Clear the Chaos: Brand Clarity Through Systems | Miriam Ortiz y Pino

Welcome to Spark & Ignite Your Marketing, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

In this episode, I talk with Certified Professional Organizer and Simplicity Expert Miriam Ortiz y Pino about how clutter can hinder your brand clarity and progress. With over 20 years of experience aiding entrepreneurs in organization and productivity, Miriam shares insights on how structure fosters freedom and why slowing down can actually lead to faster growth. If you want less noise and more focus in your business, this is your invitation to simplify and move forward confidently.

Three Key  Marketing Topics Discussed:

1. Simplicity as a Visibility Strategy: Miriam explains how decluttering your brand, physically, digitally, and mentally, can lead to clearer messaging and more confident marketing. When your systems are aligned, your voice becomes magnetic. Learn more about how to Simplify Your Marketing here!
2. How Busyness Blocks Your Brand: We dive into the sneaky ways overworking and overthinking dilute your marketing presence. Miriam shares how simplifying your decisions and digital space can amplify your visibility and audience connection.
3. Intentional Productivity for Consistent Content: Miriam reframes productivity as a marketing superpower, showing how focused action, not scattered effort, leads to sustainable content creation and brand growth. Learn here how AI can help you stay productive and consistent!

Follow Miriam:
Miriam Ortiz y Pino | LinkedIn
More Than Organized | Website
More Than Organized | Instagram
More Than Organized | Facebook

Transcript

Beverly: 0:09

did you know that clutter can kill your creativity? Whether it's physical or digital or emotional, too much stuff, real or virtual can hold you back. And today we're gonna talk about how to declutter your business and mind for more productivity, freedom and success. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly branded. With over 25 years of experience, I have helped hundreds of purpose-driven entrepreneurs awaken their brand and boldly bring it to life so that they can magnify their impact on the world. Today's guest is someone who doesn't just clear the clutter, she changes your entire relationship with it. Miriam Ortiz y Pino is a simplicity expert and certified professional organizer. Who blends productivity, money, mindset, and systems. One of my favorite words, by the way, to help entrepreneurs streamline their space, energy, and business. She's the founder of More Than Organized a NAPO University instructor and a money breakthrough business coach with over two decades of an entrepreneurial insight. Welcome to the show.

Miriam: 1:14

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Beverly: 1:17

I'm excited to have you. So let's start from the beginning. We always talk about the spark that started it all. What inspired you to launch more than Organized back in 2000 I read in your bio.

Miriam: 1:27

Yeah. A couple things. I needed to work for myself. It became very obvious I was not that employable. And yeah, I noticed all the things that were wrong and wanted to fix them, and that doesn't work great in the corporate environment. So I realized I needed to do my own thing. So I looked at what that might be and realized since I was a little kid, I had been helping all my friends and family. Get organized or as I like to put it, get out the door. So we wouldn't miss the previews at the movies. I was always the person waiting by the front door for everyone to get their act together so we could go do the thing that would be fun. So I had become a systems nerd over the course of my life, fixing my own time management when I got busier and started working to, rearranging the office supplies at every job I was ever at. So it just seemed like the thing to do when I finally decided to do my own thing. And luckily it's worked out really well. I really enjoy it. It has given me the opportunity to add in the pieces that are more specifically on productivity and money mindset and how it all connects together. Doesn't have to be all separate.

Beverly: 2:33

I love that. So why do we need decluttering? Why do we need simplification Why is that so important?

Miriam: 2:41

Because we're living in an age of overwhelm, and one of the things we can control is our own physical environment. And if we control that, we feel better. So we have more energy and interest in. Dealing with the other stuff that's going on, whether it's personal, business, political, geopolitical, whatever. But bottom line is we are just inundated with too much stuff. The average household now has over 400,000 items in it. And our brains are actually trying to keep track of all of that. So if you don't know where your pliers are, it's because your brain can't find the file and you can't find the file because you are keeping 80% too much information. It's all connected, right? We get frustrated by these little bits of interruption every day, and if you streamline all that and actually simplify and only have the things you need to live your best life, do your best work, you will not be so overwhelmed because all the extra excess, redundant stuff won't be in your way.

