Getting Rid Of Your Mental Clutter with Jennifer Ford Berry
God put a huge purpose inside of each and every one of us. Sometimes it can be daunting to be asking ourselves what our purpose is or what are we put on this planet to do. However, as you keep taking that next best step, God is going to align it all together. Organizational expert and bestselling author Jennifer Ford Berry knew organizing was a gift where she could help a lot of women. She soon realizes her bigger purpose was empowering broken women and helping them see hope again. Jennifer believes that organizing physical clutter can also declutter the body, the mind, and the spirit, leading to clarity on what your bigger purpose is. Jennifer takes us into her background story from getting laid off from her job to taking that time frame, building on it, and getting crystal clear on where God wanted her to be.
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Getting Rid Of Your Mental Clutter with Jennifer Ford Berry
I am so excited to bring my dear friend to the show. We met in a very fun way. Let me tell you a little bit about this powerhouse lady boss and entrepreneur. Jennifer Ford Berry is an organizational expert, bestselling author and the host of The 29 Minute Mom Podcast. She's a speaker and promoter of God's Plan. She has written five different books and she was previously the regular organizing expert on the TV show, Winging It! Buffalo Style. Now she is in a time and a place of jumping out in faith launching Jennifer Ford Berry Ministries and she is hitting on all cylinders. I'm so excited to be a part of her conference. She's going to be launching her first conference called Created Order. It's an organizing conference and it is going to be going on June 29th. For all those lady bosses out there that need a little bit more organization in their life and they need to get their crap together, let's go. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for taking time out of your busy schedule to connect with us and share your wisdom and knowledge with our audience.
This is going to be so fun and I look forward to talking with you.
We need to chat about how we connected. Do you want to share the story?
We were both asked to be in my friend, Terri Savelle Foy’s book launch, her team of people that helped to launch her newest book. Terri is somebody that has been a big mentor to me, close to my heart and has helped me out a lot. I remember being out of town and I came back into town. I was on Facebook. I was like, “I better check into Terri's book launch team,” and make sure I'm doing my share. I saw your profile pic or you comment on something and you commented with a picture of you and Terri. Terri was holding your book in her hand and I was laughing to myself. I was like, “That's so Terri promoting someone else's book.” It was funny because then I commented with a picture of me and Terri with my book at a conference earlier in the year. I thought this is cute. I noticed in my Facebook messenger that you had reached out to me when I was out of town. Then within a few minutes, we were like, “Let's talk now.”
As soon as I got on the phone with you, even before hearing the audio messages back and forth, I'm like, “This is my soul sister.”
That's what's cool because I feel like God puts people in your life when you're open to it for a reason. When you meet somebody and you get that feeling like you have so much in common or you have the same goals in mind or you have the same outlook, you know it's a divine appointment. That was definitely one for me.
I would love for you to share the story and the background of how you connected with Terri Savelle Foy. That's a pretty divinely guided appointment as well.
One of my good friends, she's like me. I can't get enough reading and podcasts and fuel your brain and all of that. We’re always sharing our favorite books and our favorite speakers and podcasts. She's like, “You’ve got to follow this girl, Terri Savelle Foy. She's good.” I started listening to her and I was like, “She's awesome.” Basically, why I loved her is because her initial start was as a success coach and she used her platform to build God's Kingdom by teaching it from a Christian standpoint. Then as the months went on, I started getting messages from other friends that were listening that said, “Terri is talking about you on her weekly video and on her podcast and even in some of her audio CDs that you can purchase.” I was like, “That's so funny.”
Organize Now!: A Week-by-Week Guide To Simplify Your Space and Your Life
I remember even one of my friend’s teenagers was listening to Terri for time management. You need to fuel yourself so I had recommended it. He came downstairs one night and said, “Mom, is this our Jennifer Ford Berry that Terri's talking about?” They texted me like, “Terri's talking about you.” I was like, “This is funny.” He sent me the link and I listened to it and she was quoting things from my book, Organize Now! and how she loved the book. That when she decided to get into ministry, her first step was clearing all the clutter, getting organized and eliminating everything that wasn't a purpose in her life. I sent her an email and I said, “You’ve got to hear this. You are in ministry talking about organizing and coming up with a book about organizing. I might have already written books about organizing and I want to get into ministry.”
