Welcome to our first REAL episode of 2023!
We host our first guest of the year:
OWNER & CEO of The Staging Co
We talk about his origin story, its a fun and interesting one!
Took on graduating H.S. at 16, became a certified Paramedic by the age of 18, then going on mission trips in Cali. There's more to the story but we'll let him tell it! Listen in and make sure to stay until the end!
He took ownership of Traditions Interiors – now THE STAGING COMPANY back in 2019. Bringing years of experience from B2B services, he leads the team and industry to higher levels through flawless customer services and innovative sales and marketing ideas.
Benefits of Staging: Faster Closing, Higher Returns
Home staging is the art of preparing a home for sale by rearranging and accessorizing it so that it appeals to the widest range of today’s home buyers. The goal of home staging is to get the home sold quickly by accentuating the best features of the home while minimizing the negatives. Nothing in your marketing toolkit builds more ROI than Home Staging.
The Staging Co is based in TX and has an office in FL, they looking to expand into all 50 states, so contact them through one of the links below to get connected with his services or if you have a line to help him develop in your state!
Check out his linktree:
https://linktr.ee/thestagingcompany
Welcome to our first REAL episode of 2023!
We host our first guest of the year:
OWNER & CEO of The Staging Co
We talk about his origin story, its a fun and interesting one!
Took on graduating H.S. at 16, became a certified Paramedic by the age of 18, then going on mission trips in Cali. There's more to the story but we'll let him tell it! Listen in and make sure to stay until the end!
He took ownership of Traditions Interiors – now THE STAGING COMPANY back in 2019. Bringing years of experience from B2B services, he leads the team and industry to higher levels through flawless customer services and innovative sales and marketing ideas.
Benefits of Staging: Faster Closing, Higher Returns
Home staging is the art of preparing a home for sale by rearranging and accessorizing it so that it appeals to the widest range of today’s home buyers. The goal of home staging is to get the home sold quickly by accentuating the best features of the home while minimizing the negatives. Nothing in your marketing toolkit builds more ROI than Home Staging.
The Staging Co is based in TX and has an office in FL, they looking to expand into all 50 states, so contact them through one of the links below to get connected with his services or if you have a line to help him develop in your state!
Check out his linktree:
https://linktr.ee/thestagingcompany
S3 Ep. 2 - We discuss benefits of Staging a home w/ Brandon Blake, CEO and Owner of The Staging Co - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmmABzaCOlY
Transcript:
(00:01) foreign [Music] we've arrived MVP real estate podcast with Marcus and Dan a show developed for the educational purpose of everything to do with real estate and investment buckle up let's go welcome back to season three episode two Dan how you doing today I am doing fantastic thank you for asking good good it is what Brighton Sunny 35 degrees here in the Milwaukee area where the show has taken place um I don't know if we got to do it with the first time but you're in more Racine like the South part of Wisconsin me
(00:43) being in Oconomowoc more in between Milwaukee medicine weather is all the same it all just kind of stinks right now be in the middle of winter but we don't have snow which I'm happy about yeah that makes it a tough condition sometimes with my rear wheel drive car so yeah I could see that and the little one is a little upset we haven't done much sledding at all this year I think we've gotten out once and that was about it but I'd take that over not shoveling yeah I have a big uh big driveway and a
(01:15) roundabout and not really much sidewalk but it's a lot of uh surface area to clear with just a little mini Toro Snow Thrower so yeah and I think like right now I'm cool with the snow but what I hate is the spring when it starts to rain everything gets gray and slushy and that gets everywhere that's the part so like not having it would help during that period which would be great No Gray slush which I'm looking for looks like Brandon is logging on here welcome welcome official setup with a professional mic
(01:53) and everything I know yeah well let's make sure that it's working now I can hear you okay good when we started the show we had like the professional mics and we were all set up in my like Studio up in my attic and then covet hit and then less and less people wanted to do face-to-face podcasts so I was like oh crap I just bought this equipment and now no one is no one's seen people well this is all um kind of left over from my days as the film composer so you know I've got I've got my recording studio here but if it
(02:28) looks better I can just I can scratch it well I like it okay I wonder if I can do like the digital microphone that just sits here if they have that filter yet I don't have the capability to edit that for you man we'll get there that'd be season four well Brandon uh thanks for joining us I appreciate the time um I'm gonna probably ask you more about your your history and filmmaking you said it was film yeah composing music for film oh really yep that's awesome um we've had one other guy who did radio
(03:08) and he had the same setup he had all of his mixers he could throw in audio from his like little keyboard at any point he had the setup what is that hit you with the effects oh yeah he could hit up any effect you wanted it was great um and the last time I had him on he was he was trying to figure out how he could rent out his Studio space for other people to record which I thought was a pretty good idea radio hacking instead of house hacking the uh the command center of the staging company so not gonna rent it out you
(03:42) know I wish I had more time for music these days but um yeah trying to grow this company that that's kind of the full-time gig yeah that's awesome and I mean that's a good we can jump into that if you're if you're ready to go Dan we're recording right here we are cool um I wanted to double check with you guys because you know yeah the podcasts are just free flow let let's see where it goes you know absolutely you know I'm interested in getting to know you I'm sure you know I'm here because you're
(04:12) interested in getting to know me and then you know uh hopefully this forms a pretty cool relationship going forward yeah absolutely yeah all of our shows are free-flowing uh whatever rabbit hole we go down is where we go uh when we started the show I had scripts and questions to ask we got to like two to three questions so like we never got through it because there were so many other things that I wanted to ask about before we got to the end so we just said we're gonna scrap that and then go some people do prefer a couple questions
(04:45) beforehand but usually everybody likes the just have a conversation flow of it so that's how we've kind of kept it yeah absolutely hey where where are you guys located I am in a a smaller town called Oconomowoc which is in between Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin and then Dan you're in is it Racine yes okay Racine and Kenosha are like the same thing for me it's just just north of the Illinois Wisconsin border on Lake Michigan probably 55 60 minutes north of Chicago so this morning I was waking up and
(05:22) complaining about it being 50 degrees here in in Texas so what's it like up there you're in the Goodland what part of Texas are you in so I live in a small town outside about an hour outside of San Antonio that's where we'd go for this is not part of the show I guess I played college baseball and we'd go down to San Antonio because our coach played at St Mary's yeah so we would stay on campus there and then uh I mean baseball was fun but our day off was the best part we'd go down to like
(05:52) the Riverwalk okay uh Pat O'Brien's shout out to that fine establishment for having us have a lot of fun the Hurricanes they catch up with you Pat O'Brien's yeah yep the hurricanes they catch up to you quickly yes about halfway through the first one yes and they limit you at two that's the first place I've been to they cut you off at two you cannot order any more of them yeah which I think is about the Riverwalk though uh you can always go next door yep exactly that's what we did and then do you ever watched Impractical
(06:30) Jokers oh all the time okay they did a show at Pat O'Brien's at the San Antonio location where they had to go and sip um if you ever watched the show the Hurricanes they had to go onto people's table and drink the hurricane and see how much they could drink you know inevitably we travel a lot and inevitably whenever we are um you know staying in a place and we haven't hooked up laptops to watch Netflix like a normal human being and we're flipping through the channels it's always Impractical Jokers
(07:03) it's such a good show I remember watching Whose Line Is It Anyways when I was a kid with my dad and I feel like this is now like miles is going to grow up knowing that we watched him practice Jokers uh which version of Whose Line Is It Anyway uh he watched both I like the The Drew Carey version yeah the American I guess right which is weird because like mxc have you ever watched that show oh my God he's so much better than the spin-off of the American version which was like wipeout wipeout yeah yeah mxc anyway all
(07:42) the time uh so so going back to my history back in the day I was a paramedic in LA and uh a lot of my friends would Moonlight on the set of Wipeout because there were just so many injuries that they had really there's so many Medics uh just standing around that I can I can imagine that show as long along with um what is an American warrior a Ninja Warrior uh I think it's American Ninja Warrior I don't know yeah that one I'm sure they have a lot of Medics around too because I'm watching that show like I'm not trying any of
(08:13) that yeah my kids are are way into that really yeah yeah I would do the Wipeout thing and I think that would be fun but I'd want to be on mxc just because I want to see what audio they dub over uh oh the writers wait a minute is that so I think that predates Wipeout is that the one that was like on Comedy Central and they would do this really really bad overdubs yes I remember that show that was awesome don't get eliminated don't get eliminated right yeah Yes Man childhood that was a great time that is