Beverly: 3:46

This is great. I have a DHD and if you look at my tabs right now, it's probably reason, reasons why I had tech issues before we started recording today. I overload my computer all the time and I wanna go back for one second. 400,000 items in our homes. That's insane. I know I have a lot of little stuff, but that's a lot of things to remember in quite a lot.

Miriam: 4:03

Just try to count all the stuff on your desk. Yeah, and you're over a hundred. When I first started, the first statistic I ever saw was 44,000, but that was in 2002 or so, and it has only gotten worse. We were supposed to go paperless. We were supposed to have just what we need, right when we need it on demand everything, and yet, what do we do? We hoard it all because it might not be available again, or I'll use it someday, or someone told me to get it or someone gave it to me and I don't like it, but I don't wanna hurt their feelings. There's all these excuses of why we have stuff instead of taking agency and creating the life we actually want to be living.

Beverly: 4:41

When Marie Kondo came out, it was like, yeah, a revolution, because it was like, does it bring me joy? No. Get rid of it. I did a lot of that then a lot of organizing. And minimizing of things, and it was very freeing to do that. I feel like as a creative soul, specifically, when you remove some of the clutter, it allows us the freedom. To think Differently about our challenges, about how to talk about our businesses, about, yeah. What lights us up. And I as a systems nerd as well, I love processes and systems and simplification. And all The working that I do with my clients is really about creating systems that work for them so that they can free their mind up to do the thing they actually love to do because most of us don't get into business and do marketing. They do it to do organizing or to do taxes, or to do whatever. When you can free up your mind to do that it's really important. I read something a long time ago. They talked about how the president, who has so many decisions to make, we were talking about Obama at the time. The president has so many decisions to make. So he has four or five suits. That's it. Yes. And he doesn't even have to decide. He has red ties and blue ties and a white shirt and whatever. Less decision making less. Straighten his brain so that he can make those bigger decisions that are far more important. And that's just one aspect of the president's life. Everything else is taken care of. Like he doesn't have to make any of those decisions. So he never gets decision fatigue on like just life as opposed to like those big deals. Yeah. So more that you can do that with like your services, I'm imagining that allows business owners like myself to be able to make those better, bigger decisions to grow scale and all of that.

Miriam: 6:18

Yeah. We make hundreds of thousands of decisions a day on stupid stuff. And it's the paradox of choice. It's so great and it seems like so much freedom to be able to choose amongst all these possibilities. But really it is draining and. I work with a lot of creative visionaries and artists, and they're always like you can't fence me in. But it turns out there's more innovation and creativity. When you put a few constraints around what you're working with or how you're working or when you're working and it provides more benefits than it provides impediments because you are using your actual creativity, not just avoiding things or rearranging things so that you can get to the thing you're doing and now you're rushed. Or upset or frustrated. Yep. I'm a big believer in just clearing the decks and reverse engineering everything and taking it down to its essentials.

Beverly: 7:10

Simplicity is liberating. It really is.

Miriam: 7:12

Systems Set you free.

Beverly: 7:13

Yes. They don't limit you. They set you free if it's the right system. I think that's the key. And why they need somebody to hold their hand to the process to help them get the right system for them.

Miriam: 7:23

Yes. No one else's system will necessarily work for you. It's understanding the system and what you're trying to get it to do. And. I find a lot of people, especially like in the world of planners and calendars and to-do list project management stuff, they don't get in the habit of using it and then blame the tool. So they will then go look for another tool instead of realizing it's their process that's not working, or the fact that they haven't given it enough time to become a habit. It's not. The tool's fault it's yours.

Beverly: 7:55

The thing that I have found with the clients that we've worked with, so many are overwhelmed. They're burnt out, they've done everything. They're posting, they're putting spaghetti on the wall. They're doing everything they can to be visible. And when we give them some constraints and some systems let's talk about the four to six things you want to be known for. And let's start there. And then, it's gonna be something that's owning the one little inch of the world and how deep you can go, right? Yeah. And so that little niche that you've created for yourself can be so incredibly powerful. And I tell you before. As a marketer, I wasn't always good at this because I helped everybody else and didn't help myself, which is common when you're in business. You do the thing for everyone else, like the cobbler's kids that have no shoes. is when I started doing this for myself, I found marketing to be more fun again for myself, and that was like liberating for me. It was truly freeing, and now I have more ideas than I know what to do with myself. So that has helped me focus and have clarity in ways is an easy yes or no decision now, because I know if it fits in those four to six buckets, then that's a yes. If it doesn't, then it's a hard no.

