Keep your Home Staging business moving forward

If you've already started your own home staging, house fluffing, real estate staging business, or you're just in the early planning stages, you know how hard it can be to stay focused on your goals.

You've probably experienced how one day you can be completely inspired and the next you're not sure why you are doing this.

That's why I just created the Staging Diva Weekly Biz Booster Series. It's a weekly series of messages from me that you get by email. Each one has ideas and inspiration to keep you moving forward and growing your own Home Staging House Fluffing business.

It's not easy being an entrepreneur. I know because I've been supporting my family as an entrepreneur since 1989. I've started lots of businesses (home staging is my favorite by the way!) and in the Staging Diva Weekly Biz Booster I share some of the techniques I used to grow from nothing into international recognition as a professional Home Stager in only two years.

When you order the Staging Diva Weekly Biz Booster Series, you get a total of 21 personal emails from me. Each one has a business building idea but I don't throw them at you all at once! You get one installment in the series every 7 days. That gives you time to think about the ideas I'm sharing with you and even time to try them out.

I love your Staging Diva Biz Boosters! They are very uplifting and make me want to follow your suggestions and continue on with new ideas each week. Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge! I'm really excited about growing my Home Staging Business! Danielle Oliver, Destination Sold (Evansville, IN)

You can order the Staging Diva Weekly Biz Booster Series from www.sixelements.com, at the introductory price of only $25. Imagine, $25 for 21 ways to grow your business and stay motivated to reach your home staging business goals!

"I don't need a home stager, I can do it myself"

As a professional Home Stager, you will run into potential clients who tell you they don't need help. "After all," the homeowner says, "how hard can it be to get rid of clutter, clean the house and buy some flowers?"

Of course, that's not all a Home Stager or House Fluffer does. Plus, a professional Home Stager brings an objective eye that few homeowners have when contemplating their own beloved possessions!

I'd been getting various emails from Sandy who was trying to decide whether she needed my help. She told me she had already visited my site, www.sixelements.com and used my Free House Fluffing Tips to help prepare her own home for sale.

She proudly reported that she had used my tips and put extra furniture and clutter into storage, and that the house really looked great. She wasn't sure whether she should spend money having me come over for a Home Staging Consultation just to make sure everything looked as good as it could.

I should mention at this point that Sandy was about to put a $789,000 house on the market, so a few hundred dollars for a consultation was not beyond her financial reach!

I explained that my Home Staging By Design clients earn a minimum of $10,000 more when they sell their homes, some as high as $70,000 and $100,000 more. So, she could look at my fee as an investment with a potentially significant return. I also said that I had yet to see a house where I didn't have several ideas for how it could be transformed. And this is equally true of homes that others with less experience would say "showed well."

I don't believe in begging a potential client to hire me or giving them a "hard sell." I know what I do can literally change their life by giving them a cash windfall they never would have anticipated and I explain why. When you are selling a service, it's critical that you know the value of your time, otherwise you will never earn what you are worth. I talk a lot about pricing strategies in the Staging Diva course "The Business of Home Staging: What you need to start and how to grow."

Sandy called me back after a two weeks of doing her best to get her own house ready for sale. She decided to invest in two hours of my time to make sure she had done everything needed before putting her house on the market. Boy, was she in for a shock after I walked through her house!

I believe in being candid with a client, after all they are paying me for my honest opinion. I said, "from what you've told me you have obviously been busy and put much effort into getting your home ready. But, if you really want your house to sell for over three quarters of a million dollars, it has to look the part. Right now it doesn't look anywhere near the price range you're hoping for. Let me show you what I mean..."

From there I went through every room in detail and pointed out all the places she had obviously tried to save money. For example, her husband had painted the entire house stark white, dripping paint all over the wood trim, and skipping the second coat where clearly it was needed. Clearly it was an amateur paint job which might be fine in a $150,000 house but not when you're hoping for $789,000!

