Part 5 Transcript: The Systems Every Sellable Home Staging Business Needs (How to Sell Your Home Staging Business)

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:08.706)

Welcome back to How to Sell Your Home Staging Business, a Real Women Real Business Podcast mini-series for home stagers who are starting to think about what it could look like eventually to sell their business. And they want to build a profitable business now that also builds a valuable and sellable asset for later. So I'm your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And in the last episode, we talked about inventory. And we talked about why your inventory matters, but it is not the actual business.

Inventory supports value when it helps the business to produce revenue in a clear and organized, transferable way. But a warehouse full of furniture on its own is not the same as a sellable business. And it does not contribute to the listing price of your business the way that you might think that it does, nor does your annual revenue that you're bringing in. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that first. This is part five today. We've got four other

parts to this series that we've already recorded that you can go back and listen to. And all of the information in those, each one adds on to the next. So if you haven't listened to some of those previous episodes, please go back and do that before listening to today's episode. Because today we're going one layer deeper. Because once a buyer now understands what assets are included in the business, the next question they're going to have is can this business actually continue without the current owner?

holding the entire thing together. Now, don't get me wrong, when it comes to selling a business, there's always going to be some uncertainty on both the buyer and the seller's end regarding whether or not the clients will actually transfer over. And that's a whole other episode in itself that we're not going to get into in this mini-series. But the reality is though that if you do the right transition plan, if you do the right introductions the right way,

Those relationships, majority of them will carry over. Some will drop off. That is understandable, but majority of them should carry over when done properly. But that's not what we're talking about here. So it's not about whether or not this can carry on without the relationships that the business owner has. It's whether or not the business can carry on without the brain, the mind, the headspace of the actual current owner. What is in your head? Are you currently holding everything together

Shauna Lynn Simon (02:30.69)

for your business? Does the whole thing break down essentially if you're not there? So this brings us to our systems, operations, our team, and therefore our transferability. Now, before your eyes glaze over at the word systems, I get it. Stay with me here, okay? Because I am not about to tell you that you need to create a 400-page operations manual, nor am I going to say that you need to have detailed documentation of every single

standard operating procedure, also known as an SOP. I am not here to shame you because your processes are all not perfectly documented. And I am definitely not saying that we need to turn your staging business into some cold corporate machine where every decision is automated, where every communication is automated, and nobody is basically allowed to have a personality. That's not the case. The goal is to have transferability and a transferable business is

One that can be understood, can be operated and continued by someone else without needing everything that currently lives inside of your head. That is the key. A sellable business does not necessarily have to run without you, but it does need to be able to run without your memory. I've heard this from numerous stagers that have said, you know, I'm the main operator in my business. I still do a lot of the things, and they feel like someone's not going to want to actually

purchase their business because of that. And that's simply not true. You got into the business with the goal of being the operator of your business, correct? Therefore, someone else may do the, may be interested in doing the same thing. You do not need to have a team to be sellable. Let me be very clear on this. It does not matter if you are the only employee in your business, you can still have a sellable business. There are buyers who want that day-to-day staging. They want to be doing that.

They don't want to necessarily navigate though the startup challenges of creating a business, a brand, and a reputation from square one. They want to step into something that has already been built and established. So sometimes they may be new to the industry, other times they've been working in someone else's staging business and they want to branch out on their own. But again, they don't want to start from zero. So they want something that's already been built. So if you are still doing the consults, if you are still handling the quoting.

Shauna Lynn Simon (04:50.242)

You're still making majority of the design decisions and managing your client relationships, and you're still involved in the actual staging element. That's fine. You've still got a sellable business. That's considered an owner-operated business, and it is sellable. In fact, many small businesses, staging or not, that sell, like they these are owner-operated businesses. The owner may still be involved in sales, design, quality control, operations, client relationships, or team leadership.

That is not automatically an issue or a problem per se. The problem is when the business cannot function without the specific owner's memory, their instinct, and their constant involvement. And don't get me wrong, I know instinct can be a difficult thing to teach, but it is something that can be documented. There are your you have your instincts, but you also have a certain process that you follow.

