Survival Essentials helps clients meet their New Year's resolutions
GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer
EAST GOSHEN -- Making a New Year's resolution to get organized means different things to different people.
Jean Back, in the "getting organized" business for 30 years, believes the resolve can mean uncluttering a closet, improving a filing system for a home-based business, or even moving to a new location.
It means just about anything people need to do to manage time, to feel less stressed and less overwhelmed, said Back, who founded Survival Essentials with business partner Debora Bridges in October 2004. Bridges, 50, of East Bradford, handles the promotions and public relations end of the business.
The New Year's resolution to "get organized" is rooted in a complicated snarl of events, according to Back.
"There's Halloween, which rolls into Thanksgiving, which rolls into Christmas," she said. "Once you decorate for Christmas, you don't clean until you take down the decorations. Then you want to do something with the clutter but delay putting away the Christmas ornaments. Where do you store them? How can you do it to make it better for you next year?"
To get the New Year's resolution in motion, some people buy books on organization.
But if the individual is disorganized to begin with, he or she is most likely too disorganized to find the time to read the book, the 60-year-old Back reasons.
Back said Survival Essentials differs from concierge services because it goes the extra step to be more personal.
Back goes into a client's home or office and observes how they process their work, chats with them about the clutter and their stress, and then makes suggestions. Fees range from $75 to $125 an hour depending on what type of service is needed, she said.
Either the client rearranges their closet, bedroom or home office to be more efficient or Back does. If there is a need for a closet organizer, shelving or other built-in organizing aids, Survival Essentials has partner alliances with tradesmen who can do the work.
Client Janet Raimondo, a relationship manager for Heartland Payment Systems, a credit card processing company, was one such client.
Raimondo, who runs the business out of her house in West Bradford, needed help organizing her office to streamline her work.
Now it is papers in, folders organized, papers out, instead of just one big pile, Raimondo said. The process took place over a few weeks.
"Jean (Back) would empower me to work on my own. I got better and better," Raimondo said, adding that Back "created" new habits for her. "The hardest thing is to get out of your own way. It's nice to have a mentor, a coach."
A year later, Raimondo says getting organized had a surprising result: Her business improved.
When there is less stress inside, the world outside is far better, Raimondo said.
Back, who runs Survival Essentials out of her East Goshen home in Hershey's Mill, empathizes with her clients with home-based offices.
A tip she likes to share is her 9¥-by-6¥-inch spiral notebook that never leaves her side. Back put notes she makes during phone calls in it, lists days' activities, jots down phone numbers -- any information she might need.
People are visual creatures, Back said. All too often, they remember they wrote something down, but don't remember where they put the piece of paper with information. It may take a couple of minutes to thumb through the book, but what they need is there.
Getting organized starts with what you bring home at the end of the day.
One of Back's clients used to put whatever she brought home from work in a pile by the door.
Back's advice: put the paperwork on your desk, get your drink of choice and come back to the desk, relax with the drink as you go through the paperwork.
When Back isn't helping clients organize their homes or offices, she offers an eclectic mix of services that range from planning parties to addressing Christmas cards to helping people move.
Bronwyn L. Martin, a personal and business financial advisor with Ameriprise Financial, needed to relocate her office from West Chester to Kennett Square last year.
She decided the best time to have it done was while she was on vacation. So while Martin was scuba diving in the South Pacific off the islands of Truk and Yap for two weeks, Back finished packing Martin's office, made the move and got the walls painted and the carpets cleaned in the new office and its upstairs rental unit.
By the time Martin returned, rested and tanned, her phone, fax and DSL lines were up and running and the office was ready for business.
"When you're a successful business person, you can't do all the nitty-gritty," Martin said.
Back said after years of being an executive assistant, being partners in a company is golden.
An executive assistant who handles confidential material as part of the job has a strained relationship with coworkers, one in which you don't develop fast friendships, Back said.
With Survival Essentials, Back said she has developed many close friendships with clients.
"I've never been happier," she said.
To contact staff writer Gretchen Metz, send an e-mail to gmetz@dailylocal.com.
-Daily Local News 2006
