I recently finished reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, which is written for people still toiling away inside corporations but it offers some interesting insights that we can use as home stagers too.

He argues that every workplace has traditionally had “management” and “labor” but that now there is an important third group, which he calls “linchpins.” Regardless of whether they are low down or high up in the pecking order, these are the people who make things happen. They create order out of chaos, make connections and they lead others. In so doing, they become indispensable to their organizations because they are the essential elements that hold everything together.

I would argue that a great home stager is a linchpin.

Our home staging clients are facing one of the most stressful times in their lives, preparing and selling a home, and most of them look like a deer caught in the headlights when I first meet them for a home staging consultation! By the end of our time together, their shoulders aren’t pulled up to their ears, their faces are more relaxed and they know exactly what needs to happen to get their home ready to hit the real estate market. The home seller has regained their feeling of control, and that’s why the panic is gone.

We’re also a linchpin for the real estate community, though too many real estate agents don’t yet realize this because they’re caught in their own fear and panic about what’s happening in their local market. Instead of viewing the changing market as an opportunity to do things in a new way, the majority of real estate agents cling to their old business practices that no longer work, like dropping the price and ignoring what the house looks like! As frustrating as that can be to home stagers, we need to realize that the majority of the agents do very little actual business. We only need to concern ourselves with the top 20% of real estate agents who are selling 80% of the homes! By the way, many of my home staging clients haven’t yet picked a real estate agent, making us indispensable to them too as a source of well qualified leads!

Home stagers— what do you think, are you a linchpin? Do you create order out of chaos and make connections for your clients as well as your own home staging business? Please add your thoughts, we all learn from the discussions here.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the home staging courses to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. She offers a FREE Staging Consultation Checklist with Room-by-Room Planning Forms as part of course 3, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations.

With the New Year quickly approaching, you should be setting some new goals for your business. If you’re not currently using Twitter to grow your home staging business or if you have a feeling you’re not using it to its full potential, one of those goals should be to implement this social networking phenomenon into your daily marketing activities.

If you’re still not sure how Twitter could benefit your home staging business or if you’re too intimidated by the thought of new technology to even attempt setting up an account for yourself, you need the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter. Or perhaps you’re one of the many home stagers who are on Twitter already but don’t really understand how to use it to build a home staging business.

I wrote the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter to pass on what I’ve learned along the way to mastering Twitter myself, to help you harness the power of this fun social networking tool for your own business.

By the time you finish reading it, I know you’ll feel confident using it to drive visitors to your website and/or blog and to grow your staging business.

This easy-to-read, comprehensive resource for home stagers will teach you the 12 reasons why you need to be on Twitter and will also demonstrate in a sensible step-by-step fashion exactly how to set up your account. Detailed diagrams will help you along the way as you learn how to:

• Decipher Twitter technology and jargon
• Avoid the most common Twitter pitfalls
• Save time while getting better results
• Properly set up your Twitter profile
• Find and follow the right people on Twitter
• Attract the right kind of followers
• Create a strategy to use Twitter to grow your home staging business
• And much more!

Pre-order a copy of the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter and learn how to use Twitter correctly because if you’re on there saying or doing the wrong things, you’re wasting your time and you could be inadvertently ruining your reputation.

If you hurry and order your copy by tomorrow at the latest, you’ll get it for the special pre-launch price of 20% off. Go ahead and read through the Table of Contents and reserve your copy today. When the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter is released on Friday, you’ll get it by email right away.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Debra has been writing about marketing since the 1980s and has operated her own home staging business for 7 years. The Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter is her fourth home staging guide.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home stagers guide to twitter, home staging business, home staging course, staging diva, debra gould

Unless you’ve been completely cut off from the TV and radio, certainly by now you’ve heard of Twitter – “the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet,” according to TIME Magazine. This totally free social networking site definitely hit the mainstream in the second half of 2009, when a number of celebrities jumped on board. Prior to that it was already being used by millions of independent business owners, journalists and bloggers. Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Twitter’s popularity didn’t start with teenagers.

If you aren’t already using Twitter for your home staging business, it’s likely because of one of two reasons:

• you don’t see how it could benefit you as a home stager
• you’re too intimidated by the technology to sign up for an account

Having a Twitter account should be a requisite for operating a business today and if you don’t have one due to one of the reasons I just mentioned, you need to pre-order my newest book: Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter.

You’ll learn the 12 reasons why you should be using Twitter plus how to sign up and use it’s many features. Everything is explained in a step-by-step fashion. Illustrations guide you along the way as you learn how to use this free tool to find customers and help them find you.

The Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter will teach you how to build a following and strategic tips for how to use Twitter to grow your home staging business. Twitter can be an important marketing tool for you as an entrepreneur but it’s important to learn how to use it correctly so you get the results you want and you don’t waste time.

Be the first to get your copy of the new Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter, by pre-ordering it now at a special discounted price. To get the sale price you must order by December 10 and when the guide is released Friday December 11, you’ll receive it right away by email.

Check out the Table of Contents and reserve your copy now. Only a limited number of copies are available at the pre-release price.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Debra has been writing about marketing since the 1980s and has operated her own home staging business for 7 years. The Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter is her fourth home staging guide.

Technorati Tags: book for home stagers, home stagers, home stager marketing, twitter, twitter for home stagers, debra gould, staging diva, twitter guide, home staging twitter

I like to share books I’m reading in case you’ll find them helpful in your home staging business or your life. This one was a quick read, entertaining with a few insights scattered along the way. Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America’s Richest Neighborhoods by Ryan D’Agostino started with an amazing premise.

The writer actually knocked on 500 doors in about 24 of the most affluent zip codes in America to interview them about how they got to be so rich. Surprisingly, he found 50 people who let him in!

At one point he hypothesizes that one reason they agreed was that they figured “what the heck, who knows what it might lead to?” and that this attitude also helps explain why they are successful.

Learning more about those top zip codes/neighborhoods was interesting too. The author tells you the population, median income, net worth, disposable income and average home value in each of these top zip codes. Even though the statistics are from 2007, the figures are not as high in many cases as I would have expected!

Here are some of the most useful ideas (and my thoughts about them) from this book:

Being motivated by more than money is more lucrative in the long run

• Having given up a very successful marketing consulting business to reinvent myself, I totally agree with this idea. Money isn’t enough when you don’t feel like you’re living your life’s purpose. I created both my home staging business and my training company with an overall personal mission of “inspiring and empowering others to live their best life.” Any new business idea I have that doesn’t fit that mission is discarded. This keeps me focused and on-track. While making money is still important (I have to support my family), it’s not my sole motivation.

Complacency does not lead to success

• Success isn’t a static thing. You might be successful this month or year, but what about the next? Success is a journey, not a destination. Also what makes you feel successful and the environment you are successful in both change over time. So you need to constantly adapt and never be complacent or take your success for granted.

There are many kinds of risks, “the more you know about a business, the market, and yourself, the bigger the risks you’ll be able to take and the safer you’ll feel taking them.”

• What may seem like a reckless risk to outsiders may not be that at all to the person taking it. What really matters is whether you’re taking “smart risks”. It’s important to note that taking no action at all is still a risk.

“You have to be willing to break some glass once in awhile”

• Most people are complacent and plod through life doing what they’re told and following all the “rules”. Because that’s what MOST people do, there are great rewards for those who step outside that paradigm and stop worrying what other people think and do. Letting go of the fear of making mistakes is key and realizing that you learn from those too.

“Don’t plan a career, plan a life”

• I totally agree. As an entrepreneur the line between working and not working gets blurry because you don’t punch a clock and you’re in control of your time. Also when you love what you do, you don’t actually feel like you are working. If you plan your business around the lifestyle you are trying to create it will be much happier and fulfilling in the long run, giving you more time for different areas of your life.

Set a goal and keep it in mind whether you’re relaxing or working because “by viewing all things through the lens of your goal, everything and everyone you encounter becomes a potential contributor to the big idea”

• This is why some people appear luckier then others. Many opportunities and connections come our way the question is whether we notice and act on them.

These are some of the ideas I wanted to share from this book. Learn more about Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America’s Richest Neighborhoods.

Have you read this book or do these ideas help you in your business or your life? Please add your comments here.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program. An entrepreneur for 20 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.

Technorati Tags: home staging, Debra Gould, Staging Diva, entrepreneurs, Ryan D’Agostino, Rich Like Them

Your business was conceived the moment you had the big idea that would free you from the daily grind of working for someone else – becoming a home stager! You worked hard to bring your business into the world; drafting a plan, coming up with a name, finding a designer to create your logo, a developer to get your website online, all of that is like labor. That business is your baby.

You were there throughout its infancy – losing sleep, doing what you could to keep it growing, healthy and thriving. You put everything you had into it; you read everything you could get your hands on about growing your home staging business just like a new mother devours parenting magazines and how-to books.

When a business is new, it’s almost a novelty and it’s absolutely thrilling to watch something you created from nothing grow into something real. When you’re complimented on your brand you feel proud as a parent showing off baby pictures.

Then as your business moves from its infancy, all of a sudden the adrenaline has worn off a bit. You see how much work it is just to keep everything going. Of course you love your business, your baby, but the long nights are catching up to you, and you’ve been tending to it all by yourself; it’s taking all your energy. It’s at this stage that we are likely to lose our momentum when it comes to building our businesses.