So there's a big difference between the owner has a defined role in the business as the owner operator, and there are certain specific tasks that the owner is responsible for, versus no one knows how anything works unless the owner is there. And that second one is where buyers get really nervous because if the pricing logic just lives in your head, if the client communication style lives only in your instincts, if the team only knows what to do because you text them throughout the day.

If the warehouse works only because you are the only one who knows where everything is, if the agent relationships only exist because of you personally, if no one else knows how you decide what jobs to take, what to charge, what to say, who to call, what to fix, or what to prioritize, then a buyer is not just buying a business. They're buying this guessing game. And buyers don't like guessing games. They're going to price for uncertainty, which means that they're going to lowball their offer to you.

They're going to negotiate around uncertainty and they're going to ask for a lot more transition support because of that uncertainty. So the lower offers that are going to come in are going to also require more from you in terms of transition. So why not do that work before you're transitioning? Because not only will this make it easier to transition, to actually like find a buyer and sell it to be able to transition it to the next buyer, but it's also going to make it easier for you to run it on a day-to-day basis right now. If you don't

Shauna Lynn Simon (07:07.862)

Do all of these things. If you don't create these systems and have some operations in place, essentially buyers are more likely to walk away because they just can't see how the business is going to be able to continue after you leave. So that's where this transferability part comes in. So you don't need to remove yourself completely, but the knowledge that makes the business work needs to live somewhere other than inside your brain.

So let's talk about systems for a second because I know most business owners that I talk to say something on the lines of like I don't really have any systems. And I get I'm gonna push back on that because honestly, I don't usually believe them. I think a lot of the mean when they say I don't really have systems is I don't have everything written down, or I don't have anything written down for that matter. Those are not the same things. You do have systems. If your business has been operating for any length of time, you have repeated ways that you like to do things.

You have a way that leads come in, you have a way that consoles get booked, you have a way that you quote, a way you choose your inventory, schedule your staging days, communicate with your agents and your homeowners, handle those panicked clients who need a little extra hand holding, how you deal with damaged inventory, whether you're repairing it, replacing it, donating it, how you decide who gets priority. If you've got three people who all need the same install date, how do you manage and navigate that scheduling?

You've got a way that you solve problems, whether it's from the house not being ready or the mover is late, the client forgot to remove that giant sectional they told you they were going to get rid of, or simply that the key code does not work and everyone is standing on the porch just pretend to be calm, maybe holding a chair or two, waiting to get into the house. All of this, all those things, that is a process.

It may not be documented. It may not be pretty. It may be scattered across your inbox, your text, your team's memory, your gut instinct, maybe a few notes you wrote on the back of a Homesense receipt or something, or for those of you in the US, a HomeGoods receipt, but it does exist. And that is good news because making your business more transferable doesn't usually mean inventing everything from scratch. It just means capturing what you have that already works. So now

Shauna Lynn Simon (09:19.402)

Also, another thing that I want to clear up in terms of a misconception is that a system is not just software. Okay. I hear a lot of people, when you say systems, they're thinking, well, I need a fancy CRM or some sort of automation or project management software. I need a dashboard. I need 17 hats. I need integrations. I need a tech person who understands the things that I don't understand. And don't get me wrong, maybe software helps. Sometimes it actually does, especially I, you know, I know I talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but

Having a tracking system for your inventory, that is a software that, yes, absolutely is going to help, not only for the system, but also in terms of sellability. It will increase the value of your business. But software is not necessarily the system. A system is the full structure that helps something happen reliably. So it may include some of those tools and softwares, but it's about the processes, the policies.

