Hello and welcome to the foxy property chat pod cast I'm your host today Jake and it has been a little while or a long while since my last podcast but I'm back and today. I've got a very special episode particularly for those who are looking to build a significant home staging business. And in this case when I say it I'm talking about a million dollar-plus Revenue business and I don't think that there's actually a lot of those in Australia or at least in their home staging industry. So if that is your ambition listen closely if it's not you'll still get a lot out of this chat. It's actually my first guests from outside or based outside Australia. So International podcast, it's Melissa Mauro from Rave home staging. She's based in Jacksonville, Florida and Melissa moved to Jacksonville to start her business Rave home staging completely from scratch around about six years ago, and I'm going to let her share some of the numbers around her business and the growth that they've achieved over that fairly short amount of time. Melissa is a regular speaker at some of the industry events in the US and I'm told In other countries, not Australia yet, but we'll look at that in the future. She recently gave a keynote at the International Association of home staging professionals conference bit of a mouthful and I broke down a lot of that talk when we spoke earlier and after the dive deeper on some of the key messages that she she and her thoughts on the industry some of the things that we covered how she thinks about marketing and her focus on putting out educational content how she's changed her pricing structure and it's something that I've not seen in. In Australia, and she's done it to ensure that price is never an objection again from her clients. So most in the industry would like to have that where other Home stages are going wrong in her opinion by using what she calls pretty talk and the one thing that Melissa would change in her business. If she could now we did have the the connection drop out halfway through the interview, but hopefully with the magic of editing you won't even notice as I said, there's a lot of great stuff in this chat. So without dragging it on any longer, please enjoy this chat with Listen, all right. Well firstly welcome Melissa. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Not a problem. And you're joining me. I'm sitting here in our warehouse. It's 8 a.m. In the morning in Brisbane. You're joining me and I think it's five o'clock where you are. Tell us where you're based. Yeah, so we're in Jacksonville Florida and I am actually home. I came home because our warehouses a little noisy at this time of day. So I am doing this from home. So you may potentially hear a dog barking in the background ha ha I've got signs up all over the doors so that Team knows that I'm here according. So hopefully they keep quiet for us. So what I usually start by asking my guess what they were doing before they got into their current staging business, but it's a bit different for you because this is actually your second staging business. So how about first we start with what we're doing before you got into the home staging industry great. So I was a manager for a real estate office. So I was the office manager. I gave Karen instruction to a lot of the realtors that In our office, I managed to look at all their contracts and make sure that they had everything done correctly and would often help them with things on MLS and prior to that. I actually worked for a real-estate office in recruiting. So I was out there trying to recruit agents for the company. So I've been in real estate in one form or another for quite a lot C over over 20 years now, I would say and I think that's probably going to be a couple of things where we talk about where we've got very different. Real estate Industries for those that sitting in Australia and don't know what MLS is. Can you give me a quick snapshot of that? Sure MLS is our multiple listing service. And that's basically when an agent has a property for sale, they will enter the information online to the MLS and other real estate agents can see what properties are available. And then that information is also typically fed to sites. Like I don't know if you have them over there but too Zillow and realtor.com and truly a places like that where individual people then can see what houses are for sale and often their searches will start there, but it all begins with the agent putting their new listing in to a service that sort of spreads that information out. Sure. So for us in Australia, it'll be realestate.com and domain.com probably the two big ones so similar just a different different set of sites over there. Was there a particular moment or was it a kind of series of events or what was it that actually made you decide to leave that prior role in the real estate office and move into starting your own business. Sure. Well, I actually really hated my boss and my real estate office. I found her to be a completely unethical person and I hate to say that but that is the truth. And so I need dreaded going to work every day, even though I actually loved my job and at the time there was a TV show called sell this Yes, and I loved watching that and I found that I actually could tell them what would actually be better choices than what they were making at the time. I had grown up in a family where my mother was actually a professional faux finisher and my aunt was she wasn't an interior designer but she had considered purchasing interior design franchise and things like that. And so I kind of grew up around a lot of the Homemaker decorating kind of background. And and and I kind of make the joke that when I was growing up my mother like to get married and divorced a lot. So we sold a lot of houses and moved a lot. So there was the constant that and then when I got married which was I was 19 when I got married and I'm still with my husband and he was in the Navy we moved 12 times in 15 or 16 years of service. So again, it was buying and selling a lot of houses. So it just kind of became ingrained when Show was on I found it fascinating and really believe that I could actually do that for a living and