Written By: Aleah Selman
Flagler Palm Coast High School, Sophomore
“The best thing you can do for yourself is run a business.”
-Laura Curtin
Laura Curtin runs a home staging business and helps people and realtors sell houses by redesigning the interior of the house to make it more appealing to the buyers. Their job is to make you be able to see yourself in the house. Sometimes a house may be empty or even too full and they just make it more tidy and liveable. If someone’s house is too personal, customers may not be able to see themselves living in it, so she may take things like that out and just tidy up things if it’s too ‘busy’.
She feels that entrepreneurship is very important and one of the best things you can do for yourself. You can do something you love so that it doesn't even feel like you're working. You can make better money and make your own hours and schedules. You don’t have to worry about other people messing it up because you’re working for yourself.
Her main clients are people who are struggling to sell their houses and sometimes even realtors. For a small fee they can get a consultation on their house and she’ll write down a list of things they can fix and they can either do it themselves or get her to do it.
Her favorite part of the job is seeing people’s reaction to the house or condo’s transformation and being able to find a buyer for the house. The hardest part of the job is constantly having to teach people about home staging and its benefits. An average work day for her consists of a lot of phone calls to real estate people, consultations and convincing people that they need home staging. She also does a lot of scheduling and she has to be very organized to stay on top of things. She really likes that the job is creative and innovative.
Before doing this business, she worked in the Music Industry in California. It taught her a lot about work ethic and proper time management and contributed to her ability to work well with people.
The real estate agent or the homeowners usually pays her for the consultation and she makes a list of things they need to get or they pay her to do it.
She rents her furniture from furniture stores like Quartz and Aaron’s and they don’t charge for delivery and that's how she transports the furniture. If the people who buy the house really like the furniture and layout, they can buy it from the rental companies, which allows her to also bring business to those stores also.
She determines the type of house she wants to stage by looking at the location and she aims to capture the style of the house. For example, a house is Flagler Beach would have more beachy, oceanic style. Another thing she needs to consider when staging a house is the type of customer. For instance, if they have kids she’ll do a kids room or if they work from home, she’ll do an office. She also helps them figure out what to do with what she calls weird rooms. She might change them into something like a sunroom or a game or exercise room.
During her free time she plays Pickleball; which is basically where ping-pong meets tennis with a low net. She participates in tournaments for Pickleball and believes doing any sort of team sports helps in business because you learn to being cohesive and collaborative with others. She also enjoys spending time with her Golden Doodle, Minnie. Her job is very flexible and she gets plenty of family time.
She has been working in the industry for only a year and a couple of months but has type of work for a number of years for friends. She really loves to decorate homes, so she thought ‘why don’t I turn this into a career?’ She always works from home and only has a few employees, depending on the job. She is basically a one person business. Although Lauren Curtin has only been in the business for over a year, her passion for decorating homes has only grown stronger. She is a true representation of the concept of chasing a dream and making that dream a reality.
Contact
phone(917) 689-2237
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