Miriam: 8:59

And it doesn't actually limit who you work with. It invites the cream of the crop in and then you get to decide where you're gonna make an exception. I almost always work with small business owners, but every once in a while I work with someone that's just downsizing. Yeah. Or someone that is a professional that's changing careers or something like, it doesn't have to be specifically, but I tend to talk to. And at and for small business owners. But it doesn't mean they're the only people that come in. I like variety. I let other people in too, but there's something in the message that's a crossover that appealed to them if they contacted me. We all have the same issues. It doesn't look the same.

Beverly: 9:38

Yeah. Are there other misconceptions or myths about getting organized or simplifying that is common for people to think?

Miriam: 9:44

Yeah. One of the most surprising ones is I need containers to get more organized. Now instead of 400,000 items, you have 400,001 items and one of them doesn't fit on the shelf.'cause you failed to measure, you thought it would solve all your problems.'cause it was on TikTok.

Beverly: 10:00

Are you in my house? Stop it.

Miriam: 10:02

They said the egg holder that would roll the eggs down into each other would take up less room than an egg carton. It doesn't. It's just a matter of really how are you using your things and then figuring out the best container for them. I like to use the example, but it's dating myself now, but in the nineties and early two thousands, lots of people had CD racks that had slots for the CDs. But if you had a double set or you had a special edition set, they didn't fit in, so they would be off to the side in a weird, random pile. Or you'd need more slots and you'd have to move everything over by one to fit the new one in. It was a nightmare. Instead of just have a bookshelf and pretend like it's a library, there's always more than one way to contain stuff, and it doesn't actually have to look like a container. It can be just a designated area. It'll save you tons of money and tons of time and lots of frustration on the day to day.

Beverly: 10:56

So share a client transformation story. And how you help them really embrace and get the benefits of the power of simplicity.

Miriam: 11:06

Yeah. I have one client, I've been working with her for many years. Not that she's that bad, but she has a complicated life, so it's been a longer process. But when she first hired me, she was afraid to let people into her house. And she loved to entertain and she had acquired a lot of things.'cause she's a very interesting and interested person with several hobbies. She's the director of a large nonprofit. She has a full social life, et cetera. And things had gotten away from her. So when I first came in, it was like, okay, let's just clear out the guest room. She had a guest coming. Let's make sure that's. Presentable and we did all that and she couldn't believe I fit all the stuff she wanted to keep after that first round in the space she had. cause it had been all over the place. But she didn't really wanna get rid of much. But as we went around the house and did each area, she found little bits of more time and of more space. And by the time we got to like the third or fourth room, I can't actually remember now, which order we did two of the rooms. She was willing to let go of a lot more. She was seeing how having less made it easier to access the things in the other rooms. She realized she didn't have to leave it out'cause it was easier to put it away. Now. All those little bits add up now. I think it's been like eight years I've been working with her. She has decided to retire. She's traveling more. She's entertaining. She is clearing the decks. She's dealing with family estates and family history stuff. She's getting back to her craft projects and every time I go she's let's get rid of more. Let's get rid of more. It sometimes feels overwhelming and daunting, but it's incremental progress for exponential results and her entire life and her outlook on the rest of her life has completely changed.

Beverly: 12:46

That's amazing. So powerful. I sometimes will just do a drawer'cause I have 10 minutes, I'm waiting for something, I'll just do a drawer. And I feel so empowered after that one drawer that I want to continue. But with my A DH adhd, I have this oh, I'm gonna get organized and I get everything outta the closet and then I'm like.

Miriam: 13:03

No one drawer at a time. One drawer, one cabinet, one shelf, one pile at a time.

Beverly: 13:10

That seems so easy in theory, right? But when I'm in the closet and I have all these clothes, right? That feels a little overwhelming.