If you’re coming out of the infancy stage of your home staging business as we slip into an economic recession, you might be tempted to give up, more so than if the economy were good. As a parent you can’t just decide you’re bored and discard the baby, moving on to something else! So as an entrepreneur, why would you just let your business fade away?

When you’re a parent and times are tough and challenging for you, you look for support from a spouse, another parent, or an online network made up of people in the same situation as you. You continue to nourish your child when money’s tight (like you must continue to invest in marketing your business) and you think about how rewarding the entire process will be in the end.

With the real estate market doing unpredictable things, some home stagers are feeling nervous about their businesses right now.

Home staging will continue to be a sought after service no matter what the real estate market is doing, but not all stagers are going to remain optimistic.

Staging Diva Graduates have the option of joining the Staging Diva Network, which is an exclusive online community for Staging Diva students. Belonging to a community of peers like this can keep you focused on your business and it can help you remain positive as you share in other members’ successes.

Staging Diva Graduates are also given the opportunity of joining the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers which is more economical than developing a standalone website if you’re watching your spending, and it’s a powerful marketing tool that sends potential home staging clients right to your door when they’re searching for you online.

No matter what, you owe it to yourself and your business to realize its true potential. If you give up the moment you start to lose momentum, or you fear the economy will force you out of business then you’ll never know what could have become of your enterprise, your dream, your baby.

Like parenting, being an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding things you’ll do in your life.

If you haven’t read The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (which should be required reading for entrepreneurs) you should pick up a copy as soon as you can.

Author, Michael Gerber spends a great deal of time forcing you to look at your business as if it were a child going through different developmental stages. He takes you through the reasons why most small businesses fail and how to prevent that outcome yourself.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Intrepid entrepreneur and home staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva, has been running her own business since 1989. She knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 1000 others to use their decorating talents and run their own home staging business in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, home stager, home staging, home staging business, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, Six Elements, entrepreneurship like parenting, house staging, interior design training, home staging training, emyth revisited, e-myth, Michael Gerber, home stager directory, staging diva network, directory of home stagers

I just finished reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. While I’ve been happy not to read economics books since finishing my MBA over 20 years ago, this is way different!

These authors are not your typical economists and what pulled me in was the provocative chapter title “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”

So how do they link the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents?

Both groups get their strength through the control and power of information. They argue that the “Ku Klux Klan was a group whose power— much like that of politicians or real estate agents or stockbrokers— was derived in large part from the fact that it hoarded information. Once that information falls into the right hands, much of the group’s advantage disappears.

I won’t go into the authors’ fascinating story of the rise and fall of the KKK here, because my interest as a home stager is in what they had to say about real estate agents. Their perspective goes a long way to explaining what I’ve always said in course 4 of the Staging Diva Training Program about why many real estate agents mistakenly believe they have a vested interest in NOT recommending a home stager to their clients.

The basic premise in Freakonomics is that economics is really the study of incentives— how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

In the past, real estate agents (armed with information the rest of us couldn’t access), could exert a tremendous influence by converting that information into fear, say the authors.

Because of their commission structure, agents only get paid if you sell your house and how much you sell for doesn’t influence their commission all that much. So, it was always in their interest to get a homeowner to take an offer, by building fear that another better one wouldn’t materialize.

And it was in the agent’s interest to get home buyers to make a quick buying decision, perhaps even offering more than they would have, for fear that they’d lose their “dream” home.

Only real estate agents had the information on what comparable homes sold for and how long it took. Not to mention, they had the power to create an entirely different story depending on what comparables they chose to share.

I saw this in action when I sold my Victoria home. One of the prospective listing agents kept insisting I’d be lucky to get $300,000 based on her analysis of similar homes. I actually sold in 3 days for over $30,000 more, using a different agent!

Clearly the power is shifting away from real estate agents and brokers, and back to homeowners because:

• MLS listings are now available to anyone with an Internet connection
• the profileration of sites and businesses catering to the FSBO (for sale by owner) crowd
• sites like HomeThinking and Zillow which actually rate and provide reviews of Realtor® performance

These trends and the power shift it creates bodes well for the future of home staging.

How else can you explain how I can find a home stager for a homeowner in Johannesburg, who contacted me from half way around the world because her expensive home had been sitting on the market for months with no offers.

Clearly, the only solution her own agent was prepared to offer was a price reduction. The homeowner took matters into her own hands and found me. Since I have a Johannesburg Staging Diva Graduate, I was able to put the two of them together.

Read more about Freakonomics

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program. With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

Read more about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training