Tweet

Home Staging The Perfect Career for Baby Boomers Nearing Golden Years

Written by: Debra Gould

Article Overview: The economy has everyone worried about their financial situation, especially those nearing retirement age. Many baby boomers consider starting a small business to supplement their income into their retirement years, while affording them the flexibility to pursue their passions and hobbies in a way they didn't have time for when they were younger. The Staging Diva® shares why home staging is the ideal career to get into at any age.

Home Staging The Perfect Career for Baby Boomers Nearing Golden Years

With all the negative news about the economy and the shocking drop in value of investments, are you becoming concerned about your retirement? As you approach your 60s, you may feel ready to retire, but not ready to stop working all together. If you’ve already retired maybe your savings and pension aren't quite enough to live on comfortably. If this is the case, you may have toyed with the idea of starting a business that will bring in a stream of revenue while allowing you flexibility to work around vacations and visits with family.

Home staging is a great field for anyone wanting to profit from their decorating talents to earn a good living. Home staging, real estate enhancement, or house fluffing as it’s sometimes called, is the art of decorating a home to sell quickly and for top dollar. If you have an innate talent for arranging a room to make it universally appealing then you have what it takes to become a home stager, no matter how old you are!

When you’re a home stager, you have full control over your schedule, you don’t need a store front or inventory and the most complicated piece of technology you’ll need is a digital camera. Home stagers don't have to do any heavy lifting, cleaning or painting as others can be brought into the staging project to provide those services. A home stager is more like a creative director, providing the vision for how a house can be transformed without having to actually do the physical work themselves. And most importantly, whatever you invest in training can easily be recovered with your first home staging project.

Creative people at any age or stage in life can excel as home stagers with some natural talent and the proper business tools. I receive emails and phone calls from people in their 50s, 60s and 70s wondering if home staging would be right for them or if they would be passed over for younger stagers but I don’t believe this is a legitimate fear.

As long as a person has the talent to decorate a house to sell, a homeowner doesn’t care how old the person is. In fact, age can sometimes be an asset because an older person usually has the first hand experience of buying, decorating and selling their own homes over the years. That experience is a real plus to clients who hire stagers to help them sell their house more quickly and at a higher price than they would have without staging. In today's competitive real estate market, home sellers need that skill and experience even more.

Licensed real estate appraiser, Ranee D. Strawn of Chicago-based Distinctive Design has credited the Staging Diva® Home Staging Training Program with helping her start her fourth career with the joy that comes from more fully using her creative talents. The eldest Graduate of the Staging Diva® Training Program is 76 year old Jean Smith of Staging For Sellers, who resides in a retirement community in Florida. She had two clients within weeks of completing her training. Jean is such an inspiration to us all! At an age where most people are bemoaning the fact that they won’t get a chance to do all those things they wanted to in their youth, she dared to follow her dream.

It’s never too late to start living a more creatively satisfying life. With the economy being so shaky, it’s even more reason to take control of your own destiny and protect your future.

Related Articles
  Finding Fulfillment at Midlife: Home Staging as a Second Chance Career
  Baby Boomers – How They Are Effecting The Franchise Industry
  Why Home Staging is a Perfect Home-Based Business
  5 Steps to Starting a Home Staging Business Part 1
  A Perfect Next Career for Recent Retirees and Seasoned Businesspeople

Article Tags: 50s 60s, business tools, creative director, digital camera, enhancement, flexibility, heavy lifting, home stager, home stagers, home staging, house fluffing, innate talent, investments, negative news, phone calls, proper business, retirement, stage in life, talents, top dollar



Related Forum Posts
Re: 10 ideas to make you money in 2010 - I think Education would be hard to break into. Baby Boomers, Life Support and Trading Down, however, seem like good markets. As for Green technology goes, I don't think the business has to be entirely based on Green ideologies, but rather a business that embrace Green philosophies and use that as a marketing tool.
Boomers Share... - [quote="litekepr":1zse5djs]Boomers participate in viral or word-of-mouth marketing as much as or more than younger age groups. 93% of Boomers are very or somewhat likely to share product information or news with friends. 80% of Boomers use a broadband connection at home.[/quote:1zse5djs] Great post! It is very interesting to see that 93% are likely to pass on product info and that 80% use broadband... How could you use that information to market specifically to this market segment?
Book: Comeback Moms - Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years Monica Samuels and J. C. Conklin 2006 Jacket: Millions of educated, professional women are quitting their jobs to stay home and raise their children. That would never be you, right? You worked hard for your degree and even harder to get to this point in your career. Quitting now, even for a few years, would kill your career, right? That's what Monica Samuels thought when she found out she was pregnant... Over 60 percent of professional women who leave work to raise children want to get back into the workforce someday. If you even think you might want to go back to work, be it in one year or twenty, you need to lay the groundwork now for a successful reentry or your options will be limited. 1. Quitting: When is the best time to cut the cord 2. Feathering the nest: How to financially prepare before you quit 3. Departure strategies: leaving the office 4. Money and Power: Constructing a new life on the home front 5. Backlash: handling family, friends and angry strangers 6. One foot in, one foot out: How can they miss you if you don't really go away? 7. Part time: It ain't perfect, but it's doable 8. Going back: the when and how of returning to work full time 9. Career counseling: When you need a change 10. Entrepreneurs: True Stories Resources Index
Books for Women Entrepreneurs - There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here. It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new. In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment! 1. The Old Girl's Network 2. Mother's Work 3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women 4. Pitch Like A Girl 5. Workplace Warrior 6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer 7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery 8. She Wins, You Win 9. Napoleon On Project Management 10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do 11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years 12. The One Minute Millionaire 13. Talking From 9 to 5 14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions 15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success 16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded 17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful 18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End 19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide 20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen 21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business 22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker 23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business 24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises 25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy 26. The Promotable Woman 27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it 28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home 29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
Re: Do Boomers Make Better Entrepreneurs? - The language of the Boomers was go to school, get a good grade and get a good job. they are taught to work for someone else not for themselves.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Join Conversations Politely, Part 1

Making the Most of Your Trade Show Experience

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.