Any sort routines, decision rules, any templates you have, those expectations and standards that you have for your team, your clients. Like the software is just one piece of this. And a lot of it doesn't have to be fancy software. There is nothing wrong with, for example, from a for a standardized email communication that you send out, if you don't have an automated system doing it, or if you don't feel comfortable having it auto-triggered, then you can still do it manually, but you don't need to start it from scratch. You can just

Have an email template in like your Microsoft Word or something, or in your text edits or something, and you can just pull that up and throw that into a document. So, for example, your lead intake system. This is, you know, where people are coming into you in the first place. They're a prospect, a lead, a potential client. That might include, first of all, where those inquiries come from. It will include what questions you're asking, how quickly are you responding? Is it a same day? Is it within 24 hours?

What information are you collecting from them? The address, the project address, who's paying for what? How you decide whether it's a fit for you and your business model, and then what those next steps are. So do they need a consult now? Do we schedule the staging right away, or does the staging get scheduled after we've had the consult? So it's the templated email that you're sending out. Again, this can just be in Microsoft Word. It's who follows up, when they follow up.

Shauna Lynn Simon (11:31.534)

How you track whether or not that lead actually turned into an actual project. All of this is a system. And you might not have every single piece to this system. This is just one example, but I'm willing to bet you probably have most of these pieces in place. The form or the software that you're using for all of these things, that's just a part of it. Same thing goes with your quoting system. So your quoting system is not just that pricing calculator or estimate template that you have.

It includes how you assess the scope, how you calculate your labor, how you account for inventory, how you handle delivery, how you consider rush timelines, how you decide when to add fees and how you communicate that price. Is it in a Canva proposal template? Is it in a Microsoft Word document? Does it go all through QuickBooks? All of these things contribute to where the actual value of that quoting system is. So if a buyer can understand how you quote,

They're gonna have that much more confidence that revenue can continue. Because this is one of the biggest pieces to your revenue system, is having a system to ensure that you are creating consistent pricing and communicating in a way that gets the clients to convert. So if a buyer can't understand how you quote, and you're just sort of like, I don't know, I just kind of knew and I just kind of like I guess at it. It's based on sort of this and sometimes it's that. Like, don't get me wrong, every house is unique. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I've been there. I operated a home staging business for 15 years.

But there is a system behind this. And if you're just like, I kind of just guess at this and I kind of just base it on that, that's gonna create risk for a potential buyer. And they don't wanna buy risk, right? So a lot of business owners they do build their pricing logic through years of experience. You know, you've got that pattern recognition instincts, you've seen what goes wrong, you know what takes longer than you think it actually should, you know which jobs are deceptively complicated. Like, you know that it takes a higher delivery fee.

For a condo, especially when it's in a high rise, but also like what if it's a walk-up? What if, you know, the parking is tricky for this? You know what those logistics look like. You know which clients are gonna need a little more hand holding and extra support. All of this knowledge is valuable. So if you have a method for identifying when and how a staging project is profitable, that is even better. Now, a small little side note here. If you're thinking that you need a better pricing system, as I'm talking about all of this.

Shauna Lynn Simon (13:50.904)

Be sure to check out our staging for profit course. Go to slsacademy.com/profit. It includes our industry-specific pricing calculator. It was the first of its kind in the industry to be introduced, and the course walks you through everything you need to know about not only create calculating your pricing, but how to.

use value drivers in order to position yourself and create the offers that clients are going to want to pay money for. So it's not just about pricing, it's also about your whole positioning and offer strategy. Anyway, okay, moving back on to this particular podcast episode. So all of this, your quoting system, your inventory system, how you handle all of those systems, they only become transferable when someone else can learn it. Okay. So that's where that shift comes in. Your experience

has to become visible in some way. So again, as I mentioned earlier, you do not need to document every single thing in your business. We're not going to create a 400 page manual here. So please do not listen to this episode and decide you're going to go spend the next six months just writing SOPs for every single task from answering the phone to ordering paper clips. That's not strategic. It's not profitable for that matter and it is certainly not necessary. From a buyer's perspective, not all systems are going to matter

equally. Some systems create more confidence than others do. So the systems that usually matter most are anything that's tied to your revenue, your delivery, your client experience, reducing risk and continuity. So for a staging business, that might include things like your lead intake system, your consult booking system, your proposal and pricing process, inventory selection, your staging day logistics and process, your destage logistics and process.

