SPEAKER_02 0:00

How often are you guys seeing a house that was maybe listed without staging, didn't move, and then they get you guys involved?

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Or an agent that I knew personally had worked at the same brokerage as them and where they called me and said, hey, we're doing a full rebranding. Like we went on a little high on pricing. Our initial contract is expiring. We're gonna leave it off the market. We're gonna hire you to come in and stage it. We're gonna do a little bit of a price drop. We're doing new photography. We're basically doing a whole new rebrand and it's gonna launch as a new listing. It went under contract within a week. And this was, you know, not a house that um would normally go that quickly, you know. I mean, it's a beautiful house. Yeah. But it just helped. It was vacant before. You know, they had some funky colors on the walls and, you know, people couldn't get past it when they went in and looked at it as a vacant house.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Welcome to the Studio 321 podcast, powered by Brightway, the Steve Trout agency. We're sitting down with real estate pros, insurance nerds, mortgage masterminds, and local legends who are making moves on the Space Coast. Hosted by the best insurance crew in the 321. At studio 321, it's all about community, real connections, and sharing a few laughs along the way. Drap in. Let's launch today's episode. My next guest knows something that most sellers don't figure out until it's too late: that the way a home looks on day one of a listing can mean the difference between top dollar and a price cut. Shannon Connell is the owner of the staging boutique right here on the Space Coast. She spent 13 years as a real estate agent and watched staging change the outcome of listings over and over again. So she went all in and built a business around it. She's a certified home stager, a Merritt Island native, a UCF alum, and she brings a level of real estate knowledge to the staging world that most stagers simply don't have. And she brought her husband Jerry along for the ride. Together they're serving sellers and agents all across Brevard, from Titusville down to Palm Bay, helping homes sell faster and for more money. Shannon and Jerry, welcome to the studio. Thanks, dude. What up?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

What's up, man?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

How are you guys doing? Great, good to be here. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Thanks for coming in. It means a lot. Um obviously, my my uh co-host here, Diana, is also part of your team.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

She is.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

First hire. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

She is great. Couldn't do it without her.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

Yeah, it's fun. I like it. Yes. I left him to come D.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Well, it's yeah, what was it like having your first hire where you just show up and you're like, wow, this girl can actually like design stuff and stage and oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

She's been a lifesaver. Before Diana, it was like just me out doing everything, and it was overwhelming. Yeah, but and Diana loves to come in and like decorate and do you know shelves. Anytime we did a stage that had shelves, we'd be like, Oh, I know it's weird.

SPEAKER_05 2:55

Like, we can do things like she likes beds. I hate beds. I'm like, I'll try to like put the comforter on and I'll be like, Shannon, you've got to come fix this.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

For for me, the thing I like most is when Diana's there, the job gets done much quicker. That's true. It's like she's probably the most disappointed.

SPEAKER_05 3:10

I remember one time Jerry walked in and he's like, You guys are done? I was like, Yes, we are.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Yeah, for sure. Once Diana started, when she started showing up to the stages, it was like the time it took us to do a stage was she's like so fast. Yeah, she's very goal-oriented, like, okay, what's next? I got this shelf done, you know, I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So she's she really that has always been like one of her superpowers, even at our house, where like she'll like just look at a room and go, This is what we need to do. You know, she has a vision for it.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

There's a lot of people that don't have that vision, and I think really that is a big aspect of staging and why it's so important. There's so many buyers that walk into a house and they just can't visualize it. I mean, I I can do the same thing. It's kind of you know, it I would say it's a superpower. I've always been able to walk into a house and just be able to visualize like, oh, here's the layout or here's a renovation that I know exactly what it's gonna look like, but most people cannot walk into a house and see that.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Yeah, it's it shows you the potential of what it could be, right? And like if you walk into a house that maybe they're still living in and it's cluttered and all kinds of things, it's almost like, man, that house looks small because there's so much clutter, right? And then you guys come in and clean it up, and it's like, oh wow, that looks different.

SPEAKER_05 4:26

Yes. There's even houses that we've stepped in and we're like, oh my gosh, we don't know if we could like fix this house. But at the end, we're like, wow, it really did change it. All right, we're gonna rewind a little bit and talk about how you got started in this. Okay. We jumped out the gate with me. Yeah, it's not about me, it's about you.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

So you spent 13 years as a real estate agent before launching the staging boutique. Kind of tell us about that journey and what really brought you to the point to do this.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Yeah, so um I've always loved real estate from the time that we bought our first house. So we bought our first house back in 2009 before we were even married. And I loved the whole process of it. So I after we bought our house, I went and got license in real estate and worked in real estate for a long time. And I never planned on getting out of real estate. Um, I never, when I started staging houses, I did not anticipate that it would blow up into like this full-time job where Jerry's on board with me and we have employees and all the things I kind of so it pretty much started though, because you started staging your own listings.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

I did, I did.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

So I had pretty high expectations and standards for my listings, and I I wanted something that um not only the design was to a certain standard, but I needed the scheduling and the reliability. And you know, there was just kind of a gap in the market there. So I said, I'm just gonna do it myself. Like I built it. And I think it just kind of grew organically from there with other agents kind of seeing what we were doing and what I was doing, and just like letting other agents know they're like, oh, who staged that house? I'm like, Oh, I did it, you know, who staged your listing? Oh, I did it, you know. And it just kind of grew organically from there. Um, I think when you are a listing agent, there's so much that goes into it. I mean, you guys know from the timelines with contracts and things like that with insurance aspects, there's it's no different in the very beginning of the process either. You know, as a listing agent, you have to go in and you're working with your sellers and you have to give your sellers timeline. So you have to be working with vendors that are on that same timeline. You can't have a vendor that's gonna give you a date and a time and then they don't show up. Yeah, you know, or they're making you push back photography or whatever. So I've always come into it with that aspect from the listing agent side or from the agent side of it, saying these are the standards and this is the process. And it's a timeline. It's a timeline.

SPEAKER_05 6:55

Like, and if you don't show up, then their timelines are set back.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Our foundation of this business is kind of building a process that agents can rely on. They know I text them before we get there and say, Hey, I'm gonna be there around 10 o'clock. We should be done by one. Schedule your photography for the next day, there's later that day.

SPEAKER_05 7:14

There's some people that were leaving and the photographers coming in.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Yeah, exactly. So it's super important. I mean, it's just kind of a foundation that we've built it on. Jerry's come in and really perfected that process. Um, he comes in with the background of you know operations and things like that and building processes and procedures, and it's really so that's an interesting story that people might not know.

SPEAKER_05 7:33

You were a nine to five corporate job for how many years?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

I was for 15 years.

