I’ve trained thousands of people to turn their decorating talent into a profitable home staging business, but after that training is complete, I have very little control over what people do with their new knowledge.
Ideally, a new home stager will take what they’ve learned about starting and growing a successful business and forge on; marketing their company, setting up alliances and getting clients.
Staging Diva Graduate, Sharon Charboneau of Upstaging Your Homes is an example of this type of new stager. She recently wrote to tell me about everything she’s been doing to grow her business in BC including getting herself online, forming alliances with local artisans and promoting her staging services through her own side line retail business selling home decor items.
After her website was finished, the designer she’d hired was so impressed with Sharon and her business that she’s hired her to stage her home and it just so happens, this website designer is friends with the agent who will be listing the house!
This is turning into a profitable project for Sharon and she’s been busy lining up contractors, assisting with painting and gardening, sourcing furniture, artwork and accessories while the homeowners carry out the renovations Sharon recommended. This goes to show you never know where your next client is hiding and why you should never waste any time when it comes to getting out there marketing and telling people what you’re doing!
I hear many stories like this from enthusiastic new home stagers, but I also hear from those who fall into two different camps; those who don’t do anything to market their business and wonder why they’re not getting business, and those who just don’t do anything at all. I’ll post more about these types of new home stagers on Monday.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.
[tags] home staging training, home staging program, staging diva, marketing a home staging business, growing a home staging business, debra gould[/tags]
So true, Debra. Staging clients come along a very winding road. One of my earliest projects was a $300 partial staging job on a smallish Victorian home in a not-so-wonderful part of town that was also financially very upside down. I staged it so as to highlight a corner built-in Eastlake firplace, the staging was memorable, it eventually sold for the fourth Realtor (albeit for a loss to the sellers, but it sold). Two years later I get a call from the second Realtor, looking for a Stager to refer to a Realtor in her office. She notes Ebrahimi and asks, “Did you stage an old house in Gaithersburg on Walker Ave some time ago?” Long story short, I just finished an $8,000 project on the redo and staging of a 1990 luxury town house in Gaithersburg for her office! Small world of long, winding roads.