Sue Rasmussen
and Business Results Affected by Clutter

As long as I can remember, I’ve always had an extremely strong sensitivity to rooms, especially rooms in people’s homes and their private offices – the personal spaces that reflect who they are.

And that sensitivity has always shown up to me in how I feel, literally, when I’m in a room.

Some rooms made me feel happy, some made me feel creative, some made me completely stressed out or uncomfortable, and others actually made me feel jittery and anxious or upset.

And I could always tell intuitively if a piece of furniture just didn’t feel right where it was sitting…if it needed to be moved 6 inches to the left so the room would ‘feel better.’ I could literally feel the room (and this may sound a little strange!) ‘breathing easier’ when things were placed in a certain way in the room.

I also got those same feelings with closets, drawers, and so on. If things were a jumble, I could literally feel my insides getting jumbled as well…my thoughts, my feelings, my ideas, and my energy.

And all my life, I just assumed that everybody could feel these things. It didn’t even occur to me that I was sensing things that most people don’t. (In fact, I held on to this assumption until very recently.)

As I was in my last year of high school and choosing what I wanted to do for a career, I knew that I had this love of how rooms look and how they affect us. I thought about going into interior design or decorating, and was told by my guidance counselor that “there is no money in that. Do something more practical.”

She didn’t even ask me any questions about it.

Now, growing up in the Midwest. I had a huge respect for authority, especially someone who, I believed, was in a good position to offer me valuable advice. So I believed her. I shut down completely. And I was quietly devastated.

That moment, I stopped trusting myself. I stopped trusting what I really wanted, and I stopped trusting what I believed.

I never even mentioned it to my family, I never questioned the validity of what I had been told, and I spent the next 25 years doing work that was ‘practical.’

So over the years, I made decisions that seemed to make good sense, at least from the outside.

I went on to get a double major in French and Business Administration, with an emphasis on International Business, and finished my undergraduate work at l’Institut de Gestion de Rennes, which is an international management school in France.

I worked in the corporate and professional arena until 1998, when the next major level of my love of creating space of a different kind came after divorcing my husband in 1998. We had gotten caught up in the 'more is better' mentality, and had created lives that were fairly complicated. I was working crazy hours every week, doing work I didn't love, and surrounding myself with stuff to make up for it.

I decided that it was time to review my life, my activities, the people I spent time with, and, of course, everything I owned and my living environment.

The process of simplifying, clearing out years of clutter, and making very conscious decisions about what I wanted to keep in my life and what I wanted to let go was transformational in every way for me.

At that point I decided to change my profession, become trained as a professional business coach, and focus on what I loved. During that time I also hired several top notch specialists to help me position myself as an expert, and again, mentioned to them that I had a love and passion for creating spaces that truly work for people, simplifying, and clearing out clutter.

And again I was told, by people that I had hired to support me, that what I wanted to do probably wasn't practical, and that I should focus on what would better suit the market. (And my guess is that you have heard something similar yourself at some point or another in your life as well.)

So as a coach, I decided to work with small business owners to find their own niche. I had no problem encouraging other people to follow their hearts.

And because I truly am fascinated with marketing and business development, I convinced myself that I was following my heart as well.

Over the years, as I worked with thousands of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals, teaching them how to grow their business, I became known as the niche marketing expert. I loved helping people define their specialty and their target audience, and then helping them choose the marketing activities that would help them best reach their audience.

I even wrote a book about niche marketing.

And I knew the tools worked. The marketing information and strategies I was sharing were truly the best of the best. They were simple, elegant, and could be tailored to fit any business.

And here’s the thing:



So I started investigating. (And for those of you who know me, you know that doing research is one of my true passions – I’m one of those kids who loved doing research papers in high school - seriously).

And this is what I discovered.

These business owners - who were smart, motivated, creative, and cared deeply about their businesses, their message, and their clients - weren’t making the kind of progress they thought they should be making because they were often distracted, whether consciously or unconsciously, by something else in their life.