Here I thought it was cool that I was reaching out to her. She was like, “Jennifer Ford Berry, I’m so honored. I am such a huge fan of your books.” We were back and forth like you and me. I said, “We need to meet in person.” She lives in Texas, I live in New York and by the grace of God, she was going to be in Toronto one month later. It was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive for me. We drove to Toronto and she and I, and her team and mine, and even my daughter, we got to hang out all weekend. We had an absolute blast. It was so fun. We were at a conference up in Toronto. All the women were amazing and Terri was one of the keynotes. She knocked it out of the park. We had an absolute blast and she was so gracious to give me advice on starting a ministry because I had no idea what I was doing. Everything I start off like, “Yes, God.” Then I'm like, “All right, figure it out.” She let me even have access to her entire team. If you don't know Terri, I want to say she walks the walk. She's not just saying she's a cheerleader of people's dreams, she will cheerlead your dreams on a personal level too. I appreciate when people are truly who they claim to be.
There are so many pieces about that story that I absolutely have fallen in love with. With you, you listen to that still small voice from the get-go. You started writing books on organizing. It helped Terri to up-level her business, her life, her ministry and in turn she helps you. How cool is it? God puts people in your path for such a time as this where iron can truly sharpen iron, but sometimes we can be so nervous about reaching out to that specific person. Why not just give it a try? Add value to them and who knows where it will go. Some of my absolute best friends are people that I have met on social and it doesn't happen. I don't believe in happenstance. I believe in divinely guided, ordained encounters.
When you live life like that, it's so much more fun. If she has not even responded, it wasn't going to hurt me, but look what came up reaching out. I wouldn't even have met you if I hadn't reached out to her.
It's so cool about the ripple effect and thank you for sharing that. I want to dive in deep back to quite a few years ago when you got laid off from your job. You started to almost get in, I don't know if you'd call it freak out mode but like, “I better figure this out.” Why don't you take us back to where you were mentally at when you got laid off? Share with us your background story and how you took that timeframe and built on it and got crystal clear on where you knew that God wanted you to be.
I did what many of us do. I went to college and I had a specific plan in mind that I was going to get a business and marketing degree and I was going to work in Corporate America. At that point, my dream was to work in advertising or marketing and make a lot of money. I went to college at FAU in Boca and then shortly after I graduated, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I worked for several corporations there and the last one I was working in was Clear Channel Radio and I was pregnant. I was working for Clear Channel Radio, 9/11 happened and within two months, I was laid off from my job because advertising took quite a step down. It wasn't a big priority for companies after that point. I was the low man on the totem pole and I had to go. At first I was like, “I'll stay home with my baby and get paid unemployment.” I thought that would be a great idea.
A few months into being a stay-at-home mom with a baby, I realized that that wasn't necessarily for me. I knew that I wanted to be home with her and have flexibility but not on a full-time basis. Corporate America is not going to be flexible for me at that point and I need to do something that I'm going to be able to have more time with her. After a few short years in Corporate America, I was starting to feel that feeling where I was not excited to wake-up. I felt like a hamster on a wheel and I was like in the middle of that movie Groundhog Day, where every day he wakes up and the same thing keeps happening. Deep down, I'm a dreamer. I believe anything's possible. I believe God can do anything. I thought, “Why did I set my life up this way? I can't do this for 20, 25 years.” I didn't feel like I was helping people. I didn't feel a sense of purpose. I didn't feel excited and I knew it. I knew that I was going to have to make a serious change.
I picked up this book called Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow. I had been on a serious spiritual journey because when I did first move to North Carolina, I had zero friends. I didn't have the distractions of all my friends in Florida and all my friends in New York. I had a lot of time by myself. I use that time to spend with God, which was a gift that I didn't know. If you get to a point in your life where you have the extra time, run with it because he was changing me and I didn't even realize it. Throughout that whole book, the author kept saying, what are you passionate about? I would have to answer a series of questions and it came down to the number one thing I kept saying was organizing. Here's the key, I kept trying to talk myself out of that answer because I didn't know other people doing it. It wasn't like I aspire to be a teacher and I had five friends in my life that were teachers and can tell me how to get there. I didn't know anybody organizing for a living.