SPEAKER_05 7:38

And you stepped away, and now you're working for the staging boutique full-time.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

I did, I stepped away from it. Um, you know, I saw what Shannon was building. It was I didn't understand it at first. You know, I understood the real estate part, you know, we talked a lot about that. Um, but what I think I was able to do is take my experience in corporate America and working on private jets with high wealth individuals where I worked, and taking, you know, not just the processes, but the customer experience overall and applying that to you know our little small business and trying to make it scalable, you know.

SPEAKER_05 8:15

So one of the muscles and the organization and the yeah, I can't say I can't carry it. He moves the furniture in and out, but he's also done great things with doing inventory and making sure explain the whole system you kind of created. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

So, what prompted that was obviously my experience, but it was really going into a job, and the whole job was in Shannon's head. That's true. So I couldn't do anything until she told me what she was thinking.

SPEAKER_05 8:44

What she needed, what she wanted. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

So we have to get everything loaded up and ready for a job, and it was always on the fly, and it was very inefficient. And I said, I we need to have more efficiency, much like we talked about you coming in and making decisions on what we need to do. Um, so that was where we built an app. Uh, I had a lot of inventory management experience in my previous career, and applying that into what we did allowed us to build an app. Um, it was tough getting all of our inventory eventually migrated into the app because most of our inventory was out in stages.

SPEAKER_05 9:16

So it was probably slowly as the inventory came in, you were able to stop the system.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Right. Six to eight months, really, to get everything in there. Everything new, obviously, we could add, but we had, you know, we built the system even just for adding things to the system. Right. Um, and we were able to get everything in there, and now the whole design for a stage is built ahead of time. I know everything that needs to go in there.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

And virtually, they like right, you pick and drag.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

I've never gotten gone in the system, but yeah, we pick and drag, you know, what's going to go in, or if we're gonna go destage a house, you know, we're gonna take pieces from that house and pieces from our in our inventory in the warehouse, and we're gonna build out the entire design, um, even down to how we load the truck. Yeah. So when we load the the truck a certain way, um, it's so that when things come out, they come out in the order they need to. So that, you know, if Dinah's there helping or Danielle's there helping on the stage, you know, they can start getting things placed into their spots or the rugs need to come out first, not last. You know, so there's different things like that that we've we've optimized to where sometimes behind the scenes getting everything loaded up is is can be a little bit chaotic at times. But when we show up to a stage, I feel like we've gotten that. I wouldn't say perfected, you're never perfect, but we've improved efficiency to where if everything's loaded right, it only takes a couple hours to knock out the job.

SPEAKER_06 10:34

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

I would say from outside looking in, for me, like I've just been really impressed. I mean, you guys got a lot of inventory moving around constantly. So much.

SPEAKER_05 10:43

They're always loving furniture. You should see that front porch. It's just piles of it.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

I know, and then I'll see your posts where like your entire you can't even see your house. It's just boxes of furniture that you have to put together. We do I mean, it's incredible yesterday. No, but I mean it's incredible. Like, I was thinking about logistically that the other day, like, man, that's gotta be a lot going on. I mean, because how many houses do you guys have outstage at any one time? Do you know?

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Uh depends. Right now we have four 42 houses outstage.

SPEAKER_05 11:11

And that's crazy because I when I first started working with you guys a year ago, you guys were like super proud. There, I think you had 20. Yeah. And you were overwhelmed, you know. But they have, you know, when they destage a house, a lot of that inventory goes right back in and then they put it back into another. Yeah, it's like a yeah, it's pretty well oiled. Yeah. Jerry came in, worked out the kinks, and yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

And that's just on the logistics side. The other side that I've been heavily involved with is the finance side. So, you know, we're trying to grow this responsibly. You know, obviously, this is supporting our family. So we need we can't just go and buy an abundance of inventory. One, logistically, we don't have the room for it all, but two, we need to do it in a in a smart way. So, you know, tracking our our capex expenses between the inventory, the trucks, the buildings, um, but also our operating expenses, you know, and tracking that closely. I try to discuss it with Shannon often. She sort of just says, I trust you, but it's an important piece to it to make sure that right.

SPEAKER_05 12:09

You want to make sure you're still having a profit at the end of the day and you're not paying for the bigger. Yeah, you ain't doing it.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

You're doing this to make money. I mean, at the end of the day. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

And and that's where the inventory is an asset to the business, and and it's an important piece to it, but we can't buy too much, but we need to make sure we have enough, not just for the next stage, but to make sure every stage, like you go, you went back and said, you know, you had a particular way you wanted everything to look.

SPEAKER_05 12:34

So being low on inventory and not having everything that meets your requirements is a must.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Yeah, I mean, we've been super blessed to be able to grow the business in a way where we actually own all of our inventory. Um, I have people ask me quite often, like, how what how do you acquire your inventory? How do you do all of this? Like some people rent furniture and that, but we own all of our furniture outright. It's it's it's definitely a process. Um, you know, it's gosh, there's so much that goes into it. I get so many people all the time that are like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. You just get to design houses all day, but they don't the the ugly too. Yeah, in reality, like the designing or the decorating a house is probably what like 15% of really what you do. There's they don't see the hours and hours of not only procurement, but I mean, literally all day yesterday on a Sunday, we were putting furniture together, we were getting rid of boxes, we were organizing the warehouse. Like there's so much that goes into it.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

You're meeting the realtor at the house to see if this is even gonna be a match and going to calls and seeing it.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

There's just so much that goes into it. I don't know. It's I mean, it's a super cool business. Um I definitely never thought that I would be wearing it.

SPEAKER_05 13:53

They see the fixed up, staged fully, you know. Every once in a while I'll post stuff like behind the scenes when you don't see. Like me and Danielle trying to get the floor outlet up. Or Jerry loves our woman measurement moving pictures. That's his fave. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:11

Oh yeah. Yes, but he's in your hands.

SPEAKER_05 14:14

I'm like doing arm lengths, fingers, and I'm like, it's like my fingertips to my elbow, fingers up, and he's like, oh geez.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, the back of the frame is this wide, so they're like, okay, so it's like oh that would be like we're doing a fingertip.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

I'm like, okay, it's to my knuckle, and then I'm putting it here. Okay, the angle of the nail. Hey, it looks good.