that I mean it's not a is uncommon story. But at the same time there's a big jump between working for somebody and starting your own business. Was that a scary kind of transition? It wasn't I've been also have had entrepreneurial seeds my whole life when I was in elementary school my mother who had been an ad Specialties at that time had on her own business. - and then as I got older she owned her own fo business faux painting business that she'd always had that in. I'd like she would give me things to play with and inevitably I would find myself selling them at school and I've never had a hobby in my life. I don't think that I didn't find some way to turn it into an income generating source. And when I was a stay-at-home mom with my husband a Navy, I would create crafts and sell them. This is before online. So is like a lot of crap. Shows and craft booths and things like that. So I've never had a hobby that I didn't turn into a business. So having a business was fairly seamless. I was fortunate that my husband made enough money that we didn't need the income. I had been a stay-at-home mom until all of my kids went to school and I really only went to work because I was bored as my I'm not a very good cleaner and house maker. I'm a good I was a good mom, and I enjoyed that part but once like the cook when it's it just came down to cooking and Cleaning I was done fair enough. So give us a bit of context about drive home staging which is your business today your sit as you said your second home staging company. So any kind of numbers that you can share to give that context a number of has a stage per year level of stock employees Revenue anything like that that you willing to share sure. So we have 22 employees right now. We do typically anywhere from sin 7 to 10 vacant stagings per week. Then equal a number of D stagings. Universally we can do up to about 20 jobs between the two a week and we very commonly have the calendar very full. We do this year. We're on target for 1.25 million in gross revenue for the year. Last year was our was our fifth year in business and we capped out at just over a million dollars. So good steady growth. We actually could grow faster, but it's a matter of being Be able to say profitable in the business and make not have to put more money into the business to buy more inventory. That's a conversation. I mean firstly congratulations. It's a, you know, a great achievement and such a significant business. Obviously, it's something that a conversation we have a lot and look the home staging industry is probably a little bit newer in Australia. There's certainly been people or businesses for quite a long time, but it's definitely the last few years like a lot of Emerging businesses starting up and so the conversation of how do I grow my business and invest in inventory and be able to do the work that's coming in at the same time as remain profitable and be able to afford to actually run the business. So it's one of those conversations and I kind of stayed over over and over is that growth costs money and also know when you're starting a business you don't appreciate what that means until you know, you're a couple of years in and and it's a lot of the time it's about that controlled growth and and knowing what What growth you want to achieve and what that's going to cost and had a balances with as you say the profitability side, right? I think that if I had enough Capital behind me right now which for us would probably be about another quarter of a million dollars. Then I could probably raise us from 1.25 million to 3 million in about 18 months, but I don't have that quarter of a million sitting behind me. So it's it is about the sustainable growth and still making a profit. So I've chosen not to in the in the five and a half years. We've been in business. I've chosen never to take a distribution from our company. I do get paid a salary, but we neither me nor my business partners have ever taken a distribution. We put it all back into the business and that's what has fueled the growth. Excellent. I'm going to change text a little bit. You recently gave a keynote speech and you're a bit of a speaker and you're well-known for those that haven't seen go and have a look at or Google Rave home staging. You know the kind of come across you I think on Facebook and through some of the Facebook groups and I can see that you put out a lot of videos a lot of content, which I'm going to ask you about in a second. But this is a one of the things you do is a lot of speaking and the recent keynote. I saw at the International Association of home staging professionals conference where you were kind of reflecting on the growth of your business that you just mentioned into a million dollar business. There's a few things in their particular that I really was hoping to get you to kind of talk about because I think they really resonated with me and probably with a lot of my audience. So the first one was in made a comment that when you think about marketing you think that educational content is key. So can you tell me practically what that means for your business in terms of you the content that you're putting out and kind of why you think that way sure so I'm a big fan of Gary vaynerchuk Gary Vee. I don't know if you've ever listened to his podcast you speaking to an I'm a convert. I'm obsessed. Yeah, so my I listen to them all the time. And I've been doing educational marketing since I got into business so long before I ever heard him speak long before his book ever came out. His first book ever came out. I have been that that's how we've grown. Every business is really by getting in front of our ideal clients and teaching them what we wanted them to know and how to best use our services. And so I think that's important and today I think that it's the wave of the internet Set and the internet that's that's driving new customer acquisition and and letting the homeowners individuals know the benefits and value. I don't know how it is in Australia, but here in the US I have found that the state will teach a realtor the laws of selling real estate and the broker will teach the realtor how to build a pipeline of customers. If