I know the title of this blog regarding the growth of your home staging business isn't super sexy. It's actually pretty boring sounding but….don't judge a blog by its title, ok? What's inside this post is valuable and something that we don't learn enough about when we are in the early phases of growing our home staging empires. Yes, I said empire. Why not?
If our empire is serving a few people or a few hundred, let's be smart and strategic about how we set up our staging businesses for maximum growth.
I just read a blog post from Seth Godin that illustrates what I'm about to share beautifully. He talks about how mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is a very effective way to save a life, but while you are saving one life, you can't be saving another. This means that mouth-to-mouth is a fabulous tool but it isn't scalable. Meaning your ability to serve is limited by you and your time. But, if your goal is to serve the many and not the few, you may need a different tool or strategy.
That. is. brilliant!
Our one-to-one staging services are like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We can serve a few people really well but in order to grow and serve more people, we need to be thinking about scalability or our ability to grow.
So how do we plan for the growth of your home staging business? I'm breaking down three things to get you thinking here.
Pricing Yourself As A Business
When we first start our business, we really don't have a clear understanding of what services we should offer, how we should price, etc. And why would we? We've never done this before! But let me give you some guidance on setting pricing here.
You have to remember that you aren't setting your prices as though you are an employee in the business. What do I mean by that?
If you decide your hourly rate is XX, that is not what you charge for your services. While it's nice to know what your hourly rate is, that rate likely doesn't include the cost of your insurance, marketing, software, website, web hosting, email service providers, your car, your phone, bookkeeping, accounting, investment in business tools, inventory or continuing education. And the list goes on from there.
If you start by undercharging, you handicap your home staging business from future growth and it can be challenging to course correct and raise your rates once they are established with your repeat clients. There are several ways you can communicate your value so you get paid a higher rate from the very beginning. I talk about how you can charge more and still book clients here and here.
Understanding How Your Role Will Evolve
When we are first starting out we are the CEO and employee of the business. We are diving in and staging, scheduling, coordinating, marketing, networking. Basically, we are doing all the things, right?! And this can be the case for a while. But, at a certain point, usually sooner than you think, in order to keep your sanity and grow your home staging business, you will need to hire support.
And one of the biggest things that keeps people stuck is that they aren't prepared or willing to delegate and hire. We like to think no one can do it better than us. But as a recovered one of those people, I can tell you there are soooo many people out there who can do it better than us!
One thing we can do to get ready to delegate is get things out of our own heads and computers into systems that are documented and shareable. If you want people to help you and do it your way, you've gotta put it down on paper! I love Asana for doing this, but you could start with a Google doc. I am a systems junkie and share 3 important systems you should have in your business here.
As a side note, it may surprise you that I don't do the majority of the staging work in our business so I can focus on our marketing and growth. I made the decision that I wanted to expand my reach locally (and globally) and I needed a team of stagers to accomplish that goal. My team is amazing! Why? Because I documented how I worked with clients and then taught my team the system. That's time leverage and scalability and it's life changing!
Creating Scalable Products and Services
In our industry, all of our services are highly customized and require people and/or inventory. This makes our businesses very inefficient and full of overhead. We are also limited in our reach and growth by our zip codes. What if we could serve more people no matter where they are? What if we could sell products that didn't require a person to provide them or more of your time to deliver them. This is the holy grail of profitability and growth!
Inside the RethinkYou Mentorship Program (unveiling the details soon!!) we dive into how to create and market scalable products and services so you can work with people all across the globe and make money while you Netflix! I'd love for you to learn these things alongside me that have been so powerful in the growth of my own home staging business.
xo, Lori
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