SPEAKER_05 14:36

Well, it's weird because when I first came in, I was like, I'm not hanging anything, Shannon. And then I saw how Shannon did it, and I was like, okay, that's pretty much how I hang stuff too. So now I'm like hanging everything. Jerry calls it our shotgun.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

He's like, you have your shotgun and your shotgun shells, your hammer and your nails. I get in there with a level and a measuring tape, and they're like, get out of here.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

It takes too long. We're all about efficiency here. Yeah, supermarket sweep. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

I I I hung something in our bathroom. She she wanted me to hang a mirror in the bathroom the other day, and it's like this heavy mirror, and it's and of course it's the one that has like literally just the hole over this on the left side and the hole on the right side. So you got to get it just right for it to hang right. And I'm sitting there, I'm doing my measurements and all this stuff. Dude, somewhere along the line, I royally screwed up because I put these big mollies in it to hold it because it's pretty heavy. And I went to hang it up and it's hitting the sink, and I'm like, how did I like and I I I did like the second measurement off the wrong part or something. Uh it was ridiculous, dude. But she's like screaming at me in the background. I'm like, it'll be fine, it'll cover up.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

We'll say hanging pictures is probably one of the worst parts.

SPEAKER_05 15:44

Like, oh, it's time to hang pictures. Yeah. And it's the last you're like ready to be done, and then you have to hang picture. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah, I do hate hanging pictures. She's she'll ask me to hang a picture, and it'll take me like a month to get to that property.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

You don't really use the hooks either. Like literally take the paper, we literally take the paper backing and hang it off like the frame from the picture. Yeah. We do the easy route for hanging pictures any anytime we need to stand up there forever.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

So, how how scary was it for you guys? Because as a business owner ourselves, we're like, you know, when how scary was it to like for Jerry to step away and to go all in on this and go, we're really doing this, right? Like that had to be a pretty, I'm sure you didn't come to that conclusion overnight, but like, what was the moment where you were like, we're gonna do this?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

For me, I was it had a lot to do with our family. You know, obviously we needed the business to work and we had a model that made sense, but the amount of time I wasn't home, um, and seeing the opportunities that I had to be more involved with coaching, more involved with my kids, just taking them to and from school was something I couldn't do. And and having that opportunity was motivation enough to know that if I can do more of that, that we'll figure out a way to make this work. To be honest with you, and that was a huge motivator to make the business successful, was just being there to be a better dad. Sometimes money is not always like you were traveling a lot, you were out of town a lot, right? Yeah, right. And for me, that that's really what it came down to. The longer I worked where I did, um, you know, that corporate lifestyle was starting to wear on me.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

And I feel like I was coming home a lot with you know, some extra baggage that I didn't want. And, you know, granted, there's plenty of stress here, but we own all of it, we control um, you know, the outcomes in a lot of ways. And I feel like owning that is a better, more healthy stress than some of the stress that I was dealing with. You know, but just the simple task of taking the kids to school and dropping them off, like I do not take that for granted. And even though she might be able to take them or I can take them, I'll go a lot of times too, just because I couldn't do it for most of my kids' lives up to this point. Yeah, that's awesome. And I I really enjoy that. Yeah, that's really good stuff. But back to your question, um you know, that's where I started kind of running the books for the business a little bit, and I started seeing about how much the inventory procurement costs were, um, what our average revenue per stage was, and then just using that data to determine what the potential growth was. One of the challenging things, you know, and in preparing for this podcast was trying to look at some of the market statistics. And unlike looking at closings and number of houses on the market, we can't see how many houses are staged, you know, overall, holistically. So, you know, a loose goal we have is we want to have market share in Brevard County for staging jobs, but there's no way to know exactly how much you guys are having. It's not an MLS checkbox that you can use for statistical purposes. So, but we could look at what we had, we could look at the top you know 100 agents and see who's working with us, who's partnered with us on that list. And you can roughly kind of gauge how how much our growth is in in the local bravard market, and I could see with Shannon's network she's built over 15 years, that it was going in the right direction. And I could see based on inventory procurement what that cost was for the revenue it was bringing in, what that growth could look like if we continued on the path we were on. And and to me it made sense.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

And looking at that that top hundred is where you want to be. I mean, we look at that for the agency as well. I mean, those are most of the realtors that are doing most of the business.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Yeah, and we partner with a lot of those agents. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

No, I love that, man, because you know there's probably a lot of people that are gonna listen to this and like they have a dream or they have a goal that they want to do, and there's their jobs holding them back, or something financially is holding them back. So it's cool to hear a story where it was like you were able to look at the data and really dial it in and figure out and go, we're gonna freaking do this. Yeah, that's awesome, dude. That's freaking awesome.

SPEAKER_05 20:04

You like things, you know. Yeah, I don't know if Shannon's any happier, but I'm assuming you guys actually do really well together because people would ask me, and I was like, I'm not really with him when we worked together. We weren't really side by side at all, like you guys are.

SPEAKER_06 20:22

Right.

SPEAKER_05 20:22

So I can't compare even us working together. Like I was out around the county marketing the agency. So you guys are moving dressers together, like you're like in each other's face.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

That's a big test.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Yeah, it is. I have a lot of people moving furniture together.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

It is a big test. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

That's why I go to the gym a lot. No, it's uh I I'd say there was a bit of um I wouldn't say like a learning curve, but we just kind of had to figure out the balance of like a work-life balance. You know, I was used to being the one that went to get the kids, and I went to all the school activities, and like I was the one that was there. And then when Jerry came home from the corporate job and started working within the home, like just the happiness within the kids, and like it was it was so cool to see, but there definitely was a work-life balance that we had to figure out. Like, he would want it like numbers. Like, I really don't want to hear about it.

SPEAKER_05 21:18

See, that's the hardest thing we had too. Like, we went out on date nights and we would talk about the agency and what's happening. Now that I'm not here, that's not on my forefront anymore.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Now I get to like only really bring up stuff if I really need her advice or help. Yeah, you know what I mean? Where before it was like consumed our lives, right? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

There was a time that I would say it definitely consumed the conversations, and that was definitely during the growth period. You know, when he first came on, where it was like, we have to make this work. Like there's no plan B. At the time I was still selling some real estate too. Um, so I did have that type of income coming in, but that wasn't a priority at that point. I knew that if we wanted this business to grow like that. Had to go by the wayside, and we needed a dive 100% into the staging side of it. So it did consume a lot of conversations for a long time, but with the growth that we've had and where how we've built the process and the procedure.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yeah, so how much I mean, what did the business look like before Jerry came on and what does it look like now?

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Oh man. Before Jerry came on, like you said, it was all in my head. Like it was really I oh gosh. It was it was a dream that you didn't have on paper.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

It was a vision. Yeah. The vision was in her head. You know, we were she was pulling things off, but it was it was hard. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_05 22:36

I mean, before even I came, you it said that you would be at a house almost all day long staging yourself, right? Oh my gosh. Yeah, my mom helped me.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Okay. Oh my poor mom. Bless her.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

But yeah, the the whole the whole thing was in her head, you know, as far as whose houses are staged, when are the renewals up, um, how much was your revenue per stage? How much was the procurement of all this inventory? The answer was typically, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, or I'll get it to you later. But it was hard to have a predictable outcome when all of that was in her head. Yeah, she was doing a good job, the business was growing, there was more interest in what she was doing. But you were stressed, but there was no way to know is this working, is this not working? And and that's really where I was like, okay, we gotta organize all of this and figure out are is this even actually making income or is it costing us money? Because I it it was hard to know.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Um, you know, and there are some months where, you know, that's right. Try to keep the capex expenses separate from the the opex expenses, because we do have months where, you know, we may be in the red when you add in the capex expenses, but that inventory will turn over and over and over again to where it eventually becomes profitable.

