15 Must-Read Books for Home Stagers to Grow Their Staging Businesses
As a home stager, continuously expanding your knowledge and skills is crucial for growing your staging business in an ever-evolving market. Whether you’re just starting or have years of experience, there’s always more to learn when it comes to setting a vision, developing business models, cultivating the right mindset, and assembling the perfect team.
In this blog post, we’ve put together a carefully curated list of 15 must-read books that every home stager should have in their collection, based on our experiences teaching and working with stagers who want to grow their staging businesses. Several books on this list came highly recommended by guest experts featured on our podcast, The Home Staging Show.
These hand-picked selections offer valuable insights into various aspects of operating a successful home staging business, serving as indispensable resources for both personal and professional growth. So grab your favorite cup of coffee, settle in comfortably, and immerse yourself in these inspiring reads that will undoubtedly contribute to the growth and success of your home staging endeavors.
Affiliate Disclosure: We’ve provided links to each book on Amazon.com for your convenience if you wish to purchase them. As an Amazon affiliate, we may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through our referral links. However, this comes at no additional cost to you. Your support helps us continue providing valuable content and recommendations for the home staging community.
On Mindset and Productivity
If you are constantly struggling with developing disciplines and taking action on your ideas, then read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
It is a great read for any creative professionals, like home stagers, who want to overcome challenges and the “wall” that they often run into that has stalled their progress. The book dives into the concept of resistance – the internal force that hinders your ability to take action on your ideas and finish projects.
As a home staging business owner, you can get great benefits from understanding how resistance manifests itself in your work and learning strategies to break free from its control. The book also provides practical techniques to overcome self-doubt and procrastination while developing your full creative potential.
Most importantly, the book helps you find the clarity to empower you to create and develop your work. It will help you overcome challenges in your staging business, and ultimately achieve the success you deserve as a home staging professional.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is an incredible book for any creative professional. The reason why we recommend books like this is that in our line of work as a home stager, we do need a constant injection of creativity. If we don’t feel creative, our staging can become dull and formulaic.
The most valuable tool I found in the book is the Morning Pages. It is a stream of conscious writing that helps you clear your head and subsequently work out challenges and fears that you’ve encountered in your work. I utilize this tool a lot especially when I feel anxious about something at work or in life.
The book also offers a 12-week program that focuses on nurturing your creativity and overcoming the self-doubt and limiting beliefs that often hinder one’s growth. At any part of your home staging business building journey, this book can serve as an invaluable tool for your personal and professional growth.
In our 5-Figure Floor Plan staging business foundation course, we emphasize the importance of developing good business habits from the start or as early as possible. This book, compiled by Tim Ferriss, features tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires and world-class performers gathered from his podcast interviews combined with additional insights and information.
By reading about their experiences and the tools they use to achieve success, you can gain valuable lessons that can be applied to your own career as a home stager. From learning how to manage your time more effectively to discovering new ways to market yourself and your services, Tools of Titans is packed with information that can help you improve both personally and professionally.
If you want to improve your habits and achieve greater success in your business (and personal life), then reading Atomic Habits can be incredibly valuable. (On a side note, I also recommend his newsletter.)
This book provides practical guidance on how to build good habits that will help you reach your goals, as well as methods for breaking bad habits that may be holding you back. By learning how to create small changes in your behavior and environment, you can make progress toward larger, long-term objectives. This is incredibly important in building a business. It is a long game, but by taking consistent actions and turning them into good habits, you will be able to achieve success.
Whether you want to improve the efficiency of your work routine or increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, Atomic Habits offers strategies for making lasting improvements. By implementing the lessons from this book, you can transform your approach to work and life and become a more successful home stager.
This came highly recommended by one of our podcast guests when it comes to developing the vision you have for your staging business.
If you’re looking to clarify and achieve your long-term goals, you should read Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold. This book provides a framework for creating a compelling, detailed vision of what you want your business to look like three years from now.
By developing this “vivid vision,” you can align your team and resources toward achieving your goals, as well as communicate your vision effectively to clients and stakeholders. The book also includes guidance on how to turn your vision into reality by breaking it down into actionable steps and holding yourself accountable. Overall, Vivid Vision is a powerful tool for any home stager looking to create a clear roadmap for success and achieve greater results in their business.
On Business Models
If you want to dive into structuring your business models, take a look at the book Business Model Generation. In the book, the Business Model Canvas is especially a great visual tool to help you create your business model. You can now find the Canvas template everywhere, like Canva, Miro, etc.
I love the way the book is laid out. It is visually compelling and clear in terms of what you need to consider as a business owner and creates a bird’s eye view by using the Business Model Canvas. It will help you identify gaps in your existing approaches and develop new strategies tailored to your staging business.
If you are looking to stand out in a competitive market, we recommend reading Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
This most important concept in the book is creating uncontested market space, or “blue oceans,” instead of fighting to survive in overcrowded “red oceans” filled with fierce competition. This concept is important for a real estate business since home staging has a very low threshold to enter into the industry. It is important to figure out how you can build a staging business that breaks through the noise.
By applying the principles outlined in the book, you can get inspired to develop innovative ways to differentiate your staging services, add unique value to your clients, and create a niche within the staging industry. The book is packed with actionable insights that will help you reimagine your home staging business and elevate your success in an increasingly competitive field.