My recommendations included:

• fixing up the sloppy paint (I wanted to get away from stark white and select a warm but neutral color palette for their entire home, but they didn't consider this an option)
• minor repairs
• replacing bargain basement light fixtures
• eliminating at least 50% more of the contents (imagine how much stuff they must have had when they started!)
• rearranging the remaining furnishings
• purchasing some accessories
• adding flowers
• new paint color for the front door and porch and adding planted urns for curb appeal

Often I do all this work for my clients but there are always those who want to pay for my advice and then do the work themselves. This usually costs them more money in the long run, but they don't realize this until it's too late and they don't get the selling price they had hoped for!

If you're at all nervous about how to do a home staging consultation, I outline the whole process in detail in the Staging Diva Home Staging Checklist. It's the guide I follow with hundreds of clients for Six Elements Inc.

Here's what Sandy told me two weeks after my visit:

Thanks so much for your advice and honesty during our meeting. Your recommendations were a tremendous help, I only wish I had called you in a month sooner. I wasted so much time and made many wrong decisions because I couldn't be objective and I've never sold a house before. Who knows, my house might have already been sold by now and here I am not even on the market yet!

So, the next time a potential client says, "I can do it myself," point out the potential pitfalls and how you can help them get the most money for their home quickly.

Selling an empty house is a bad idea

Selling an empty house, or one with lots of empty rooms is almost always a bad idea— especially if you want to get the highest selling price possible!

If you're a home stager or house fluffer you probably already know that empty rooms turn buyers off. The challenge is educating your potential clients and helping them realize that investing in your services can really pay off for them.

Let's say you have potential clients who fall into one of these categories:

• they've already moved to a new home and their old house is empty
• they bought a home to renovate and flip (so there's no one living there)
• they live in their home but there are key rooms that have no furniture
• builders trying to sell a new or just renovated vacant home

In any of these categories, you're likely to find an entirely empty home or one that has many rooms without furniture.

These houses need to be staged if the vendor is going to get the highest selling price possible.

It's relatively inexpensive to rent anything needed, and these finishing touches help ensure the vendor maximizes his return on investment (ROI) for all those costly renovations.

Home staging is about packaging a home to show off its best features and downplay the flaws. Home staging is about romancing the buyer, putting them in the mood to make an emotional connection with a house!

These are also great projects for you as a home stager (house stager, real estate stager or house fluffer).

Imagine having a virtual clean slate in which to create! I love these kinds of projects because I can really take creative control. I don't need to work with existing furnishings so I'm free to bring in what I think will best suit that particular property and the likely buyer profile.

These are also great projects because they come with higher home staging fees than a simple consultation.

To help you convince your prospective buyer that it is in their interest not to leave their rooms empty, I've prepared this list of the...

5 REASONS WHY IT'S A BAD IDEA TO LEAVE ROOMS EMPTY:

1. People don't buy houses, they buy homes.

2. It's hard to understand how large a room is when there's nothing in it as a reference point.

3. People can't visualize how furniture will fit in an empty space and if they're unsure, they don't buy.

4. When a room is empty prospective buyers focus on negative details instead of falling in love with the overall space. Instead of looking at the flow of one room to another, they get bogged down in questions like: Is the drywall smooth? Will those bumps in the carpet come out? How come the closet doesn't have a hanging bar yet? Why doesn't that molding fit perfectly? How come the light switch is in the middle of the wall?

5. When a house or even a few rooms are empty prospective buyers can get distracted from looking at the house. Instead of focusing on whether this is the home for them, they may be busy wondering: Is this a divorce? Have they left town? Are they selling because they have money problems? This train of thought will take them where the vendor, won't want them to go! They'll start thinking, "maybe I can put in a low ball offer since the seller might be desperate."

You can read more about this and other home staging topics at www.sixelements.com, my official home staging house fluffing website!

10 Reasons Home Staging is a great home based business

Independence Day got me thinking about the whole concept of "independence" and reminded me why I became an entrepreneur in 1989.

I had a lucrative job at the time but hated the office politics and feeling dependent on the company I worked for. I wanted to feel more in control of my future and have the flexibility to take on projects that I was interested in.