Your client communication, your agent relationship management, how your warehouse flows, your inventory tracking, even your vendor and contractor relationships. It might include your team roles and responsibilities, how you handle billings and collections, and how you resolve any problems or issues that might come up. Now, the key to doing this successfully is don't try to do it all at once. Here's how you're gonna start. You're gonna start by simply compiling a list of the things that need to be documented. When you find yourself doing something repeatable.

Shauna Lynn Simon (16:09.602)

Just throw it onto a list. Don't worry about documenting everything right away. Just throw it onto a list. Because if you can see where the business is too dependent on you, you can start reducing some of that dependence. So the next thing you're going to do is you're going to capture it. Once you've got that list, you can kind of identify well, which ones of these are going to be the most important to capture sooner than later. And then capturing it can be as simple as a screen share video. It can be an audio note. The point is that you want to create a list first of all the tasks that you have that should be documented.

Then prioritize them based on what's most important. So you can start working through those ones that are more key and critical. And this helps you whether or not you sell your business. And this is one of the reasons why I love looking at a business through this sell-ready lens, through the buyer's lens. Because even if you never sell, having this level of transferability in your business is going to give you more freedom day to day. If your team understands the process, they're going to ask you fewer questions.

If your quoting logic becomes clearer, you make fewer emotional pricing decisions because now you're pricing for profit. If your client communication is templated, you spend less time reinventing the same email or thinking about what you need to say. If your warehouse is organized, your staging days and your destage days are going to run that much smoother. So you can see how this is not just good for a future buyer, it's also good for you. Even let me be really clear on this one, even if it's just you.

In the business. I create SOPs for pretty much everything that I do, even if I'm the only one doing it. And I do this for a couple of reasons. One is that honestly, I just don't like thinking about things twice. So for example, when I work with my coaching clients, I have a checklist that I go through when I finish a call with them. So I make sure I don't miss any steps in there. And sometimes they're a bit more detailed than others, but other times, you know, they're just a little bit of a checklist, just some bullet points. And sometimes the system can start as something as simple as that.

Doesn't need to be fully documented, but it does need to have some sort of system in place to it or some sort of process in place that's been documented. I don't like thinking about things twice and having processes documented also just frees up my head from having to carry this. I hate the idea of trying to like tap into my memory and say, where is that? How do I normally do this? Especially if it's a task that I only do once a month, once a quarter, or worse yet, even once a year. So then when I'm ready to pass something off to someone else, though.

Shauna Lynn Simon (18:37.056)

It's pretty much ready to go. Or if I'm going to be out of the office for a period of time, I know that my team has the tools to get things done if they need to. And this is where your team and your contractor relationships also work into the conversation. Because if you have employees or movers or admin support, warehouse help, stylists, bookkeepers, whether they're on your payroll or not, you know, your photographers, people who do repairs, other contractors that are just involved in the business, a buyer wants to understand.

How those people support the equation. And we don't need some sort of complicated organization chart, just a clear picture of who helps run the business, who handles what, who communicates with what clients, who supports staging days, who knows the warehouse, who helps with admin, billing, scheduling, follow-up. All of these things can be a real asset, especially if those relationships can continue after the sale. A reliable mover who understands the process and where everything goes in your warehouse, that's gold.

An admin person who knows your communication flow and ensures that high-level client experience every time, amazing. The stylist who understands your standards and can actually prep, pack, and pull and execute any staging job, whether you're there or not, that is money in the bank. So if everything runs through you, now don't get me wrong, again, doesn't mean that you have to have this team in place. But if you do, it's a good idea to document who is doing what, who's responsible for what, because that is going to be a big part of your value.