SPEAKER_05 23:54

And it all kind of evens out. There's some weeks that you have none, and there's some weeks that you're booked all week. Yeah, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Right. So as long as our OpEx expenses don't get out of hand, then the business model continues to work as long as the business we continue to get new.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

And it's got to be a huge for relief for you, Shannon, not carrying all that in your head constantly. Like now it's on paper, now it's in a system, now it's like you're not having to connect the dots constantly.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

I think a lot of it came from when I started staging, I didn't anticipate that it was going to become what it is. So it just kind of grew and grew as more people asked me to stage for them. So it never, I never had the processes and procedures that be like, okay, you know, I've got three houses where the furniture and it just built and built and built. And then it finally reached a point where there was a transition within the company Jerry was working with, and you know, he had the opportunity to come work with me, and it was like, we can make this work. And um, you know, so it it it was nice to have him come on because he was able to lay all of that out for me and be like, and this is like doing it.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

As you slowly keep continuing to grow, there is gonna be a time where both of you can step back and you're not fully in it. I mean, it's hard. We'll even say, like, you're never gonna, nobody's ever gonna run your business like you do or care about it as much as you do. But you'll find the right people that want to give that to you.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

Yeah, in terms of growth, since Jerry's come on, um, we've hired you to come on on the part-time basis, coming in and helping us do the designs and the stages themselves. But we've also hired another full-time stager. Um, Danielle, I know we've mentioned her a few times on here, but um, she's kind of taken over the design part of it. She comes from a staging background in Texas. She worked with one of the uh top five staging companies in all of the United States. So she's a really strong um stager. She kind of knows all of that. So that was a big win being able to bring on another stager to help.

SPEAKER_05 25:54

And you got somebody that was more committed than hey, I'll do it a couple days a week.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Yeah, but it's great to have both of you guys on board because not only are you guys a fabulous um additions to our team and your own. It's nice too.

SPEAKER_05 26:08

Like she'll even look at me and she's like, So what do you think? And I'm like, I don't even have the experience that you do, but I'm glad you're asking me.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Well, I mean, for me, it definitely took off a lot of the stress of you know the design, making sure there's so much that goes into it. You have to think about your inventory. Let's say I've got four stages this week, or if not more, I have to really plan out what I'm going to put in each stage.

SPEAKER_05 26:32

And make sure you have everything that's absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

And before I had any help with staging, it was like, okay, do I have enough bar stools for this one? Do I have all of the things that I need? That was in my head. Then I'm waking up at five in the morning to pack all my bins and my artwork, and then I'm going to pack up the truck with Jerry. And we do have movers, by the way. We just don't use them all the time. Um, and you know, it's just there's so many different aspects of it. So hiring Danielle and Diana to come in and take over a portion of that has really been.

SPEAKER_05 27:03

She showed up what last week and she's like, You guys are already done.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Yeah. So it's allowed me to kind of go out and do that. That's how it should be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

I mean, that's the goal.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

Yeah, it's allowed me to go out and do more marketing.

SPEAKER_05 27:15

For someone who has never hired a stager, walk us through working with the staging boutique, what it actually looks like from that first call to a fully staged and ready for the market.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

We're either getting calls from homeowners or we're getting calls from agents. Um, it's really going to be the same process no matter what. Um, I kind of ask, like, do you have pictures of the house? Do you know which rooms you want staged? Um, from there, sometimes we'll have to come out and actually walk the property. Um, most of the times I can provide a quote based on pictures or which rooms we want staged. I'll provide the quote. I provide our timeline. Typically, I'd say I like to get a week's notice of you know, here we'd like it staged next Tuesday or whatnot. A lot of times I can try and squeeze it in and we have the bandwidth now with more stagers that we can kind of do more than one stage in a day if we really need to. Um from there, uh we'll show I'll give you a timeline. Usually we like to show up by 10 o'clock. Um, most of the time, depending on the size of the house, we're done by one. Um and then you've got a contract, we do like 60-day contracts, and you know, you got you've got the furniture for 60 days and and then they can extend it if they want to. Hopefully they don't need to, and then it's the cost is per room, correct? Yeah, so I charge um per room. We have base pricing, you know, but it's most of the time I don't charge based on square footage, I charge by room.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

So how often are you guys seeing a house that was maybe listed without staging, didn't move, and then they get you guys involved? How does that look? Do you got any cool stories there?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

She does, and those are some of the probably the most satisfying situations for us is when they call us with that scenario. We come in and and do what we do, and then see the house go under contract within a week. It's a pretty satisfying feeling knowing that you know that part of the strategy helped things forward.

SPEAKER_06 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

Um, the first one I did was for an agent that I knew personally. I had worked at the same brokerage as him. Um, not the first stage, but the first one where they called me and said, Hey, we're doing a full rebranding. Like we went on a little high on pricing, our initial contract is expiring, we're gonna leave it off the market, we're gonna hire you to come in and stage it. It needs staging. We're gonna do a little bit of a price drop, we're doing new photography, we're basically doing a whole new rebrand and it's gonna launch as a new listing. It went under contract within a week. And this was, you know, not not a house that um would normally go that quickly, you know. It was it was a more of a priority.

SPEAKER_05 29:54

I think it was in your neighborhood you grew up. Is it the one behind Target? That neighborhood?

SPEAKER_03 29:58

No, no, no, different. It was in South Merit Island. Oh, okay. I mean, it's a beautiful house. Yeah, but it just helped. It was vacant before, you know, they had some funky colors on the walls, and you know, people couldn't get past it when they went in and looked at it as a vacant house.

SPEAKER_05 30:12

Um there are so many people that cannot visualize. Like you said before, you can walk into a house and see it, and I can too. I did that with our house we live in now. But just to be able to see where you can put stuff, like how to lay stuff out. People don't know.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

I remember when we bought we bought our house in Suwannee, the person we had bought it from, you know, they were there 10, 15 years or whatever, and they just had acquired a bunch of stuff. And, you know, and I remember Diana coming in like the first week. We bought it fully furnished. Yeah, we bought it fully furnished, and uh, I remember Diana coming in the first weekend, clearing out the clutter, getting, you know, everything, and we threw up, you know, probably half the stuff out just because there was just too much stuff in the house. And I remember the owners coming back, because they're friends of ours coming back a couple weeks later, and they were like, Diana, you freaking killed it. This place looks incredible. It never looked this way.

