One-to-One Mentoring

Are you a business that needs accountability, guidance and support?

We’re pleased to be running a mentoring scheme, whereby established APDO members - who are all business owners in their own right and run successful businesses - are offering mentoring calls to those who have a professional organising business and are looking for accountability and mentoring.

Costs for mentoring calls are set by each mentor so please discuss that with the mentor of your choice.

Please note: the APDO 'buddy list' is a free benefit to members, where we pair you up with another member to support each other. If you would like APDO to find you a 'buddy' please email [email protected]

What is a mentor and what do they do?

A mentor is an experienced and trusted advisor
Mentors provide guidance, advice, feedback, and support to the mentee, serving variously as role model, teacher, counsellor, advisor, sponsor, advocate, and ally, depending on the specific goals and objectives negotiated with the mentee

Topics that our mentors can help you with:

Defining your offering
Business setup & administration
Creating your website
Marketing & Social Media
Networking & finding clients
Communicating with clients
Growing your business
Confidence
Motivation
Goal setting
Boundaries
Overcoming challenges

The arrangement between mentor and mentee is private; APDO is simply providing a platform to connect mentees with mentors and will have no knowledge of, or influence on, individual mentor’s fees or methods of work.

Details of the current four mentors are listed below. Please contact your chosen mentor(s) to start the conversation!

Sarah Bickers

Sarah has worked as a professional organiser since 2014 and trained as a coach in 2022. She works predominantly with ADHD clients, combining her skills as a professional organiser and ADHD coach. Having ADHD herself, she understands well the challenges, unique qualities and strengths that people with ADHD are living with.

Sarah runs the popular ADHD for Organisers workshop and has trained over 100 APDO members over the past 5 years to help organisers support their ADHD clients. She has mentored other professional organisers for several years, and welcomes organisers who have ADHD/ AuDHD or who work with ADHD clients.

Sarah's style is collaborative, helping both organisers and clients develop a more ADHD-friendly approach, supporting them with challenges at home or work using a combination of practical experience and listening / coaching skills.

Mentoring sessions with her offer organisers an opportunity to talk through specific issues as a one-off session OR ongoing support. Sarah loves nothing better than encouraging and supporting organisers to recognise their unique skills and strengthen their practice with clients.

Amanda Biggs

Amanda has been a self-employed business owner for more than two decades. She sold one business after building it from the ground up, remains a Director of another, and runs her own successful professional organising business. Amanda also has a background in Customer Service.

All of this has given Amanda a great grounding in the business side of business: from setting up as both a sole trader and a limited company, to finding and retaining clients. All the detail that goes alongside it, including accounts, VAT, self-assessment, and marketing are also part of Amanda’s skillset and experience.

As APDO’s Membership Director, Amanda values feeling part of a team and having colleagues while being self-employed, and works to ensure all members experience this too. She also recognises the power of networking and support to aid progression.

Amanda works with ADHD clients and welcomes applications from organisers who themselves have ADHD, or work with clients with ADHD.

A friendly, honest approach underpins Amanda’s mentoring style as well as a desire to help members thrive in their careers.

Katherine Blackler

Katherine had 15 years’ experience in the corporate world coordinating projects, people, and processes before setting up SortMySpace Ltd in 2016. During this time, she accrued practical business and administrative knowledge.

As the immediate Past President of APDO, Katherine was instrumental in developing a number of APDO's backend operations as it grew substantially from 160 to 400+ members during her tenure.

Katherine became the first person in the UK to gain the CPO® (Certified Professional Organizer) credentials in 2019 and is also a member of NAPO National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (headquartered in the US). She regularly attends overseas organising conferences to benefit from multicultural influences within, and for, the professional organising industry.

Since late 2024, Katherine has been studying with Coach Approach Training, an ICF-accredited programme with a particular focus for professional organisers and for supporting neurodiverse clients.

Katherine thrives on seeing others step out of their comfort zone and soar to new heights.

Caroline Rogers

Caroline launched Room to Think in 2013 and offers professional organising, coaching and mentoring services. Many of her PO, coaching, and mentoring clients are neurodivergent and/or experiencing significant life depleting challenges.

An experienced member of APDO’s training team, she developed and delivers APDO’s Effective Listening course. As an enthusiastic volunteer, she facilitates APDO’s monthly new members’ welcome zooms and helps organise the East London APDO meetups.

Caroline’s research area of positive psychology informs her whole practice. She authored and published academic research on the association between clutter and wellbeing in 2020 and keeps updated with current research on clutter and hoarding.

Your wellbeing – and your clients’ – will be foremost in a mentoring relationship. Many professional organisers that Caroline has already mentored are now established, flourishing members of APDO who work to their strengths, feel confident, enjoy their clients and make a living.

Caroline is naturally easy going, friendly, and informal. She doesn’t believe there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to be a professional organiser – only a professional, ethical, reflective and individual one. She will help you discover your own ‘right way’ in your own practice

Lisa Barrett

Lisa has been a qualified Social Worker for 22 years and has been in private practice since 2016, specialising hoarding behaviour. She has been a member of the APDO training team since 2020, and was previously Membership Director for over 3 years. Lisa is a registered trainer and mentor with BASW (British Association of Social Workers) and was a trainer and volunteer with a national bereavement charity for 6 years.

Lisa developed and delivers the ‘Collaborative Approach to Complex Situations’ training session for APDO and is regularly commissioned to provide training and direct client support by local authority social care and safeguarding services, child protection teams and social housing providers.

As a mentor, Lisa offers a supportive and reflective space to explore direct practice, professional development, and business aspirations. Her mentoring approach is informed by ongoing learning in areas such as neurodivergence, chronic disorganisation, trauma, bereavement, and mental health, enabling her to support mentees with confidence, compassion, and clarity in complex work.

Lisa is committed to inclusive practice and values diversity in all its forms. She works with curiosity, respect, and cultural humility, recognising how lived experience, identity, and systemic factors can shape both professional practice and learning needs.

Kat Band

Kat is a Director of Hoarding Disorders UK, where she leads specialist training, consultancy, and support rooted in lived experience and evidence based practice. A recognised practitioner in hoarding and chronic disorganisation, she blends deep expertise with a compassionate, person centred approach. She also contributes to national research/policy, guest lectures, and sits on the UK Hoarding Partnership steering group.

Through her private practice, Kat supports individuals of all ages who feel utterly stuck. Her work combines therapeutic approaches, neuro affirming and executive function coaching, hands on support, harm reduction strategies, and multi agency coordination to create safe, sustainable change.

As an Autistic woman with ADHD (AuDHD), Kat draws on her neurodivergent identity and personal family experience of hoarding. Her 20 year career in the children’s charity sector- including senior leadership, commercial tendering, and safeguarding roles at Barnardo’s- shapes her commitment to ethical, trauma informed practice and practitioner wellbeing. Burnout prevention is an area of particular focus.

Kat’s mentoring style is flexible, collaborative, and gently curious. She adapts to each person’s needs and learning preferences, prioritising psychological safety and reflective, grounded learning without judgement or pressure.

She lives in Lincolnshire with her wonderfully unconventional family, loves live music, and has a thriving collection of cacti that refuse to die.