If you are a part of the home staging community, it’s my guess you know who Todd McAllister is…. he is the guy with the big grin on his face in the photo above, in case you don’t know. For someone who is as busy as he is running a very successful staging business, he is still so involved with giving back to the staging community.
As the Chief Buzz Creator at RESA my job is to be in the know of all things home staging and design! I am apart of more staging facebook groups then I care to admit, and one of the common threads throughout all of the groups that I am apart of is home stagers (at all levels in their business) are looking for guidance and inspiration.
Todd is the guy in the group(s) that is always offering great staging hacks, tips on how to organize your warehouse so its more efficient, how to deal with difficult situations in business, inspiration from his teams latest stage and then some, which is why it was no surprise that he was voted RESA Home Stager Of The Year.
I wanted to get to know a little more about Todd beyond what his bio shared. Luckily for me, he was willing to spend some of his valuable time answering a few questions!
What made you get into the home staging industry?
Honestly, I got started in home staging by accident, and the accident has turned out pretty good for all involved. Now 17 years later, we have an AMAZING staff, multiple locations and I am very proud to say that we offer our employees health and retirement benefits. I believe much of our success is not giving up in the beginning, empowering your team to make decisions, taking risks and continuing to change and evolve in how you run the business and how you do things. This has been a learning journey, and the learning continues every day.
Did you have core training, and if so where from?
When the business first started, I really had no idea on how to run a business including all aspects of the business. I am the poster child for all things NOT TO DO. I had no contract, had no idea how much people would pay for staging, or, if this was even going to be a viable business. I just knew in my gut that I had found “my happy place”. I was doing everything from looking at every house, buying all of the inventory, loading my truck and staging…. and the dreaded billing. I would literally shop some days from morning till night, then stage a house. After about 6 months a great friend Allan joined me. He brought business experience where I only really had design experience. It was a short time after, I found Christine Rae and CSP. They were having a class in Portland, Oregon, so I signed up. This class gave me the basics I was missing in running a staging business.
What did you do before home staging?
Before home staging, I had an interesting work background. I first worked for a comic book publisher where I would actually color each page using custom software and a color chart telling me what percentage of color and fading to use. I then transitioned over to starting the production coordinator position, where my job grew into managing the production of over 300 books and the components of each book. After about 9 years, I then transitioned into visual merchandising for Nordstrom. My job consisted of floor changes, where we would clear off an entire department and reset every fixture, re-arrange the merchandise, dressing mannequins, re-working the merchandise and holiday sets, where we would install Christmas the night before Thanksgiving. I was also on the team that would travel around to store openings and help set up the entire store before the grand opening. It was grueling work, but we had so much fun. I feel as though this job is what really got me thinking on how important visual presentation is, which later translated into home staging.
Can you tell me about your favorite staging jobs and send photos?
Like many other stagers, I have literally staged thousands of properties. Many times, the furniture was nicer than the house it was going into, but it was my job to make the home look it’s very best. I have met many interesting people over the years and seen a lot of crazy things, but I think it’s been the crazy that has kept me going. For myself, the most rewarding jobs are the modest homes of first time sellers. They are very self conscious about their home and that it is not the biggest or most beautiful. When they see the end product, they are the most appreciative and never realized that their home could look this nice. And to get the call that it went over asking is just icing on the cake.
Felicia has a background in production design and studied at Academy Of Art University where she had a focus in Motion Pictures And Television. In her free time you can find her reading about the latest marketing trends or hanging out with her husband in Disneyland.
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