SPEAKER_05 31:06

Imagine putting it like where you put that.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

I we we get a lot of those comments too, you know, from the from the clients, from the sellers more than the agents. And they're just this I don't even know if I want to sell my house now. It looks beautiful. It never I never imagined it looking like this. Yeah, I and that's nice when they allow us to come in, or I say us, but you guys do the design because you make beds sometimes.

SPEAKER_05 31:32

You do a really good job, Derry. You're like me though, she has to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Yeah, I I don't try to do that part. I stay in my pay grade. Just picking things up and putting them out. But uh it it it is neat to see how happy and and satisfied they are when they come in and decorate the houses the way that they do it.

SPEAKER_05 31:55

They all say I've lived here forever and I didn't realize I could change that and put that there. Just because once you're in it, it's just habit and it's there, you know, like there's no change.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Well, there's a big difference too between like designing a house functionally for you to live in and designing a house with a buyer in mind. There's a huge difference there. Um, so we kind of always have that in mind of uh for me coming from the agent side of it, I always come in and think like, where's the photographer going to take the picture? Like that's gonna dictate where we're hanging this artwork or how we're situating this room because we want it to we want it to present we're we're staging for the buyers, we're not staging for the sellers. Yeah, you know, we're staging is a tool in a toolkit that agents use to market their listings. So as a stager, I have to come in and think of it that way as well. I'm not coming in and thinking of like functionality of like, oh, this is how you would live in this house. I know that the way that we set up the furniture is not always the way that someone's gonna come in and set it up to live in this house. Um, so you know, as a stager, it's just not all about beautiful design. You have to think of the goal to sell the home.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, exactly. She tried to teach me this. So when I left the corporate job and was full-time fullbore, here we go. Um, before you had joined us, you know, it was just her and I, and Shannon showed me with the decor, like, don't put the green piece here because there's this tree here, and it will clash and the photography.

SPEAKER_05 33:27

And I'm like, what did I do? Yeah. I was like, I can train you to stage.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

I can move the couches and the tables and the chairs. Yeah, you just tell me where to put them. Really quickly, we learned that he's like, when the when the decor pieces come out, I just sort of blend into the background and there you go. Like, hey, are you guys done yet?

SPEAKER_03 33:47

He's managing the inventory at that point.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

I am and if the if the sellers are there, it's not ideal. Um, but I usually try to sit there and talk with them and just get to know them. Usually there's pretty interesting stories, and it also keeps them out of their hair. So shaking hands and kissing babies becomes my rule after all the heavy.

SPEAKER_05 34:05

We ended up knowing one of the guys that we came into his house, remember? They were talking about hunting or oh yeah, that was an occupied stage.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

That was.

unknown 34:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:13

Yeah.

unknown 34:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

So obviously it's a lot easier to do one that's vacant. Is it are the challenging ones the ones where people are still living there? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:21

Just because they're so attached to their stuff. And a lot of them don't like change, you know. So like to move their stuff around, some people are like, well, the analogy.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Especially if they stay there. I don't know if this is uh user-friendly for your podcast, but the occupied stage is trying to make chicken soup out of chicken shit. You know, and it's tough. Not always, but a lot of times that's that's the tough thing is how do we use all of the stuff that's here and and market it the right way? And it's it's pretty tough.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

It's it's hard because a lot of times when we're getting hired to come in to do an occupied stage, it's because the stage doesn't present well, it doesn't show well. Right. People are coming in and they don't see division. So um it's it's hard to come in and try and make a cohesive look with furniture that doesn't match our furniture.

SPEAKER_06 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Um so that it's very challenging. A lot of times the occupied stages take us longer than the vacant stages um because we're working with other people's stuff and it and we have to be the bad guys coming in there and be like, no, I don't know. You're gonna have to take that out. Yeah, I don't think that's right.

SPEAKER_05 35:31

You know, a lot of it's like, you know, an older client that have, you know, the Victorian, big heavy wood furniture. Um, and you know, the older you get, the more particular you get your ways. Yeah. So I like them though. Yeah. That's Shannon always calls me. She's like, Can you come?

SPEAKER_03 35:51

Like, we gotta occupy such. Oh, they are very beneficial. It can definitely make a difference.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

You know, so I would I would think in this market too, like you guys couldn't be like this is the best, I feel like, market type for your business. Houses are still selling, but they're not selling fast. Like you have to put your best foot forward to sell the house. There's a lot of competition out there. Um and it I feel like it is the perfect market for you guys right now. So if you could just like bottle this up and keep it like this forever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

The 2021 market wouldn't have been.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

No, because you MLS was selling it on its own, right? And so you really didn't have to have the staging aspect because the houses were moving so fast.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Yeah. You don't have to do anything.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Yeah. And they're moving fast enough where your inventory is not being held up for 90 days, right? Or plus. And so in a really slow market, it it costs you. It'll get it'll cost you. Yeah. Would you guys have to charge more in a slower market? Or how you know what I mean? Have you ever thought about like that? If the market does slow to a point where it's taking six months to sell a house, I'll make it up.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

But no, no, the the models built to account for that. Yeah. Whether whether it's the the market dynamics or it's the specific house that's staged, the way that our contracts are built, um, it accounts for a house that sits on the market longer because we do have a contract date and we do have a renewal rate. And the renewals are basically built for inventory procurement. Yeah. So it's it's obviously it's another revenue stream, but it's really to account for the additional inventory we need because the model is built on these the inventory moving within the contract time frame. And if it doesn't, then the renewal rate allows us to procure more inventory to account for the inventory that's staying on the market. So whether it stays out for six months or a year, those renewals will kind of help offset that for us.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah. Financially.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

But yeah, I was thinking about that before the podcast, and I was just in my head, I'm going, man, this has got to be the perfect market for a stager. Because you're like right in that sweet spot at the timeline on the market. And like you can't just list your house anymore.

SPEAKER_06 38:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Right. And I I you know that I think an example is say you have the exact same house that one is say one's in Marit Island and one's in Rockledge, but it's the exact same house, same built or built it, you know, in the 90s, let's say. It's the exact same house, all the details are the same, and one is staged and one is properly marketed and gets the right exposure. And the other one has, say, poor photography, no staging, and not the same level of marketing. I mean, it's pretty obvious which one is going to get more views, get more foot traffic, and eventually get a bigger offer or an offer more quickly. Um, you know, and I think that's where the value comes in with some of the top agents that, you know, do take those additional steps and have that as part of their strategy and getting a house sold. You know, and and there's a couple things that we you know like to mention. One is, you know, staging your house is is cheaper than your first price reduction.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Yeah, good mob.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

But it's also typically cheaper than your first month of holding costs, too. So, you know, the typical house that we're staging when it's priced right is under contract, well, under 30 days.