(08:46) a blast from the past what a deep pull oh yeah I still pull up some YouTube videos of mxc they never get old yeah they they were some of my favorite you know like like I'm I'm pushing 40 here so I think I was a kid in a different era but I laughed so hard at some of those things that cannot be made today like that show because of the overdub could not be made today Tropicana could not be made today oh yeah I laughed my ass off every time I see it you know any Will Ferrell movie from the late 90s early
(09:21) 2000s could not be made today yeah I mean two of the biggest biggest Comics that were made South Park and Family Guy could not be started right now there's no way um Arrested Development couldn't be made today the office is good even though oh yeah the most streamed television show yeah on any platform cannot be made today yeah yeah I got to see uh Seth MacFarlane in Milwaukee there's a little piano bar and he came by and got up on stage just on like a random Saturday and started doing like a little
(10:00) I don't know off the cuff little piano silhouette comedy show in the middle of this bar and it wasn't scheduled he just like was like Hey I'm gonna hop on the the piano and The Pianist got up and he took over super cool funny I was there for maybe like 20 minutes and I had to go to work but super funny dude and he just thinks of it off the top of his head and switch's personality left and right just on command super talented dude 25 years of practice at this point like you know he's like oh I'm gonna voice this entire
(10:33) guy for this show and then I'm going to drink a cup of coffee and then voice this entire character for a show and I mean his talent just completely um it like humbles me because you you see those people that off the cuff and I've known a lot of these guys you know throughout the years um I knew a piano player with perfect pitch and you know he would I mean he he was on the uh uh Continuum sessions for John Mayer but like you meet these guys and they like completely humble you with just their grasp of their craft yeah
(11:08) like in my craft which you know I think it switched a few times in my career it's like never in a million years will I be you know even half as good as these guys yeah and like I take it into a separate sector like people like Seth MacFarlane Jamie Foxx does it too I know Zach Galifianakis is a different humor but like all three of those guys come up to mind they introduce music and comedy industries that I cannot do like I'm not a stand-up uh comic I don't think I'd be good at it and I don't know how to play
(11:42) a lick of music so like for them to do it together on stage and make a show of it like Kudos totally absolutely so but that all comes with past and they've been doing it for years so as a really bad segue into you and your life you've switched from paramedic music and now home staging yeah man talk about yeah tie those together for us here you know I don't know that there really is a way of tying them all together um I've kind of like always been um I've always been driven by the mindset that anything worth doing is worth
(12:24) overdoing and and I'm kind of driven by like uncommon Milestones right so I became an EMT when I was 16. and why 16 because that's the youngest that you can be an EMT in the state of Virginia right and I was already quad when I was 15 and I basically had to stand around and watch people in like wash trucks and stuff like that right and as soon as I turned 16 um I I became an EMT also 16 year old college student right like I was I was homeschooled I went into school for high school um had horrible grades because you know
(13:04) I aced every test and never did the homework um and uh you know sitting down with my dad and and he's like hey uh do you want to go to college next year we can just drop you out of high school we'll take a placement a whole bunch of loopholes right and and college so you know waiting to become an EMT at 16 you know in college at 16.
(13:26) uh became a paramedic at 18 why 18 because that's the youngest that you can be a paramedic in the state of Virginia right that's awesome in hindsight that's scary like putting somebody else's life in the hand of an 18 year old that like barely has anything figured out right um anyway long long story short uh graduated college uh moved to LA as part of a missions organization um what year did you graduate college do you remember how old you were oh um I I had like a gap year I went to India and Korea and Israel and England and a
(14:06) whole bunch of stuff in between um I think it was 2000 it was either 2005 but it might have been 2006 when I officially got my diploma I don't really know that's still super cool like a lot of experiences within that Gap year like I wouldn't take that as a negative at all in the path of where you're at yeah man um so and it ended up in La um that's where I met my wife um we were part of this missions organization we were kind of tired of not being able to buy food and stuff so um I went back to working as a paramedic
(14:41) in La um which was kind of kind of boring like you spend a lot of time in the passenger seat of an ambulance just waiting for something to happen and so that's where I was like you know what I love music I pulled out my laptop and I opened garage band at the time and um you know I was like hey let's just play around with stuff and start layering stuff and layering stuff and layering stuff had a bunch of friends that were in the film industry so um you know did a couple of pretty small projects um you know released three albums on my
(15:13) own so I think all in all I did like 13 films and three albums um but as we started to have kids then it was like it's time to grow up a little bit you know um so you know and there was also this like defining moment like I think everybody's got their origin story but there's a couple of defining moments in mind um the first one was when I think I had gotten home at like two o'clock in the morning from a shift and my wife held my or handed my then nine month old daughter to me and she just screamed
(15:47) because uh she had no idea who I was like we had been on opposite sleep schedules for her entire life and I was like okay it's cool like I'm providing for the family I'm I'm paying some bills um but what kind of quality of life is that providing for my family right and yeah you know and and she was my wife was five months pregnant with our second and um so then I was like right I think that math adds up I don't know they're 14 months apart um so I was like something's got to change so we uh we moved to Kansas City with a
(16:22) much lower cost of living and uh I decided to go into sales and um you know starting at the bottom uh looked like the musical instruments department at Best Buy for me right yeah learned kind of quickly that I had a knack for it um if you added the rest of the department up at that Best Buy that I worked at they almost got to where I was in sales um and so you're doing all right what's that so you're doing all right you know well I mean there was no commission it was just straight hourly so I was like
(16:55) oh dang my commissioned off of this right so I went to Sprint same thing number one in the store number two was about 50 behind me um and uh long story short ended up coming to this uh really small town in Kerrville running a sales department and that led to you know I.T sales and you know after a while just kind of with this theme of like anything that's worth doing is worth overdoing I've always been very comfortable with risk I've always been very you know comfortable doing you know uncommon things and kind of you know one
(17:28) of our core values is inspiration like we lead from the front right so leading from the front is kind of a big thing for me and I found an opportunity to buy a staging company and you know and I had two two thoughts initially like number one I wear the same black T-shirt every single day what do I know about interior design this wonderful background courtesy of my team I didn't do any of that right um and uh and anyway the the uh the other thought is like and I'm not gay and I'm literally the only straight guy
(17:59) in any of these environments which um you know it it's good um so I bought a staging company and uh you know kind of my response was if somebody's stupid enough to loan me a million dollars I guess I will buy this company loan me a million dollars and so I bought a company and um and I mean it's sales it's marketing it's you know knowing how to lead a team uh with all things that I thought I was pretty good at until I you know had to learn how to scale myself and um so learned really quick that I was just
(18:40) over my head um in leadership and uh you know started learning a lot about that but uh 2001 I was at the 10x uh growth conference and had an opportunity to um sit next to another staging company owner and he's like hey man I'm selling my company I was like cool have you broke or call me on Monday so 2001 we did it again um 2001 or 21 sorry I don't want to correct you sorry 2021 yeah okay foreign dates not a not a strong point um no but that's cool that you're at this convention in from where I heard it you
(19:19) were kind of already like okay I'm kind of over my head Maybe I'm gonna double down and buy another one anything that's worth doing is worth overdoing I like it I like it all right so 2021 you get the offer you go through and you buy it so now you're sitting with two staging companies where do you go from there like where you go back to the office now you sit down you're like I got two staging companies are they in the same area or are they separate San Antonio and Orlando okay so how do we manage those
(19:52) um I have an amazing team in both locations um and we've learned a lot along the way um I was very very fortunate to have uh strong leadership in Orlando [Music] um so I spend about a week a month there um just to kind of you know bring my personality and my drive and um you know connection with the team um San Antonio was a completely different uh entity entirely I mean I made a lot of mistakes like trying to figure things out and um April of 2022 had to come back from Florida and fire half my team in in San