After giving it a lot of prayers and a lot of thought I said, “This is my gift. It's something I've loved since I was five years old. It's something that God gave me as a gift and I'm going to say, “The heck with it, I'm going to try it. What do I have to lose?” I started a business and I started asking people if I could organize their closets for free. I started a little pathetic free newsletter called Free Weekly Organizing Tips where I gave people one thing to do to get organized every week. Little did I know that that would be the basis of my very first book. It grew from there.
I feel truly God has put a huge purpose inside of each and every one of us. Sometimes it can be daunting to be like, “What is my purpose? What am I put on this planet to do?” As you keep doing that next right best step, God is going to align it all together. It's cool that you're like, “I don't know exactly how this is going to play out, but I'm going to take that next best step.” I'd love for you to share what would be your top three tips for defining what your purpose is and how you would take action on them?
Here's the thing, that was the beginning of the bigger purpose, but sixteen years ago I knew my purpose was to help women. I knew that women needed help and I knew organizing was a gift where I could help them. Deep in my soul I didn't want to teach them how to have a perfectly organized closet. That didn't do enough for me. I love organizing a closet. I love still to this day working one-on-one with my clients. I absolutely love it, but I knew that my bigger purpose was empowering women. I even remember going to a local transitional house where women that had gotten out of abusive marriages were in hiding at this house in my town. I went to them and I said I want to teach an empowerment for women class. Those women were broken. They were hard to connect with because they were like, “Look at you, you didn't walk through my shoes, so how can you empower me?” I knew in my heart that I could, that I knew if I taught them about God that they could start to see hope again.
Even though I was organizing, when I would meet with my clients, I would try to talk about God here and there a little bit, but I wasn't as bold about it as I am now back then. I knew deep down that if I could remove the clutter from their lives, they would start seeing their life as a more potential. Quite honestly, I thought it felt then and I still do that I can see people's potential more than they can see it themselves. I was clearing clutter on the outside but deep down I was like, I want to get this girl to a higher level. They might not even realize they're going there, but they are going.
Mental Clutter: You have to fuel yourself if you want to follow a purpose because you are going to get off track all the time.
When you're asking yourself like, “What is my purpose?” Think about what are those words that resonate with you. For you, you got lit up when you help people to clear that clutter and you breathe that life and belief into them. You spoke the truth in love through God's word to them and taking them to that next level. That's good food for thought, getting still and quiet. What are those things that resonate with you and set your soul on fire? That’s so important.
The other part is you have to fuel yourself if you want to follow a purpose because you are going to get off track all the time. People are going to talk you out of your dream. Satan's going to come in and try to talk you out of your dream and you have to protect your mind. One of the things too to answer your question is that I'm very specific about who I hang out with, what I read, what I watch, what I listened to. My husband picks on me all the time. We'll put on a movie and I'll be like, “Nope, I can't do it.” He's like, “It's not uplifting enough?” If it's not going to lift me up, why would I waste my time?
We connect on so many levels. I literally will walk out of the movie, even my guy friends and girlfriends, they roll their eyes. I'm like, “I can't handle it. I'm so ADD.” They're like, “Is it not inspirational enough?” I'm like, “Shut up.”
Time is very precious and I know I have a little of it so I want to use it wisely. That is one thing you can do, you should pull yourself by how you're using your time.
On the way to you building the empire that you have built, let's say you would go back to two years in your business. What would be one of your best pieces of advice that you would give yourself two years into building your business?
People think that if you make a mistake or you don't get it right the first time, it's probably not supposed to be or it wasn't for you or who are you, “Who do you think you are doing this?” If I could go back and tell myself every mistake I made, I learned so much more than the things I got right. I would tell myself to relax because it's the journey that is growing me in building the character to keep increasing to levels of success. Basically, the way I look at it is God started me out in saying yes to organizing and that got me in the door for my even bigger purpose where I am now. All those little things that happened, he was building the character that I needed to do that. If I had skipped all the middle to where I am now, I wouldn't have the right character. I would fail, I would not be successful because I wouldn't have that inside lessons and priorities and characteristics that he needed to build within me. The whole entire journey is as important as getting to that finish line that you think that you need to get to it. Once you're at that finish line, there's another one waiting for you. As long as you're breathing, you're going to want to keep going. All of it is super important and I would have told myself to not get hung up on the things that I thought I screwed up.