Now, if everything runs through you, the buyer has to figure out whether they're inheriting actual support or just a list of names you personally know how to manage, right? But if you can actually say, like, no, no, they're responsible for X, Y, and Z, like these are actual decisions that they are responsible for, that they own this job. They own the outcome of this particular task. And so this doesn't need to be overly complicated. Just start by documenting the basics, who you rely on, what they do, how they're paid, et cetera. Are there any other important details that someone else would need to know?

And that alone can make the business feel that much more organized and transferable. Okay, now before we I leave you here, I'm going to leave you with an exercise that you can do to identify where your business is most dependent on. And I call it the 30-day test. So I want you to ask yourself if you were to step away from the business for 30 days, or if that gives you heart palpitations thinking of 30 days, let's go for one week or two weeks. But if you were to step away, what would break? The reason why I like 30 days is because that's an entire month cycle and there's different things that happen at different points in the month.

Shauna Lynn Simon (21:01.72)

So that's usually little bit better, especially if you've got things like payroll or banking things that you're doing or paying warehouse releases or things like that. But if again, if that gives you heart palpitations, let's just do a week. So what what would break? Do leads still get answered? Would consults still get booked? Would proposals still go out? Do staging days still get prepped? Do destages still get scheduled? Do invoices still get sent? Would payments still be followed up on? Would the team know who to call if something went wrong?

Would anyone know where to find passwords, templates, project notes, client details, or vendor information? The goal is to identify pressure points. If you are having a bit of an anxiety attack on this one, again, I want you to take a deep breath, step back for a moment because you don't have to fix it all at once. But I want you to think about like what are the most critical things that are really going to slow down because people are waiting for your answer. And think specifically about anything that drives revenue or prevents you from being able to make money.

Where are those mistakes happening? This is where you start. And please start simple. A basic checklist is enough. A screen recording is enough. A quick shared folder with some templates. That is all enough. You do not need to create a polished operations manual before this becomes useful. You just need to start getting the most information out of your head and into a place where someone else can find it, understand it, and use it. Google Docs are fantastic for this. Okay, so really quick recap from today.

A sellable business does not need to be fully automated. It does not need a huge team and it does not need a perfect operations manual. An owner-operated business can be sellable. What matters is whether the business can be understood and continued by someone else. And whether you sell or not, that is going to make your life so much easier now. You're going to make fewer repeat decisions. You're going to answer fewer repeat questions. Your team is going to have more clarity. Your vendors and contractors are going to be easier to manage.

You're not carrying quite so much of the business in your own head. That is the word. So if you want some help getting your systems in order, be sure to check out our Systems Unlocked Business Training. Go to slsacademy.com/systemsunlocked. But if you really want to create a sell ready business, we provide you with the tools and templates to get your systems and your pricing in order in our Sell Your Staging Business bootcamp. In fact,

Shauna Lynn Simon (23:24.906)

In the boot camp, if you register, you're going to get our Systems Unlocked Business Training absolutely free. Okay. And then we also have a special offer for getting the staging for profit course as well. Now, inside the boot camp, we look at what buyers actually want when they talk about systems, what needs to be documented and what does not, how your team and contractors are reviewed in the sale and how to make your business more transferable without overwhelming yourself or your team. We're going to give you the worksheets.

checklists and tools to put all of this in place. And you get lifetime access to all of those materials as well as our Systems Unlocked Business Training. Now if you want to learn more about how to get in on our next Sell Your Staging Business boot camp, simply go to slsacademy.com/sellyourbiz And of course, all of these links you can find them in our show notes. Now in the next

And final episode of this mini-series, we're going to talk about the sale process itself. Because selling your business is not just finding someone who might be interested, then of course sending the here's everything that I have. Here's all my financials, here's all my documents, here's all my client relationships. No, no, no. We're going to talk about how to protect confidentiality, when to share what, how to qualify buyers. And we're going to help you to move from that interest into a serious conversation without losing control of the process along the way.

So go check out the bootcamp, slsacademy.com/sellyourbiz And I will see you in the next episode. And until next time, happy staging.