(20:37) Antonio and kind of start over but um I think I got pretty lucky with Orlando yeah and were they like were there similarities that you liked or were they different and you liked the different like are they in different avenues like one residential one more commercial or were there a lot of Blends or overlaps um man that's a great question there there was a lot of blend and a lot of overlap I think in what we were trying to do okay yeah okay I think the major drive for me was kind of like I don't know Elon Musk wants to go to Mars
(21:20) why because if Earth is destroyed you know Earth is kind of like a single point of failure for us as a species right so I said any data that I get here in San Antonio is not really valuable because we want to be in all 50 states right the the goal is to build a billion dollar company here that is in all 50 states um so any data collected in San Antonio is somewhat valuable but it's even more valuable if we can replicate that same data in a completely different Market and so I think that was the big drive for me I was like I can kind of figure
(21:55) out how to manage these two companies one remotely and and I guess they're both remotely because San Antonio is an hour away but um I think the real thing was you know what's what's working in both locations at the same time and we spent all of 2022 trying to figure that out right and we we spent all of 2022 trying to figure this out in in an environment where you know gas was going up a dollar a week you know the cost of buying furniture went up 5x the cost of Labor went up 2x um we in both Texas and Florida we had a
(22:37) residential real estate boom that you even mentioned that you might be thinking about putting your house on the market um you're going to get 38 offers all all over asking right and so the the sales pitch for hey we're going to help you sell your house faster and for more money wasn't necessarily working so so we're like we're trying to figure out okay what is working what's working in both locations how do we grow this thing okay you know what works in the north what works in the west what works in the East you know
(23:11) and just trying to figure out a lot of that stuff so to go back to the question I you know I think I think the opportunity for a new challenge um and a new like calculated risk I think was the most uh appealing thing to that acquisition yeah and obviously with any new company uh acquisition there's going to be an amount of risk but having one already makes that risk a little bit less and I would equate that when I started in real estate I was always listening to the podcasts of people starting and they're like well I
(23:45) just want to start someone to buy a single family I'm going to buy a single family start small and then there's a few people that come in and they're like to manage a single-family house is just like managing a fourplex if you can get the funding for the four Plex get the four packs it's it's more of a mitigated risk because you've got three other units rented well one goes vacant rather than having your one house go vacant and now you're 100 unoccupied so like it was just like changing my my thought process
(24:14) of like yeah it's a risk and yes it's more money but it's actually safer to spend more money than just to buy the one and that's kind of what you did where you you're like yeah it's a risk but we've already got some things rolling it's not like it's a brand new world we just gotta figure out how they both work together and you take your experiences from old and you apply to new kind of a system which I think is is awesome to see somebody take the steps on that not many people do it so kudos
(24:43) to you um I I may be a little too comfortable with risk at times hey but I want to go back to a comment that you just made you know versus the fourplex yeah what is it you guys have kids I have one kid yeah okay cool all right four you got four yeah I do yeah me too how old's your oldest um 21 my my next oldest is gonna be 21 in three four weeks and then soon to be 18 year old and then a nine-year-old I'll see your oldest two are really close together too well it's we have a blended family um so my daughter and then my my wife's
(25:26) two um the 21 year old and soon be 18 year old and then I have the 21 year old and then we have a nine-year-old together so so a little uh Brady Bunch but um yeah it's it's working for us it remind when you said that thing about uh you already had one in Texas and you were looking at the uh acquiring the one in Florida it reminded me of that uh I think it was Jim Gaffigan uh stand up mate where he's talking about uh someone asked me what it's like having four kids he said imagine you have three and and
(26:00) you're drowning and someone hands you a fourth kid so it's just like you're you're all in already so what's what's the point of you know adding another it I mean it's funny because it's relative right makes sense for what you did with acquiring the second one and the same thing with your your fourplex story uh Marcus from one instead because at that point when you have just one it's like it's so much work for the little bit of I guess not even profit sometimes but it's so much work just managing that one
(26:31) property why not have it for Forex you know what I mean so yeah and then they talk about having four units and why would you drive to four separate units when four of them are in one spot that's less drive time so like all around it it does make sense just to Pilot on but 100 and you know model this is 13.
(26:51) and you know despite my grandpa being outrageously successful in in multi-family you know it kind of like skipped a generation and I didn't talk with him about money or or you know finances or you know business strategy or anything until I was like 35 years old right and you know so asking about the kids you know and Legacy and stuff like that it's incredibly easy to buy a fourplex now 18 19 20 years old whatever it doesn't seem incredibly easy but when you're you know pushing 40 like it's actually incredibly
(27:30) easy it's incredibly easy for an 18 year old to buy a four-plex right yeah if you know we all have that conversation like if I knew then what I know now you know so then it's like okay well now it's my responsibility as a parent to you know tell my kids how easy it is and like hey why rent an apartment when you can buy a fourplex qualify off the cash flow of the fourplex you live in one with a roommate and then you rent out the other three and then when when you're done with College move out do it again move out
(28:06) yeah move out do it again I mean my wife and I moved 13 times in our marriage like imagine if we we're making money and like you know building you know Holdings uh yeah every step of the way yeah and I actually had a kid um one of my roommates in college and teammates he now teaches down in like the Lake Geneva in Wisconsin area so it's like an hour and a half south of me maybe an hour but uh he teaches in I guess it's technically like the special ed department but not everybody is like special ed he takes students who maybe
(28:44) are just like uh maybe like ADHD which in this example this kid he was diagnosed with ADHD but he was always like entrepreneurial he didn't know what he wanted to do but he wanted to do anything but school like in my buddy calls and he's like hey I got this kid he's a bright kid but he's just he's scattered like he's got just flights of ideas so he starts coming up once a week and working with us and I'm sitting there talking to him and I'm like hey you've got like 50 ideas like just drill down
(29:17) to one and do one idea and then go to the second idea I'm not going to say don't do them and just concentrate on school because I'm talking to you and you you're a smart kid you just have you want to do all of the things and I go back to the Ron Swanson of don't don't half-ass two things whole ass one thing so just whole ass one thing and then um he the school year ends he does another apprenticeship and then all of a sudden I connect with my roommate again and they're like yeah he actually is uh he's listing a house
(29:52) down here that hasn't sold in like a year and it's a little outdated but he is now like trying to sell this not as an agent but just for sale by owner got a listing with this guy he he markets as an Airbnb because it's like a 10 bedroom but super outdated facility so we mark this as an Airbnb he contacts the news station for them to come film it he goes on and talks to him he's 17.
(30:22) sells the thing for like 1.2 million wow and I'm like this is the like just keep going man you've got like a an IT factor of just without fear in your mind you're just gonna go do the thing that you can do so like that's a kid that I I'm Gonna Keep a little tab on just to see where he goes because he reminds me of you where he's just like I don't care how old I am I want to do this I'm going to go do it regardless of what people tell me regardless of what the normal is I'm just gonna go do it
(30:52) totally you know I think um well I heard the story once you know there there's like a FedEx driver and you know he's been late on delivering packages you know like running behind his quota right and and so his boss basically tells him like Hey uh if you're late again today you're fired right so Midway through his route he comes up to a gate that says beware of dog and he can't see the dog you know he he doesn't know you know what lies behind that gate right but he stops at the gate and he like spends 10 minutes
(31:30) contemplating am I going up to the porch or not right yeah well he's contemplating looking at that beware of dog sign uh you know a young six-year-old kid walks in you know opens the gate and runs right in why because the kid couldn't read the sign yeah you know yeah so I think a lot of times we we put barriers for ourselves between us and success yeah absolutely it comes down to the fear and like you were saying sometimes you just you have a lack of fear of what could happen you just jump in and that's
(32:04) I mean I wouldn't say that I have a lack of fear I just don't let it affect my decisions right when I'm headed as an 18 year old kid when I'm headed to a car accident or a you know a shooting or a you know unknown you know man down you know we we lost communication with them on the phone situation right my heart rate's a good 170.