Not letting the failures hold you back from your success because you need to build on those failures because if you don't have them, good luck. You're not going to end at that point.
God is looking for perseverance. Every time things get hard, that's when you have to persevere. That's the difference between people that are going to fall down and not get back up. Once you start having to face that, you realized, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”
That does separate the good from the great. When things are going great and things are exploding on all levels, how much does it take to power through those types of circumstances? Not so much but when all the chips are down and you're like, “Is this what I'm supposed to be doing or where I'm supposed to be going?” It's like putting on your boss boots and say, “Nope, this is the time that separates the men from the boys or the lady bosses from the girls.” I want to talk to you a little bit about what we were chatting about earlier before about how mental clutter can screw you up and how you can get past that. Maybe even some different situations of how you've helped even some of your coaching clients to get past that mental clutter so they can boss up.
You hear a podcast, it could be a book, it could be a conference you attend and in theory you're like, “I want to do this. I want to live this life. I want to be like this person. I want to be successful and I'm going to do it.” Then a lot of life circumstances happen. A voice comes into your head and says, “You're not good enough to do this. Who do you think you are?” You're doing too much comparing and you're on social media and you're like, “I want to be like this person but they have it all figured out. They are so much smarter than me, they have the right connections.” Let me tell you, they don't. They're like you. They have figured it out as they've gone. You have all these things that come in and I call it mental clutter where it's almost like the same stuff. It's in your mind even including ideas and thoughts. If they're not organized correctly, then that becomes more clutter and you have all these ideas but you're not taking action.
Mental Clutter: A lot of clearing away physical clutter takes energy from you and adds to the mental clutter.
What's happened with a lot of people that I've coached is the one thing that's different between them and everybody else is that they contacted me and they have been intentional. They made a commitment to make a change in their life. The only reason that they changed compared to other people is that they have an accountability partner that is not going to let them quit. On those days when they want to quit, which is all the time, they don't because they have me saying, “No, you're not quitting.” It's basically the same as what you do or if we went to a gym with a trainer. You would not want to show up for the training session because you feel like, “I'm tired or I did this last night. I was out too late.” The trainer is like, “No, you're exercising.” It's the same thing.
I've seen people that have come out of whether it's bad divorces or even bad childhoods, parents that didn't cheer them on. It does matter. I've had a lot of clients have somebody in their life that broke them down and we had to rebuild them. That comes into a lot of personal coaching, a lot of fueling yourself with the right message. A lot of clearing away physical clutter that takes energy from you and adds to the mental clutter. A lot of planning and vision and I've seen people transform their lives when they handle all types of clutter in their life. They've transformed and then they start making their dreams come true, but they couldn't do it before because the clutter was blocking them and they couldn't get past it whether it be physical or mental.
That physical, mental, emotional clutter can hold you back from where God is calling you to go. Even forgiveness is a huge component that can be a lot of clutter inside your soul.
Bitterness is a perfect example of clutter. I love that you pointed that out.
I am super excited about diving into your books. I’ve even thought about other small ways or big ways of how to up-level your organization skills, how to get rid of the clutter in your mind, inside your soul, even devotions can be a huge component to that. Blessing and releasing what's happened in the past and moving forward.
Shortly after I met with Terri and we met face-to-face, I came home and I said to myself, “Am I going to be serious about creating this ministry?” I was scared. I had mental clutter. I had those thoughts that said, “You're not an ordained minister. You didn't grow up with a preacher father,” and all these people that Terri had, that you see they went a certain way. Finally, one day I heard a sermon from Cynthia Brazelton. She said something about making the decision and it said in this, I'll never forget, “When you make the decision, then God knows you're serious about moving forward.” At that point I said, “I'm doing this. I have no idea how but I'm doing this.” I don't even know how to create a 501(c)3. There was a 27-page application for that that was printed on my desk. I was like, “I guess I'm going to have to make time in my schedule to get it done. I'm going to pick away at it like bite-sized pieces for a big goal.”