Miriam: 13:19

It's not one closet, it's one shelf of your closet. It's one section between brackets. It's it's really a little bit at a time. And I think what trips people up and gets them back overwhelmed is they're trying to do too much and they don't know what to do with the maybes. Yes. So instead of. Continuing. They give up or they get frustrated or they leave it out and they're like, I'll know in a minute, whatever. But really the maybes need to be just set aside as its own category. And it could be left in the closet just to one side, so that you are using your favorites, your yeses and the nos are out of the way. And now, three months later. You're going to get a shirt and you have all these maybes that you haven't even looked at and you realize, oh, I need that one shirt. I'm so glad I kept it. And you move it into the yeses or you go, I don't need any of these. I'm removing them. It's a reevaluation of the maybes and there's a category called, I don't know where it belongs. So it's, yes, I need to keep it. I just don't know where it's gonna live yet. And so you keep it in that category. Like you can use a bin, a basket, a box, or you can carry it around with you as you go through your house of the, I need more information to figure the decision on this piece out and then all of a sudden, three drawers later, you'll find the matching belt to that dress, or you'll find the piece of that furniture that you need to reattach or like all those little bits that we left out to remind ourselves to take care of something that we didn't do.

Beverly: 14:50

Yeah. So how does this relate to work?

Miriam: 14:52

Oh, it's the same thing. The digital realm is just like the physical realm. So you've got a file on your desktop or in your Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever, but it Is it attached to anything else? We now rely so much on search, and search is so diluted because everything you do has the word. For me it's simplicity. Organizing productivity. I can't find anything unless I subcategorize it myself. So I'm a big fan of still setting up some files and folders in your computer life, but also just. Open every file and glance at it. And do I still need this? Is this still relevant? This article I downloaded about mortgage rates in 2007. Is it still relevant today? No. Yeah, because we had three mortgage crisis since then. But you know what? What's still relevant? And it's about weeding out, but having that process of how you use things, what's the workflow for the kinds of information? And the number one thing around work is you can't find the stuff you saved for that thing. So there's no system and there's the redundancy of your lists. You have an idea, you don't know where to put it. So you write it on a list and then two days later you write it on a different list. And then four days later you write it on yet another list. And it might be in your notes, it might be in your Evernote, it might be in your Dropbox. It might be in your Google Drive, it might be in your planner, it might be in your notebook. It might be in the other notebook or the 47 other ones in the corner. cause people love to start a new notebook for every new thing they do.

Beverly: 16:19

My husband uses the list everywhere. And that drives me crazy. But I only use my notes on my app for things that I need to do. I can put it there and then I share it with him, if it's about the house or whatever, so he can see this is what I'm thinking for the weekend or whatever, and, but he has the handwritten notes of it. I'm like, it's 2025, babe. Like you can consolidate all those into one list and you can even like market and click it and it crosses it off for you. It's amazing. He's just can old school. He loves a paper list.

Miriam: 16:51

I do too, but there's a reason for it. And it's not bad. It's just Does he have all his lists in one place or are they still all over the place? Actually writing the act, the physical act of writing something down helps your brain remember it. Because it is appealing to all of your senses. You are seeing it appear, you are feeling it, appear, you are smelling the ink or the graphite. You are hearing it appear on the paper, like it actually involves all five senses. Whereas typing, you don't really smell it. May or may not feel it. And. It may or may not auto correct, so it's not even what you intended to write. There's a few problems with keeping it digitally. I'm a big fan of taking the notes by hand and then I transfer the things to their correct places in my digital realm as needed.

Beverly: 17:41

I have a notebook that I do like to write in, especially in meetings like when we were talked about today and the question you wanted. But I do have a project management system that most everything lives and exists in that is like for the stuff that I just cannot let drop off. It has to have a due date and accountability and all those things, but it is finding the system that works for you. But you have to use it like you said. A lot of these programs do so much, it's almost a little overwhelming just in like the ideas of how extensive and how many apps can go into the program. In the process of making the system work for us. And I love that that's something you champion because that is something that's so important. You've been in business for 20 years. I've been in business for 13 years. Business changes too. And the tool needs to change. What's one part of your business that has evolved the most, do you think? And what's pushed you to make those changes?

Miriam: 19:33

Probably social media. When I started, there was no social media. Yeah, same. I, that's not entirely true. There was MySpace. If you wanna go back in the day I've been in business since there were still, bulletin boards and forums. But that's the thing that changes the most. Every day it changes. So another point you said about your clients getting overwhelmed with all the social media stuff. By the time you learn that you should be doing something, that trend is already over. And so figuring out your voice, your method of communication is so important. And, I'm a case study for that. I spent years chasing the trends and following what people. Said, and it never sounded like me. It didn't do anything for me and I kept trying to be more authentic and more me, and a year ago, I suddenly realized I can't, if I'm following the trends and I'm listening to everybody else, and I stopped and I started talking. Straight talk like this. Yeah. And it's been amazing. Everything has started growing after years of just flatlining.

