Getting Started

By Shara Koplowitz

Getting Started

WELCOME!  The name of my Professional Organizing and Life Styling company is O.P.E.N. I believe that when you are OPEN and ORGANIZED you have more time, balance and a positive place to enjoy your life.  A clear space invites opportunity and good things to emerge. So with my first blog entry, I am going to start by being OPEN about myself and my journey.

I was born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles and I still live here now.  I spent the better part of the last 15 years as a PR executive in the entertainment industry. I held positions as high up as Vice President at very successful agencies and had a lot of financial success as an entertainment marketing and personal celebrity publicist. My job looked great on paper and my college friends were envious. I traveled the world with George Clooney, walked the red carpet at the ACADEMY AWARDS®, attended Vanity Fair parties, but I never loved what I was doing.  My personal and professional lives had blurred. I wasn’t able to differentiate real friends from the people in my life that were there because I had access to something that they wanted. When I eventually tried to separate the two, I found I wasn’t as successful at my job.

I was transitioning. I wanted more. My way of living was no longer working for me. In hindsight, I see that I was approaching my need for growth with an all-or-nothing mindset. That was four years ago. On my journey I have explored and discovered my creative side. I tried to incorporate creativity (the kind I found inspiring) into my work and it just didn’t fit in.

So, I took a step back and broke down what part of my past experience I did connect to. I searched for the common thread that ran throughout all of the events I executed, all of the trade shows I attended, all of the photo shoots I worked on and all of the showrooms I merchandised. I concluded that I found fulfillment in the tangible, hands-on components of the work. I loved the planning,conceptualizing, clearing out, organizing and designing that went into the projects I executed. I tapped into the joy I felt when the hours would fly by as I styled a client’s collection, fine tuned decor elements for a client’s event and made sure all was camera ready. I was able to make significant contributions and it brought me a great sense of accomplishment. It was then that I realized how lucky I was, I figured out what I loved to do and found a career path that would allow me to do this full time.

I won’t tell you starting over and rebuilding hasn’t been challenging and there is an element of fear. I am not scared in the sense that I will fail as I know I’m on the right path, but it is scary taking a chance on yourself and starting from scratch. Not to mention how frustrating and sometimes hard it is to do everything yourself (building a blog and website yourself included). Being OPEN and getting myself ORGANIZED created the space I needed to find my true calling.

Now on to the fun stuff!

xShara

Author: Shara Koplowitz

Date Published: October 10, 2012