(32:29) yeah there's fear involved right my cortisol levels right now probably would kill the average person but I just don't let it affect the decisions you know and that's a different mindset shift too when when now you have an executive team and a management team and you know you have we're up to 20 23 24 people now and there's those people their families their kids all rely on me you know and so you can't let fear drive you know drive you or hinder you you know at some point like you've got to do it afraid you know and
(33:10) yeah kind of work through it you know um Jaco willing says you know prioritize as an execute right like look at the situation take a step back take a deep breath make a call prioritize and execute right and think about you know the the you know the the people on your team and you know don't let them down yeah I mean that that ties into like what what you said as far as like being a paramedic right your your peer has to be uh subdued because you have to worry about the person that you're headed to take care of same thing like you said
(33:44) with with your your companies you can't worry about yourself you have to make the decisions for for the whole of the company or the best you know best decision decision to you know stay in business or stay profitable or things like that yeah nice chocolate willing plug by the way I I have read a couple of his books uh I tell everybody about it all the time actually borrowed the book to one of my friends because extreme ownership and I cannot recall the other one it's the all-black um no it's a different one leadership but
(34:21) uh leadership tactics the field manual maybe a bunch of them I thought it had discipline in the title of it too but I don't I don't recall I mean if I was a better verse maybe read that one two or three times like I did extreme ownership uh I had to know exactly what it is but yeah it's uh it's all relevant stuff um yeah I like the mindset correction that you gave me so I appreciate that not letting fear affect you because fear is there it's a it's a feeling you're gonna get but is it gonna hold you back or are you
(34:57) just gonna go for it I just finished uh the war of Art and he talks about um resistance that's the major thing with with battling with art because art is not quantitative you don't get like you're you put two in and someone else puts two and you get four out it's all subjective and when he was a writer so he talks about going down to right and when he finishes his book like he has the knowledge in it but the hardest part is sitting down and putting the words on the paper and most of it is the resistance of this book isn't good
(35:34) enough or I'm not writing it the way that I want to or all of those those inner talks that you have with yourself about what you can't do and why you shouldn't do it and and all that stuff is resistance and getting through that resistance or that fear to get your job done that you have to do and once you start rolling it's usually all just Flow State like once you can get actually like with your fingers on the keys and typing you can keep going but getting to the keys is the hard part from what that work was I don't know if
(36:08) you've ever read that one but that one hit with me I haven't but I did I did hear a quote um something online the voice in your head is not your own so it's basically like hey you're either worrying about your own fears and it's your mind playing tricks against you or it's your fear of judgment or your fear of making a mistake or others saying you can't do this or you shouldn't do this how could you do this things like that and you know I I bring it to my kids like you said they're they're early 20s
(36:39) and the same thing we talked to them about you know possible house hacking uh I I we got my my steps on the book uh set for life he wasn't um interested in college and that's not something we pushed to our kids um but he has more of the the work ethic of tell me what to do I'm gonna do it he is you know coming up with his own ideas and trying to make his situation better Meanwhile my daughter is off that College in her third year going to be a PA position assistant so it's a different conversation when
(37:14) you're saying you're investing in yourself right now going to college and then my steps I'm like hey let's let's give you the building blocks to be self-sufficient with whatever you can do to get a property on and on your books and house hack or like you said buy a fourplex and live in one and rent out the other three we tried doing that we establish them with a credit card right as he turned 18 so that he could build his own credit um and we're in talks of doing the same thing for my stepdaughter and I was
(37:44) going to be 18 next month so we're thinking about just adding her on hours as a like a authorized user so that she can tap into our use but not be affected or not be able to spend with it because we're not going to give you know she likes her Starbucks and Duncan and she's got prom coming up too so there's a lot of stuff that because we don't want her to take advantage of but yeah it's it's uh it's your your head your voice that that sometimes can be I know it's stopped me a few times and I wish I
(38:15) could overcome it and that was one of my notes that I took down for this year you know get out of your own way I wrote down I expect to fail or or look forward to failing this year and using those as lessons to you know turn it into something successful so yeah it's not about me it's about you though so uh yeah I was gonna throw in a really good segue here because I know there's fear around staging and I wanted to get into actually what you're doing so here's an awful segue for all the listeners we're talking about fear a big
(38:49) fear into home staging is why am I going to pay a bunch of money for furniture like does it really make me make more money I feel like that's the number one fear or objection that you get from customers and I say that because that was my number one fear we just sold the house just got accepted we staged it give us your pitch man your best one let me out let me ask some questions why don't you help me Pitch this um you know what were what were the comps how quickly did it sell and what did it sell for generalities are fine if you
(39:27) don't want to like broadcast that no um well the the house is a five bedroom three bath um fully remodeled we took the whole house down there was a bunch of water damage so the project kind of spung we were just supposed to take off the roof put shed Dormers at a couple bedrooms upstairs be done like a year ago but so much water damage we had to tear the whole thing down we raised the foundation up and then just rebuilt so with that our budget changed mid project our expected outcome changed we were on a less
(40:04) desirable location because we're on a busier street so the house itself if you pick it up what is that we've got a lot of challenges a lot of challenges and and as we reach the end we're trying to sit at okay so that's my dog you felt like dropping his bone um if you take the house and you pick it up and you put it into a subdivision probably six hundred thousand with an HOA in a subdivision and but you'd get a smaller lot so we're sitting on like an acre but it's a busy road the house
(40:38) itself is great though um so as we go through this we're like okay our comps are sitting at maybe like 560. I don't know 500 to 560 570 range um but if it wasn't on the busy road it goes up so we're trying to say how can we pull in that like nice house HOA cozy feeling when you're not really in that environment outside of the house um and one of the I am an agent but with our workload and everything we did go with uh a big box agent to list it and that firm works with an interior designer and a staging company already
(41:26) so as we're talking about it I felt like it's super hard I can look at the house and I can see what it can become I've been through enough rebuilds I can look at it from like the rough stage and kind of see what it's all going to look like but it's super hard for someone coming in not in that environment to think of like okay well this is where my dining room table is going to go and how big is our couch do you think it'll fit here super hard to think about so I'm thinking about like making this
(41:57) thing look as much like a house and homey as possible is going to help pull the the focus in your eyesight in the house rather than out into the busy road and the gas station that's right next door so that was my thought s yeah so you're not alone nine out of ten people can't imagine where the couch is going to go right and similar I sold the house two years ago when we bought this house you know we thought it was going to be a great spot for our family it's on a busy road you know [Music] um about a month into no couple weeks into
(42:33) owning the house I dropped something on the floor and it rolled completely to the other side of the house and I was like oh really so I had a buddy of mine come in and look at the foundation he's like yeah it's three inches off right and so yeah and it and it turned out that um you know it couldn't be fixed of course we disclosed all this stuff but um you know we we did the same thing that you did I mean we didn't we didn't take it down to the ground and raise the foundation but we you know we took a lot
(43:02) of it down to the studs and and put a lot of work into rehabbing it a lot of work into the foundation you know putting that foam in and stuff like that um and uh you know we bought it at 298. um I think the when we sold it the comps were um somewhere around 325 um but due to the staging we got cash offers in in the 450 range yeah yeah um you know and so I don't know what we're seeing in Texas what we're seeing in Florida uh on average homes that are staged to go for 20 more than vacant houses okay um so when you actually like crunch the
(43:48) numbers on what that is you know a 2500 staging is going to net you um trying to do the actual numbers here well like a hundred thousand dollars right um so if it's a you know four hundred thousand dollar house and it's going for 500 000 or whatever right yeah um they say never do math in public I'm usually yeah but I've had a lot of coffee this morning so um anyway we won't hold you to numbers but we won't hold you the numbers what we're seeing is on average 17 to 20 more right so when we're crunching the
(44:25) numbers what we're seeing in terms of cash on cash investment is like 30 to 40x depending on you know Market selling price of the house stuff like that what investment can you or I make that will give a 30X cash on cash return staging yeah exactly I Gotta Give It Away right um you know but uh you know I've done reels and they they do really well you know I usually talk about um you know if if I say give me three thousand dollars and I'm Gonna Give You eighty five thousand dollars back even if I have that and I said 42.50
(45:06) right would you do it yeah yeah absolutely all day long I mean like how can I do it 10 you know 15 20 times a day right so that's really what staging does and you know it really wasn't a great sales pitch for the last 18 months saying hey we're going to help your house sell faster yeah but now it is I mean literally in um since June of 2022 the average days on Market has gone up from like four or five to 39 to 40.
