We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lila Glasoe Francese. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lila below.
Lila, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
99% of your business is how you present it and how you sell it. The other 1% is just plugging in all the information, facts, knowledge and and stats about your product/brand.
Lila, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Lila Glasoe Francese and I am the founder/co-owner of OHI HOME, LLC. My husband and I started out company fourteen years ago during a recession. We first began as a home staging company. We had been flipping homes in Los Angeles and had decided to use our gains to move our life to a small town an hour and a half north of the city, Ojai, CA. We had sold many of the homes we flipped in Los Angeles with our own staging and when we began our home search in Ojai we realized there was no home staging company based in the area. Having had a background in design and a bachelor of fine arts degree it felt very “doable” to try our luck. My home staging career began with a terrific organization RESA (Real Estate Staging Association) where I was able to meet mentors and learn skills to be a successful, home stager. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got starting our business was “You don’t need a hundred people to work with your company to be successful. You just a handful of reliable clients.” In home staging, realtors are our primary client. We work with realtors now that we began working with over a decade ago. Staging in a small town often presents a different set of challenges. For instance, it is a challenge for home buyers to buy furniture locally. We quickly learned that if we offered the furnishings in our stagings it would set up another income stream for our business. Seller’s pay us to rent the home staging pieces, but buyers can purchases these pieces and have a move in ready home. Many of these buyers have also turned into design clients, hiring us to help with construction projects, paint consulting, buying additional decor and ordering window treatments. I feel it is my job as a designer to help elevate a client’s ideas and make their redesigned home turn out even better than they imagined.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Many new home stagers get frustrated by difficult clients. Often realtors encourage staging and the seller has a very little concept of what is is we actually do as home stagers. I have mentored many new stagers and they often ask how to handle reluctant sellers. 1) Realize if they are reluctant they probably don’t truly understand what it is you do. Home staging makes sellers more money and sells homes faster than on average. Once a seller truly believes this they won’t be so reluctant. 2)Share your success stories. 3)Share your statistics! For instance, I just staged a home that was for sale on street with three other homes. One house was listed as is and is still on the market. The other house was sell staged by the seller and they got a sale price close to what they were asking. The house we staged received eight offers, five over asking and sold within the first week on market. Our seller was able to directly witness the power of home staging. 4)I tell our sellers when we meet that the reason to stage a home isn’t just to sell it, it’s to not leave money on the table, Home staging presents homes in their best optimal light and buying a home is often the only large investment that’s an emotional purchase. Our buyers often realize they NEED the home we staged the moment they walk in. 5) Perceived value matters in real estate transactions and home staging maximizes perceived value.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding part of our business is honestly turning a house into a home. This is true of both our home staging and interior design projects. We had one client, Abby, a brilliant cancer research doctor that I will never forget. I was called into her home at the request of her realtor to help prepare it for market. Abby was retiring and moving out of state. Her home was a testament to how hard she worked – lots of awards, tons of medical books. But it was also an example of how low on her priority list her home aesthetic had been. Her sheets were ripped. Her plates were chipped. The stuffing was even coming out of her furniture. There were huge stain marks on everyone wooden table and she had left me a sign on one such piece saying “don’t move.” Abby admitted she had moved into the home forty years ago shortly after her wedding and had not found the need to change anything since. She left to work that day hesitant about the process, her realtor making many assurances as she walked her to her car. When Abby arrive home a few hours later she stood speechless in the doorway. “This looks like a hotel,” she exclaimed! I gave her a tour of each room and when we reached the primary bedroom (in home staging we make the primary bedroom a huge priority), she began crying. We hugged (yes this is often a part of a home stagers job). Abby looked at me and said “why didn’t I do this twenty years ago?” I answered her back.
“I don’t know Abby, but I do know you deserve to live this beautifully. You have worked so hard!” Abby’s house sold within one week of hitting the market and she ended up buying most of the staging pieces! She is living a beautiful retirement in Arizona and knowing that is beyond rewarding.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ohihome.com
- Instagram: @ohihome
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ohihome
- Twitter: @ojaihome
Image Credits
OHI HOME,LLC