the agent is lucky the broker will teach that but no one really tells the Actually how to sell a house how to sell the product they've been given to merchandize into market and so they're really the agent's job really as far as they understand. It isn't to sell the house. It's too it's to build a customer base and I think there's kind of a problem with that because if you build a customer base and you don't sell the product then then your customers are going to be happy, right? So for me, I make it a point to teach agents how to sell a house and that It goes beyond just the staging and the preparation part but it's to teach in the things that I actually know from Real Estate as well things that I understand about the buyer psychology and the seller psychology and how things translate from that how when a buyers looking online when they're looking through. What did you say realestate.com is what your yeah, I'm or Diana or whatever it is for your site's when they're looking through their to understand the buyer psychology that if they don't like the first five photos. They're not going to move on to the 6th 7th and 8th. So those first five photos have to be key really understanding and researching all of those all of that data and turning that into something that's teachable and coachable and then teaching them how to use our staging Services as an addition to that so they could actually make the most of what the content the very little bit of content they are producing. So they're getting the most buyer leads and then the most referrals and I guess when you think about it educational and I think that's a good way to put it you're teaching how you know a realtor or even a client out there that how to use your services. I guess another or another arm of the educational piece could be and for us I guess so the difference is in our Market a little bit. So we often deal directly with clients in some cases. Although a lot of the work still comes referrals through real estate agents, but I guess when we're talking about education some of what we like to put out ourselves is Teaching people how to do the staging themselves with some of the pieces that they have now, that doesn't mean that we're trying to say you don't need a home Stager. But what it means is that some people are going to be limited on budget. Some people were never going to use this anyway, but it builds a trust with agents. It builds trust with the clients who will often get us in for a consult anyway, and some of them do decided to do it themselves, but more often than not people will take the advice and then decide that I want to do it themselves and they'll get they'll bring us into to do it for them. Anyway, so I think you know, I don't know your thoughts on that, but from an educational point of view, we found that to be quite successful as well. And we do that as well. And we also produce videos that help other stagers and other areas. So we've done videos on marketing videos for other stagers and that are on our YouTube channel and then we've also done videos like I think one of the two of the most popular videos we have would probably be good for a home owner or agent or another stage or in another area. To learn like the fact that the shower curtain should always be open during showings and how that creates a different perception for buyers in a different buying experience for the shower curtain to be open and particularly in the bath the non Master bathrooms, and then another one is if you've got a window and around like a bay window in a round table that the chairs should be on an x pattern not a plus pattern and the visual differences and psychological differences. That those different configurations make definitely and and it's interesting because we do something similar in terms of the content. We put out here. We we put it out for all sorts of different Target markets and one of them as you say is for other stages, so some of the content we put out I think our most popular video was a recent one where it sounds click baby, but it's exactly what I went through in the video was how much can you make as a home staging business and obviously that you know, if you're a running it or you're new to the industry or you've got a small Your own that's going to be of interest. So it's and it wasn't a this, you know, it was more about this is what we've found and here's some percentages that are kind of General in nature and all that sort of stuff. But it's I think different content for different audiences is important and you don't have to stick to just the one Now I agree and I think that you know, you know, you mentioned that you really do more for the individual homeowner versus the agent for us. We a lot of our content can go across board too many different Target audiences. But what we focus on is I'll say the low-hanging fruit. I want to our biggest customer base is actually flippers. So it's what we do the most for and that's because we have flippers that do a hundred and fifty houses a year, and I'd rather have one customer. That does a hundred and fifty houses a year then, you know 10 customers that do 15 and you know a hundred and fifty that do one because it's a lot easier in the end to keep the customer happy and if something goes wrong and they one time, you know, they know that that's not your standard right that things happen and this isn't their first experience with you. So we tend to go after customers who have multiple properties to give us throughout a year and that makes things It's really a lot smoother. It doesn't mean that we won't take the one off customer but we're not going to really spend marketing dollars towards that we're going to spend our money our biggest marketing dollar toward the customer that's going to give us the most Roi. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Especially I mean not especially but for those that are new to the business and it's always a question. How do I win more work for the those that are new to the industry and it's an important Point like the low-hanging fruit are for us as well. It's going to be agents who can refer, you know five. And 15 jobs a month and if you're a brand new business in the industry that can be a huge growth opportunity for you. So I agree there next one. I had there was and you can fact check this for me. But as I understand that your pricing is it's different than anything. I've seen at least in Australia. It's based on the list price of the house that you're staging so percentage of that. So tell me about how you use it. So, how do you think about that? Why do you do it that way? And I guess talk a little bit about if if it's been that way. Right from the start or if you had to kind of transition people and it's an educational piece because it's is it are you the only ones who do what I guess in your Market or is it something that's a bit more common? I think since people have seen the success of our pricing model that it is picking up in the industry. I've heard of more and more people doing it for many years. We were the only ones doing it and we were absolutely told by everybody not to do it that way. So, you know, sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and say nope. I think this is a good plan for me. It happened. Because it wasn't that way in our business in Charleston that company we we had a different pricing structure model, which I'll say was really much more random. It kind of was how big does the house how much Furniture do we think we're going to need like it really was kind of pulling a number out of the sky and this way when we have repeat clients. What we really wanted was a formula that they would that the a if we were working with an agent or a flipper that they could know. Before the listing how much it would cost to Stage. So for a flipper our main client, they're probably 80% or more of our business for a flipper. They could actually win they were calculating how much it was going to cost to put the house, you know in the repairs and and upgrades that they could calculate the cost of staging into that. So there was no at the end what we didn't know staging was going to cost that much. So that was part of it being able to have that formula and then for realtors when they're taking the listing and they're bringing Aging into the conversation for them to have a very clear number that they can an expectation that they could give their homeowners. And so that really established us that it wasn't. Well. Let's see how much staging was it was something that they could wrap their brains about the process and the cost and for homeowners the individual homeowner now as opposed to The Flipper what have you they could see that pretty well as they were paying Realtors a percentage of list. Price so we kind of fit right into that industry model. And with that we decided we didn't want to be a rental company. It wasn't we weren't going to charge by, you know, our quote says, you know a sofa two chairs anybody 10 rug coffee table blah blah blah and then when we came in decided, you know what it would really be better if we had two sofas instead of a sofa and two chairs and change that model and then I'm saying well doesn't that cost less or cost more or you know question the pricing? That we gave them because we had given them a list of what we were going to bring in and charging a rental fee off of that. So we didn't want anything to do with that. And and so the it kind of change we did we also have an option to pay a closed which most staging companies don't offer. They need that liquid now in order to do their in order to do the staging and we tacked on an additional half percent to our quote. So instead of one percent It was one and a half percent and since then we've actually changed it to our staging fees are one and a half percent. But if you pay upfront we give you a discount of 20% So we've actually sort of raised our prices from one to one-and-a-half knowing that a lot of people who were we were attacking on that half percent tried to talk us out of it. Now everybody wants to pay us upfront because they want the discount and that's I just want to focus on something you said that because you said it and it's something that we've thought about it. I think it's it's brilliant and it's it's the psychology thing. It's a way it's a the way that you worded it because we have a what we call a stage now pay later. So it's a similar sort of thing. It's not pay it close, but it's in essence. It's a deferred payment option and there's two ways that you can go about this. And the first one that a lot of people have spoken about is they have their fee for upfront payment and that's the default and if you want to defer payment there's a percentage added on like you said, there's a premium or an extra. Just the the alternative way, which is what you've transitioned to is and this is what we do. We have our deferred payment option as our default. And then if you want to pay up front, there's a discount now the numbers are exactly the same but people don't like the word premium they like to a discount and and it's not changing anything. Other than the way you actually talk about it. So I think I just want to highlight that because I think you've mentioned something that we stumbled on and I think it's a really clever way of going about it. Yeah, and and you know, we explore different pricing options all the time right now for the fall. We have a different pricing structure going on as we're one of the things that's our happens a lot in our Market is we are absolutely a premium staging service. But we've noticed that a lot of the last volume us flippers and our Market have started hiring another staging company that provides a really low cost and Lie, low cost all say and we've created a pricing structure that actually sort of almost matches them, but it's only month to month. So when you're looking at the two numbers side by side, we're probably about 25 percent more than their pricing quote. But in the long run will actually turn our furniture faster and make more money, even though it sounds like we're making a lot less upfront. Okay, very interesting. Ting and instead, I don't think it's something I've seen in Australia in terms of that processing model is up centage of list price, but I think it's very interesting and one of the comments you made when you spoke