I started my first company before I turned 30 and I've never regretted the life of an entrepreneur.

Here are my top 10 reasons why Home Staging (or House Fluffing) is a great home-based business:

• Home Staging is a low cost business to start.

• It doesn't require official credentials because there are none for this industry (despite what some organizations claim for their own marketing reasons).

• There is no need to invest in inventory or recruit others into the business. This is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

• The financial rewards are there if you work hard to build your home staging business.

• You can still have time for your family or other demands while running this business.

• Since you visit clients in their homes, you don't need to worry about what your own home looks like or where you live.

• You'll have daily opportunities to be creative, meet interesting people and make a real difference in their lives by helping them make a significant profit on your services.

• You'll enjoy variety and a sense of adventure.

• You can control how fast you want to grow your home staging business.

• You decide who you want to work with and what kind of projects you want to take on.

If you want to learn more about starting your own Home Staging business, why not join our TeleClass, "Decorate to sell: Cashing in on the latest real estate craze"?

Cashing in on Home Staging Business Growth

Product and services go through a life cycle, from introduction to growth, then to maturity and decline. Decorating homes to sell fast and for top dollar— also called Home Staging, House Staging, House Fluffing and Real Estate Staging— is certainly past the introductory phase and is growing strong.

This creates tremendous opportunities for anyone considering getting into the Home Staging business. It's a growing industry which is why it's getting so much attention from the media. It's also new enough that not everyone has heard of it and most people are still interested in learning more about how and why Home Staging works.

In June I had a whole page in Reader's Digest (Canada) opening the RD Living section, but I've also been written up in major newspapers and appeared on four television networks (HGTV, LIFE Network, CBC and Toronto1).


Here's why you want to go into a business that's in the growth phase:

• The growth stage is when a growing number of people become interested in using a new product or service. In other words, a growing number of people will be interested in what you have to offer and they'll remember you because what you do is different.

When I go to a networking event, I'm generally the only Home Stager or House Fluffer in a room filled with coaches, accountants, financial planners, real estate agents, multi level marketers, etc. Who do you think people want to learn more about? And guess what, all of them are homeowners or know people that are! And, even better, if it's around the spring or fall a good percentage of them will be selling their homes in the near future!

BUSINESS BUILDING TIP: Get yourself out to networking events and talk about your Home Staging business!! You can learn more about this and other low cost business building tips in Decorate to Sell: Cashing in on the latest Real Estate Craze.

• You have a better chance of becoming one of the local Home Staging experts if fewer people are already established in your area (imagine trying to open your own little coffee shop on a street that already has a Starbucks at both ends of it).

• Most of your potential clients haven't used a Home Stager before, so they have no loyalties to someone else. This makes it easier for you to get established (compare this with being a new real estate agent and most of the people you meet have already used someone else they are happy with; tough to break in and convince them to switch, right?).

• Accepted pricing standards have yet to be established so you can blaze your own trail (I talk a lot about how to establish your pricing in a course called The Business of Home Staging/House Fluffing: What you Need to Start and How to Grow.

• In the growth stage, there are fewer competitors. Once a product or service reaches maturity, there are many competitors and many of them compete on price. Eventually there are too many competitors and the weaker ones are pushed out of the market.
  

If you get in now and establish yourself, it will be harder for others to catch up and you won't have to play the same pricing game when you have a strong track record of success. I have a growing number of competitors. Some charge half what I do. But, when one of my clients decides to sell their next house, who are they going to call? If I've already helped them make a $50,000 profit on my Home Staging services, why would they risk trying someone else just to save a few hundred dollars? Since they've already hired me before, they know that if a new person didn't do as good a job staging their home, they could lose thousands when they sell their property.

You can learn more about how to position yourself as a home staging expert in The Staging Diva's Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boosting your Home Staging Business.

Fall real estate market creates tons of opportunities for new Home Stagers

We’ve just come off an extremely hot spring real estate market in many cities across the US and Canada, which means that Home Stagers (also called House Fluffers) were extremely busy with new clients— if they did a good job of marketing their services to the right audiences!

