at the end of their life, and I was determined to set a path for myself now to allow myself the flexibility to enjoy those moments in the present, at a young(ish) age.

Within the professional organizing community, there’s a lot of assisting other organizers when your calendar isn’t full or you’re just starting out. I’ve always been really organized, so I had no problem learning how to be successful with organizing and decluttering. I have a background in operations, so putting together the pieces to form a business and track my expenses and such was pretty easy, too. The risk was building up enough business for myself to pay the bills. Word-of-mouth referrals are huge for this industry, and being an introvert made that tough, but it was worth the risk to branch out and do this on my own. I was lucky enough to pick up some side gigs- event coordination and nonprofit consulting- to also fill the gaps and make ends meet. Those odd jobs also keep things interesting for me, and give me some variety in my work weeks. I do miss days in front of a computer, deep in a spreadsheet, or figuring out how to meet the needs of people attending an event I’m helping pull off. It all relates back to being organized in some way, so I still consider it all under the umbrella of Drew Price Organizing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Drew Price Organizing provides professional organizing, moving, and wedding registry consulting services for the greater LA and Washington DC areas, with a focus on sustainability. Basically, I love helping people create spaces that they love through decluttering and reworking how their stuff lives in their spaces. I also do move management, helping coordinate vendors and timelines and unpacking. Lastly, I love spending time in my kitchen cooking and baking and I have a running list of my favorite things. I found myself helping friends and family members re-work their registries and thought I might as well add that to my business plan. I’m starting to dabble in productivity management and nonprofit consulting more, so be on the lookout for new offerings in the near future.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

A quick Google search of “professional organizer [location]” will give you plenty of hits, especially in the Los Angeles area. It can be tough to stand out unless you can really carve out the time to build up your search engine optimization (SEO) content or social media presence (and who has time for all that when they’re doing the thing they actually started a business for!) Neither of those are my strong suit, as you can see from my Instagram page, so I rely a lot on word-of-mouth referrals from clients, which is how most organizers get their business.

Some organizers will urge you to pick a name for your business that can be sold later, aka don’t put your name in it. I went the opposite route, though. People want to work with Drew Price Organizing because they want to work with me. I’ve always been a pretty chill person and all of my clients tell me I have a calming presence that makes the whole process really easy on them. Organizing can be stressful for people, and I often find myself doing some “light therapy” while working with clients. I have a natural personality that makes people feel really comfortable and want to open up to me. I think its what really helps me stand out from the crowd. People aren’t coming to me because of my Instagram page. There are organizers who can whip in and out of a space and make it Instagram-worthy, but it might not be as functional if they don’t really connect with the client and figure out their needs. Some organizers are much more extroverted than me and drum up a lot more business. I’m proud of the client base I’ve built, though, because it feels authentic and I know all of them individually.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the best pieces of advice I heard early in my career was, “if you don’t cringe a little the first time you tell someone your rate, it’s not high enough.” It was also followed up with an affirmation to stand firm in your value, unless you feel you want to give a discount. As a young entrepreneur there can be a bit of imposter syndrome starting out. All of my friends and family and former co-workers had more confidence in me than I had in myself, and it took a lot to get over that. Crunching the numbers to see what I needed to earn to make a living, while balancing my goal of having enough free time to enjoy life’s moments on the daily eventually got me to where I am today. And yes, I did cringe the first few times I threw out my hourly rate, but I know that I have a real talent for organizing, and for making people feel good about my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.drewpriceorganizing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drewpriceorganizing/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drewpriceorganizing/

Image Credits
All photos were taken by and are the property of Drew Price Organizing