about this in your in your keynote was and I'm trying to remember the exact quote. But you said how would you like to never have prices and objection again? And I think everybody in this industry can relate to that. Basically what we're looking at is that we never have to go out to a house and preview a house with out the customer already having it. Having approved the pricing. So we're only going to go out there to ease their mind if you will, but they've already agreed to our pricing structure. So we're not wasting any time. But before we kind of get to that and they've called us usually the initial comments on the phone are either how much the staging cost or I have X budget and what can I get for that and we started backtrack the conversation and really give them our value pitched because again up to 80% I'm sorry over 80% of our customer base. Our flippers were able to really have good conversations with them about what kind of return on that investment. They're seeing investors. Don't do a lot of expenses if they're not going to get a return out of it. And so universally we've heard that they find that they're getting typically about 10 percent more for the property when they staged it then when it's left out in stage. So in our Market because Our Market is sort of a very low-end Market if it's a 250 thousand dollar house. That means that there when they staged the house they're thinking they're going to get about 25 thousand dollars more for that house by staging it then leaving it empty and that's a big number. So when we're talking to our customers, we don't actually say 10% more because we don't want them psychologically going crazy and raising the price so high that they can't sell it, but we're going to let them know that Turn should typically be three to five times what they're spending even though our even though our customers tell us. It's closer to 10% So when we look at that what we're saying is if you have a $250,000 house at one percent because it's really what we're looking for. That's going to be a 25 hundred dollar investment that you should expect to get $7,500 or more out of that at closing and so when we explain that Then typically we don't get as much like if all you're concerned is about spending $2,500. You're not our customer if you're concerned about how much my getting back. Is this an expense or is this an investment then are your our customer base? So once we establish that then we're happy to meet with them and do whatever we need to to secure the deal, but we're never going to waste time and house where we haven't already secured the knowledge of what our pricing is. We're never going to Get out to a house on the go. Oh, I had no idea what it cost so much. I think I mean you basically qualifying Elites in a way. And as you say there are there are people who aren't going to be your customer and without having that expectation of price upfront often. You'll get a call to go and look at a house or give a quote when they were never your customer to begin with. So I really like it and I think people should think about that we thought about a version which we're looking into which is not a percentage necessarily but fixed pricing and we Of you know a number of the say three or four different fixed prices, depending on what size house or something. Yeah, we're still looking into things like that. But but the point would be more of a way to give an expectation of cost before they actually turn up or before they call us for us. The fixed price Model doesn't work because we focus in a lot on demographic staging. So who's the most likely buyer for this house and our because of where we are in Florida, we have Beach beachfront properties. And then we have very rural properties. And so you might have a $200,000 house that very rural that is 4,000 square feet. So you got to bring in a lot of furniture and then you might have a $600,000 beach house. That's 1,200 square feet and you don't have to bring them very much Furniture, but it has to be super quality, you know, so package pricing doesn't like we staged the entire house all of the rooms all of the interior square footage, so For us when we tried to calculate like well, if it's this price point that's this multiple and blow out the easiest and the end was the percent and there's some we win and there's some we lose but overall we make a good profit fair enough. I'm going to try and get through a couple questions reasonably quick look. So now I'm taking up some of your time probably the favorite probably the thing. That was my favorite comment that you mentioned in that recent video was How a lot of the stages in the market use what you call pretty talk and I think this is I've written this down because it was a direct quote that I really liked. You said. We don't make houses pretty we make them marketable pretty as a side effect of what we do. Can you talk to that a little bit? Oh, I love this is like my favorite Topic in the whole wide world. I absolutely get hostile sometimes listening to stagers talk about what they do from a design rated related platform. We need to use good Design principles with what we're doing, but ultimately this goes back to that demographic thing. We need to understand who is buying the product and then when we understand who is buying the product then we need to figure out how they're going to use that product. So this is and this is kind of the example that I give for people to really understand if you were if you decided to set up a store and you were going to sell school supplies, wouldn't it be important to know whether you Wanted to sell college school supplies or Elementary School supplies, right? Because if you just said, hey, I want to sell school supplies and you open up a school supply store that geared things towards elementary school kids and you opened up next to the college. You probably aren't going to sell very much, right? And yeah, absolutely and I guess, you know, I'm not a stage. I'm not a stylist or of any sort of design bones in my body. I'm the business. Operator I'm with my wife and she's the chief stylist in our team. And we've got a team of stylists. So from my point of view, I've said this before