(45:39) in just six months right yeah the 10x basically what's that so 10 times the normal amount right from two three to four days to 30 39 to 40. so yeah we're back to 2018 2019 levels we're not quite at 2008 2009 levels but we're at yeah 2018 2019 levels and you know let's time stamp this it's January 2023.
(46:06) um since June of 2022 the housing prices have gone down depending on the market like 12 to 20 percent right so yeah um I mean all the eye buyers are are backing out of the market you know because they can't make money in a in a market that's you know going down right so yeah why do we bring that up well hey man and Zillow missed the mark on the eye buying thing did you hear about the whole how much they lost with their algorithm just being off on on their marketing that was bad but sorry to interrupt real
(46:39) real bad um yeah no anyways you know the point is I mean we on average a stage to home sells 88 faster and for 17 to 20 percent more right so you know when and I used to do this whole presentation on the return on investment we would talk about carry costs your mortgage payment interest Insurance you know any utilities all that kind of stuff like okay if we can shorten you know days on Market 40 days that's where it becomes like pending and under contract right but you still have financing timelines and option periods and all
(47:18) that kind of stuff so you're actually looking at probably closer to you know 60 to 75 days before you can actually stop paying your mortgage on that property yeah not paying insurance and stuff like that so now we're talking depending on the house you know anywhere from eight to maybe twelve thousand dollars just to sell that yep whereas if we can shorten that time by half um then not only are you making that 30X cash on cash investment you're saving money on the carry cost you know and and we kind of like consider ourselves a
(47:52) marketing agency that uses Furniture right we know okay so this is your house this is all the challenges around this house we know who's most likely going to buy this house so why don't we decorate this house with that person in mind yeah right and it's a and it's a huge compliment uh to you know accomplishing that mission when the buyer's like hey can I purchase the furniture in this house right yeah so that staging that's the sales pitch that's what we do right we sell houses faster and for more money uh a lot more
(48:26) money a lot faster you know the staging company we we have a very different philosophy we are a marketing company first we you know deliver unparalleled return on investment um of course we get the decorating right but that's a given when you're talking to a staging company we want the process to be really really good yeah oh uh like we just heard yesterday from somebody they had a signed contract with another staging company and um they said oh by the way we just wanted to let you guys know um we're going to be staying in the
(49:01) guest bedroom off and on while we move uh out of state right and um the other staging company is like no that's unacceptable we don't allow anybody in the house while it's staged and so they called us and we said yeah that's totally fine we don't care yeah why wouldn't we let them stay in their own guest room in their own house that they own people have like 30 page contracts with you know like 100 bullet points that you have to initial we have three three seems better than 100 it does
(49:31) right that's what I thought they probably don't I mean not to speak for the other company but maybe they're like hey I don't want anybody taking advantage or living off of my furniture and you know feel like they're getting taken advantage of but I mean the the furniture maybe for them is more of a visual than um effective or tangible use right if that makes sense I could maybe understand that I don't want to go backwards with it but I had a question oh like liability on their equipment you're saying maybe maybe
(50:01) something something along those lines like hey you say you're only going to be in one room but you know you could be sitting on my couch watching the TV or whatever it is you know like something of that effect and maybe maybe makes the furniture wear down faster even though you live on your furniture that you have currently whatever when you have customers that you're trying to sell to a lot of them might have that mindset where like well my house is different I don't think that I need to do this
(50:31) staging because my house has this special feature it's so unique and I know maybe they make the the sale harder for you to achieve um I've been in sales for let's call it 10 plus years now in in different various forms um so I I know how to get into the mindset of providing the need first rather than saying here take this is what we have have that conversation find the customers or the clients needs and then fulfill those and then say let's make this work right um so like how do you overcome that if
(51:08) somebody thinks that you know this is a very unique feature of a house or their house overall is unique they don't really feel like they they need to make that investment and then I have another question after that do you collect the funds up front or is it at closing you guys get paid out just curious question on Maya nothing really relevant but I'll let you answer so this is a mindset thing okay um that's a really cool feature in that house and you really resonate with that really cool feature in that house
(51:42) um are you the one that's buying your house yeah because if not I mean what what are the odds that you know unless it's like you know a massive pool with a water park which doesn't even translate to everybody but what what are the odds one really really great feature is the one really really great feature for the first or second person that comes to view that house and and the answer is it's astronomically low right so you know how do we overcome that objection we just say hey the way that you live in a house is not the way that
(52:18) you sell a house and that's the same way if we stage it and they say I hate it it's hideous okay cool well we we can decorate your next house yeah more in line with what you want right but again we're a marketing company we know that the the people most likely to come visit this house in the first five showings are this person and we want to decorate for that person right because that's how you get an offer right if we decorate to you and your favorite thing is your emerald green couch with rhinestone
(52:59) Tufts like cool let's put one yeah yeah no it's it is so true and um I had the the thought of like when you go to a hotel and you you stay there you put your stuff down you go to the water park it's the next day room service comes in cleans your sheet folds your sheet folds the little like towel makes it look super cool and you walk in and you're like that was super awesome that feeling like through the build process you lose that or through you living there for 20 years you lose that you need to recreate
(53:41) that open the door oh my gosh feeling that one cool feature in your house doesn't have the oh my gosh I'm home feeling you've got that from the the service that came in and folded the sheets and made the pill look nice and put a chocolate there and organize the desk to look like it was new that's what you recreate if I got that kind of correct or the analogy fit yeah and when we sold our last house like you know we we took photos of the deer in the front yard and and stuff like that because we we knew that the person
(54:16) that was buying it and it turned out to be correct the person that was buying it renovated the front porch so that they could air condition it so that they could sit in it with a rifle because nice Texas that happens right um you know it's it's really about putting yourself in the shoes of you know that Avatar that you're selling to right yeah and yeah in um curious answer is uh yeah we take 100 payment up front okay okay interesting it's not very expensive I mean when when you think that we're
(54:51) putting you know thirty thousand dollars worth of furniture in a house we're only charging uh on average about 2 800 for that so the reason I ask that is because uh I just we just recently bought him in our house I mean not recently probably about two and a half years ago now but when we were buying you know like for me obviously having four kids we sold the house kind of on a whim uh through a friend of ours who's an agent uh awesome she did a great job for us um when we you know when you're going
(55:23) into selling and then buying on contingency because we couldn't buy unless this one sold right we couldn't make big purchases couldn't put them on a credit card blah blah blah so the reason I was asking about like when you take payment and I mean you're the business owner I'm just some random guy you just met today really right but like have you ever considered like offering hey we could take you know payment on closing but then increase bump your fee of another five ten percent like hey you know set up 2 800
(55:51) if you don't want to have the the hit on your credit card if you're trying to mortgage this or whatever let's look at you know taking payment but instead of it being 3 000 it's gonna be 33 or 3 500. um partner that we work with um they're essentially a hard money lender that will bring you the money to stage paint you know do Roofing you know power washing like whatever you have to do to to prep the house um even flooring I think they give us our fee and then they collect you know everything that they've
(56:29) helped you out with at closing um but we have a third party vendor for that because I mean we're growing so fast that we are buying furniture in real time right and so if we delay our accounts receivable then you know we can't provide the service to as many people um as we do so this has been kind of a good middle ground but it's funny you know I have a bunch of people who ask me that question which is why we went out and we found a partner to help us with this we have yet to have anybody take us up on
(57:01) it okay so we get this question from about half the sellers that we work with but nobody yet has has done it you know they just put it on the credit card right okay I have two challenges for you I don't want to take away from Marcus's next question no go for it go with the channel kind of random okay so say say you have a realtor friend that's listing a house my challenge is for your sales team if you however many people you have expert them to find a potential buyer to request your staging services on a
