SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2018
“I reached that objective and met the client’s expectations. How do I know that? I received a lovely message that said, “Cathryn I, and my sellers are so pleased with this outcome! It’s exactly what I had in
When Cathryn Tracy stages or redesigns a home her goal is always the same: “I’m there to create magic so that homebuyers will fall in love and homeowners will fall in love again.” Cathryn, or ‘Cat’ as she prefers, is the founder of and resident “Staging Diva” at Setting the Stage, a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia-headquartered home staging and interior decorating service. She describes herself as a “self-taught expert” first and a graduate of Debra Gould’s world renowned “The Staging Diva” Home Staging Business Training Program second. “I’d been doing interior decorating and staging for a number of years, but never as a job,” Cat explained when she spoke with Spotlight on Business in late September. “In 2016, I found myself suddenly unemployed because of a ‘restructuring effort’ so off I went job hunting. While I was researching and doing my due diligence about a sales manager position at a popular Downtown Halifax hotel, I was approached by a friend who was selling her house. She knew about my interior decorating talents as I had helped her redesign her existing home when she and her family moved in a few years earlier. Also knowing that I’m passionate about staging and decorating homes, she wanted me to help her sell her home – and I accepted! Her house officially hit the market in June of that year and it was officially sold in less than 60 days. During that project, another home owner and friend, approached me who was re-decorating her home and asked for my help as she was stuck. As these and other projects progressed I was asked the same question over and over again: ‘Cat, why are you still job searching? Think about it’. “With those encouraging words, now I’ve turned my passion into a business!” Setting the Stage today serves clients throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality, Truro, and the South Shore as far as Bridgewater and the Annapolis Valley as far as Kentville. By David MacDonald I f you’re one of Cat’s many clients or one of her business partners – who are the real estate agents, painters and pho- tographers, carpenters and furniture retailers she fondly calls “my colleagues” – you know that she doesn’t waste time. “Once I decided on this career path I very quickly got in contact with the Centre for Entrepreneurship Education and Development [CEED] here in Halifax,” she explained “who directed me on next steps.” “They work in conjunction with Employment Nova Scotia offering a program called the SEB program, which is the Self-Em- ployment Benefits program. I had to go through a few different stages in the 5 week application process before getting approved for the full 40-week program. It basically teaches you, through facilitation and workshops, how to actually start
me along to assist with both occupied and vacant staging projects. I was so grateful as I learned a lot during that time! All in all, it’s been quite an intense year but it’s been quite a rewarding one, too. Now I am doing exactly what I love to do.” That’s not to say that the hard work is over, Cat empha- sized. “There’s still a lot of homework to do in the begin- ning and as you go along. I take advantage of webinars offering courses on color consultation, etc., and stay on top of updates in home staging and décor and color trends.” “Now I’ve turned my passion into a business!” Professional Home Stagers also rely on dependable and equitable business relationships and partnerships with fur- niture vendors and realtors, to name a couple, particularly in the beginning. “At the start I took the time to tap into my extensive network to source out reliable furniture sup- pliers, painters, handymen, photographers, etcetera,” she said. “Easyhome, a lease-to-own furniture business with locations in Dartmouth, Halifax and Lower Sackville, also caters to Stagers, so they’ve been great to connect with. As soon as I told them that I was in the biz staging a couple of homes in Halifax and Sackville they were on board with me offering suggestions and answering all of my questions. Pier 21, along with other retailers, is another furniture store
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and run a business. So it was then that I decided to take another course at the same time so that I’d become a little more familiar with the business side of Home Staging and, also, hone my skills. I graduated from ‘The Staging Diva’ Home Staging Business Training Program last year. I also acted on an opportunity to take a professional sales course through the CPSA [Canadian Professional Sales Associa- tion] in conjunction with ACOA [Atlantic Canada Opportu- nities Association] where I gained a certificate in Profession- al Selling. And, finally, I had the opportunity and pleasure of acquiring a mentor, a seasoned home stager who invited
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I’ve partnered with. By joining retailer’s interior designer programs, I can set up accounts offering me designer dis- counts and then pass those savings on to my clients.” In the beginning when Cat was still filling the ranks of the Setting the Stage team she took on roles that weren’t exactly in her wheelhouse. “Initially I was taking the photographs myself,” she laughed. “I didn’t do too badly, but now I’ve hired particular professional photographers to come to my staging properties and they do before and after pictures which are then shared with the client and with the realtor.” And now that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed in Setting the Stage, Cat is more free than ever to flex her artistic muscles. “There’s definitely a lot of artistic and aesthetic creativity involved in successfully staging or redesigning any home,” she explained. “With Staging you also have to really under- stand the real estate market. You have to grasp the current trends and you also have to understand your target market in the particular communities where you are Home Staging. Stats show that 65 per cent or more of home buyers are mil- lennials with a few Gen-xers mixed in and a percentage of them have young families. That’s going to ‘set the stage’ on how I style the home for the market; it has to be modern but functional, livable. But if I’m staging a condo in Downtown Halifax for professionals let’s say, the mood, the atmo- sphere I’d go for is likely going to be different. In either case, both (very busy) generations are looking for ‘move in
ready’. I ‘set the stage’ to help homebuyers envision them- selves already living there.” “It’s been quite an intense year but it’s been quite a rewarding one, too.” “One particular condo project I staged that went very well in terms of the transformation belonged to a widow who was looking to put her home of many years on the market,” Cat continued. “It was a well-loved home, but as soon as I had a grasp of the new demographic in the neighbourhood I was able to give it a nice modern, but comfortable lived in look and feel. I did the same thing with a bare and boring balcony at another condo recently. I haven’t worked a lot on exteriors but that was a Staging project that really exer- cised my creativity – and it turned out beautifully! In that particular case the problem was the view of an ugly lower roof top connected to another condo building. My job was to ‘minimize the ugly and accentuate or maximize the pretty drawing the eye to the treescape and lake across the street. I reached that objective and met the client’s expectations. How do I know that? I received a lovely message that said, “Cathryn I and my sellers are so pleased with this outcome! It’s exactly what I had in my mind’s eye! So beautiful!”
It is wonderful, especially considering the stoicism and versatility required to excel literally outside of her comfort
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zone. But that’s what it takes to thrive in the world of Home Staging and ReDesign, Cat explained. “No two homes are alike. That’s why when I do my staging consultations I deter- mine timelines and budgets with the clients so everyone is on the same page. Getting on the same page also means really measuring the scale of the staging project and a major component of that is determining how many props will be involved. For example, if I’m doing a vacant home staging I’m going to have to go out and source a lot of dif- ferent materials for each space in that home down to acces- sories and artwork. When I do an occupied home staging it means mostly working with the furnishings that are already in the home which could be a matter of just re-positioning furniture, doing a little editing, and adding a few accesso- ries. Part of my mission is to complete the project as quickly and as efficiently as possible. That way we end up with a product that everybody is happy with,” she said. A typical Home Staging consultation takes approximately two hours and the homeowner, Cat explained, can decide whether to act on the recommendations themselves or retain Setting the Stage. “It’s important for homeowners [and Listing Agents] to know and understand that the cost of Staging is much less than a price reduction. A price reduction, due to multiple days on market, D-O-M in the real estate world, can begin at $5,000 and go up from there. When looking at the bottom line; once a homeown- er decides that it is time to put what is likely their largest financial investment on the real estate market, they really want to do it right.” “At the start I took the time to tap into my extensive network to source out reliable furniture suppliers, painters, handymen, photographers, and etcetera.”
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as spotlighted in the OCTOBER 2018 issue of SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
www.spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com
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