The Home Staging Show

Welcome back to the Home Staging Show! On this episode, I’ve got a really fun and interesting guest, fellow podcaster Stacy Grinsfelder.

Stacy hosts the podcast True Tales from Old Houses and runs a blog about modern living and DIY called Blake Hill House. Stacy and her family moved into their 1800s home after falling in love with its architectural quirks and rich history.  Now, she’s a passionate advocate for the respectful restoration of old houses that honors their past while giving them a fresh, modern present. 

Stacy and I cover a lot of ground in this episode, talking about why she decided to move into an old house and what to expect if you want to do the same. We discuss home inspections, what kind of money & time you can expect to spend on restoring an old home, and what she would do differently if she had to do it all again. And Stacy shares some of the common mistakes that restoration newbies tend to make when they’re first learning how to live in their old home. 

I am really excited about having McCall on the show today. She is very good at breaking down ways to engage with your audience and grow your social media presence for your business. We also talked a lot about using videos to grow your engagement. During the show, McCall gave us a bunch of great and practical tips on how to get started on social media and using video if you are new to or is already familiar with social media but want to take it to the next level.

On today’s show, I have McCall Capozzi, who was the Social Media Manager of RE/MAX Western Canada. I invited her on the show to talk about her work in real estate and how to use social media to build awareness for your real estate brand and business and marketing your listings. McCall had some really tangible tips on what mistakes to avoid and how to incorporate your online marketing into your overall marketing strategies. She also talked about hashtag research, how much time you should spend on social media each week and what can you do if you are starting out or advanced in social media marketing.

I am SO excited to have Anthea Click back. She is a total rockstar as you can tell from last season’s episode. On the podcast today, we delved in deeper on her home staging business, on how she buys inventory, the costs of inventory, pricing and where to buy. We also talked about how she trains her stagers, how she learned how to stage and style interiors, plus her tricks on improving her home staging skills.

On the show today, I am interviewing Sanja who is the European director of IAHSP.  She has been working as an interior designer and she is the founder of The Art of Staging. She has launched her home staging business in 2013 in Chicago, Illinois and has moved to Rome, Italy in 2016 where she currently lives and works. Sanja is a certified ASP® Trainer for StagedHomes.com and she is also very actively involved in the home staging community both in Europe and in the States. 

On today’s show, we talked a lot about the growth of home staging internationally and how to develop your work in a new market. We also talk about different ways of working. Sanja also took the time and answered a few of our listener’s questions.   

On the show today, we have an artist and a creative director of a marketing agency Darcy Briks on the show. Darcy’s mother is an interior designer and who had done work with builders and investors on selling their homes. Growing up, Darcy had a lot of influence from her mother when it comes to colors. During today’s show, we chatted a lot about the creative process, using colors and how we perceive and are influenced by colors. Because of Darcy’s position as a creative director, we also talk about branding and how colors are used in branding. And of course, because of her background as an artist, we also talk a lot about how to handle, transport and select artwork for your home. Darcy also gave us a few resources on buying art online.

Today on the show, we have Olivia Conlon, a UK stager based in Glasgow, on the show. She started her staging business when she was 16 and about 4 years in, her home staging business services entire country of United Kingdom and she not only stage homes, her business also includes manufacturing furnishing, importing soft goods and renting and selling staging inventory to investors and buyers. It’s an absolutely incredible business model. 

Currently operating throughout the UK, Olivia Conlon of ThePropertyStagers and her team of ten, furnish around 300 properties per year in the UK. What makes the business unique, aside from its stellar reputation, is that its young founder has grown revenue from £30,000 in year one, to £1 million in the space of twelve months. 

On learning that 80,000 families will wake up in temporary accommodation such as hostels this year, Liv recently launched the 100 Home Christmas Makeover in partnership with London based charity Home Finder. Liv’s mission is to bring true Christmas spirit into the temporary homes of 100 families by providing items donated by homeware brands including Christmas trees, lights and soft furnishings to uplift their living space.