As soon as I made the decision, things started coming my way and that God was saying, “Here I am to help you.” One of them was that I had mentioned to my lawyer, “Do you know anybody that deals with nonprofits?” He was like, “I believe in you and because I believe in you, I'm going to do this for you for free.” That happened the next day that I made the decision. What's cool is when I had the decision made and I knew that God gave me that little like, “You made the right decision. Here you go.” I'm an organizer. I live an organized life. I went into my office and I took out everything that had nothing to do with the next level. Whatever was going to have something to do with Jennifer Ford Berry Ministries, I kept. If it didn't, it went. I don't care if it was old research, I don't care if it was old notes from books I've written. I don't care if it was old presentations. I said, “From now on, I'm using my platform for God and it's going to look like this. If it doesn't look like that, it's going.” That was the best because that helped me narrow in and focus on my goal. For me, clutter does distract me and I need to work in a simple environment. I feel like that was a step that I needed to take for myself to say, “I'm serious and I'm going to remove anything that could be a possible distraction.”
Even Terri Savelle Foy, she talks about the number one thing holding you back from your dream is the how. Forget about the how, get solidified on the why. Decide, get crystal clear on it and then start executing in the right people show up because your heart's in the right spot.
One of my friends is coming to the conference down in Charlotte to talk about your why. I've heard her speak before about it. It's like as soon as you know your why, you know what way you're pointing to your car and why you're going there and everything else falls into place. Then it helps you with time management and distractions because you're like, “Is that part of my why? Yes or no?” If it's a no, let it go.
With you being so organized, what is your morning routine?
It's very similar to what you've probably heard before that it's like if you want to become successful, you have to do what successful people do and you have to study that. I've done all that and so my morning routine is get up and do some exercise. I shoot for 30 minutes. I've learned that I'm not the type of person that can say, “I'm going to work out for one hour for three days a week.” That's not going to happen. First of all, I don't want to work out for an hour. I wish I was that person, but I'm not. I feel like when I say three days a week, it gives me days to skip. It gives me an excuse, “I only have to do this for three days a week, so if I don't do it now, I'll do it tomorrow.”
I've learned that about myself. I have to do something every single day and that has to be it. At first, it was hard and I kept getting frustrated like, “Why can’t I stick with this?” I always say, “Fake it until you make it.” Even though I wouldn't even do a great workout, at least I was doing something and then it got better from there. Nine times out of ten, I spend time doing my devotional, reading the Word reading, some God-based book. If there's a day where I can't do that because I'm in a super big hurry, barely getting the kids off to school and then to an appointment. I always listened to God's word in the car. I drive a lot so I always listened to podcasts, audio CDs are my best friend. I feel like I've gotten an extra college degree from that. Every day, reading devotion, quick prayer of gratitude when I first wake up to and then exercising and I also add in my coffee and lots of water.
Mental Clutter: There are things that are not letting us completely be ourselves because we’re afraid of offending certain people.
I want to hear how you got inspired to start this conference. What is so interesting as entrepreneurs, we get to a point where things are hitting great on all cylinders but then this divinely-guided idea drops into our head and then we start executing it. You could have been fine going without the conference with your ministries. There are tons of other things on your plate, but why a conference and why now?
First of all, back to saying I could have gone on the way I was. The last book I published, I remember my publisher saying like, “We're going to take a little bit of the Christianity out of your book because your book is sold overseas and we don't want to offend anybody.” I was like, “That's not how I wrote it.” Even to the point, I will share this inside secret, the last book was supposed to be called Organize Now! Your Body, Mind, and Spirit. They changed the name of the book to Organize Now! Think and Live Clutter Free. That even bothered me because I wanted the word spirit in there. I felt like the book was all about decluttering your body, your mind and your spirit and right then was a red flag, something's got to change. I built this brand in a certain way, but in my soul it doesn't feel right. I knew God was saying, “Come with me 100%,” and that was scary. To leave a publisher that I had been with for years and years and a solid paycheck, I knew it was a big leap of faith. I said, “God, you're my partner now.” I can't even tell you, we could go on for hours, how much change last year for me when I said that I was going to do this.
