In 1997, Geri was flying to cities in the south,
paying for hotel rooms and tuition for each course she was required
to complete to get her Image Consultant Certification. “When
it came time to do my taxes,” she says, “I realized
I was spending a lot of money to get my certification and making
more money staging houses. I’m not a great mathematician,
but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I should
be spending more time where the money is.”
Staging Denver prepares homes about to go on the market, so that
they sell faster and for more money. “We specialize in making
vacant homes and occupied homes look like show homes,” Geri
says. “We also do redesign, which is making a difference
in your home with what you already own.”
Q: What do you find most fulfilling
about running your business?
GB: I have a passion
for helping people move on with their lives! If your house is
for sale, you can’t move to the next phase of your life
until it sells, whether you are living in it or carrying two mortgages
or it is an investment property. We love making your house become
a home with which buyers fall in love. However, my greater joy
is when sellers call to let me know the house is under contract!
I’ve always loved doing makeovers and helping people look
their best. Staging or redesigning a home is helping it to look
its best. When you love where you live, you start to see potential
in every area of your life, including your career, your marriage,
your teenagers, etc. A makeover in any area of your life can be
the impetus you need to tackle some of the tougher ones. It helps
you see what’s possible.
Q: What motivated you to start
this business?
GB: I started staging
houses to make enough money to take the classes I needed to get
my Image Consultant Certification. I didn’t have a particular
background that would equate to staging homes. When I began the
business, not many people even knew what the term “staging”
meant. Competition in the field was almost nonexistent. There
were about three of us and we were hardly aware of each other.
I taught myself everything I needed to know by listening to realtors
and buyers, reading everything I could find on preparing your
home for sale and moving everything around countless times until
I saw the best way to present each room. I personally train each
stager on my team and we believe we bring a uniqueness to each
home we stage.
Today, we have helped to establish an organization called Colorado
Staging Professionals that has a current mailing list of 70-plus
staging companies in the area. It is one of the fastest growing
careers of the new century.
Q: What book has been most helpful
to you in your business?
GB: E-myth Revisited
by Michael Gerber. When I started, I was the technician who
created every aspect of the business and implemented it. The billing
didn’t always get done in a timely manner but all my clients
were glad to pay me when I finally invoiced them!
I got to a point where I was having so much fun doing what I
was doing, I had to share it with my daughter, then we shared
it with a couple of other people. Now,
there are about eight of us having a great time doing the things
we love with the business and not doing the things we aren’t
gifted to do. I learned that from E-myth.
If you are doing it all alone, your business isn’t big enough
yet! Keep building it! I hire people who are excellent at the
things I’m not, so I can do what I love. When you follow
that formula, you create positions for people to come alongside
you who will complete your winning team. Add
an Advisory Board to that and you will be unstoppable!
Q: Who has influenced you most
in your life?
GB: My relationship with
God, who keeps telling me to “See it bigger!”, my
family, who calls to the best in me, and my best friends forever,
who stand with me during the character-building times and won’t
allow me to get away with mediocrity.
Q: What has proved to be your most
successful marketing strategy?
GB: After attending many
leads groups and networking opportunities, we identified our target
market to be realtors and began sending out an ezine with our
success stories and results. We also include tips for their business
success from a business coach. Keeping our name in front of them
has proven to be the best strategy for us.
Q: What have been the greatest
challenges you have had to overcome, or are currently facing,
in your business?
GB: Getting out of the
way of my extremely competent team so they can do what they do
best. I recently had everyone tested (a referral from one of my
board members) and discovered that I have become redundant in
the daily operations of my business. I’m going to go do
what I do best and let my team continue to create the vision of
what a buyer’s life could be like when they purchase one
of our staged homes!
Q: How did you benefit/are you
benefiting from participating in a Make-it-Fly®
program?
GB: The Bible says, “A
wise woman has many counselors” (the Geri paraphrase version).
We all have people around us who would like to tell us how to
build and run our businesses. But they aren’t always the
best counselors for us. I love having a group of men and women
who are truly invested in my business for the long run. The Advisory
Board 101 was a great first step in the right direction, at
the right time, for my business. But I’ve spent the last
four years with a board that honestly cares about me, my business
and our growth, as I care about them. As they speak into my life
and the life of my business, I do the same for them. When I do,
I realize I’d best take my own advice as well as theirs.
We think we know what challenges we are facing right now, but
a fellow board member identifies something in their business that
requires an answer and we realize that it’s something that
is looming in our business also. Someone needs to redesign their
website and suddenly you realize your website is looking a bit
last century. Someone talks about being out of balance in an area
of their life and you suddenly can’t remember the last time
you were alone with the love of your life without a cell phone
and a laptop. It may not occur as a pressing need but it helps
you be on the lookout for a problem that could blind-side you
when you least expect it.
Q: What would you say to other
business owners who are contemplating getting involved in a Make-it-Fly®
program?
GB: Do
the Advisory Board so you can get to the Alumni
Board! Joking aside, both programs
can be life and business changing for anyone looking for answers
in building their business. There is something
truly wonderful in cheering for your own home team and that’s
what the Board becomes for you.
“When the tide rises, all the ships in the harbor rise.”
We foster each other’s success and we all win because of
it!
Geri Bigum can be reached by phone
at: 303-886-1614, or visit her website at: www.stagingdenver.com.
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We
returned to snowy Colorado Sunday after eight days in sunny Mexico—taking
time out to relax, reflect on this year and talk about our plans
for 2008. A lovely condo by the beach in a beautiful, quiet location
was the perfect place for this. Other visitors told us they were
bored, since there was no entertainment, but it was just what
we needed! 
