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I've thought long and hard on how to approach
everything we are seeing on the news regarding Covid-19 in a positive
and productive email to you my dear readers.
No doubt, you are getting a lot of these emails
but my hope is to take a different and more "actionable" approach that
is tailored to the staging/design industry and filled with helpful tips,
useful tech tools, free training and weekly inspiration...
First off, I want to encourage you by telling you
that this is temporary. This too shall pass (hopefully sooner than
later).
We are all in this together. We are all
impacted.
Together we can be stronger and while the news
shows the negative, I believe all of us has witnessed patience, grace
and kindness at our local stores/communities in the wake of this more
often than not.
Homes still need selling and staging.
I'm going to try and follow this equation in my
business, family and community so I hope that it is helpful to you
too...
Prepared + Perspective + Productivity +
Positivity = Peace and Empowerment
Prepared...
For your business -
- Begin having conversations with your clients,
employees and vendors in anticipation of the best way to handle
quarantine if that happens in your area.
- Contact your clients about how you can still
help while social distancing...there's so much you can do using
technology (see below)
- Use free technology like "Facetime" or Skype
to do walk-throughs with your clients. Jody Lovitt, emailed me
saying she is already doing "virtual, occupied consultations" and
her clients are embracing it...they still need your help and we can
pass off our expertise remotely. Have them send you their room
photos ahead of time and then schedule the call.
- Time to start moving business activities like
banking, team communication, etc...online. Hint - An easy way
to share your screen and communicate quickly via video is using a
free technology called Loom -
https://www.loom.com/
- Use Google Calendar to stay organized and
communicate, use Facetime or Discord to group chat (my son has been
using the Discord app a ton to watch movies with friends remotely -
https://discordapp.com/)
- Use
E-Design to move your design clients to remote design and
planning. I've reopened last week's webinar on this, so you
can see how to do that using Designfiles.co.
Click here for the direct link to the replay but ignore minutes
15-20 when I had technical snafoos:-)
Perspective
I've had to have "perspective" conversations with
my sons whose friends are still out hanging out with each other while
they are "stuck inside". My girlfriend sent this quote to me and
it helped my boys put their isolation in perspective AND shift into a
more productive mode.
Productivity - I've decided to use
this time to refresh my training, refocus on my goals and give back to
my community of home stagers.
The first thing I'm going to do is have weekly, "Staging
Q & A Virtual Happy Hours" where we are just going to do Q & A
sessions, look at gorgeous photos, encourage one another and brainstorm
ways to make our businesses stronger, more organized and ready for when
this temporary period is over.
Join me every Wednesday at 3pm
(pacific time) at this link:
https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/virtual-happy-hour
Here's some ideas for your business:
- Email your clients about this "temporary new
norm" and let them know that most everything you do, can be done
virtually or with social distancing. Most importantly, the
sell of their home is top priority.
- Use my
weekly goal and activity sheet to make a plan.
Click
here to watch the training I gave on this in January that I've
reopened due to this situation.
- Organize your inventory
- Photograph your inventory
- Rework your website
- Set-up a sales funnel on your website for
each service you offer
- Create your social media calendar
- Redo your portfolio or organize your photos
- HSR grad Karen Hunter shared that she is
creating videos with her photos (you can use the Loom tech for that
or my favorite app Ripl (search your app store)
- Clean up your contact list - Create a contact
list using mailchimp.com or hubspot.com which are both free
- Go through that training you purchased but
didn't finish:-)
- Think about adding
staging, color, design or e-design training to your skill set
Here's some ideas for your family:
- Work out, bike ride or walk outside together
- Do a puzzle (I've got one on my dining table
as we speak:-)
- Play games
- Have Facetime Happy Hours...yes, I've been
doing this too with my family
- Stay connected most importantly with friends
and family
- Serve people in need (I've been doing all the
shopping for an elderly parent)
- Organize those photo albums
- Organize those closets or redecorate your
rooms
Positivity - This one is tough...but
the world needs this from us today and we need this for ourselves.
I will try to be positive and look for
solutions...will you help me? Our industry is amazing and I think
we can encourage and help one another weekly, so I hope you will join me
this Wednesday as we kick off this new series of productive learning!
https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/virtual-happy-hour
Maybe if we do all of those things, we can
have more Peace and Empowerment in our lives, businesses and
relationships.
Sorry for the long read but I hope you found it
helpful!
XOXO
Audra
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