Some numbers in a staging project feel more defined than others.

The initial staging fee is usually built with care. It reflects scope, inventory, labor, and experience. It has structure behind it.

Renewal pricing tends to sit in a different category. The number is there, but the reasoning behind it is not always as clearly outlined. It can be influenced by instinct, habit, or what feels reasonable in the moment.

In this episode, we continue the vacant staging pricing series by focusing on how to approach that number with more precision. This is a closer look at how renewal pricing can be grounded in the ongoing value of your inventory and its role inside your business.

Because even when nothing new is being installed, your assets are still actively allocated. They continue to influence capacity, availability, and what your business can generate next.

The opportunity is in understanding how to translate that into a number that is intentional, consistent, and financially sound.

We walk through:

• The difference between "what makes this profitable" vs. "what makes this powerful"
• Why standard renewal math often lands at the bare minimum
• How to shift your thinking from monthly pricing to total asset value
• The 8–12% renewal model that creates stronger margins, flexibility, and cash flow
• How renewals can quietly become one of the most impactful drivers of your bottom line

This episode also addresses the internal tension many owners feel when raising prices.

Because pricing is never just numbers. It's belief, identity, and decision-making. When you anchor your pricing in clean math, you create stability and confidence that ripple through your entire business.

Renewals are not an afterthought. They are a strategic lever.

And when used well, they fund your growth, your team, and your ability to actually enjoy the business you've built.

• Why most renewal pricing models leave money on the table
• The difference between baseline profitability vs. strategic pricing
• How to use the 8–12% inventory-based renewal model
• The real role renewals play in cash flow and business stability
• How to think like a CEO when pricing—beyond fear, competition, or guesswork

What happens when a stager with a tech background gets tired of duct-taping together Trello, QuickBooks, and a CRM that wasn't built for her? She builds something better.

In this episode, I sit down with Kate, co-founder of Hutch — a purpose-built project management and inventory platform designed specifically for home stagers. Kate shares her journey from SaaS startup life to staging side hustler to software founder, and walks us through exactly what Hutch does, why the staging industry has been underserved for so long, and how better data can finally help stagers price their services for what they're actually worth.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• How Kate went from staging side hustler to software co-founder
• Why so many stagers are stitching together tools that were never built for them and what that's costing them
• What Hutch does as an all in one staging business tailored platform
• Why your average inventory investment per stage might be the most important number you're not tracking

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
• Hutch Staging Website: hutchstaging.com
• Hutch Staging on Instagram: @hutchstaging

If you want to learn how to market and grow your staging business, enrollment is open for Rethink You Accelerate. This is a year-long mentorship program, where I help you and other staging business owners plan, grow, flow, and thrive with the results that you've always wanted. The doors are open and I would love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

Last time, we talked about overhead allocation—the cost of just turning the lights on in your business. Today we're continuing with the other two pieces that make up the three checks every staging project needs to write for you: the people check and the furniture check.

The people check covers what it actually costs to deliver the service. Your team's time, movers, truck rentals, fuel, all the admin work from the first client call to the moment that last throw pillow is back on the shelf.

The furniture check is about inventory recovery. You're putting thousands of dollars of inventory into every house, and that inventory needs to earn its money back over time.

When you add these together with your overhead allocation, you get your pricing floor—what you need to charge before you ever add profit.

Understanding these numbers is what separates staging businesses that grow and thrive from ones that work themselves into the ground.

Let's now walk through the real numbers so you can calculate your own pricing floor.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• How to calculate your people and furniture check
• What inventory recovery means and why every piece of furniture needs to earn its money back
• How to calculate your true floor pricing before adding profit
• How to stair-step pricing increases without scaring yourself

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome

If you want to learn how to market and grow your staging business, enrollment is open for Rethink You Accelerate. This is a year-long mentorship program, where I help you and other staging business owners plan, grow, flow, and thrive with the results that you've always wanted. The doors are open and I would love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

If you've ever posted in a Facebook group asking what other stagers are charging, first of all — no shame. We've all done it. But you probably walked away more confused than when you started, because pricing a vacant staging business is genuinely complicated and a comment section just can't hold that conversation. This is an expensive business model to run, and if the pricing isn't right, it can really hurt you. It does not matter whether you're brand new or you've been in business for years.

In this episode, I'm kicking off a three-part series on pricing your vacant staging service, and I'm starting with the pillar that I know trips most of us up: overhead allocation per project. It's the piece of the pricing puzzle that took me the longest to understand, and once I did, everything started to make a lot more sense. I'll walk you through what it is, how to calculate it, and what the real numbers look like for a staging business that is built to last.

Listen in! My goal is that you walk away with clarity on at least this one piece of your pricing.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Why pricing for vacant staging is genuinely complex and why that's not a reflection of your skill.
• What the three pillars of pricing are and their importance.
• Why you should be pricing for the business you want and not the one you have right now.
• How your contract term length (30, 60, or 90 days) directly impacts how much overhead each project must carry.

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome

If you want to learn how to market and grow your staging business, enrollment is open for Rethink You Accelerate. This is a year-long mentorship program, where I help you and other staging business owners plan, grow, flow, and thrive with the results that you've always wanted. The doors are open and I would love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

Running a staging business means dealing with all kinds of client requests. Some reasonable, some feeling like they are meant to test your boundaries. "Can you install tomorrow?" "I'll give you a lot of business, so can you give me a better price?" "We don't like the art—can you come change it before photos?"

