He's been Working behind the scenes for 2 years to pull off the Oprah Winfrey Australian trip. Peter Walsh, a 54 year old Australian designer and professional organiser who lives in Los Angeles.Walsh was born in Adelaide and holds a Master's Degree in educational psychology. Finding little use for his talents in Australia, he moved to LA in 1995 and found work immediately as a professional 'organiser' for numerous Fortune 500 companies and wealthy individuals including the Russian oligarch Vladimirovich Deripaska .
Walsh's speciality is coming into a person or companies life and completely re-organising it. He now heads his own corporation and has published 4 best selling books-How to Organize (Just About) Everything; It's All Too Much; Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? and Enough Already!
4 years ago he secured a regular spot on the Oprah Winfrey show. Next year he will host his own show on Oprah's channel-OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network)
But it was 2 years ago that he conceived of the plan to get Oprah to visit Australia. His first contact-apart from Winfrey who had already expressed the desire to pay a working visit-was the NSW Tourism Board. Timing is everything. After several failed campaigns like Tourism Australia's So Where The Bloody Hell Are You TV adverts with Lara Bingle, it was a slam dunk.
NSW jumped at the opportunity and Qantas came onboard immediately. Oprah's visit will cost the government $3M but the resulting publicity is estimated to be worth 100 times that. Plus the visit should inject at least $10M into the local economy.
While Oprah's 300 hand picked studio guests will travel on a new Qantas A380 jet piloted by John Travolta, Walsh will travel with Oprah and personal staff in her private Bombardier jet .
And after the 8 day tour, Oprah and her entire staff will be holidaying over Christmas at the El Questro resort (below) in the East Kimberley's.
That's her yearly treat to her staff.Below : watch Peter 'de-clutter' a house in Inside The Lives of Hoarders !. It basically involves putting things in boxes. Nice work if you can get it !