(57:32) property that they intend to buy if it's been sitting long enough that makes sense that's an interesting challenge yeah so so you say we frame this right so a buyer's looking uh Zillow realtor Redfin whatever and they see an empty house and they're like oh I just don't know how I would do live here hire us to Stage it to show them how they would do it and then you know hopefully obviously that turns into a sale for them or their a buy for them and obviously a sale for the and maybe they asked us but the costs with the seller
(58:12) right so yeah I mean that's similar to what we do on the Airbnb side um you know an investor comes to us and says hey you know high level these are my goals um or we work with a couple of property managers um throughout the nation who will actually help investors uh make a smart decision on on what to buy and then you know we come in because we've just done a lot of research and you know my family and I personally stay in a lot of airbnbs we've seen really good ones we've seen really bad ones so we know
(58:43) you know exactly what we're going to put in that house you know we can stay on budget uh it's going to be super efficient um you're going to get five star reviews it's going to photo really well so yeah I mean that's similar to what we do um on the Airbnb side and uh another bad segue I'm gonna throw that in here you were talking about Investors for the investors who have rental units let's say a tenant moves out cleaning crew comes in and you put it back on the market for it to be re-rented and we've had
(59:16) this instance where um that I had to chuckle when you talked about like are you the one buying this house because we've had ones where we've renovated uh unowned so another person owns a property we just manage the property he moved and when we went in to renovate it I changed paint colors all over the place and he looks at me he's like I hate it and I was like perfect because I'm not renting to you you like granola you like Browns and beiges and Earth Tones but like not everybody likes that so like we
(59:50) have to put in Gray floors and white walls and a gray wall here and then like a dark like just a blue random like accent wall I you're not living here but when you move back I'll repaint it all for you but for right now we're going to try to get you the most rental money we can so we're going to make those changes yeah so in that the one thing that's super hard for an investor if I have a tenant move out and I'm trying to market for a new tenant that's a very short window is that something where you would
(1:00:19) actually move furniture in for photos or can you do a digital staging is that something you guys are dabbling in or on the horizon of thinking about for those shorter tenant rollovers rather than a full staging 45 days to close timeline um so we do this with Apartments all the time they okay so they can photo it um digital staging is also called virtual staging okay and um I think the only thing that it does right is that it's cheap um even in the photos it just does not look right and you know I I actually
(1:01:03) think so if you're selling a house uh I think virtual staging does more harm than good and the reason is because you know um even when we're not in the market for a house my wife is constantly on Zillow looking at what's around and what's listed right and if she sees a a house-staged virtually with Furniture that's just unattainable at the price point of that house or whatever um and she gets her hopes up around what she saw in the photos um we all know because we're all in the industry you have five seconds when the
(1:01:38) person walks through the door to make that first impression right well if their expectation level is here yeah photos and they walk in and they see this you're never coming back from that expectation mismatch so I would actually save the money and and list vacant photos right or you know we talked about cash on cash return on investment go ahead and Stage the house right yeah going back to the example of an investor um so we've done a lot of Apartments where we staged it one day they shot it we moved that furniture to
(1:02:14) another apartment in the building they shot it we destaged it and we left all in one day we've we've done um uh we've done tons of properties where we staged it and then destaged it the next day um a lot of new builds where like hey we built this house specifically for a client um we're not going to put it on the market but we want our photos to still have like you know real Furniture in them right so we'll stage it and then destage it the next day um we're working with a company right now that
(1:02:50) um they're working on augmented reality and virtual reality so we will go in um we'll stage in a room for them um they'll do all the Wizardry behind the the cameras and the computers and all that kind of stuff and then we'll destage it and make it a different type of room the next day and a different type of room the next day so you know I think there's a lot of nuances to that question but you know first and foremost like we were out to be um client and customer Centric so if you have a need around
(1:03:21) Furniture we can figure out how to make it happen um timelines I mean you can you can call my team right now um and say hey I need this property stage tomorrow what can you do um we had the Orlando team had a guy reach out last night at 6 pm and say uh hey I know this is really short notice but we had a contract with another staging company and they did not show up today um can you guys stage this tomorrow this is 6 p.
(1:03:50) m the office is closed um they said absolutely um send him a contract he signed it we're staging it right now so um well that's awesome yeah and I'm glad you mentioned that virtual uh or digital staging being more hurtful than helpful because I I would go back to the analogy of walking your hotel room expecting it to be clean put together ordered and you open the door and everything's chaos you're like well that sucks like that feeling that gut feeling that you got is gonna sit there that whole weekend that you're there
(1:04:23) because they missed it and you're going to have that for a buyer and like that's just not a good foot you want to start out on and I was trying to think of like with a a home sale and a tenant turnover are two different marketings because you get a lot of foot traffic and people coming through your your listings but a tenant turnover I get a lot of like window shopping the emails are like hey is this still available I saw your pictures but like very few are going to come and see the unit except if they are very
(1:04:53) very prone to renting so the virtual kind of different on that scope but yeah for a home sale even me like I either like you were saying go all in or don't do it because you're going to do more harm by virtually doing it at a home sale side of it so like I completely agree with you there don't half-ass two things yes hey don't half past one thing either like anything that we're doing is worth overdoing so we're just like creating a perfect Loop here I like that the Segways got us all the way
(1:05:24) home and we reached an hour but I I have like more I can and ask on that but we try to keep it to an hour just because I feel like it gets a little bit too long but Dan did you have any follow-up questions that you wanted to ask that were sitting there I was gonna say um I guess so I'm here for you whatever okay cool um I was going to go back to the the virtual staging I think to me not to not that it's that relatable but like when it's like when you see something that's for sale on Amazon and
(1:05:56) it's they take they take a photo or whatever the product is and they like Photoshop it into you know on like if it's a backpack onto somebody or in it it decides the scale is completely off and then the lighting's off and you can completely tell that's what I think about when I think of like virtual staging because I don't think enough time or effort is going to be put in to make sure that the lighting of the picture matches the lighting of whatever furniture that you're putting in there and then at what point is the
(1:06:23) the cost or the the affordability what's the trade-off there because if you spend too much time trying to make every photo for every room accurate or perfect you're you're going to be either losing money as a company or you're going to be charging too much for that service so like you said I I don't see virtual staging as a great option or even a good option um the other question I have is like what kind of things are you looking for or are you do you have anybody like on your team for like innovating like what is the
(1:06:57) next level or the next step of staging right like I have a random idea then I told you another challenge if you have a house that's on a market for let's call it 60 plus days and you have obviously Realtors or agents in your in your phone book on your phone your contact list and you say hey you got any properties 60 days old uh they're not selling and maybe they are staged but then they have a client that's interested in looking at it would you ever consider like it's really random like hiring almost
(1:07:29) like actors to portray like a barbecue in the backyard or like sitting down in the in the man cave watching a football game or an event have them having the the clients come in and see that atmosphere right you already have a background in movies I'm just saying like let's film up not even specifically to that I don't know anything about cameras yeah so I mean something like that I mean that's just a random thought that I have but do you have what is like some innovative ideas that you maybe guys are
(1:08:00) coming up with or gonna be looking forward to doing so one of our driving philosophies as a company is that we will get to yes so if you have a crazy idea and it involves anything even close to our core competencies we're going to figure out how to pull it off um I hadn't thought about hiring actors at an open house but I like where your head's at on this one and um I'm gonna throw that out as a challenge to a couple of Realtors um but yeah we'll we'll get to yes on anything I mean I I think one of the
