When Bill Cliton saw Monica Lewinsky, he thought “hmm, I can cross that line, because I am the President!” Obviously, an impeachment trial later and many months of public humiliation, he finally admitted: “Yes, I did have sexual relationship with Monica.”

Well, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Through my life, I have learned that I can’t be all things to all people. If I can be all those things to all people, I will be a very unhappy and tired person. It’s difficult to please everyone! If I followed my parents’ wishes, I would become a doctor and a lawyer and a financial banker, married to some guy, have 2 kids, 1 dog and live at their house. Scary thought, isn’t it??

Similarly, as professionals, we can’t be all things to our clients. As much as I would love to make more money, I can’t paint my clients’ walls, landscape their yards, or power-clean their houses, etc. Why? Sure I can, I can hire couple guys to do it. BUT, are the end results are going to be as good as the jobs done by professionals? By doing everything for clients to “save” them money, is this the best for MY client? No, I think not. My clients hire me to stage their houses well so the listings will sell, not to do all these other things. Ultimately it will be much cheaper and cost effective to have the job done well by professionals who are pros in their fields. That’s why I leave the painting to the painters. They know how to deal with different textures of the wall, and how different types of paint affect the overall effects. Well, I don’t. I just know what color looks good. Application of the color is a total different story. Similarly with landscaping or cleaning, I will never landscape or clean as well as professionals who do this EVERYDAY. I have a black thumb, I have even killed cactus.

As a professional, I intend on doing what’s best for my clients, not what I can do “okay” for my clients. That’s why I am skeptical when I see ads of cleaning companies or furniture companies start offering staging as part of their services.
I also hear this a lot from sellers & agents “I can totally stage the house myself, I watch HGTV.” I also get a lot of calls from agents: “Um, my clients staged their house and it looks terrible. What can you do?” Just because I watch food channel, it doesn’t mean I can do whip out a 8-course meal like Bobby Flay. The professionals who work on these TV shows have a lot of trainings and professional experiences, and that’s why they are good at what they do. True, staging is not rocket science, but there are still some finesse to it.

A fellow real estate blogger and a realtor Jessica Wynn Horton shared similar sentiments on her post at Bloodhound: (Read more …)

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• How to Earn an Extra Income by Becoming a Home Stager (Cindy's Guest Blog @ FreeMoneyFinance)
• Make the Blink Count
• Dear Cindy: Can I Stage My Own Home?

(this is a slightly "vintage" post, but I totally forgot I wrote it!)

I’m wondering what your day is like?
My day to day is very different. It’s like snowflakes, no 2 days are alike. On days when I am doing installations, my call time starts at 7am to pull inventory, or the night before to pack everything up. With bigger jobs I tend to rent a box truck, which means it’s extra hours to pick up and return vehicle. Typically I spend 5-8 hours on job site with 1-2 assistants. That does NOT include prep time and clean up time after we return to warehouse.

On days when I don’t have installations, I have things range from appointments to visit home owners for consultations, meeting with potential vendors, meeting realtors, networking events, to admin work like invoicing, billing, writing, researching, working on expanding my business, marketing, continue education, cleaning inventory, cataloging inventory, moving furniture, shopping for new inventory, working on current trends, reading, LOTS of things to do.

I typically work 6-7 days a week, ranging from 6-12 hours per day.

And how you feel the market is doing?
Market is market, there will be hot times and cold times, busy times and slow times. It’s cyclical, just like any business. Like ice cream truck does better in summer than winter, or coats are more popular in winter. We have ups and downs as well in real estate. The market timing depends on where you are in the country. In San Francisco bay area, the market (Read more …)

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