but when I look through Instagram and we kind of obviously we look at all of our competition and the other stages around Australia and yourself and others in around the world from my point of view as somebody who isn't a stylist. Everybody looks the same and that's not trying to be critical of anybody staging but I just don't understand the the the small details that make a difference. Since I'm not the person who is going to know that and I think I in some ways relate more to the buyer that maybe what the stylist does so you have to understand that somebody else looking at this from the outside who doesn't look at different homes every single day. They're not going to know the difference and a comment that you made which I agree with is if all we do is we look the same and we all say the same thing which is generally everybody says we sell for more and we sell faster if we're if that's what everybody is saying. It makes sense that somebody would go for a cheaper option. Absolutely. And so like we classify this that for for us the definition of staging is that staging creates a measurable marketable change and the perceived value of the property. Yes. I love that everything. We do focuses first on that. We do not make a single recommendation in the house unless we believe that recommendation will make a perceived value change in the house. It has to be measurable and has to be marketable or forget about it. I'll never forget I used to have in my business in Charleston. I had a stage where my team and he was a little bit of a diva and he'll be like I see this bookcase with all white accessories and I'm like, that's great David. Do we have all white accessories for you? And he's like no you need to buy me some and I'm like, okay. Well tell me is that a design decision or is it actually going to change the perceived value of the property to the buyer? And he would just kind of stare at me blankly and be like it's a design decision and I'm like great the news what we have right because we're not I mean we do want pretty pictures. We do want it to be favorable with MLS, but I can do that without all-white accessories, right? I can do that in other ways and I'm going to spend money on the property if somebody tells me they need a desk because there's this space here. That's an awkward space and really it's, you know, maybe even a hallway and It really could be an office, you know a nice little simple office then then and he we don't have the right shape or Dimension desk in stock. I'm going to go buy a new desk to fit in that space because I'm going to bring value to that property. I'm going to create an extra room or an extra usable marketable space for them. That's that's going to make a difference to the potential buyer. And so I will do that and we do that like Ana Landings and things like that giving the buyer. Ideas of how to use a space that otherwise otherwise might be empty useless space and when we can do that and we can pop open their eyes and say, ah now I see how I can live here. That's when they're going to emotionally connect with the property and that's when they're going to pay more money for it. It's not about making the house pretty it's not about knowing where the sofa goes, but it is about creating a lot of the visual perception of a lot of space. A lot of usable space in the way that they would live. I agree a hundred percent. I don't think I've got anything to add to that. You said it very well. Let's move on from that talk. And as I said before for those that would like to say I think it's about a 40-minute cannot that you gave so for those listening go and check it out but a couple of final questions, so if you could click your fingers going back to being the business owner, click your fingers and instantly change one thing about about your business. What would it be? Oh, wow. That's a tough one. I am going to say that. Maybe a current frustration. Yeah, I think that I wish that I would have hired another me sooner and what I mean by that is we've got a great team, but I'm we've just finished. We actually just had our big Mark our big meeting today finishing up the book traction and about sort of replanting the business for the new year and we're actually looking at potentially franchising in another year here in the states. And the one thing I think I really waited too long. Long on that we've just changed but like now I feel like I'm under such the gun for him to catch up is hiring an operations manager that I've been really good about delegating things that I'm not competent with if I'm if I like I don't like the money part of it. I mean, I like I like data I like numbers, but I'm just not good at the money part the schedule, you know paying the bills and all that all the time. So I need somebody else to do that because I get distracted by Other bigger projects and I hired a sales manager because I don't like networking and I hired other stagers and assistance because I couldn't do it all I knew that we needed to get more done. We hired our own in-house movers and so on and so forth, but the one position that I didn't that I didn't replace until just recently and I feel like we should have done it a year sooner is an operations manager and that's because for the last year plus I have spent. All my time working in the business and not on the business. And now that I have somebody taking that that responsibility I'm starting to see things are becoming more efficient in the business and I'm able to actually build out the future of the company. So I think that's maybe the one thing that I would snap my fingers and and go back a year and hire hire somebody to get that in place sooner. I like that answer. It's you know, it's a cliche but working on business. Not in the business. I think that's especially for the new businesses in this industry or any industry. But you know, it's it is a bit of a trap when you're the especially I mean what for us personally, you know what my wife being the chief stylist. She started the company from The Styling point of view and she's now building out her team but she still very involved in a lot of things and that's just that's what happens when you start a small business