(1:08:37) really cool things that we um are getting to you know going back to that um the scale different operating locations you know now we don't have one staging coordinator we have two staging coordinators and as we expand you know into other territories this year and next year then we'll have three four five staging coordinators we'll have a you know you know director of staging that now you know oversees The Mastermind of five staging coordinators and we've got you know five sales coordinators and now we've got a sales
(1:09:12) manager and a marketing manager who um just started Tuesday and that that's a that's a lot off of my plate now that I can be a little bit more forward thinking but um you know there's a lot of masterminds out there we're able to run our own now because we've got a great team and you know we also referenced this at one point but you know I I think it's a really really good question to ask your team and to ask yourself um if we did do it how would it be done right because I think so and and listen
(1:09:51) I don't I don't hire when I hire the sales and marketing manager I was like hey I wanna I don't want you to treat me uh as your boss like now that you're part of this Mastermind you have a seat at the table I want you to view yourself as a partner um and I tell a lot of my employees that um I don't want you guys to you know just say yes sir or whatever and just do what you're told right um you know we have uh bi-weekly one-on-ones with every single person on the team um regardless of their position
(1:10:21) so you know they have a seat at the table because we want to know where those innovative ideas are coming from and you know one of our core values is inspiration uh we want to lead from the front and um so anyway I'm I'm open to whatever challenge yeah and I can't remember what book it was but I had I've taken the term from it uh they talk about entrepreneurs and a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs we're trying to create entrepreneurs like eventually like you can't everybody can't be an entrepreneur because you
(1:10:52) need some Workforce to create the bus to go so they were talking about entrepreneurs so you're not going to start your own company but in the position you are in you are in a position where you are head of that and you are the ideas person you're driving that bus you need to have the Hat on in the Mantra of like I am developing and my ideas are what are creating this this little microcosm in terms of the whole company so I've liked that entrepreneur mindset and that's what I tell like my foreman
(1:11:24) we come up with a problem like you could have your build plans but as you get to building there's always going to be little areas where like oh I didn't think about this when I opened the cabinet this is obstructed or if this is here that causes a problem like I'll turn to like hey I'll have an idea and you'll have an idea I trust your workmanship where do you think the best path is like you can figure this one out I'm probably 99 gonna go with it and giving them the the autonomy to just
(1:11:55) make their own decisions one takes things off of my plate on your team and I mean that that's why I ended up having to clear out half the team in San Antonio in April of last year because you know the the guy really at the the point of that you would give him an opportunity to make a decision and you can see that there's three possible options and there's one that's clearly the best and there's one that's clearly the worst he would yeah do the one that was clearly the worst yeah um and that and that and that's tough you
(1:12:30) know um so you have to hire really really well you have to have a mission statement you have to have a vision statement you have to have core values you have to hire and Fire based off of those core values you have to have you know right and left boundaries because you know I heard this um statistic in April of last year that like only three percent uh of the population is wired to be that entrepreneur that we're talking about right the red the rest like something like 78 of the population they they still want to innovate they still
(1:13:04) want to have a seat at the table but they do want you to give them the right and left boundaries where there's permission to make a decision within those boundaries and you know it's up to you know us as the business owners to create those right and left boundaries yes um another one of our core values is accountability um and hold people accountable to those right and left boundaries even for myself I have to put right and left boundaries on myself you know as an example and uh and hold myself accountable to those right and
(1:13:39) left boundaries so um you know you have to hire well to to pull that off yeah and and create the like the boundaries you're saying do you know who Jordan B Peterson is of course yeah okay whether you like him or you don't like them I there's a sound bite on them like two weeks ago I listened and he was a professor in in the segment he was talking about was back in his days when he was a professor he was talking about those like laws was where they started from they said okay do you want to play a game
(1:14:11) and he said the student was like yeah and he's like okay you go first and then the student just like stood there and he's like do what and he's like just go first and the student's like yeah but where do I go and he's like exactly you need some sort of boundary you need some rule to get you to go even though you have no rules there's no rules and you still stood there but once I put a chessboard down there are rules to this game now and now if I said go first you do it you'd move the pawn too or you'd move like you
(1:14:46) start rolling and he says like well you know you can't throw a basketball at the board like that's in the rules so it's not the it's not the complete openness of your structure and it's not the bearing down of all of the rules but you have to find the right equal medium to where there's structure but freedom and then putting the right people in that system and I that was like a light bulb went off for me on that one yeah that is a wealth of just general Olympics but you know when you talk
(1:15:20) about Jordan Peterson and whether you like him or not like man how much damage has that statement done to civilization and really since I mean it's magnified since 2016. it's like yeah now whether you like a person or not plays into whether they have something worth listening to yeah and I don't like that I mean that that is done so much damage to you know the human psyche because now you know you can't listen to people that you quote unquote aren't supposed to listen to and yeah I don't subscribe to that I listen
(1:15:58) to everybody yeah me too so why not in uh even on on topics of things I don't agree with I'll turn on the other side's radio or newscast to see what's going on because like I don't know it's all knowledge I get to decipher how I want to decide on it but I'm gonna get the info so yeah I had a I had a history teacher anyway we're like really out in the Weeds now it happens it's the end of the show it's the end of the show yeah right on uh history teacher back in 10th Grade
(1:16:28) and um you know he would when he would have signed a paper he's like in your paper I want to know your assessment of you know the their Paradigm you know how they see the world um don't need to know that it lines up with your Paradigm but you know at least that you are you know aware of how to start processing that kind of information um you know and I think now like in social media we like the algorithms are so finely tuned to show you what um they know that you'll engage with so you don't kind of get that challenging
(1:17:11) uh perspective or thought anymore yeah um Echo chamber totally yeah exactly um I just think it's important to have conversations you know it may and maybe not even pick sides like every objective or be the Devil's Advocate or you know yeah being being receptive or cognizant that there is another other opinion not not just your fact not just you know your own and that's what it is like yeah being open to to have that healthy dialogue and you could get into a heated argument or discussion but you know you could walk away with
(1:17:50) more knowledge than you left it with I I yeah I appreciate that as well yeah stay stay at the table I mean I think the the people that I just flat out will not listen to are the people that are like oh you're challenging my thoughts so I'm gonna start screaming at you slam my hands on the table and walk away it's like yeah I won yeah yeah essentially and I I hope that doesn't come across within your your company where you're sitting aside and you're you're trying to sell the benefit of home staging and
(1:18:20) they're like it's a waste of money I'm not doing it like those are the people where like as much as you know the numbers and you know it will benefit you kind of just have to like sit back and say like you're not the client we're gonna take on I'm just going to keep focusing my energy on people that are open to idea not saying that they're like 100 gonna buy every time but they're open to the idea of what you have to say and how you can benefit because even I when I was talking to the
(1:18:48) agent and she was saying home staging home staging I was Devil's Advocate I was like this is a new house it's perfectly done we don't need to hide any flaws like you it's an open concept they'll see it they'll get it because I wanted to see how much they push in the benefit and if they believed in it like that made me feel better too but yeah I I was throwing out objections even though I know the numbers on it you know I I wanna I wanna throw out a challenge specifically to the San Antonio Market you know I I've owned
(1:19:18) this company now for three and a half years and there is a uh cohort of agents in San Antonio that almost take joy out of talking me out of this being a viable business model really we don't need a stage we've never needed a stage that notion of like this is how we've always done things which if you are not challenging that notion at every given time um you're just not growing as a person as a company you know as an industry you always need to challenge that notion um but if you're not staging in this