The E-Myth is a must-read for home stagers (and any business owners!).
In the book, Gerber talked about the three personalities of an entrepreneur: the dreamer, the technician, and the manager. When these three personalities are out of balance, problems will start happening in your business.
Most importantly, The E-Myth highlights the importance of creating systems in your business. It is critical that you are working on your business, not in your business, which is what we are currently focusing on at the school to help working stagers to achieve, so they are out of the day-to-day grind and focus on the higher level parts of their staging businesses.
I had the fortune to work for Michael Gerber for a brief period of time, shadowing him and his team around the country and attending business conferences where Mr. Gerber was speaking at.
When I used to travel with Mr. Gerber and his team, we met so many 6-, 7- and 8-figure business owners who credit their successes to the book. Whenever I am working on the curriculum of the school, I still incorporate many of the key ideas in the book to help stagers to grow their staging businesses.
On Leadership, Management and Team
Start With Why by Simon Sinek is for you if you are looking to redefine your purpose, leadership skills and drive success in your businesses. We recommend this book frequently. We also use the principles in the book in the decision-making process of operating our own business. The book delves into the concept of starting with a clear “why”—the fundamental reason that compels you and your business to exist—before moving on to the “how” and “what.”
By understanding and communicating your unique “why,“ you can inspire and connect with clients, employees, and partners more effectively, setting yourself apart from competitors. Home stagers who can articulate their core purpose will not only create a strong brand identity but also foster loyalty among clients, leading to repeat business and referrals.
Reading Start With Why will provide insights into how you can make impactful decisions, build a cohesive team, and create lasting success in the home staging industry by putting your purpose at the forefront.
Blink, written by Malcolm Gladwell, is a thought-provoking book that explores the power of rapid cognition and decision-making based on thin-slicing.
As a home stager, understanding this concept can be particularly beneficial as potential buyers often make snap judgments about properties within seconds of walking through the door. By reading Blink, you will gain insights into how these quick decisions are formed and learn techniques to create spaces that evoke immediate positive reactions from potential buyers. Furthermore, this knowledge can also enhance your own decision-making skills in various aspects of your home staging business, from choosing design elements to selecting marketing strategies.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, written by Malcolm Gladwell, is a really fascinating book that talks about how ideas become trends and how social behaviors are influenced. The book was written 20 years ago but is very applicable even today, where everything is competing for the attention of our clients.
Gladwell’s concept of “the tipping point” is the moment when a small idea, trend, or behavior reaches critical mass and makes a huge impact. The book outlines three key principles: the law of the few, a stickiness factor, and the power of context. You can adapt these principles to your own staging business to develop strategies to innovate, attract staging clients and stand out in your market.
By reading The Tipping Point, you can gain a deeper understanding of how your marketing can become viral through word-of-mouth, and how to identify and take advantage of trends and opportunities that could be the tipping points for your staging business.
Originally, the theme of the book, The Five Love Languages, focuses on relationships. But in recent years, the five love languages (words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch) have been applied to the business world when it comes to developing relationships with team members and clients.
This book explores the concept that people express and experience love in different ways, which can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or miscommunications. By understanding these different languages of love, you can tailor your approach to each client and build stronger relationships. You will learn how to identify which language resonates most with each person. By speaking your client’s or team member’s language of love, you’ll create a more positive experience for them and increase their satisfaction with your work as a home stager.
When we did our very first Stagers’ Business Mastery Retreats in 2015, we had a business coach speaking at the retreat to talk about hiring and developing relationships with team members. This book was highly recommended by her. Before the retreat, she had us do the questionnaire to find our strengths and then went over what the results meant during our session. It was pretty eye-opening and explained a lot of friction and miscommunication that several attendees were experiencing with their business partners and team members.
This is why we recommend reading StrengthsFinder 2.0 and doing the questionnaire online. It can be incredibly beneficial in understanding the people you work with. The online questionnaire is an assessment tool that helps you discover your unique talents and capabilities, as well as strategies for capitalizing on these strengths in your professional life.
By focusing on what you do best and finding ways to leverage these skills, you can increase your effectiveness as a team leader and business owner. Additionally, the book includes insight into how to work with others whose strengths differ from yours, allowing you to build stronger relationships with colleagues and clients alike.
This is another book that came highly recommended by one of our podcast guests when it comes to developing and finding the right team members for your staging business. This is the book that will help you build a strong team.
This book, The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, outlines three key virtues that every successful team player embodies: humility, hunger, and people smarts. By understanding and cultivating these qualities in yourself and your team members, you can create a more collaborative, productive work environment.
Additionally, the book provides practical advice on how to identify ideal team players during the hiring process and how to foster these virtues within your existing team.
On Small Business Finance
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz is a must-read if you want to take control of your financial success and build a stable, profitable business.
This book introduces an innovative cash management system that promotes putting profits first, focusing on efficient money management rather than simply chasing revenue. By adopting the Profit First approach, you can transform your financial mindset, prioritize expenses more effectively, and ensure your home staging businesses remain consistently profitable.
Reading Profit First will provide invaluable guidance on how to make informed financial decisions that support your long-term goals, allowing you to grow your home staging business with confidence and stability.