July is the slowest month for Home Staging (well, it’s probably tied with December) but that creates the ideal opportunity to lay a foundation for business growth in the fall. New real estate listings will start hitting the market right after Labor Day and build throughout September, October and early November.

Now is the time to start planning your marketing of your home staging business to the four key target audiences: homeowners, real estate agents, builders and the media. Each has different needs and therefore requires a different marketing message.

Start planning now, get your message out there in late August through mid-September and you’ll be in good shape to take advantage of the fall real estate market.

If you miss the fall, home staging sales don’t get busy again until February or March! It’s part of the natural cycle of this business— we follow the seasonality patterns in real estate only we’re ahead by a couple of weeks. Why? Because most people only call a home stager one to two weeks before they put their homes on the market! When they do call, they’re highly motivated and usually desperate to have someone come in as soon as possible to decorate their homes to sell.

If you’re just starting a home staging business, or you need help with marketing and pricing to get you ready for the fall real estate market, you can join the Staging Diva Training Program.

You can take all five classes or choose the ones that are right for your situation. Each course is offered over one evening, by phone, and takes 90 to 100 minutes depending on how much discussion there is. All you need is email (so you can receive all the course notes in advance) and a phone to participate in the course, which is very much like a conference call. I lead all the “TeleClasses” taking you through the course notes, and answering tons of questions from my students. You really get a sense of how I run my business. I share what’s worked for me, and what I’ve tried that hasn’t worked so well.

Staging Diva students even learn what different Home Stagers in selected cities across Canada and the US charge for their services. This alone is a real eye opener for many! There’s an art to successful pricing strategies. Without them, you can’t earn enough to reach your goals. That’s why so many Home Stagers don’t stay in the business— they can’t figure out how to price correctly and how to market their services to the right audiences to get the fees they need.

In three to five weeks, you can do the whole Staging Diva program and be ready to launch and grow your own Home Staging business. There is room in the July and August course dates.

The program wraps up on time for you to get your marketing message out there and take advantage of the fall real estate market, which is predicted to be as brisk as the spring was.

Remember, since all the courses are in a TeleClass format, all you need is a phone. Some Staging Diva students have called in while they were on vacation since you can call from anywhere. Here’s some more information about the Staging Diva Program from www.sixelements.com.

Do you love decorating and real estate?

I've loved decorating for as long as I can remember. From choosing my wall color at the age of seven (royal blue to set off my white furniture) to painting a mural in my bedroom several years later. Thankfully, my mother indulged my early experiments. At least I wasn't painting the room black and covering the ceiling with tin foil like some teenagers!

I was in heaven when HGTV hit the air, finally something to watch on TV at almost any hour. It's hard to believe it wasn't all that long ago that none of these decorating shows even existed (being on HGTV twice in the last 2 years were real high points of my life).

Based on the growing awareness of Home Staging or House Fluffing as a concept, within the last two years, Home Staging shows have also made their debut on HGTV, A&E and other specialty channels with shows like: "House Doctor," "Designed to Sell," and "Sell this House."

These shows are fun, but not that realistic. After all, who has a crew of 10 or more trained people show up to transform their home over two days. And, if they did, what would it cost?

In the real world, Home Stagers do client consultations in which they identify all the steps that are necessary to prepare a home for sale. Often they do a lot of the work themselves, or involve others in the process. It doesn't generally happen over two days, so if you've let those new TV shows scare you out of trying Home Staging as a business, don't!

I started my own Home Staging business after buying, decorating and selling 6 of my own homes in about 8 years. When the last one sold for $30,000 more than it should have (after I owned it for only 7 weeks), I knew I was really onto something! It wasn't the market that changed, it was what I had done to the house that made all the difference in the new selling price!

Since that time, I've staged hundreds of homes in the $190,000 to $1,600,000 price range. I've also taught others from all over North America to start their own home staging businesses. If you think this might be the business for you, but have many doubts, here's a FREE quiz you can take.