We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Karen Durbin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Karen , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Every home staging or design project I’ve done has been meaningful to me. I love helping people see their homes in a new light — to fall back in love with their space if it’s a design project, and to help buyers fall in love with the space if it’s a real estate staging project. I fall in love with every home I work in, and bring my artistic vision to life. But if I had to say what my absolute favorite project has been, it would be staging a 19th century Victorian for a client who had moved into a retirement community and needed her home to sell fast so she wouldn’t be stuck paying two mortgages. The history of the home, the character of the neighborhood, and the generalized design tastes of the target buyer we’re all taken into consideration as I made a design plan for this very special home and it’s very special owner. The magic and art of staging is that you can completely transform a space with the right design choices. This home needed to feel more contemporary and updated without obliterating the unique beauty of a 150 year old home. It was a fun project, challenging and exciting! After sitting on the market for 2 months with very little buyer interest, it was under contract 2 days after being staged, and closed in time for the seller to avoid another payment. With the money she saved, she hired me to come design her new home!

Karen , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I actually kind of stumbled somewhat unwillingly into this career, but now realize that so many of my past careers, and choices, have led me to be exactly where I need to be, doing exactly what I love. I started my adult life as a high school English and journalism teacher. That background has given me the ability to write well, and to write succinctly. I use that skill now to do real estate copywriting for my clients. Working with teenagers for 18 years also helped me hone the skills needed to be clear, and direct when helping someone, and to be able to “read” a person so that I can bring exactly what they need to the table, and I bring that communication style to every client interaction. During my time as a teacher, I also bought and remodeled 3 homes. I dove into these projects with late night research into home design and learned so much from doing the work myself that I can now advise clients on remodels with more than just design expertise, but the expertise of someone who has been there and done that. When I left teaching, my good friend Beth at Artemis Interior asked me to come work for her part time doing marketing, and social media. I absolutely loved that job and learned even more about real estate and the process of marketing a home for sale. Beth quickly realized that my eye for design meant she wanted me to do more than marketing and start staging homes. At first I balked at the idea — I love decorating and interior design, but just wasn’t sure I really wanted to do it full time. She dragged me along to several projects and handed me the reigns, and then I fell in love. I fell in love with the idea of a home as a canvas, the idea of lighting as a way to paint that canvas, and the simple beauty that choosing the right furniture and color palette can bring to a home. It is an art and I became an artist. When Beth moved her business in a different direction to no longer include home staging, I opened Wildflowers Home Staging and Copywriting Services and now get to do two things I love — writing, and home design — everyday. Is it the career I imagined for myself when I was younger? Nope. But I’ve learned that often the things we stumble upon are far more magical than the things we planned.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I strongly believe that a good leader will surround themselves with good people, and then get the heck out of their way. Sometimes it’s difficult to let go and let my team take over. I admit I may be guilty of micro-managing at times, but I love my team and their ideas, and while I continue to train them, I am open to learning from them as well. They are creative, and skilled and it’s my job to give them the tools they need and then back-off, stay in my lane, and let them design away! Allowing them to have control over a project, and bring their own artistic visions to life, keeps morale high. In home design, it can be very defeating to work for someone who expects you to stay within their parameters and won’t allow you to play, I hope that my team continues to grow and learn and that I can pass my expertise on to them, but I also hope they feel they have some independence and can break away from my design principles to play around and implement their own.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I have a few rules about my business and about my life that have helped build my reputation.

Always go above and beyond
Always under promise and over deliver

It took about a year for word-of-mouth referrals to begin to really drive my new client intake, but my flexibility, my almost annoying attention to detail, and my desire to always go above and beyond what has been promised have built a reputation for Wildflowers Home Staging that grown my business through referrals. Home stagers are a dime a dozen, but truly good design specialists are not. It’s a tough business with a lot of competition, but when people see my work, the work of my team, and then find that we are also easy to work with and want to be a part of their team, well, that’s when the referrals happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wildflowershomestaging.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildflowers_home_staging/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WildflowersHomeStaging
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-durbin-18b26b153
• Yelp: https://yelp.to/k6MOsObDbtb

Image Credits
Karen Durbin