Beverly: 20:31

This challenge is so real. Every single entrepreneur I've ever worked with has the same thing. Like they're just trying to check the boxes and look at what the competitor's doing and seeing what this trend is, and they get caught up in all the shoulds that they end up should all over themselves. And they don't actually do what's good for them. Or that feels right to them or is actually them and then their words and their voice and then their purpose and their why, it's all gets muddied. And then your poor clients don't even know who you are because you're so muddy. That Clarity is so important.

Miriam: 21:01

I'm here to tell you that as a professional organizer, a certified one at that. I would never, ever tell you what you should or shouldn't buy on Amazon this week. Not once. All those AI things, it's like the eight secrets to this, the six keys to that, the 12 tips professional organizers think you need, all those things. It's all AI. Doesn't sound like anyone.

Beverly: 21:24

No, for sure. So this season, the big question's all about confidence and I think when you have simplicity and you have that liberation of less overwhelm, what does confidence look like to an organizer? And is there a moment where you realized you were truly showing up with it?

Miriam: 21:38

Yes and yes. So for me, it looks like actually saying this stuff out loud that I think in my head and having people resonate with it. That was really powerful. And then this year I went to the NAPO conference, which that's the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals. For those of you that we're wondering. It was the first time I had a bunch of newish organizers know who I was and want to hang out and ask me questions, and I felt like I was the old guard and things are changing, but they were asking for my input and that's when I knew, I really know my stuff and I feel good about it, and I am ready to give back.

Beverly: 22:19

Confidence in your words. And confidence in your authority.'cause you've been around the block, right? Yes. I love that. So you've built A business around streamlining. How does That show up in your marketing?

Miriam: 22:31

Overall I leverage everything. I write a blog post. It has to have, 10 other ways I can use it. And I use meet Edgar as a posting tool. So I have these libraries of stuff that just rotate through my content. That allows me to have a baseline and then I can layer in special events or things that come up in the news or whatever. But yeah, just. Finally pulling it all together and saying, no, all of these things feed into this category.

Beverly: 22:57

The content buckets. Yes. Yeah.

Miriam: 23:00

We literally just did this last week. I can't remember how many we started with over the years. It ballooned a little bit and this was like, oh, this is a new category, we cleaned it up. We are down to, I think it's seven categories, seven categories plus the launches. So each of the launches has its own category that just gets turned on and off. But the rest of it had been like 18 or 19 categories and we just streamlined it down to seven.

Beverly: 23:22

So this is like containers. Like this is the virtual container of marketing Exactly. So for us it's a clarity, awakening your brand magic, that's a content bucket. For us, it's activating your brand and what that looks like. Confidence in your brand and visibility and what that looks like. So we have these buckets that we live within and it's an invisible container, but that container can contain. Every single blog post that you ever write about that particular thing. And the way we see this, that repurposing, I love the repurpose. It's so good. Is that you can write the blog post. From the blog post could be an email, from the blog post, you can create 10 social media posts. From the social media post. You could create a video. From the video. You can create, like all these things can happen, right? But at the end of it, these content buckets, these six, you say seven, I say four to six.'cause I wanna even keep it simple there for my clients. But these four to six content buckets can then become chapters in a book. They can become these much bigger pieces of content that you can leverage. They could become a major infographic. Like one bucket could become a white paper. Like you have so many ways that you can then aggregate once you have a lot. Even further into the realm. So we actually, on the podcast, one of our buckets is confidence. So this season is all about confidence. Even on the podcast, we're bucketing our seasons according to our content buckets. So you can get very intentional about what you're writing, who you're writing for, and how you're writing it, and repurpose the heck out of it. And that is streamlining so well. That's lovely, Miriam. I'm so proud of you.

Miriam: 24:57

Yeah. And technically I have five topic buckets.

Beverly: 25:01

Okay.

Miriam: 25:01

And I have tons of content. Y'all, I've been doing this for 25 years, so there's a lot and a lot of my stuff crosses over because I talk about the connections a lot. So my five topic buckets are interspersed with my seven categories. And the seven categories basically now correspond to a day of the week. This is what I post on Mondays, is this is the bucket I post on this day. This is the bucket I post on that day. That kind of thing. Just because I tried just doing the topics for a while. And it seemed to confuse people. They didn't see the connections anymore, so I went back to, Nope, we gotta talk about the connections and how to do that and still maintain the topics.