Here are some of the distractions I heard from my clients on a regular basis:

• In many cases, their desk was piled high with stacks of papers. They couldn’t find anything, and were constantly saying things like “I’ll work on my marketing as soon as I get my desk cleared off,” which somehow never seemed to happen, so their marketing never seemed to happen.
• I often heard that they were upset because they kept trying tool after tool, attending seminar after seminar, and reading information products, books, and the latest 'guaranteed' hot tips, and nothing seemed to be changing. This is clutter at its finest, and affects most entrepreurs at some point or another.
• In some cases, they didn’t particularly like their home or an aspect of where they lived, but ‘had to stay there’ for a variety of reasons. Or they didn’t like how their living room looked, but didn’t have time to create a room they loved.
• Or their garage was a huge mess, and they’d plan to clean it out weekend after weekend, only to come into work on Monday upset that they still couldn’t fit their car in the garage.
• Maybe they didn’t love their office, but they stayed there because they were partnering with their brother-in-law and didn’t want to rock the boat in their family. So they spent a good amount of their time either being stressed or trying to come up with work-arounds that didn’t change a thing…and didn’t actually do anything to change the direction of their business.
• They often felt behind, and stressed, and bad about the progress they wanted to make but weren’t making. They put so much pressure on themselves, and still weren’t moving forward. Their beliefs, their worry, and their constant beating themselves up were literally blocking their ability to create the results they wanted, no matter what actions they took.

• Or their schedule was often jam-packed, with no breathing room, and they found themselves running from one thing to another. Their client sessions constantly ran late, they themselves were often late, and each day felt like one big race against time.

• They might say things like “when I get this next project done, then I’ll have time to focus on growing my business.” And again, that day never came.
• Or they were in a partnership that was causing them a lot of stress, and they couldn’t figure out what to do about it, and so they did nothing except spent a lot of time being stressed about it, talking about it, and looking for new solutions to make it work…when it was clear that it wasn’t going to work no matter what they did.
• Many had staff issues that were frustrating them, and they didn’t know how to handle them, or they didn’t feel like they could let the staff member go. And their reasoning either went “I’ll just have another conversation with my assistant, and I’m sure things will get fixed” or “I don’t have time to hire another assistant, so I’m going to keep this one for awhile longer.” And nothing changed unfortunately.

And the list could go on and on.

I started recognizing that most of our coaching time was being spent on everything except  marketing.

As I looked more closely at what was going on, it became apparent to me that letting go - of the staff or the clutter on the desk or the activities that were crowding the schedule – wasn’t such a simple thing for most people.

They often didn’t know how to let go of the clutter in their lives. They didn’t even know they could choose to let it go.

And they certainly didn’t realize that their clutter in all its various forms – physical clutter, relationship clutter, time clutter, mental, emotional, and spiritual clutter – was the reason they weren’t seeing the results they wanted in their lives.

They thought their clutter was something they would handle if they had time…it was low on their list of priorities. And I knew that it was anything BUT a low priority – clearing the clutter would be, by far, the easiest way for them to start seeing results in their lives and in their business.


Clutter is completely blocked energy. It is stagnant. It is derived from the word ‘clot’ – and there is no movement in ‘clot.’

So I asked them to clear their desk, clean out their closet, handle the conversation with their assistant or partner or husband or children, create space in their schedule, and create an environment that they loved – using quick, practical approaches.

I started telling them that when they started handling their clutter (because I call all those things clutter), that’s when they’d start making more money. Or become more creative. Or get more clients. Or whatever they wanted more of in their life.

And that’s exactly what happened.

When they started focusing on handling their clutter, 

things started shifting in often completely unexpected areas 

of their business, as well as their life.

They started noticing that their creativity went through the roof, without any effort on their part. New clients started showing up, more and more easily, often from out of the blue. And they were happier, more relaxed, and the stress started going away. Their personal relationships started getting better.

They started making decisions based on “how do I feel?” instead of “what do I think?” and found it was so much easier.

And for me, the connection between what I had loved all of my life - creating environments that really work, including simplifying and clearing out the clutter that is no longer serving you – and creating powerful results in business and in life was coming full circle.


For more info, check out my Fast Facts.

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