SPEAKER_06 39:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

And you know, you think about just your holding costs, which I think is different for investors versus someone who's lived in the same house. If you've lived in the same house, you're used to your mortgage coming out, you're used to your, you know, the rest of your holding costs, you know, electric, water, whatever it may be. Obviously, I'm thinking of a vacant stage, so they're probably not living there. Um, but that one month of holding costs is typically more expensive than the cost to get your house staged. Now, if you have two months of holding costs and you do a price reduction, and then you decide maybe we should invest a little bit more into getting our house staged. Well, that's already lost.

SPEAKER_06 39:52

You're coming out with double whammy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

What it would have cost to stage it from the get-go. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of the value comes in. If we can do it reliably, we can do it consistently, try to pride ourselves on the communications, just the overall customer experience, whether it's with the agent or the seller. Um, you know, and I and any sellers who call us, they're we're a referral from an agent. So our you know, really our customers are the agents. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and just making sure we have a consistent and a reliable experience with them is you know, where that value comes in. That's truly, I think, our differential.

SPEAKER_05 40:29

What would you say to a realtor that wants to do virtual staging over a physical, a physical stage?

SPEAKER_03 40:36

So we were talking about it this morning, actually. Um, you know, a lot of people will do virtual staging. And I I don't fault agents for doing virtual staging. Sometimes your commission is just not there. And it and it is cheaper to do some virtual staging, but you're getting people in the door based on everyone's out there shopping on Zillow or realtor.com or whatever, and and your presentation of your photos and all of that stuff is is key to getting people in the door. Well, they have an expectation when they see that house is virtually staged or or staged. They a lot of times they might not even know if it's virtually staged. Well, then they go see the house and it doesn't look like the same house. Like what the scale is off. I'm never gonna be able to fit two couches in here or whatnot. You want a consistent look all the way around. So when people are seeing this house online, they see this beautiful stage. You want them to go in and see the beautiful house. Like we want them to walk in the door and be wow.

SPEAKER_05 41:31

Your customer is getting the look from the time they take the pictures to the time they walk in, it's all consistent. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

I mean, and sometimes I'll even recommend. Okay, so we have a lot of um sellers or not, yeah, sellers, owners that will call us and they request, like, I want my whole house staged. And it's expensive, number one, if you're gonna stage your whole house, we're start charging by the room, right? But it's not necessary. I say you get your biggest bang for your buck staging all your main living areas, so your living, dining, family room, whatever, and then your primary bedroom. Also, kitchens and baths are are important as well. Um, but now I don't remember where I was going with that.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

So yeah, but you yeah, because the key features of the house is what you're trying to show. Like you said, the main living area and stuff like that. You don't necessarily need to do every bedroom if it's a four-bedroom house. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

She's not trying to upsell. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that a real estate agent almost never reaches out and says, I want this whole house staged. I want the living room and the dining room staged. You know, we'll go in there and be like, this is, you know, if there is, I wouldn't call it an upsell, but I think we could do something to and there are certain scenarios that if there's a room that we think needs to be added, then we'll absolutely give them that option.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Yeah, there might be a room like right off the main living that you're like, oh yeah, that probably would be needed.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

And all of that staged right there. Like you're not gonna want to leave one room in that whole flow empty.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Absolutely. Sometimes we'll stage like guest rooms that are super small or someone, it's gonna be a challenge or someone.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Just to show, like, hey, this is what you could do with it.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

But I'll never I'm not big on upselling, I'm always about like this, we want your property to show you.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

So you're trying to help the seller maximize their their profit.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

So sometimes I will recommend virtual staging. Like, hey, if you want your whole house to show flawlessly on the MLS, like let us come in and stage the important ones so that when they walk in that door, they're getting that wow factor. But save yourself a few bucks by if you want your guest rooms to be staged in your photo, save yourself a few bucks and you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

But one one I was just thinking of that that we did, I don't even know if you were there for most of it, was the pink house a few months ago.

SPEAKER_06 43:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Oh if that house was virtually staged, you know, it might have had some people interested in it.

SPEAKER_05 43:53

Yeah, it was definitely like a 1980s, still had pink walls, pink carpets. You know, the sun has shine shine. Shined through the window and faded the carpet. But it was one of those ones that I'm like, I don't know if this is gonna help. But then you walk out and you're like, Yeah, holy crap, it did help.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

But their marketing strategy for that, that house sold quick.

SPEAKER_05 44:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

And that was uh Oh, it did?

SPEAKER_05 44:14

I didn't realize that sold quick.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

That sold super quick. There was a good strategy behind it.

SPEAKER_05 44:19

I mean, when you have a house with good bones, like you can do, you know, stuff to make it look fairly. I mean, even when we bought our house, like I knew it was a good house. Like, was it something I wanted to move into right away? It was moving ready. So we lived like that. We've slowly like gone room by room pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

But I remember you and I moving things in there, and we're like, what are we doing with this one? And when we left, I was like, Yes, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_05 44:44

It reminded me of my childhood bedroom. But put yourself in a in a it really did. My mom like had a girl, and I I had two brothers. It was a tomboy, pink walls, pink carpet, flower. Like she had an interior decorator come in and do our whole house. And oh, it was awful.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Yeah. Well, put yourself in a in the buyer's shoes walking into a house like that. Had there not been furniture there, look at all the things that they would have picked out. Obviously, you're still gonna see the paint market, but it's not the first thing that you see when you walk into a house. Like if you're walking into a vacant house, the first thing you're seeing are all the things that are like putting makeup on a pig. That's right, that's right. Like you pick out all the flaws, like yeah, paint that needs to be touched up, flooring, all of those things. If you walk into a house that is staged, you're not able to pick it apart that way. You're you're there's some distractions, yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Yeah, so what is life for Jerry and Shannon outside of the staging boutique?

SPEAKER_00 45:41

At the moment, it is fairly chaotic as well. But I but I think going back, it it's nice having control of our schedule. Yeah, and we quickly switch gears from parking the box truck, putting the furniture away, throwing on the coaching hat, the mom and dad hat, and we're very active with our kids.

SPEAKER_05 46:01

You coach volleyball, right? I do, yeah. Yeah, basketball.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Yeah, she's volleyball and basketball. I'm coaching football. Um, our kids are very active in sports, so we're also I'm very active outdoors, hunting, fishing, golfing, anything I can do outdoors. So as soon as the box truck gets put away, we're usually switching gears to right now, something with our kids. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's almost every single day, you know, between whatever their schedule is after school and then trying to. Which is awesome.

