Hello, I am Joanna, the Marketing Assistant for the Real Estate Staging Association, the industry’s only nonprofit trade association. Because RESA® is a nonprofit, we are set up to leverage your membership dollars to advance professionalism in the industry. Once a month we host member-exclusive RESA Professional Development Webinars addressing different aspects of your home staging business to help achieve this mission.

I am lucky enough to attend each of our RESA Professional Development Webinars and have learned so much this year from industry leaders across North America.

In 2022, we covered topics from making your website do the work for you (Hosted by Audra Slinkey), consulting on color choices (Hosted by Debbie Boggs) to mastering your marketing strategies (Hosted by Sue Styles). These webinars are recorded live and made available for members to watch on-demand in our Professional Development Webinar library all year long.

Here are some highlights from our 2022 RESA Professional Development Webinar lineup:

1. Growth is Good – Use it to Your Advantage

For many people, it can be overwhelming and easy to get discouraged by what some call “over-saturation”. Especially when you are in the early stages of starting your business. Industry growth doesn’t have to be scary, no matter where you are in your home staging business.

In February, Shauna Lynn Simon who is the Founder of RESA® Approved Continued Education Provider, SLS Academy hosted a RESA Professional Development Webinar, How to Stop Competing on Price.

Shauna Lynn Simon provided home stagers with a different perspective to consider when looking at the rapid growth we have seen in the home staging industry over the past few years:

Industry acceptance has increased significantly! When I started my business 14 years ago, I had to explain to people what the heck home staging was! Now, home staging has become a standard in so many markets. There are tons of agents that won’t even list a house without staging it first. There are markets where 90% of the listings you see on the MLS, are staged properties.

Growth leads to new technology and/or techniques to help you be more efficient. This is a great time to take a look at your value and use the new ways to fine-tune or add to your service offerings.

“In any industry, the bigger an industry gets, the more diverse it becomes. This is going to mean there are different players that have different business strategies, with varying levels of competence. So why should you lower your quality standards to align with someone else’s business model? And why should you lower your price to align with someone else’s business model?”

Industry growth also opens the door to new clientele. Instead of focusing on homeowners and real estate agents as your clients, now you can add investors to your marketing and networking practices as well. This is especially beneficial with the explosion of the short-term rental market.

I see this growth not only beneficial to the staging industry financially, but personally. As a creative person myself, I enjoy having different ways to express creativity and have yet to meet a creative type who only enjoys one specific creative activity.

2. Social Media: Followers Don’t Always Mean Clients

Do you want to be an influencer? Or grow your business? Despite the fact that incorporating social media into business is common practice (and even necessary) these days, the number of followers doesn’t always equal paying clients.

In March, we had Andress Eichstadt, Creative Director for RESA® Accredited Education Provider, Staging Studio host a webinar for members of RESA on the Blueprint to Gaining Clients, Not Just Followers on Social Media.

“If you are here to learn how to be an Instagram influencer, this is probably not the webinar for you. This webinar is specifically for home stagers to use Instagram and other social media platforms as another marketing tool in your business. Our goal is not fame, our goal is more staging clients!”

Not only does Andress use her social media expertise to grow business, she teaches Staging Studio students how to get the most of social media when running their own home staging business. From creating your profile to what you post and what hashtags to use, she covers it all in this webinar.

“If I use #beautifulhome #stagingsells or #realestate, the likelihood that someone in my market, here in San Antonio, would see that and then know that we were a San Antonio home staging company and call us, is so remote. So think about the hashtags that you are using. Hyper local hashtags are the way to go!”

While social media is ever changing and can sometimes feel like a full time job on its own, there is no doubt that it is here to stay and has changed the way we get ourselves out there in front of our ideal clientele.

You don’t have to master the all mighty algorithm on day one, but the tips and information Andress shares in this webinar, are a great starting point to see what works for you and your business goals.

3. “No” is Not a Bad Word

“I started to realize that I can say no. I created boundaries for myself, for my business; for what I was willing to do and not do. When I stuck to them, I got paid what I was asking without anybody questioning my pricing. I got better quality clients, people who actually appreciated what it was that I was doing, what I brought to the table. People who said ‘thank you’. People who would hand out my business card to other people who needed staging services. I made space for better opportunities down the line.”

While we do want to go above and beyond for our clients, at the end of the day, we are only human with physical, mental, and emotional boundaries. There is a beautiful “in-between” where setting our limits and sticking to them leads us to success.

In this webinar, we specifically addressed home staging business but, I feel this is something a lot of us can apply in other areas of our lives going into 2023!

Have you ever thought about stats to keep yourself motivated and decide “what’s next” for your home staging business?

“It’s nice to look back and say we’re doing the right things, the decisions that we’ve made, the communication and people that we met through going to conventions, and a variety of other areas in our community, are really starting to make a difference.”

Statistics aren’t just for veteran stagers with hundreds of houses under their belts, in fact, if you are just getting started it is the best time to start keeping track of your business. Even though this webinar contains a large amount of information, it can help you decide what your goals are and what statistics can help you get there. Luckily, as a RESA® member, you get unlimited access to watch this webinar as many times as you want to!