Do you want to be a successful home stager? Of course you do! Finding a new career as a home stager is only part of the dream. Becoming successful and starting your own prosperous business will complete the vision embraced by virtually all aspiring and novice stagers. However, the staging business is difficult and can test even the best prepared individual on their path towards financial independence. There will be competition, problems to contend with and mistakes made along the way. Statistics show that most small businesses fail within the first year they open and home staging companies are certainly not exceptions to this rule. However, you can stack the odds for achieving success in your favor by following the simple and proven business advice contained in this dialog.
This article is geared towards helping stagers reach a level of success in their career paths. We will discuss the impediments faced by home stagers, as well as the most effective solutions that can facilitate true business prosperity long-term.
Be a Successful Home Stager with Training
The first step in a successful home stager career is preparation. You must be able to provide the very finest services to your clients and have all the skills, knowledge and experience possible in order to make their real estate marketing dreams come true. So how do you gain these personal attributes? You must train.
There are more options than ever before for learning how to become a home stager. There are classroom based-schools that teach a full curriculum of design and business courses. There are home study programs that can be taken online, as well as lessons contained in books and videos. Fortunate aspiring stagers might be lucky enough to secure on-the-job training and mentorship as an intern or a staging apprentice.
However you decide to pursue your training needs, it is vital that you do indeed learn. Staging requires design and marketing skills that must be acquired from experts in the field, as well as business sense that must be learned in both theory and practical application. Do not cut corners on your training, since this will only set the tone for disappointment later in your career path. Instead, invest the time and money in yourself to enrich your knowledge base and improve all the attributes that you will need to become an expert home stager yourself someday.
Be a Successful Home Stager in Business
Ok, so once you have the design skills to provide the best results for your clients, you must still know enough about business in order to start your company and effectively compete. Most home stager courses will provide at least basic training in business practices, while some programs will impart in-depth knowledge about what it will take to rise to the upper echelon of the real estate staging industry. Unfortunately, some programs do not spend adequate effort completing their graduates’ skill sets in business, placing these people at a distinct disadvantage in the competitive marketplace of staging services.
Even the best prepared graduates of the finest staging education programs will still encounter things they never imagined back in their classroom days. Small business is an unpredictable environment and it is normal to make lots of mistakes in the early years of personal growth. You will find that as long as you rectify your mistakes and learn from them, they will actually help you in your continuing efforts towards business success. However, in order to learn and grow, you must be good at recognizing when an error has been made, so it can be handled appropriately and without damage to your reputation or future financial prospects.
The scope of starting a staging business and providing expert business advice for home stagers are topics unto themselves. Luckily, I have already written about these important considerations and strongly advise you to read the above links for the golden rules when it comes to winning in the competitive sector of property marketing. In a nutshell, you will need to learn how to network with others in the industry, how to acquire and retain clients and how to earn referrals from all of these contacts through your hard work and diligence. You will also need to understand the technical aspects of the profession, including certification, licensure, insurance, advertising and many other small business lessons.
Be a Successful Home Stager with Ethics
Most importantly, you will need to learn and demonstrate ethics in your business and in your dealings with everyone, including your competition. Earning a reputation as a dishonest, ruthless or irresponsible stager will doom your business at any stage of its development. You need to become an exemplary model of fairness, quality, dependability and talent in all the things you do. If you make a mistake, you must learn to own it and make up for it. This type of business ethics is what separates the truly successful from those who use underhanded tactics to thrive short-term, but cut off their nose to spite their face in the long run.
Treat everyone you come in contact with fairly and kindly, especially if you do not like them. Remember, you will meet lots of people you don’t like in your business. However, you will need to be able to look past your personal feelings in order to do the best job for each and every client and real estate peer, regardless of whether they deserve it in your opinion or not.
So, in summary, I recommend approaching a home staging job the same way one would work to build a successful career of any kind, as well as a meaningful and fulfilling life. Learn, grow and test yourself. Become a warrior and a scholar, but always play fair. Give your word and keep it. Over-deliver at every opportunity. Oh, one more thing is truly crucial to court your clients’ good will: Stick to your budget and do not try to continually make more money, just for the sake of personal gain. If your client truly needs to spend more, tell them, but do not ever compromise the quality of your results just because you feel you should be earning more than you currently are.