SORT-THINGS-OUT ORGANIZING RADIO SHOW
Fridays, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m., 1450 WCTC-AM
Hosted by Eva Abreu, Organizing Coach
Show #1: Friday, April 5, 2019
In-Studio Guest: Todd Kerekes, Owner
Tailored Living - Princeton
Web: https://www.tailoredliving.com/princeton
Tel. 609-337-4434
TRANSCRIPT:
[Eva] I'd like to welcome Todd Kerekes now as a guest and Todd, he does custom design solutions. His company is TailoredLiving.com/princeton. So they can help you organize every single space in your home.
And I know I can use this to because I'm not born organized, like I mentioned, and I'm always constantly learning, I'm here to share tips and advice that I've learned and share resources and also learn from you, the listeners, as well and as well as from our guest experts.
So Todd can help you with designing space, and maximizing your space in your home in terms of closets, home offices, because we know a lot of people now work from home, whether they have their own business or they're working remotely.
How about the entryways as well? And kids bedrooms, I'm sure you can help with. Laundry rooms, pantries, kitchens, entertainment centers, garages, basements even businesses too. So let's welcome Todd Kerekes, to our studio. Welcome!
[Todd] Thanks for having me.
[Eva] So can you tell me a little bit about how you decided to get started with Tailored Living?
[Todd] Sure! My wife and I were talking about what our retirement is gonna look like and maybe another 10 years or so. And I was working in corporate America in sales and I said, "Do I really see myself doing this for another 10 years?" And answer was No, but the question was "What do we do, and what is our plan really gonna be in the future?" So, I had always liked doing work around my own house and a lot of the type of work that I do now, I had done in my own house. And, believe it or not, listening to a radio ad asking for people to look at Tailored Living as an opportunity, it's a franchise. I called them up and started the conversation. One thing led to another, and here I am.
[Eva] Oh, that's fantastic! So you reinvented yourself.
[Todd] I did at 50-something years old [laughter] Yeah, interesting story is that when my wife and I went out for a final meeting with Tailored Living, what's called the "Decision Day," two decisions were made. One was, yes, we're gonna enter this business and the second one, driving back to the airport, and we were discussing with the limo driver things to do in California, that's where we went, had to go back for our training.
We weren't married yet at the time. He told his Catalina Island and at that time we decided when we went back for training, we were gonna get married on Catalina Island, the weekend before we started Tailored Living Training.
[Eva] Wow! So that's combining love with business. I love it. Yeah, that's our theme for today. Love and business, that's fantastic. And is your wife a part of the business?
[Todd] She is a partner, and she's really behind the scenes right now, because she's still working in one of the local hospitals full-time because we're just ramping up the business. We're only in for a year and the plan is to get her full-time in the business coming up in the next couple of years.
[Eva] So that sounds like you have a goal and this is the plan, these are the action steps to get to it, that's what we were talking about it earlier.
So can you tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you have worked on? Let's start with a simple project. Do you have an example of... If somebody just wants to get an idea of what they can do with organizing part of their home, what would you suggest?
[Todd] Yeah, I can give an example of a simple reach-in closet in someone's bedroom, who called me in and went in and looked at the closet and it was, to put it mildly, cluttered and the existing system was falling off the wall. There were a lot of problems there.
And we sat down together and talked about what they would like to accomplish in that closet. I look at the different types of items that they want a store in the closet. And the beauty of what we do is that we have software where I can sit down with the customer at their kitchen table and build something, especially in a simple situation, like this, build something right in front of them, and get their immediate feedback and input to the project.
So we were able to build that, come up with a solution and got it done right then and there.
[Eva] That's great, I love that 3-D modeling aspect of your website, that you can see it before and after.
So we were talking with Todd Kerekes, he's the owner of TailoredLiving.com/princeton, serving Mercer, Monmouth and Middlesex County and he could be reached at 609-337-4434.
And this is Sort-Things-Out, I'm Eva Abreu, Organizing Coach, and we're talking about all things organizing.
So Todd, can you tell us a little bit about maybe a unique project that you've done?
[Todd] Yeah, I mean we don't just do as I said, complicated closets, we'll help people with very specific needs. As an example, as you mentioned, we do garages and we will do very fancy garages with cabinets and epoxy flooring and so forth.
But we had a woman who had lived in a 55-plus community, she had moved in maybe six months ago, and the garage was full of boxes, so she was very stressed out about... Asked me to come in and give her some suggestions on how could she store them better in her garage.
So I came up with the solution, but not only did we put shelving up for her, but my installers, when they were done with the shelving, came in and they actually put all this stuff away for her.
So, a couple of things. My installers felt very good about that because they helped somebody and they got very positive feedback, but it really helped her get through something that was causing a lot of stress.
[Eva] That's fantastic and I saw that you also offer Murphy beds also. I'm really interested in that. So, what's the process of... If I was a customer, and you were to come to my home to assess whether I can get a Murphy bed installed.
[Todd] Typically people are turning empty nest bedrooms into an office space, as you mentioned before, and they don't wanna lose that space to be able to accommodate guests if they're gonna stay over.
So... Really, we have to come in and look at the amount of wall space that you have and measure it out and design it with our 3D software, and then we can give you an answer as to whether it would work from an organizational and spatial perspective.
[Eva] Great, and anything else? How can we find you online, or how can people reach you?
[Todd] So you can find us at TailoredLiving.com/princeton. And tailored is T-A-I-L-O-R-E-D. Sometimes that gets confused. Our phone number is 609-337-4434.
[Eva] Great, and we'd love to have you come back again as well. We're with Todd Kerekes, he's one of our guests in studio, he's the owner of TailoredLiving.com/princeton and we thank you for being our in studio guest today.
[Todd] Pleasure to be here.
[Eva] Thank you! We're at 11:56 AM., and I'm Eva Abreu, I'm an Organizing Coach and your host of Sort-Things-Out Organizing. It's a new show on WCTC, talking about all things organizing. We'll see you again next Friday 11 AM!