Beverly: 25:37

I love it. We use a social media matrix, testimonials go here, this goes here. Like we do this thing, 80% is more informational, educational, 20% is more business focused. Like we have this whole magic formula we use to pull from your different posts and things like that. It can get a little bit formulaic, but once you have your content and it's you and authentic, it's easier to put it in the formula to make it work. Yeah, it is.

Miriam: 26:01

Yeah, there was a lot of trial and error, how to make that all come together, but yeah, finally did it.

Beverly: 26:06

We should have met earlier'cause I could have totally helped you with that. So what is the hardest thing about marketing for you?

Miriam: 26:12

Even though I have a niche, it's very hard to define one when I have so many. Different content buckets. Like it makes perfect sense if you see my whole roadmap, but anyone that sees one of my posts doesn't necessarily know I do all the other things. So it's that, how to make it work together. Messaging that doesn't look quite like other organizers. And so people it's navigating the misunderstandings about it and finding. But again, using my voice the last couple years has really helped with that differentiate me from everybody else.

Beverly: 26:44

Yeah, there's only one Miriam, with your experience and your particular perspective and your framework and how you do things, and you really have to lean on that and push that forward. When we help some of our entrepreneurs, they're so scattered, right? And they don't know that there's a strategy. And when you have strategy and you have clarity, and then you have confidence because you're clear, you can say the thing because you're clear. Yeah. And that momentum in the process, and that all starts with really understanding your voice and who you are and your purpose and your why. We have this 90 minute deep dive. I actually joke, I'm like part marketing therapist, part brand clarity, fairy godmother.'Cause we really do lean into what ha, where have you been, where you are now, where do you wanna go? What's the challenges? What is holding you back? Where are you struggling the most? Because there's usually something really good about in those moments. I've moved 28 times Miriam. I'm a military wife. My mom left my dad when I was really young, so we've had to move a lot in my life. And what it has taught me is the power of connection. Like I'm really good at connecting dots, connecting with people. And so when somebody hears that, they're like, oh, like that makes her uniquely her. When you start sharing some of your personal stories around what actually has helped. You evolve as a human. Sometimes it's sadness, sometimes it's good as success and all those things, but that's exactly the person, the guide to help that person get to there. And you can create the business exactly around that. Yeah. Leading into your actual voice and who you are and how you serve and what you love is incredibly powerful. Love it. I have a magic hat. In my hat. I have some fun little questions. Woo. What is the most WTF thing that has ever happened in your business?

Miriam: 28:16

Oh, I had someone that I knew well hire me for a six month package to go through their whole house. And I got there and on day three she was threatening to take me to court because I had failed to take away one box of glasses off the counter.'cause I thought she had put it in my car when we were loading up my car. And she's calling me before I move back home. And she's you suck, you're terrible. And I'm like, hang on. Over one box of glasses. Crazy. Yeah. What is happening? And this was someone I knew, so it was even more surprising. I think it's, that allowed me to really figure out how to deal with people's triggers and emotional states and make sure I left on more of an understanding. So it improved my client's sessions tremendously, but it was a very. WTF moment for me what, where is this coming from? I don't understand.

Beverly: 29:07

What fear have you had to overcome to grow your business?

Miriam: 29:12

To be honest, it was putting myself out there in social media. Not that I'm afraid to talk or any of that, but I have had a couple stalker slash stalker adjacent situations in my life. And so being out there, I'm not afraid to talk my truth, but it also puts me out there in the public a lot more. And luckily that has not come to pass. That was a worry. That hasn't happened. In that form, but it gave me pause in the beginning for sure. Sure.

Beverly: 29:37

What's been the hardest parts about being an entrepreneur?

Miriam: 29:41

Inconsistent income. It comes up, it comes down, you make plans, it's not there. It comes back like it, it's all fine and it's always been quite enough to support me, but it's like sometimes my ideas get bigger than my bank account, and then I have to wait for it to catch up.

Beverly: 29:56

You are not alone. What core values guide your business decisions and interactions with your customers?