(1:19:53) market you're really doing your client a disservice yeah you know you're you're not uh be in that fiduciary in the transaction right because we're talking about you know 88 faster um 17 to 20 more 30X cash on cash return on investments so I I just want to throw down you know just this blanket challenge that if you are listing a vacant house right now in this market yes more or less failing your client yes I know that's strong I'm a strong guy I agree yep because I would and I'm going to go back to my Terrible
(1:20:33) Hotel analogy uh and bring me up to Wisconsin hotels don't need to do anything special to sell out during a Packer game every hotel room is sold out weeks before the game we just got done with a year of a Packer game like all of the houses on the market are gone in two days three days there's so many buyers there was not enough inventory that was such a weird little blur so if you're an agent saying we don't need a stage they're already selling I agree that was a Sunday Packer game we are now in the
(1:21:08) everyday Norm you need to have a good product you need to you need to show your your prospective buyers that you care that you have the the marketing show side of that sale like it needs to happen we're flipping back into normal that's what I would equate it to so along with that that challenge like you said do you sell the staging offer to the seller of the house or to the agent excuse me um really either one um I I tell the agents that the sellers probably should pay because when we're talking about that transaction the
(1:21:49) seller is walking away with way more return than the agent is but you know be the agent that has that in their toolkit that has that conversation um in their back pocket who can pitch the value who can approve the value in their numbers um and and if your you know client absolutely will not do it I mean we do have agents that say you know what I'm going to front it um because this is part of my brand this is part of my um Competitive Edge um but you're gonna pay me back at closing so yeah and I guess that was the reason
(1:22:30) I asked too because if if you know you put the the pitch or the sale in the hands of the realtor do they have the passion like you or your sales people would and then if they say well I talk to my client they're not really interested and would you I mean have you ever gone to say hey well let me talk to your client for you and it's in your best interest to let me right because at the end of the day you're increasing then your commission on this transaction 17 20 whatever maybe if you're listing
(1:22:59) at 400 000 and you know you get as a realer in our area whether it's six percent normally Marcus correct me if I'm wrong yeah that's somewhere around there right and then if you go from a listing price of 400 but then with staging you're pushing 500 525 or whatever the actual numbers may be you know you're talking an additional six thousand dollar commission right or increasing Commission on your end if my math is right yeah so I guess I guess the ballpark maybe having having more more passion or more
(1:23:33) um intent with that conversation to the the selling for the sellers as opposed to the passing it through to the agent because like I said the agent sometimes some of them like you said just want the quick Buck we've never had the state's houses and you know they're still flying they're still flying off the market well cool they're flying off the market but at a lower you know a lower value or you know so um just just like I said random questions that pop in my head that I made me think that they're a little bit relevant to
(1:24:02) you know what you're trying to accomplish there so yeah 100 I mean at the end of the day we want industry Partners so if you know the sales team needs to hop in on that conversation with you um to help you promote your brand absolutely we're gonna do it um you know Realtors have kind of had a Year's worth of Packer games to accept technology too and you know they they've had to compete so hard for listings that they don't you know they they don't want to rock the boat so to speak but you know I I
(1:24:36) think you know in this market um what's going to differentiate differentiate your house from another house is also going to differentiate One agent from another agent so I think yeah I think that mindset is going to shift I just want to challenge San Antonio specifically to really take this Market seriously and and choose you know what your Competitive Edge is going to be yeah and then decide to go staging and then decide to go to Pat O'Brien's after the closing and enjoy the fruits of the labor in that one with the cast of your
(1:25:13) of your live uh live active live action staging event totally live action staging that's gonna be great I mean so my random idea was like go to a local high school and you know take some of the theater kids obviously with the the director present or the the you know theater class director and bring them there and say hey this is what we're looking to accomplish can you guys mimic this I mean they might get a kick out of that completely random too like hey can you guys just go like in the basement watching TV and make tick tocks like go
(1:25:44) through the motions of making texts that's what most teenage kids and not generalizing on that level but you know that maybe what hey you know everyone their kids doing that in that space the number one thing that kids want to be when they grow up now is an influencer in the US that just came out so you had yeah I'm just Gobi influencers and we'll videotape it I've got some like Tick-Tock dances going on in the background so [Music] um talking with you the only thing I want to ask you do you have I know you got an
(1:26:20) event coming up is it end of February yeah it's an industry event it's specifically for home stagers but yeah I'm gonna be speaking at the um International Association of home staging professionals I'm just really talking about running your business or your business is going to run you um and this is something that you know like I came really close to burnout last year because I'm like man I can I mean any kind of the spirit of you know endurance races and and sales performance and stuff I can I can run
(1:26:52) harder you know longer than anybody else and I learned uh that that only goes so far right so yeah when we're talking about right and left boundaries when we're talking about core values when we're talking about Mission Vision like you have to have all these things running or else your businesses just kind of run you over yeah absolutely that's that's in New Orleans New Orleans okay and is there still like tickets available for people to buy to go to that event like yeah for for homestagers absolutely yeah okay
(1:27:30) um but yeah we're we're kind of all over the place um I think we can send you guys a QR code that you can uh post on this which will take you to our link tree where you can connect with us on social you can uh hit our website um if we are not currently in your Market we will be um because we want to be Nationwide we want to take this philosophy that we have um to the entire country but if you are in Florida if you are um anywhere near Dallas Austin San Antonio Houston uh the Hill Country um you know if you do airbnbs in either one
(1:28:06) of those areas anywhere in Florida or in those areas of Texas um give us a call because again with that philosophy we do it better faster cheaper than anybody else um the website is thestaging dot Co that's right okay yeah we're gonna work on getting you up to Wisconsin as quick as possible as long as as quick as possible isn't until at least May deal May that's when the weather gets nice anyway so why not I will start looking for some Commercial Warehouse property for you I was up in Bend Oregon
(1:28:41) a couple weeks ago visiting um family and uh they already had snow on the ground I'm like this place is not for me yeah I know need a giant bubble for the winter months but that'll be uh I think we'll get to Mars first before you invent that one totally yeah but uh it was a it was so much fun talking to you um to see the transition from where you started to where you are now is super cool where you're hosting an international home staging uh convention so that's that's awesome uh we will talk
(1:29:15) again soon I'm sure uh thank you for all the knowledge hopefully our viewers got something out of it I know I learned a lot um and thank you for the contact information We'll add that to the show notes so that if we have questions I know you're not in Wisconsin but if our listeners from Texas and Florida want to get a hold of you they know how to do that as well so I appreciate that and we'll also are you on Instagram is that in the QR code uh our whole link tree is on the QR code sweet so we'll make sure to put that in
(1:29:45) the show notes for you yeah and you know people here's a free business idea for everybody don't carry around business cards carry around these things with your QR code and the name of your company on them I've seen a version It's like a credit card that you'd go out and they'd scan your card but then again you're holding basically a business card but it remotes right to their phone which was like the key technology to it yeah any camera can scan this yeah yeah takes them right to our Point tree
(1:30:14) it's super helpful anyway I like it I like it it's awesome this was a blast um you know I just uh a business coach of mine a long time ago um was just like hey all businesses it's finding light-hearted kings in the industry um you know back in the day when when kings were at War everybody went together and I think you know 2020 kind of kicked off uh a season for every small business owner that said hey you're all startups again um nobody doesn't received anything um in fact uh some people are going to
(1:30:49) put limitations on whether you're allowed to be in business or not um small business owners coming together holding each other up supporting each other masterminding together I mean that that's what's going to differentiate all of us in the next you know five ten years so uh very happy to be here thanks for having me guys yeah we appreciate it right back at you thanks a lot Brandon thank you absolutely you're mocking me out of here oh that's hilarious [Music]