As a professional organizer, winging it is probably not your strong suit. But getting too bogged down on a meticulous plan can keep you from the actual doing. These are some of the lessons learned by our guest.
This week on Stand Out: Growing Your Organizing and Productivity Business, host Sarah Karakaian speaks with Joshua Zerkel, CPO and Head of Global Community at Asana, the easiest way for teams to track their work and get results.
Sarah and Joshua began their conversation by looking at how Joshua got started as an organizer. Living and working in the world of tech, Joshua found that many colleagues were strong creative types, but often lacked organization and project management skills. He started wondering if some of them might pay him to help with project management. Turns out, the answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes!”
Joshua and Sarah also talk about career path. For Joshua, this has meant a basic posture of openness to possibilities. He has moved from employment in the tech world, to owning a productivity and organizing business full time, writing books, and now working for a company full-time and doing productivity consulting on the side.
Zerkel goes on to talk about how he was able to become a brand ambassador, and offers tips on becoming an ambassador for a product or service you are passionate about. His counter intuitive advice on starting a business focused on helping people stay organized: “Don’t wait to start your business until you’ve finished your plan. Just get started.”
The work he has done has given Joshua a special niche market. He understands productivity tools the way few others do. Productivity apps can really help with your own business as well as offer clients tools to stay organized and productive.
At the end of each interview, Sarah asks guests for two big ideas – two main takeaways they would advise for anyone in the industry. For Joshua, the first takeaway: get stuff out of your head and written down somewhere-he calls it a brain dump, so ideas and problems aren’t just cluttering your mind. Second, give yourself a break. You don’t have to complete every idea in your head – choose 1 or 2 important things and follow up on those.
There’s much more packed into the interview – be sure you take a listen. To check out the podcast and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, visit: https://napopodcast.com/
Joshua Zerkel is responsible for growing and engaging the Asana community around the world. For over a decade, he has focused his career on helping people and businesses get more organized and increase their productivity.
Before joining Asana, Josh was Evernote’s Director of Global Customer Education and Community. He is the author of the books Evernote @ Work and Integrate: Evernote. Joshua has been featured in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, National Public Radio, CBS News, ABC News, the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, Online Organizing, among many others. He’s also an inaugural Certified Professional Organizer® and is a two-term past president of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, San Francisco Bay Area chapter. Although he doesn’t consider himself freakishly organized, Josh does admit to spending some of his free time alphabetizing his comic books.