SPEAKER_05 46:32

They say you have to get 17 summers with your kids. And when you think about that, that's Camden's gonna be 16 next month.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 46:40

Because everybody's like their senior year, they don't want to do something with you in the summer. Because I've always heard 18, but I was like, I'll cut one more. I got one more summer with my kid. He's probably gonna be like a basement kid, and all of that's not good.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Yeah, I don't know if we're getting rid of that, but yeah, and then um another big thing, you know, and I know it's been something you guys have been doing too, is is is just kind of trying to live as healthy as we can across the board, whether it's exercise, eating healthy. So I always thought I knew how to eat healthy until the last couple years. I realized I didn't know anything about it. Yeah. Um trying to get the kids on board has been a challenge, as I'm sure you guys can relate to as well.

SPEAKER_05 47:20

Our kids really haven't been bad. Like they I don't know. I I feel like they know now. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, they're kids. I let them have kids stuff every once in a while. I couldn't, yeah. I mean, they're they still get lunch meat. They're dead, yeah. I know it's horrible, but it's like the organic, you know. I try my best. Yeah, I feel like that's all you can do. That's right.

SPEAKER_06 47:41

Right.

SPEAKER_05 47:41

And you're doing better than most. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

You know, the majority of their diet is pretty good, but you know, we still let them get ice cream. Our kids are like sugar fiends. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

I ran into Jerry at the uh new ice cream place in here. That's right. Yeah, the grand opening.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Yeah, that was like a reunion in there. It was. That was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

Yeah, it was cool.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

Yeah, so yeah, just a lot of uh kids' activities.

SPEAKER_05 48:02

And you're into fitness as well and doing yoga and I think that's my way of staying sane.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

Working with my husband all day, every day. It's like my escape of going to Pilates in the morning or whether it's CrossFit. I just started doing CrossFit. One of my best friends just moved back from Tennessee and she coaches CrossFit. So I go to her class at like 5 30 in the morning on two days a week. That's commitment. Yeah. Well, I enjoy it. Like I like waking up early. I like getting my day started that way. If I don't do it first thing in the morning, I'm I'm not doing it. I'm not coming home from staging all day and lifting heavy stuff to go upstairs and lift more heavy stuff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it's it's nice, you know. Jerry's home, he can take the kids to school now, so I can go to like 5 30 classes or 7 o'clock classes or whatnot before we get started.

SPEAKER_05 48:52

Um I've already packed three lunches and taken all the kids to school, and he's still in bed.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Sometimes I just want to our kids have, I don't know what's gotten into them, but like they set their alarms for 6 a.m. Nice. I it's crazy. They wake up early on the weekend too. Kind of. Oh, Reese's been like sleeping out to her best friend's house, like the last three Saturdays. So God only knows what time they're.

SPEAKER_05 49:22

We don't get that. Our kids only our house is the house that everybody comes to. Our house used to be like a sleepover just once.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

Reese's friend moved to Vieira, so now they think that like there's a Publix next door, so they get to walk to Publix, and it's like who knew Publix around okay, yeah. Who knew?

SPEAKER_06 49:38

Club hub. Right?

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Apparently, this Publix has like a second level where you can go upstairs and eat, and they go up there and they think they're like the coolest thing. 12 years old, you know. So no, it's fun, it's fun. Um just being a parent is it's wild. It's wild, it's busy, it's a busy life.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

I've been doing uh the triathlons for the last couple years. That's been pretty exciting. It was uh it kind of started with just getting ready for elk hunting. So obviously our group of friends, they're big into elk hunting. I went a few years ago, I struggled. I did the Peloton like 12 times for like 20 or 30 minutes. I was like, all right, I'm ready to go elk hunting. I was not ready to go elk. So the next year I started training in February.

SPEAKER_05 50:25

Who would have thought that elk hunting would get him in shape?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Yeah, it really was though, and it it's such an important part of success, is being able to get around the mountains. And so I started cycling a lot, I started swimming a lot, and then one of the guys I worked with, he's like, Why don't you start doing travelings? You're doing two-thirds of it. So I started running too, and I've actually really enjoyed it to where I have a stretch goal. I don't know if my body will allow it, but I really want to try to do a half iron man by the end of the year. Oh well. So I don't know if I'll get there. She thinks of it.

SPEAKER_05 50:57

You kind of got him into that too, though, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 51:00

Uh, he got me into that. Right. So the first one we did, he was signed up for it, and he's like, uh, can we do a relay? Because he has a bum knee, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:09

He's like each part that the other kids do.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

So he's like, Can you run it for me? I can do a 5k, sure. No problem. You know, I had been running and stuff at the time. And then I got we got into it, and it was like, I saw like 70-year-olds out there, and I'm like, I've I can do this. Like, I felt like a wuss. Like, I'm only out here doing this 5k portion. All these people have done the swim and the bike and all that. So anyway, it kind of motivated me to start doing them with them. So yeah, and it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

The kids have been there and they kind of see us doing it.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

Yeah, they see, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

You know, when they want to play the video games or whatever, it's a little easier to you know, not just do as I say, not as I do, but do as I say and as I do.

SPEAKER_03 51:53

Yeah, it's tough getting older.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

Yeah, we just built a gym. Our third we turned our third car into a gym.

SPEAKER_03 51:57

So jealousy.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

We're jealous of your gym.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

And uh my boys are out there literally every day.

SPEAKER_05 52:03

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

And you can see a difference in them. Really? Like they're already putting on muscle.

SPEAKER_05 52:08

You can't see it in us. Yeah, no. You guys look great.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

I need to get out there more. I I've only been getting out there like a couple nights a week, and it's just not enough. I need to be out there like four or five nights.

SPEAKER_05 52:18

But but he again is the person that does it at the end of the day. Like he, you know, he needs to wake up while I'm taking the kids to school.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah. It's hard to do that. I think part of that though is for me, especially prior to this, was my mental state and dealing with the stress of the day, or just being more patient with the kids at the end of the day after a stressful day. If I if I exercised in the morning, all of that was better throughout the day. And it and it was it made such a huge difference in just my overall mental composition.

SPEAKER_05 52:50

Your view on the Peloton's not horrible either.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

No, it's not. Unfortunately, our Peloton, for those that don't know, is dead center all of our decor and art. Nice. And then there's my sweaty Peloton station.

SPEAKER_05 53:08

Yeah, so they have this nice second floor that could be like an awesome like ensuite. Yeah, and you walk at one time. You walk up and it's like a hobby lobby. It's like it's very impressive, though. You like walk, you got books, frames, pictures, pillows, the back wall, or that the pillows are bathroom, and then the front wall is like all plants and decor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

So my Peloton, right in the middle, looking out at the water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

People that don't know what Yeah. Don't worry, your decor is safe away from his sweater.