Miriam: 30:01

Oh. Fulfillment for me and my clients. Joy, because why shouldn't work Be fun. Yes. And wisdom and it's'cause I feel wisdom comes from experience and you have to go through it to get it.

Beverly: 30:15

Okay. I have a magic wand.

Miriam: 30:17

I. Mine is a little slow. It's been in under the air conditioning.

Beverly: 30:22

So the magic wand actually helps us travel through time. And when I wave it, we're gonna go back to the Miriam who graduated from high school. Okay. And I would love for you to give her a piece of advice that you wish you knew sooner, that would've helped you at in your business.

Miriam: 30:37

You are enough.

Beverly: 30:39

Yes. What would she say about you now that 18-year-old Miriam,

Miriam: 30:43

she'd be like, what took you so long?

Beverly: 30:44

It's interesting to think about it that way.

Miriam: 30:46

Yeah.

Beverly: 30:47

I like it. So if I wave the one and we go in the future and we look at like many decades. I always say this like far in the future, what do you want to be your most significant legacy and impact? If someone were to give your eulogy, what would you want them to say about your work and how you've impacted the world?

Miriam: 31:02

I helped people enjoy their lives.

Beverly: 31:04

That's such a good one. Like I want people to have more joy and contentment. So I'm gonna wave us back to the present that we are here back in 2025. For those people who are tuning in today, those small business owners, the people who are wanting to be an entrepreneur, what is one tip that you would give them? They're trying to build more confidence in what they do, how they talk, what their office is what their work is like. Related to organizing and simplicity for sure. Miriam, what is one thing they could try to do to build more confidence in how they show up and run their business?

Miriam: 31:35

Yeah. There's a lot of things, but I think the most empowering thing is to actually know your numbers. So many people go into the business thing with, I just wanna help people, or I make decisions in the moment, or whatever. But there's actual strategy involved in success and knowing your numbers. Not every bank balance down to the penny, although that's helpful, but what is your be well number? How much do you need to be making to enjoy your life? And then work towards that, not, oh, I have enough. I think especially women do a lot of that. Oh, I just need a little extra, I'm just contributing a little. Why not play bigger and get a bunch? Or the other way around, I need a bunch to maintain this lifestyle that I don't even like. So just get really clear on what your be well number is and not. Just to pay for the weird self-care stuff that isn't actually self-care, but just purchasing

Beverly: 32:29

We're very consumerism society, right? Just to get more stuff, acquire more stuff, show up more stuff, have more stuff. There's something to be said about that for sure.

Miriam: 32:37

If so much more sustainable, if you just have the stuff that helps you feel good.

Beverly: 32:43

I'm sure that people who listening feel this themselves or. Is struggling with getting organized or has had some of those same struggles? It means so much to Miriam and myself if you'd share this episode with them to help them maybe find a little nugget that might get them closer to maybe that be well number or be well in their business being more joyful, enjoying their business more because they have more simplicity and they are more organized that would mean a lot to us. Or leave us a review and tell us that this mattered to you. This has helped you in some way, shape, or form. So before we go though, Miriam, I would love for you to share where people can learn more about you and about your business and connect with you. To see more.

Miriam: 33:20

Yeah. I think the easiest way to do it is morethanorganize.net. It has links to all my socials. It has blog posts. It has free content on there, and it has all the links to all my various offerings as well. But that's where you can find out the most about me.

Beverly: 33:37

Wonderful. I'll make sure to include that in the show notes as well. Miriam, this has been a really fun conversation. I really thank you for sharing your wisdom and your journey and your magic with us. I know our listeners are going to walk away feeling more inspired and ready to maybe simplify a few things, even if it's their Google Drive or their desk. I'm looking at my desk right now going, maybe I need to simplify that. I'm so grateful for your time and for the impact that you're making to help bring more joy into the world. I hope today's episode really lit a fire under you. My listeners gave you maybe some new ideas and most of all, inspired to take that next step because here is the thing. Your message matters. Your work matters, and the world needs to hear what you have to say. Marketing isn't just about visibility. It's about impact. It's about connecting with the right people in a way that feels true to you. So keep showing up. Keep sharing your brilliance. Keep making things simpler and keep making magic in the world. And hey, if you ever feel stuck, know that you don't have to do this alone. We're here to help you and turn your sparks into a wildfire. So until next time, keep sparking and igniting.