If requests like these stress you out or leave you feeling devalued, you're not alone. But here's the thing: most of these aren't actually boundary violations. They're just questions from people who don't fully understand how staging works or who skimmed your 20-page client agreement.

In this episode, I'm talking about how grounded communication can better help you respond to client requests from a place of emotional neutrality instead of frustration or fear. I also walk you through the four key components of communicating your policies effectively, plus share a FREE plug-and-chug communication template that you can use right in your own business!

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• The three critical components of grounded communication
• How to separate your personal identity from your business identity so client requests don't feel like personal attacks
• Why deciding your communication plans ahead of time keeps you out of emotional reactivity
• When to create exceptions to your policies using client filters and when to hold firm

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
• Download your copy of the Communication Plan Template

If you want to learn how to market and grow your staging business, enrollment is open for Rethink You Accelerate. This is a year-long mentorship program, where I help you and other staging business owners plan, grow, flow, and thrive with the results that you've always wanted. The doors are open and I would love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been sharing some things in my business that were genuinely challenging. The systems that stretched me, the decisions that felt uncomfortable, the seasons that required me to shift my thinking. I've talked about what was hard and the mindset shifts that came from it. But what I realized I haven't really talked about is how I got to those mindset shifts in the first place.

The truth is, those shifts didn't come from thinking harder or powering through or honestly even journaling. They came from my decision to invest in my own education and business coaching. More specifically, from a mindset shift I had to make about what coaching is actually for.

When I first stepped into the world of business coaching, I thought I was going to get all the answers. I thought they would tell me exactly what to do, what the right next move was, what the perfect strategy was. And while that happened, it didn't happen the way I expected. I had to recalibrate my thinking because what coaching did best wasn't hand me answers—it was to help me make better decisions for my business and give me access. And why are both crucial for growth as a staging business owner?

This episode unpacks that.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Why free resources expand awareness but don't always sharpen decisions
• How high-level CEOs measure ROI on coaching investments
• Why access to higher-level thinking matters more than having all the answers
• How to extract gold from any coaching container, even if you miss every call

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible

There's a business season that doesn't get talked about enough; the one where growth stops feeling exciting and starts feeling heavy. It's a different phase from when you are the only person and you are tired from being overwhelmed. Here, you're no longer doing everything yourself. What you have running are systems, training, and leadership, but these feel harder than any work you have ever done.

This episode is grounded in what that season looked like inside my own business, because it's a phase so many owners experience but rarely name out loud.

I walk through what was really happening for me during that stretch; the mental exhaustion of training and delegation, my nervous system constantly on edge, and what understanding the neuroscience behind growth helped me finally see. I also share a turning-point conversation with a long-time client that forced me to choose: keep being the value in my business, or start building it into the business itself.

If you're building a team, feeling the weight of growth, or questioning why this phase feels so uncomfortable, I hope this episode helps you make sense that this season isn't a mistake.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Why growth often feels worse before it feels better
• Why training is harder than just doing the work yourself
• The difference between clients who want outcomes and clients who want access
• How to advocate for your team instead of rescuing situations

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible

Heather Russo is building a luxury staging business in the Boston area. And her path here? Eighteen years in insurance first. I know, right.

She is like most of us out there who didn't set out to build a staging business.

Today, Heather and I talk about what it really looks like to grow a staging business intentionally. From learning how to manage seasonality and capacity, to making decisions that allow the business to support long-term goals instead of constant burnout.

We talk about the moment success starts to stretch you, why hiring often has to happen before you feel ready, and the shift from doing all the things to teaching, documenting, and letting go of control. Heather also shares what changed when she brought on support and later welcomed her husband, Tony, into the business to help with operations and growth.

If you're in a season of growth and figuring out what needs to change so the business can keep up, you'll hear yourself in this one.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Why the term "hobby business" is damaging to women in this industry and needs to retire
• How to price your services when you're not making money 12 months out of the year
• The signs you've hit capacity and actually need help
• What it's really like bringing your spouse into the business as a partner

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
• Rethink Home Interiors: rethinkhomeinteriors.com/
• Glen Street Staging on Instagram: www.instagram.com/glenstreetstaging
• Glen Street Staging: glenstreetstaging.com

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible

We love to say we want things to be simple.

Simple workflows. Simple systems. Simple days.

But if you've ever felt exhausted by something that looks straightforward on paper, please come closer.

On Staging Sips today, I am pulling back the curtain on why "simple" workflows in a staging business often feel anything but simple. Also, why that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. Rather, it means you're running a real business with real moving parts.

This episode isn't about adding more software or forcing yourself into tighter systems. It's about understanding the invisible complexity behind your day-to-day operations so you can stop carrying unnecessary frustration and start making clearer, calmer decisions as the CEO of your Staging Business.

If you've been telling yourself, "This shouldn't feel this hard," I've got you today.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Why workflows that look simple often carry hidden layers of decision-making and emotional labor
• How complexity quietly builds as your staging business grows, even when your services stay the same
• The difference between a workflow problem and a capacity problem
• Why forcing simplicity too early can actually slow you down

RESOURCES:

• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.