I believe in betting on yourself.

I’ve always had an independent, enterprising streak. Clearly, I am not a gal who was born to work in a cube. (Who is, really?) I’ve never had a “regular” 40-hour a week job, and I’ve never worked any of my part-time jobs for more than 3 years. My pattern was: get a job, organize everything, get bored, get restless, get another job.

Near the end of my twenties, I became fully self-employed – financially supporting myself with work that was deeply fulfilling. And I did so again in the area of my next interest… and the one after that. And, very often, that’s what I’m helping my clients with – making transitions from one career or calling to another, or from one level of success to another.

I know firsthand about following one’s dream – and about choosing which dream to follow.

I have lived the roller coaster life of a creative artist.

For a decade I worked in Los Angeles as an actor. Yep – SAG, AFTRA, and Equity. Although I was born in L.A., I think I had the only set of parents not involved in the entertainment industry, so I grew up only dreaming of acting. (Oh I begged – and, for many years, I put “an agent” at the top of my Christmas list – but my mom was not at all interested in spending her time schlepping me around to auditions. So no child acting for me. Probably for the best.)

I chose to attend a small liberal arts college in Oregon (Linfield College… which, after a glow up, is now Linfield University), and then I returned to L.A. to start figuring out show biz. During this chapter of my life, I was fortunate to find (and smart enough to join) The Actors’ Network. Soon after, I was selected and trained by the organization’s founder to lead the monthly Power Groups – groups of 30 actors who met for 2 hours each month to review their victories, discuss their issues, and plan their next action steps. In the 11 years that I was a Power Group facilitator, I guided the development of 400+ actors (some of whom were in my groups for several years). That was where I learned how to listen, discern, and coach.

I discovered that I love facilitating groups… in fact, every single month for over twenty consecutive years, I’ve coached multiple, ongoing groups – in person and online.

I built my own business.

In the middle of my performing years, I discovered “professional organizing” and immediately started my biz, Personalized Organization, as a way to earn money to support my acting career. It worked. Really, really well.

I fell in love with both organizing and the autonomy of running my own business. After a semi-torturous, 18 month deliberation, I decided to leave acting to focus on organizing full-time. The business exploded – in a good way. Soon, I had two associate organizers working for me.

During this period, I learned how to make a service-based business run smoothly and I invested substantially in educating myself about internet marketing, copywriting, and product development. Thus, I am well-equipped to steer clients towards the business approaches and tactics that will work best for them and away from the pitfalls and mistakes that many of my colleagues and I have encountered.

I fully understand the unusual and demanding dynamics of dealing with the unpredictable schedule, sporadic work hours, and unexpected fluctuations in income that come with a creative, entrepreneurial, self-employed life. The good news is I can teach you how to make plans, adjust plans, and find a sense of security within the seeming insecurity of it all.

I have worked behind the scenes in hundreds of lives.

As more of my organizing clients started asking me to organize their minds, my evolution into a coach began. Through my coaching, writing, and speaking, I have now provided guidance to clients and audiences all over the world.

Eventually, I retired from organizing to work exclusively as a change strategist (which is much easier on my back).

I am on intimate terms with expansion and contraction.

While I am naturally oriented towards growth, and while I am devoted to helping people expand their lives in a wide variety of ways, I am also a witness to what it looks and feels like when a life diminishes – slowly, painfully, and incurably.

My witty powerhouse of a sister was five years younger than me. We were very different people, yet we were equally gifted in terms of intelligence, talent, industriousness, and kindness. She, however, was very ill as a child and her health, as an adult, declined steadily and substantially throughout her life. For seven of those years, she lived with me, and I continued to be her caregiver and companion until her death. To say these circumstances were heartbreaking would be an understatement… but, oh, I learned a great deal.

This experience with my only sibling has given me a visceral understanding that life is as wonderful and malleable as it is unpredictable and fragile. My belief in and attraction to our ability, as humans, to expand, create, and achieve is balanced with my knowledge of how to identify, handle, and surrender to what is and is not within our control.

I have learned that nothing of significance is ever achieved alone.

I’ve walked ALL of my talk.

When my future husband and I (we’re goin’ on 35 years now) moved into our first apartment we had a card table and two folding chairs (all borrowed). We couldn’t afford a couch and a bed so we bought a sofa-bed and slept on that for a year or two until the springs got un-sprung. (And then we slept on the sofa-bed’s mattress on the floor. Then we got a real mattress. Then, eventually, we got a frame for that mattress. Movin’ on up!)

We didn’t have a car for a year. I walked to work and took the bus to my first student film shoot. Once, to pay my taxes, I wrote a check to the IRS for almost exactly 1/2 of all the money I had. Ours was a one-bedroom apartment but the sofa-bed (and, later, the sofa and the bed) were in the living room. (Oh yes, lots of teasing from friends about this!) But we made the “bedroom” room into our office because we knew it was the work we’d do in our office that would eventually get us into a bigger apartment. And, a couple of years later, that’s what happened. And, some years later, we made it happen again.

We’ve continued to be grateful, hopeful, sometimes doubtful, yet always consistently striving towards creating the texture of the life that we desire. We were (and still are) on each other’s team. Since then, my team has expanded: mentors, coaches, advisors, assistants, stylists, videographers, etc. Building these teams – the hiring, firing, managing of, and delegating to – is another realm in which my clients benefit from my own (smooth and not-so-smooth) experiences.