I have another business that my partner for twelve years decided to step down, which meant I was going to have a lot more on my plate. She didn't like the business anymore and it was a negative energy on me. I prayed and prayed about it, she wants us to sell. I knew God said, “You've created a good thing that helps people, why give it up?” It ended up becoming even bigger this year by myself because of having God be my partner. At the same year, I lost my business partner and I also divorced my publisher. That was crazy. It was major changes and I had days where I was like, “God, you're decluttering my life, aren't you? You are stripping me down.” I'm not a person that is attached to things, I'm attached to people big time. I was super attached to my business partner. I was super attached to my publisher. There were even people in my life that I was super attached to and God kept plucking it out and saying, “Nope.” I had a hard time. Now, I can see why because there were things that I was not letting myself completely be me because I was afraid of offending certain people like with the situation with the publisher. We're afraid of offending people that aren't believers. I got to a point where I was like, “I can't be everything for everybody. I can only be what I feel called to be.”
When I decided to do the conference, I had a long gap where I was like, “I want to do this.” It wasn't all coming into play until that day I spoke of where I made that decision. The conference has been something that I thought of for a long time and never did until I made that decision to start Jennifer Ford Berry Ministries. I felt like I was going to have to step out in faith. I wasn't going to have the answers. Me, the organizer was going to have to let it play out. I was going to have to put my trust in God. I was like, “If this is what you're saying to do, then you will prove me right.” It's a huge leap of faith to start a conference. I decided to do it in Charlotte because we did live there. My daughter was born there. She wants to go back on a regular basis. We have lots of family and friends there, business connections.
For me, what it represents is the full circle that I remember in that little house in Belmont, North Carolina with my daughter as a baby, sixteen years ago. Having a dream and reading that book and saying yes. I had no idea what kind of ride I was in for. Now, the fact that He's like, “Start this conference.” I even learned at that point, don't even name it yourself because I love a good brainstorming session for marketing. I love names and I love all that stuff. I had to even stop myself and not name it and I would read the Bible and I'd be like, “God, I need you to give me a name.” It would be weeks and weeks. One day, I was like, “My timeline is this and this and we got to start rolling this out. I could use the name right now. I need to name the book.” They were like, “Jennifer, what are you calling this conference?” I said, “I don't know. I'm waiting on God.” The lady that worked for me, she emailed me back and she goes, “I love this.” One day I was like, “The name came. He told me exactly what it was.” I would never have thought the words Created Order myself. I wouldn't have. I had a list of brainstorming names and none of them were even close to that. When I did the research on what that meant, he showed me why he gave me that name. I want to encourage people, it's okay to take time and listen because if you are focused on hearing Him, He will end up giving you a better answer than you would have ever come up with it yourself.
I’m glad you shared that story because I remember getting my big event together for my book launch, not having done anything to that extent and wanting it to be the best of the best. I remember putting together this PowerPoint and I've got my plan and I work this plan. It's going to be like a mic drop type. It's going to be amazing. I literally, within three days of the book launch, I remember telling my organizer, “This is crazy but this is not the message that I'm supposed to share.” I struggled with God. I had a conversation. I remember hearing deep inside my spirit that, “Nope, you're not supposed to do this PowerPoint.” I'm like, “No, I am because this is going to be amazing.” He's like, “Do you want to have it be your words or mine?” I'm like, “Mine.” I was like, “Nope, this is not the reason I'm putting on this conference,” like, “Stef, get out of your own way.” I remember not being very well put together, but those were the words that I was supposed to share at that time. There were so many women that came up to me afterward and they're like, “That was not your normal Stefanie Peters speech.”
