Exploring Life & Business with Kristen Christian of Bee Organized

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristen Christian.

Hi Kristen, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
How We Came to Bee
It all started as best friends in junior high. As life moved forward with new spouses, houses, and kids, we did our best to support each other and navigate life. One friend, a self-acclaimed “hot mess,” earnestly struggled to organize, simplify, and sustain a constantly expanding household with family, furniture, and the tchotchkes of life that naturally accumulate. The other friend, already gifted in the art and science of space organizing, knew exactly what needed to be done with kindness and compassion and made it fun! That was us, Kristen and Lisa, helping each other. You get the picture; we are the yin and the yang, Mutt, Jeff, Thelma, and Louise.

With patience and trust. Clarity and calm. Grace and humor. That was the beginning of Bee Organized; simplifying and organizing our homes brought out the best in each of us. We were happier. We felt better about ourselves and more grateful and present in our daily lives. That feeling sparked a crazy idea: “Why couldn’t we do this for others?” “What if we took our passion for organizing and helping others and turned it into something bigger?” So, built on the shoulders of this friendship, trust, and support, we began offering our services. The affirmations from our family, friends, and strangers were overwhelming. We were humbled. “My house feels lighter, and so do I.” “You restored in me something I feel like I had completely lost.” “I had no idea how much the clutter and disorganization were stressing me out until the project was finished.” We saw the despair of some clients turn into hope. We saw procrastination turn into productivity. We watched clients happily move on with the next chapter of their lives, and we watched others fall in love with their homes all over again. We launched Bee Organized in 2015 with the sole desire and purpose of helping people get organized and teaching them how to “Simplify their Hives” and lives. We knew that if people could get a glimpse of how the organization could change their lives, they’d be hooked!

The Jive of Our Hive
We started small, worked hard, and with grit and humility, we built a national brand from the ground up. As our Buzz quickly spread, our purpose became bigger than just organizing. We now realize that we’re transforming lives one Hive at a time. We are beyond proud that a family culture has organically developed in our company, not unlike that of a beehive everyone Buzzing together with the same goal. We created Bee Organized to help our friends and neighbors locally. Little did we know that we were building a road map for organizing enthusiasts around the country to build a business for themselves, but not by themselves. And just like that, Bee Organized Franchising was born! One of our greatest joys has been watching our Franchise Owners spread their wings and experience this sweet nectar of success while providing a needed service. One owner said it best“Becoming a Franchise Owner has allowed me to continue to ‘fill my bucket’ of helping others while providing a professional, exemplary service.” Through the years, a lot has changed. Our business has grown into a successful franchise company with Bees pollinating in major cities from the West Coast to the East Coast. But one thing has remained constant.

Our three Bee-liefs, the foundation we built our company on:

• Compassion. We meet you where you are and come alongside you to listen, talk, and sometimes cry together.
• Confidentiality. It’s our privilege to be in your home, and you’re the only one who ever needs to know we were there.
• Judgement-Free. We respect your courage and conviction to seek our help. We’re impartial, accepting, and focused on progress, not perfection.

We continue to thrive because of this embedded foundation. Through our Bee-liefs, we attract Bees nationwide who embrace these same core values. That’s why our Bee’s superpowers go way beyond organizing and set us apart from the crowd. One of our happy Bees summed it up beautifully by gushing. “Often, we enter homes as strangers but leave being the best of friends.” We are so giddy about what we do that we even created our own Organizing Profile Quiz for our clients to understand better why we buy what we buy and keep what we keep. Once we know our relationship with our stuff and the behaviors around it, we can make lasting changes.

At Bee Organized, our mission is simple we make spaces more usable, homes more livable, and lives more enjoyable. We do this because (we love making new friends) and we’re confident that simplified, clutter-free, and orderly spaces make breathing, thinking, working, and living more effortless. We have to ask you, my friend, who doesn’t want more of that?

Kristen & Lisa
Co-Founders and Best Friends

You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
Oh my, it has been a wild and crazy ride with many detours, roadblocks, and u-turns! When building a company, you don’t know what you don’t know. There is so much to do and so many hats to wear that you can get overwhelmed and spin in too many directions. We wasted hundreds of hours and dollars. Technology has been one of our biggest stumbling blocks.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Bee Organized?
We provide customized and sustainable organizing solutions for our clients. We often say we help take the overwhelm out of a situation, room, move, or area. We remind our clients that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. We sit down and help them eat it! Our emphasis on progress over perfection and connecting with our clients with true compassion is what sets us apart. To us, it’s not about a flashy picture but rather about how our clients feel through the process.

What matters most to you? Why?
As a business owner, what truly matters to me is acknowledging clients, partners, vendors, employees, and franchisees – where they are and honoring them. Allowing people to feel heard, understood, and important. Armed with that goal, it is easier to establish expectations and clear communication that, in turn, create happy clients, partners, vendors, employees, and franchisees. As a professional organizer, what matters most to me is to help people strike that perfect balance of organization – which is different for everyone. To help people understand their relationship with their belongings so that they can let go of items that do not serve them, create an environment that welcomes them, feeds them, and supports them. There is so much we cannot control in this world; it is so important to be able to come home and feel at home.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.beeorganized.com
• Instagram: beeorganizedkc and beeorganizedcorp
• Facebook: @beeorganizedkc
• Linkedin: Bee Organized

Image Credits
All internal – pictures owned by Bee Organized