On today’s show, we talked a lot about educating the market on home staging, since home staging is still very new in UK. We also talked a lot about building the look for staging the homes, what home staging is, how to prepare homes for sale, dealing with client pushbacks, especially on pricing of staging, her business operations and real estate in the UK. She also talked about the challenges she faces staging entire United Kingdom, business operations and providing vacant home staging services and how she used social media to build her business and now marketing her home staging business to service the entire country. 

On today’s show, I am interviewing Anthea Click, who is just a total rockstar in the home staging industry. She is one of my favorite people, and it’s been incredible to watch her business grow since we both started our businesses around the same time. On today’s show, we talked a lot about everything, the growth in the real estate industry, the real estate market in Nashville, how Anthea got started in the home staging industry, staging Airbnbs, differentiating yourself from other stagers in the market place and building multiple streams of income as a home stager. So a lot of juicy info today. In the beginning, we also chatted about my updates, that I am now living in London and learning the real estate market here. And we talked a little bit about real estate in Paris as well. So a lot of fun details on the show today.

For those of you who don’t know who Anthea is, After several years as a real estate agent, Anthea Click realized the need for staging in her local market. It was over 10 years ago when Anthea and her husband, Cory, started FP Staging and Design in Nashville, TN. With nothing more than an idea, a willingness to work, and the guts to go for it, together they have built the company from their garage to a 14,000 sq ft facility with multiple streams of income. Through her experience with the ups and downs of being a small business owner, Anthea has a passion to give back to the home staging industry by helping others obtain their own success. 

On the show today, I have real estate agent Kristina Mollo on the show and we talk about the process of both buying and selling a home, and what today’s buyers are looking for. When it comes to selling real estate, whether you are a home stager, a real estate agent or a home seller, it is important to understand what today’s buyers are looking for and how they think. Having worked on both buyer’s and seller’s side, Kristina knows what today’s buyers are looking for and understands the importance of putting the home’s best foot forward when it comes to selling real estate.

During the show, we discussed how to make listings stand out, leveraging social media, ways to create demand for your listings and what makes great homes hard to sell.

Today, I have Kate from Simple Pin Media with us to talk about leveraging Pinterest for our businesses. I know our first five episodes of this season really focused on building a home staging business. For the next few episodes, we are going to shift the focus for a bit and focusing on the upcoming sales season. As you are probably starting to experience, the market is getting busier. 

On today’s show, here are some of the stuff we discussed:

• Hey Kate, thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what type of work do you do?
  
• What is Pinterest and how does it work?
  
• Why is Pinterest so important in today’s marketplace?
  
• What are some of the trends you are seeing today?
  
• I think one of the main issues for small business owners is that working on social media feels like running an additional business, it takes a lot of time to build up the presence and people are not sure if it is the right strategy for them. And a lot of us are a one-woman or one-man shop. So how can we use this platform to market our businesses and drive more sales?
  
• For home professionals like us stagers, how can we use Pinterest to our advantage to market ourselves? Or can Pinterest only work for online businesses?
  
• What are some of the best practices that you recommend for home stagers?
  
• What are some of the common mistakes you see people make on Pinterest?
  
• What are some of the most important statistics to look at when you are looking at Pinterest analytics? For example, I see our Staged4more Pinterest account says that we have 391.9k monthly viewers and 28.3k monthly engaged. But we only have about 600 followers. So are these monthly viewers vanity metrics? What stats should we be tracking?
  
• How do we know what we are doing is getting ROI?
  
• How can we leverage Pinterest to drive more traffic to our website?
  
• Can Pinterest be automated? How do you automate on Pinterest?
  
• What do you do when you see your traffic on Pinterest drops?
  
• What is the number one tip you will give to home stagers when it comes to using Pinterest for marketing their business?
  

Hi guys, I am really excited to have Kevin Htain on the show. Recognized amongst Staging and Design aficionados for his engaging personality and his limitless devotion to the Home Staging industry, Kevin Htain- Lifetime Master Accredited Staging Professional, has become an iconic figure in the Staging industry for creating emotionally magnetizing spaces that sell.

On the show today, we talked a lot about working with builders, different pricing models for home staging services and what it is like to stage homes for TV.