and you're the you're the person and I think for the you know for for my thought on that it doesn't have to be another another operations manager, but you know just on the if you're finding that things aren't getting done that you're spending too much time in the minutiae like it's time to look at what minutiae can I get rid of and it took a long time for me to realize the minutiae I needed to get rid of was actually operations that I didn't need to control all of that and I think part of that question is asking yourself. What am I like so what am I the best start and where do I add the most value and for a lot of people in this starting out in the early days? You're kind of wearing every hat you doing everything but there comes a point where you have to start saying some of these things could be done better by somebody else and I shouldn't be doing them anymore and not being afraid to hire somebody better than you. Yep. Absolutely. All right last couple of questions here. What would you say has been the most difficult thing you've had to deal with and that can be from a business point of view or personal point of view as the owner. What kind of comes to mind starting over when I sold my business in In Charleston and we moved to Jacksonville. I did not plan on starting over. I plan on getting out of the industry. And the truth is I love it. It's in my blood and we moved because my husband had a job that he couldn't say no to and I had been sick for a year on bed rest for over eight months. And so it made sense for us to move and I just didn't coming off of that. I didn't think that I would get back into it and feeling the Pains of knowing what a great company you can have but not knowing anyone and literally. Having anything not having a warehouse not having a move or not having an assistant not having a thing going from having it all to having none of it. That was very eye-opening. I think the great advantage that I had their though was I literally got to look at my business and say if I had it to do all over again, what would I change and then made those changes? You just a question that kind of came to mind. How do you think of yourself when somebody says what is your role or what are you doing? Do you think of yourself as a Stager or you an operator had it? How do you think about that? I'm an entrepreneur brilliant. I like it. No more needed. All right, let's just finish up with a couple of rapid-fire questions. And these are their rapid questions. The answers can be as long or as short as you like. So the first one how has a failure or and what seemed from the outside maybe to be a failure. How is that? Set you up for later success. That's a good question. Um, I think that I so so here's a funny funny little story and I'll try to keep it super short is when I worked for the real estate office and I was the office manager. We were getting ready to move into a brand-new beautiful shiny new construction giant building and I kind of went from being the manager who sat behind the reception desk answering the phones and greeting people to where I would have my own office with the glass door and my own team and staff and I literally four weeks sat and thought about was I willing to give up that status of you know, having that glass door with my name on it to quitting my job and going after something else even though I love my job, but I hated my boss and and I laugh at that now there was another moment where I was afraid to spend $50 a month when I was starting to make the commitment of a year contract for $50 a month for Constant Contact a newsletter service and that first year that newsletter service. We we could count $100,000 worth of Direct business that we got from that newsletter. I think things like that failures of worrying about what other people would think or you know was I willing to make kind of big It meant without any anything there to to fall onto and and I think in the end I did push myself into a very uncomfortable place and it was those that that really uncomfortable place that ends up having all value and all the reward. Okay, another one. What is one of the best or most worthwhile Investments that you've made and that can be in the form of time money energy anything that you like having somebody that I could rely on to unquestionably do the business for me. So if I and for me that started off being an assistant who now actually five years later runs manages five other. Stagers and five other assistance so she's got a team of 10. So she started off as my assistant and and really deciding that even though I didn't think I could afford it yet hiring somebody to start taking some of that load off my plate. Okay. I like it. That's very relevant to us right now. What advice do you wish you'd received when you start it out either in your first or second business. Get out of your own way. Okay, thank I mean and what I mean by that is I know that sounds cliche but we I am a control person. I'd like to control things. I am not a micromanager, but I do like to have control and sometimes the right answer is really just letting go and and seeing if you've done a good job and and see what happens with the aftermath and I'm going to relate that back to Gary Vee he says often. Is building out his giant marketing firm or agency and he says five people's 90% is better than your 100 and I think that's an important Point as you're growing. You have to let go a little bit. Absolutely. Okay, probably I'm going to say I was going to ask you a bad piece of advice for the industry, but I think we've kind of touched on that a little bit. So some of the ways I will skip that one. But so let's just finish up with this which is a bit of a simpler one. