Do you imagine yourself scrimping, saving and starving during your first and second year in business as a home stager? While it's true that you may have to make some adjustments in your lifestyle when you set out to be your own boss, it's important to remember that it's all relative to what you were earning before.
When you decide to go into business for yourself as a professional home stager, you have no choice but to start thinking about business expenses. One of the advantages of operating your own business is that you get to write off many of your expenses against your income. This has tax advantages. If you don't have a bookkeeping or financial background (which I don't), it's a good idea to start building a relationship with a good accountant.
Many Staging Diva Graduates start out as part-time home stagers because they simply can't afford to leave their job right away. This option works great for many people who are able to decide eventually whether they're making enough money to warrant quitting that day job or if they just enjoy the flexibility of part-time staging and the extra cash it brings.
There are several traits that set entrepreneurs apart from those who live their lives aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Many of the most important characteristics have nothing to do with business acumen or working capital. I believe what defines those of us who go ahead and step into the unknown of self-employment is: a belief in our talents, a passion for what we do, a willingness to step outside our comfort zone even if that means making mistakes along the way and a commitment to not settle for the "same old, same old."
Home stagers, especially those who haven't been in the home staging business for long, often have fears of being asked to stage a luxury home. If they don't live in one themselves and they didn't grow up in a wealthy family, it's natural to worry that they won't know the right things to do. My very first home staging project was in one of the most expensive areas of the city. When I heard the neighborhood it was in and the fact that they would also need furniture to supplement what they had, I was instantly terrified.
I remember sitting in my cousin's kitchen a few years ago, watching as she prepared a brisket for Sunday dinner. It was the first time she was going to cook the meal on her own as the torch was being passed down from her mother. The first thing my cousin did after removing the meat from the wrapping was to chop off each of the ends before placing it in the pan. My aunt, her mother, looked at her in shock and said, "What in the world did you do that for?"
While the economy was taking its toll on established home stager, Leah Fritz's business, Leah was hunkered down, working on her marketing despite the storm of uncertainty swirling around her. She wasn't distracted by a constantly ringing phone so she invested time in the development of her marketing plan. Her email wasn't full of client inquiries so she focused instead on building relationships with past customers and potential clients. She wasn't running around from appointment to appointment so she used that downtime to tweak her branding and try some different marketing tactics.
Much of your professional image, your public perception and essentially your success as a home staging professional, boils down to the amount of confidence you have in yourself and your abilities. This point is demonstrated brilliantly in a quote about leadership from Adlai Stevenson, an American politician appointed by John F. Kennedy as Ambassador to the United Nations when he said: "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse."
Home stagers often need to either provide or recommend outside services, in addition to doing the actual rearranging of furniture. The most common of these services needed in home staging include: Sourcing and selecting rental furniture/art/accessories, purchasing accessories (bedding, towels, decorative items, flowers), painting, handyman-type repairs, gathering packing supplies, finding storage facilities, junk removal, landscaping and cleaning (interior, windows, carpets, exterior).
I talk to so many new home stagers or people wanting to get into the home staging business and almost every single one of them eventually mentions how their own fear can get in the way of moving forward. Depending on where they are in their business, these fears can range from "what if the furniture is too heavy to move?" or "what if I don't get paid?" to "what if my client's house doesn't sell?" It's normal for fears to come up when you start a new project as a home stager, or when you think about stepping out of your comfort zone to start your own home staging business.
Before finally hiring Staging Diva Graduate Fabia MacNair, a desperate house seller had accepted an offer of $250,000 for her home knowing it was worth more. She wasn't interested in doing the work needed to complete the home staging to-do list, however, because she just wanted to sell. Fabia hated that her hands were tied and the seller was losing so much equity for the sake of a little elbow grease. But nothing could be done with a signed offer and a date with the lawyers.
I was chatting with a friend recently who happens to be in the market for a new home. She thought of me when she did a drive-by of a property she saw online, in the rural area where she lives. It was the perfect location for her family and it was surrounded by attractive homes but there was a huge "Keep Out" sign on the actual house itself. The second thing my friend noticed was a black and yellow "No Trespassing" sign on a post in the yard and another one nailed to a tree along the driveway.
Over the past three years, Ontario Staging Diva Graduate Margaret Harlos has been solidifying her position as the expert home stager in her area with her business, Living Organized. Margaret is a former Volunteer Manager and Program Coordinator for a non-profit organization and has been featured multiple times in the local media both in print and on local TV.
What could make a stronger case for hiring a home stager than an offer coming in after a home was staged... from a person who saw the home before staging without any interest? That's exactly what happened with a Maryland property transformed by home stager and Staging Diva Graduate, Holly Battaglia.
"Oh, St. Joseph, guardian of household needs, we know you don't like to be upside down in the ground, but the sooner escrow closes the sooner we will dig you up and put you in a place of honor in our new home. Please bring us an acceptable offer (or any offer!) and help sustain our faith in the real estate market." According to FishEaters.com, that's one version of the popular prayer offered up by home sellers after burying a statue of St. Joseph, hoping for a quicker sale.
If you're a home stager, depending on what email lists you belong to, you may have recently received a message or two attempting to sell you virtual home staging software. I know this because I've heard from many of you curious about my take on this new practice.
With two very young children at home it was a risky move on Fabia MacNair's part to quit her job in the residential development field to run her Ontario home staging business, Styling Spaces, full-time. But it's a risk that continues to pay off for her and her family. Fabia has worked hard to put what she learned in the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program into practice (she was obviously motivated to make her business work having given up her steady job). She has even been mentioned in her local newspaper after giving a staging seminar to local members of the community.
I lived in 3 different cities in 4 years and learned my way around all of them by car. This was before GPS of course, and even though the technology exists now, I still don't use it. I often pulled over to the side of the road on the way to a new destination to look at a map, convinced that I was headed in the wrong direction. It happened to me so often that I coined the phrase "giving up a block too soon," because I realized I was letting self-doubt force me to pull over and wondered if this wasn't a metaphor for how I was living my life in other ways.
Many home owners choose to sell on their own instead of working with a real estate agent and giving 5 per cent or 6 per cent of their selling price over in real estate commissions. These properties are known as FSBOs, an acronym for 'For Sale by Owner.' The very fact that they've chosen to sell without an agent tells you these types of clients are interested in making more money on their sale. Home staging is an excellent way for the owners of FSBO properties to maximize their selling price, as demonstrated in the following story about Staging Diva Graduate and Omaha home stager, Dolly Dewald.
If it hasn't already happened during your career as a home stager, you might one day be asked by a homeowner if you'll conduct your consultation even though they can't be there. Even if they say they'll have a check there waiting for you, you should always insist someone be there when you do a home staging consultation. What value is the consultation to the homeowner if they're not there to hear it? How will they understand what you plan to do?