That's what's so cool because it's even bigger and better than I could have done. The thing is God kept whispering these words to me called purpose over possessions. It ends up that I'm finishing up a book called that. We talked about using your event to launch your book. That end up being part of the planning. I never thought of that the Created Order Conference will launch the next book, Purpose Over Possessions. That's the actual theme for the conference. With this society, people have realized that all this stuff is not making them any happier. The possessions that they had, I call it the Target Five-Minute High, where you buy something at Target and you're like, “I'm so excited,” the whole way home. It’s like, “Find that item a month from now or six months from now and tell me if you still get that rush of joy and excitement,” probably not. A thing could never give you the joy and excitement that you have when you're living your purpose. It's not possible. You know, like I do, after working and working at this, that when you know your purpose, you wake up every single day excited. Your work is not even work because you love every second of it.
I want that for as many people as possible. I feel like working one-on-one with people and coaching people, in that way I can only help one person at a time but at a conference, I can help so many people at once. I want these people to come to the conference and be so ignited that they know, not only that they have a purpose, what the purpose is, but they have a specific plan of how they're going to live it every single day. They know exactly how to organize their life around it and how to clear all the clutter and how to manage their time. We're creating an online private community so that they have each other like you talked about with the tribe. Where they can stay accountable and they can have people cheering them on because they're going to have hard days. I know they'll leave super pumped, but what about those days when Satan soups in us like, “You can't do this.” All of us are going to be behind you like, “Yes, you can. Don't listen.” That's why I want to bring as many like-minded people together to take on and to help build what he wants to be built here. There's no better rush. There isn’t.
Mental Clutter: You can't lead other people unless you're sure of where God is leading you.
I cannot wait to be a part of that conference and be able to speak life into the women. Take it all in and have my tribe come and experience that. I truly think that mental clutter and all the other things that clutter life can hold us back from where God is calling us to, so we can strip away the layers. All bets are off on what we can accomplish for the kingdom. Thank you for stepping out in faith and doing this. I cannot wait. Two last questions. Number one, if someone met you and said, “Jennifer, I want to be able to become the boss of my own life and call the shots. What's my first step?”
Your first step is to start spending at least fifteen minutes every single day with God. You aren't going to know what you're called to do if you aren't listening and you aren't taking time to check in with yourself. I feel like that's the first step. When you’ve got your answer, I'm going to go and say the next step would be clear everything that is clutter that is distracting you from that.
What is your definition of a boss?
A boss is somebody that does things the way their soul calls them to do, regardless of what other people think. I also think that you can't lead other people unless you're sure of where God is leading you. As a boss, you need to be an example of that. You need to live that every single day so that others around you are seeing it because if you're doing it for yourself, you're not going to influence anybody. Then how is the kingdom going to grow from there?
Why don't you share with all of our beautiful friends that have joined us, where they can connect with you, where they can follow you? I know they will want to connect with the beautiful Jennifer Ford Berry.
They can find me on my website, JenniferFordBerry.com. If you want to find out about the conference, if you want to find out about the podcast, the books, it's all on there. I'm also on Instagram, @JenniferFordBerry and Facebook, @JenniferFordBerry, so it's pretty simple. I'm on Pinterest, I'm under Organize Now, which is the name of my book series. If you want more information or you want to share what you thought about, then reach out to me because I love connecting with other women.
She is the real deal. I totally connected with her on so many different levels when we first started chatting. You are going to be so blessed by her ministry, all of her different products and podcasts. Go check it out. As all of you ladies and men bosses know, my challenge to you is to fire your fear, build your faith and become the boss of your own life. Until next time, let's get after it and do what God has called us to do. Be blessed.
Important Links:
@JenniferFordBerry on Instagram
@JenniferFordBerry on Facebook
Organize Now on Pinterest
About Jennifer Ford Berry
Jennifer Ford Berry is an organizational expert, best selling author of the series: Organize Now!, host of The 29 Minute Mom podcast, national speaker and promoter of God’s plan. Jennifer was previously the regular organizing expert on the TV show: Winging It, Buffalo Style. Jennifer has been a guest on numerous television and radio shows. She has also been featured in many national magazines and newspapers. She is an animated speaker who has presented to the Learning Annex, corporations, churches, national conferences, mom groups and school districts. She is also the founder of Created Order Organizing Conference and the Blurry Conference. Jennifer currently resides in Western New York where she continues to work hands-on with her clients helping them to eliminate clutter and live their dreams.