SPEAKER_05 53:43

I know the first time I came in, she's like, it smells up here. Jerry rides the Peloton. I was like, I don't, I have three boys, I don't smell it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

But we are envious of your gym. Yeah. Well, come on over, check it out. I know.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

I'll put it to work. So our ultimate goal, it's so right now we run our business out of the house. So we are lucky that we have a detached garage on our property that was not built for staging. We built it prior to starting. Who knew? We forecast her. Um, so we've got this big that's like four-bay garage out there, and that's where we keep all of our staging inventory um except for our art and decor, obviously. That took over the second floor of our house. Um I guess a nice view. That's where all our guests would stay. But we are actively looking for a commercial space. We're trying to get it off of our property. So if there's any agents out there listening, then you have a commercial space, hit me up because we are we are looking.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

Um that'd be cool to like get your home life back.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

It would be great. And then we're gonna turn our garage into our ambitions are to be to be like the trouts and put a gym in our house.

SPEAKER_05 54:50

Uh it really was the boys. Like they, you know.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

They were really pushing for it.

SPEAKER_05 54:55

It's that Oxford generation that doesn't want to go out and speak to people. So we'll just build it at home so you can be even more of a hermit. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

And I wanted to build it at home because I I won't like if I have to go to the gym and do all that, like that's gonna keep me from doing it. Yeah, I won't cover you that. Like I've started to like work out and do all that stuff because I can just walk right out into my garage and do it. You know what I mean? Like it's super easy for me. Yeah, that's not true. And so I wanted it to make selfishly, I wanted it to do it for me too. Of like, I need something just super easy.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Yeah, when people ask me about my workouts, I was like, I I do I call it the junkyard dog workout. I I don't really have much of a plan. I kind of have a goal, yeah, I have an outcome I want to achieve, but how I get there is kind of the junkyard dog approach at the house.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Yeah, yeah. Just grabbing whatever you can.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yeah. It seems to be working okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Yeah, no, you're doing great, man. You look incredible, dude.

SPEAKER_05 55:45

So um I know he always talks every day when I'm going to work. He's like, Jerry looks so good.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

I uh I ran into you, yeah. I ran into you a few weeks ago, I feel like, at the ice cream shop or whatever. And I was like, I left, I called Diana, I'm like, what the hell is Jerry doing?

SPEAKER_05 55:59

I'm like, he's moving peanuts, carrying couches.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Carrying couches.

SPEAKER_05 56:03

Carrying couches and eating peanuts. That's oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

It's always an interesting statistic, whether it's you know, family or friends when they're asking us about the staging, I'm like, yeah, we're the now the proud owners. So I looked, 72 couches. So we own 72 couches now. Oh wow. I always think that's kind of a cool stat. That is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 56:23

Yeah, the logistics of the furniture is all the good things you get excited about when you get older. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Diana was telling me a story. Don't do you have like something that you keep in your back pocket when you're staging with them or whatever, and it looks like a dip? And Jerry's always.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

No, it was my supplements that I was like, dang, you can start doing Copenhagen.

SPEAKER_05 56:51

That's funny. Yeah, it wasn't. I was like, yeah, Jerry, I take supplements and I'm dipping now.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

It looked like it.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

Yeah, Diana and I always have our little supplements in our pocket. Like, oh, I forgot to take my B vitamins.

SPEAKER_04 57:09

Really, really bad lately. Uh yeah. After this surgery, I just can't bounce back. No.

SPEAKER_02 57:15

All right. Well, let's wrap it up, folks. So, how how can people find you guys? What's the best way if they want to connect?

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Uh, so we have Instagram and Facebook. It's at the staging boutique. We also have stagingboutique.com. Um, yeah, reach out to us there. We try and post all of our listings, or not listings, all of our stages on Instagram and Facebook and stuff. So um, it's also on our portfolio on our website. Awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Well, you guys are incredible. Super proud of you. Thank you. It's really all been awesome to watch how fast your business has grown. So thank you guys for everything.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate you having a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 57:48

Thanks for hiring me. Thanks for putting those bread crumbs out.

SPEAKER_05 57:51

Diana was like, My husband wasn't happy about it, but I am.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Well, we'll talk about that. So I I you know I worked really hard to get us to a point where she didn't really have to do anything. You know what I mean? And so it was like, and then she comes home one day and she's like, Oh, by the way, I took a job with Jerry and Shannon, you know. And meanwhile, I'm thinking in the back of my head, well, shit, I could use the help if you really want to work. You know? Um but it really did make her happy and uh she really loves working with you guys, and so thank you for that. And um it's been good for us too. It's kind of got her away from dealing with what I deal with all day and yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Make things a little healthier. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 58:28

That's good. Um But no, I I'm I mean I wasn't a fan at first, to be completely honest, just because I was like, in my head, I'm going like, why does she want to work? Like, you know what I mean? Like we worked so hard to get her to this point. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it's been great. And it's uh and you guys have been awesome, like working, you know, around our busy schedules and lives and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 58:49

So I love it when Diana's like, I can I can work this week. Yes. Diana Things are getting done. I mean, my part-time title is very part-time. Yeah, I think Danielle loves it too. She's like, Is Diana coming back?

SPEAKER_00 59:04

Like the whole team's just happier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:07

It's it's great having that extra help, you know. And I think it's good for you too. Like I get to go out.

SPEAKER_05 59:13

Yeah, I get to go out. Like I told Shannon, I was like, I'm not giving up pickleball. Like my house would have to be on fire.

unknown 59:19

She's like working a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 59:21

I can't work on Wednesdays I have pickleball. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 59:24

I got it. What boss would ever approve that?

SPEAKER_03 59:26

Yeah. You show up whenever you want.

SPEAKER_05 59:28

We had a we had a really I had to lay the foundation for my part-time, part-time job. It's perfect.

SPEAKER_03 59:34

It's perfect. But it's good for me too, because it's hard as a business owner to be able to reliably give hours, especially in this business. I mean, you know how the real estate business is. It's like it can be a roller coaster. I mean, we're fortunate where we've gotten pretty consistent, you know, as a grown up. But you don't have anything that you can give to people. Yeah, it's been it's been a while since we've got to. When I say yes, I show up. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So it's important. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:03

It's important.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:04

Well, thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Let's get out of here. Thank you, guys. Thank you. That's a wrap for this episode of the Studio 321 Podcast, powered by Rightway, the Steve Trout Agency. We can't thank you enough for being part of our journey. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a friend. Until next time, 321, we're out.