One Saturday morning, doing my New York Times Spelling Bee (don't judge me, it's a whole ritual), I decided to write down every piece of software my staging business runs on. I even had to dig through my bank statements to remember everything I was paying for.

Nine or ten tools. Every one of them doing exactly what it was supposed to do. But staring at that list, I realized I hadn't built a system. I'd built a collection of tools that didn't know the others existed.

That's the moment fragmentation clicked for me. None of those tools were wrong. They just weren't built for a staging business or designed to work together. Today, I'm sharing the story behind that realization, the decade of trial and error that led up to it, the conversations that nearly stopped me from pursuing the idea, and why I ultimately chose to build something from the ground up instead of settling for another workaround.

What You'll Learn:

• What I mean by "fragmentation" and how to recognize it
• The question I started asking about every tool in my business
• Why I chose not to build on someone else's platform
• How years of solving small problems led to one much bigger solution

RESOURCES:

• Join the Harlowe Inner Circle Waitlist: https://waitlist.harloweco.com/
• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
  

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

This week I'm continuing our series on how I simplified my staging business and how fifteen years of lived experience is directly shaping how Harlowe is built.

I walk through the full project life cycle for vacant staging: prospect, preview, proposal, sale, planning, install, and monitoring. Mind you, that last phase, monitoring, is nowhere near as passive as I used to think. There's real home staging admin work hiding in contract renewals, follow-ups, and invoicing.

I also talk about why patchwork tools – my old Zapier workarounds included – were never going to hold up long-term.

Lastly, I share why I'm more convinced about Harlowe than anything I've ever built, plus how to get on the waitlist before we open it in waves.

What You'll Learn

• The full project life cycle for a staging business
• Why the monitoring phase is one of the most admin-heavy (and most overlooked) parts of our business
• Why flexibility with clients can quietly add complexity to your workload
• Why software built by outsiders never quite fits a staging business, and why Harlow was built differently

RESOURCES:

• Join the Harlowe Inner Circle Waitlist: https://waitlist.harloweco.com/
• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
  

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

For years, every time a client wanted to move forward, I found myself jumping between multiple tools, entering the same information over and over again, and waiting for the next step. I'd send the proposal, wait for a response, send the agreement, wait for a signature, then figure out payment. It was just the way I thought the process had to work.

Then I tried something different.

I combined two of those steps into one. The very first time I sent it, the agreement came back signed within the hour. It was one of those moments when I thought, "Why have I been making this so much harder than it needs to be?"

Today, I'm sharing what that process looked like, what changed when I simplified it, and why I eventually realized there was still one piece missing. If you've ever felt like your staging proposal workflow involves too much waiting, too much follow-up, or too many moving parts, I think this conversation will give you a different way to think about it.

What You'll Learn

• Why treating your proposal as its own standalone step creates friction instead of removing it
• The exact process I used for years, and every re-entry point that was wasting my time
• The one change that got me a signed agreement in under an hour
• How what I have built finally closes the gap for good

RESOURCES:

• Join the Harlowe Inner Circle Waitlist: https://waitlist.harloweco.com/
• Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp
• Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate
• Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool
• Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome
  

If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!

ENJOY THE SHOW?

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you.
• Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.