You’re a home staging professional—but you’re also a business owner. Balancing the two can be challenging for many home stagers that I have spoken to. You’re creative, and you’re a “people person”, two skills that allow you to be successful at what you do. But your skill set may not include the attention to detail and the discipline necessary to prepare a profit-and-loss statement each month, for instance.

But that’s okay! At CSP International, we have helped hundreds of home stagers master the skills necessary to build highly profitable businesses.

Below are three particularly common mistakes that talented home stagers make as they seek to grow their business:

1)     Failure to create and adhere to a strategic plan. Without a strategic business plan, you are flying blind. A strategic plan helps you to define your goals, your vision, and the steps you are going to take to achieve them. Your plan serves as a roadmap that you can refer to on a regular basis to determine whether you are “on course.” Yet, far too many home stagers don’t have such a plan. If you need help getting started, get in touch with us today!

2)     Failure to properly keep the books. One thing I can say with certainty: very few of you decided to open your own business because of your love for accounting. But the truth is that failing to keep the books will come back to haunt you sooner or later. Whether it is failure to properly pay your taxes, control your inventory, or ensure profitability… failure to keep the books has consequences. If you simply can’t force yourself to do it, hire a professional to do your books at the end of each month. You won’t regret it.

3)     Failure to create a system of doing business. Right now, many of you are doing everything yourself—marketing, customer service, and of course the actual staging of homes. But for your business to grow, you’ll need to find others that can take some of these responsibilities off your hands. You have a particular way of doing things, and it works—but you can’t expect your new employees to operate the way you would… unless you teach them. Take the time to document important processes and create systems that will work repeatedly as you grow your business.

There’s more to growing a successful business than just being a good stager. CSP International has a plug and go process; If you’d like to learn more, or you’re ready to learn the secrets to creating a six-figure income for yourself, contact us today!