Terrylynn's Blog

Active Rain has brought us together as a real estate/staging community. We are all looking for camaraderie, people who know our business and share our concerns and challenges, a place to bounce arounds ideas with people we can relate to and who relate to us.  Along with that we hope to gain recognition by the public and our peers and increase our business or market share.  It IS about relationships and cross country networking made easier. Here at AR you will be challenged if you are out of line, nudged  a bit if needed, and supported when we agree.  But you know pretty quickly whether we like an idea, as we will give an opinion and tell you. THIS is the perfect sounding board for your new ideas, products and business models.  You come here and get support, encouragement and I think genuine, honest  support and good wishes that you do well; Peers who want you to make money doing your work, whatever that is.

We are all SELLING SOMETHING.   As Realtors, we are selling our services to homeowners and we sell their homes.  BUT we have to sell ourselves first or we don't get the opportunity to sell the home, right?  As stagers we sell ourselves to Realtors and to homeowner or we don't get the staging work, right?   We sell ourselves whether we sell a home, staging, a book, seminar, class, prop, couch, book, blinds, drapes, whatever it may be.  WE ARE SELLING A OUR TALENT AND OUR SERVICE or we don't really have a business, do we?  We ARE in the business to make money, right?  Otherwise what ARE we we doing?  Is this a hobby, a charity? or a business?  Maybe there are some that can afford to do this work for free because they love it so much, but for the Realtor, the cost of a listing, marketing it, etc; or as a stager the inventory, storage, trucks, gas, and other things are daunting, it's an expensive hobby if that's the case, whether real estate or staging.  There are hobbyists in both professions actually and they sometimes kid themselves that they are running a business. They don't keep track of the cost of doing business and sell themselves and the client short as they generally can't afford to take classes, own the tools,  or do the things that make the difference for the client's bottom line.  (That could be the computer, website, truck or education they need to specialize and keep up with the current trends and demographics.  THESE are the marketing tools that aid the client behind the scenes, and so many more.) 

I am selling homes -

Connie Tebyani is selling gorgeous bedding http://activerain.com/blogsview/894229/This-Home-Stager-is-Now-Your-Independent-Distributor-of-Eastern-Accents-Bedding

Joanne O'Donnell is selling Dewey Color Classes  Click here

SO when you give genuine support do you mean it?  Do you want your peers to be successful as long as they aren't more successful than you are?  Do you want them to grow their business in ways that support the industry but think they should not make any money doing it?  Do you think that the efforts you put out on your business should not be rewarded?  Of coure not!  So why then should others efforts and industry contributions not be rewarded?  The truth is if the service is not needed, it will not be rewarded as we have a free society and we have the right to partake and purchase or not...it's a self governing system.

WE are all selling something and truthfully the person I would rather buy from or take a class from IS someone in the industry who has paid their dues and comes from a place of KNOWING my business and sharing their expertise.  There is a comfort in knowing they have a history that we share, a knowledge base that I can relate to and something to share.  But that's me.

2009 Staging Innovator of the YEAR - StagersLIST.com (Kym Hough and Terrylynn Fisher)