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? Of so, we want to know how we do you can be I love watching any show that has to do with psychology and so in sometimes in an odd way, so like I like drug rehab shows because I like to see the psychology of how they overcome their incidents. I like like Millionaire Matchmaker. I don't even know that still on TV and I like Sister Wives. So I love watching how people Think and respond to things. Okay. Well, that's all I had but I lied there's one more question and this is the simplest of a lot for those that aren't already following you or seen your stuff. What is the best way that they can have a look at what you've got going on as they put a lot of video content level lot of content including videos. So where's the best place that they can find you? So the best place to look is anywhere on social media for a trave home staging so YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn wherever if you just follow it if you look up Brave home staging. That's where we're going to be. We're pretty much everywhere. I actually just recently hired a digital marketing manager. So she's really pushing it out and we have it had a video videographer on staff. So I would like to ask you a question if that's okay. Yeah hit me so I would like to know what biggest challenge that you have in Australia as far as getting your message out like how is how but what are your big tackles? For your business and Australia, you know, I think if you if you'd asked the question, maybe a couple of years ago the answer for most people would be education and acceptance of home staging back then especially as I said before you're the last couple of years. It's definitely growing as an industry. It's more accepted in agency circles. So that probably would have been the answer. I don't know that that is still the answer anymore. I think in terms of us getting our message out there. Don't know if it's a difficulty as such but as an industry we tend to we struggle putting ourselves out there. I think I don't know if that's a easy answer but a lot of people speaking to you and what we're trying to do here at Foxy. We are trying to put out a lot of content. We have a marketing or media person in house, and he was one of our first six people because we very early on committed to wanting to put out a lot of content. And so I think we're trying to do it do it in a way that we Sells out there just educational content and behind the scenes and all sorts of stuff. But I think as an industry it seems to me that a lot of people are struggling with I guess convincing themselves that firstly that's worth it finding the the money or the cost all the time to do that and just kind of take a step back and you know, it's a judgment thing. I think to some degree people don't want to put themselves out there or have themselves on camera. So I think in terms of building a brand building a business reputation And getting known I think that's probably the thing that people are struggling with the most. Well, you know what, I love about your behind-the-scenes content if I may for a moment is that and we do a little bit of it here as well is when you show people like in the beginning its the value proposition is spending this money worth it and they think it's a large sum of money because to them it may be but really it's that they just see it as Furniture in a house. I think when you do the behind-the-scenes footage as you've been doing it really shows what Work goes into this that for us, we've got a curate all of that stuff that goes in the house, right? We've got to go shopping and get it all done. And even when it's in the warehouse It's then it's still picking it, you know doing the measurements picking it out for the specific cows that it's going into and and the thought processes behind it so that they're paying us for our skill set and our understanding of the market not just our ability to make a pretty house, you know, kind of took that battle through a conversation earlier. Earlier, right? And I think you're behind the scenes footage does a great job of portraying how much work and stress and frustration. Sometimes it really takes to get this job done and why you're worth every penny that you charge. Yeah. I think it's something you said before as well. We're not a Furniture hire company. I think that's a very important mindset to have and that that fits in directly with what you were just saying and and how we then portray that to people outside of our own business. That they think of it as just about the furniture and we really have to Showcase that it's not the furniture that makes the stage. It's the knowledge and the stagers head. Brilliant. All right, I think that's a brilliant place to to finish up Melissa. I very much appreciate you coming on. Hopefully those listening got a lot of out of it, I which I'm sure they will and will drop you a message if they have a look at your your stuff on social media as you mentioned and yeah, let's I'm looking forward to following A long as you say you've got a lot more growth coming controlled growth, and I'll be watching along and and I'm sure we'll talk again soon, and I'll be watching you on YouTube as well. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.
It’s been a little while since my last podcast, but I’m back and I’ve got a special episode for you today, particularly for those looking to build a significant home staging business, and I’m talking a million dollar revenue business. And I don’t think there are many of those in the Australian home staging industry, so if that’s your ambition, listen closely. And if it’s not, you’ll still get a lot out of this chat. It’s actually my first guest from outside Australia so the podcast is going international! It’s Melissa Marro from Rave Home Staging, based in Jacksonville, Florida. Melissa move to Jacksonville and started Rave Home Staging completely from scratch about six years ago. Some of the things we covered: - How Melissa thinks about marketing, and her focus on putting out educational content - How Melissa has changed her pricing structure (to something I’ve not seen in Australia) to ensure that the price is never an objection from a client again - Where other home stagers are going wrong by using what Melissa calls ‘pretty talk’ - The one thing she’d change in her business if she could. You can follow Melissa’s journey via:   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravehomestaging/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ravehomestaging/   Website: http://rave-reviews-home-staging.com/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClbDocMcCrwgUZfHGK8qtCg 