How to Stage a Home

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:18 — 140.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Alisa Sparks  – Linden Creek

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Discovering a passion for staging
9:22 Real estate staging process
15:42 Learning to delegate effectively
19:25 Shifting demand from staging to design
26:04 Considering a franchise business
28:37 Franchise owner support and coaching
33:07 Ensuring brand consistency across franchises
40:10 Evaluating franchise prospects
48:24 Navigating software development challenges
51:37 Importance of honest sales communication
59:48 Program sponsor and listener call-to-action

Podcast Transcription:

James Kademan [00:00:00]:
Tell me about the art or pictures. And most people’s houses you’ll see pictures of family or graduation pictures or grandma or whatever. Are you including some pictures like that or is it more art or maybe it’s nothing.

Alisa Sparks [00:00:11]:
Yeah, definitely do not include family photos when you’re selling a home. Now, you could have a really cute family and they could be fantastic, but the problem is the moment they see a picture of your family, the conversation in their brain changes from this is this could be my home. I can imagine myself living here to. To somebody else’s living here. And all of a sudden it changes that emotional connection. And so we highly recommend you don’t have photos of your family in a home.

James Kademan [00:00:39]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found https://drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie Calls on call Extraordinary Answering Service, the Bold Business Book and Live Switch. Today we’re welcoming, preparing to learn from Alisa Sparks of Linden Creek. And Alisa, I believe we’re talking home staging here. So how is it going today?

Alisa Sparks [00:01:11]:
It’s going great. Thank you so much for having me today. I’m excited to be here.

James Kademan [00:01:15]:
Yeah. I’m actually very excited to talk with you because I’ve met some home stagers before, but I have never met a home stager with a company that’s beyond many offices or even beyond really their home office. So I’m excited to talk to you, talk to you about your business growth. That’s huge.

Alisa Sparks [00:01:35]:
Yeah, it’s been a really fun journey. This is an industry. You’re absolutely right. Most individuals in this have their one stop location and so expanding outside of just our four walls has been a really fun adventure over these last few years.

James Kademan [00:01:49]:
Nice. So let’s go to the way back. Right. When did you first start this?

Alisa Sparks [00:01:53]:
I started Linden Creek eight years ago. My background has nothing to do with interior design or real estate. I have a background in finance, so I love numbers. Give me an Excel spreadsheet and I will entertain myself for hours. Right. Like that is my. My bread and butter. However, with that being said, I found myself in this place where I was always trying to fulfill this creative itch.

Alisa Sparks [00:02:15]:
So. So when I would finish my day job, I would spend time buying the ugliest houses I could find and renovating them, building furniture in my garage, whatever I could do to kind of fulfill this creative itch that I had until finally I had this aha moment of like, maybe I should take this passion that I have and this hobby and build it into something that’s a true business.

James Kademan [00:02:36]:
How cool is that? And when were you working in finance industry before?

Alisa Sparks [00:02:41]:
I was in the finance industry and actually supported the Department of Defense for nearly a decade, managing their aircraft budgets. So again, nothing at all related to what I do today. But so many of the skills that I learned from that experience, whether it came from systems and operations to managing financials, have been crucial for the success of where Linden Creek is today.

James Kademan [00:03:03]:
Nice. And what was the major contributing factor to make you shift? Saying, I gotta go off and do this on my own. Government, you got health care and whatever. W2BI weekly paycheck, whatever.

Alisa Sparks [00:03:16]:
All the great benefits, all the safety nets. And so much so that I had a good friend of mine that I worked with two years into me starting Linden Creek. We caught up and grabbed coffee, and she looked at me and she goes, why did you leave such a safe, stable job with such good income? And I was like, there’s something more to this. So, yeah, it was a big shift in change to get faster of make this massive jump. It actually all came down to a book. I was at the gym listening to an audiobook of Rich Dad, Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I’m sure many are familiar with that one, but he talked about the value of building a business and how that becomes an asset. It’s not just a job.

Alisa Sparks [00:03:54]:
And there was something about that that struck for me when it came to just that ownership of what you have and the work that you’re putting into something. And as I started kind of scratching my head going, okay, what kind of business could I start? I’m playing with aircraft, right? Helicopters and things like that. That’s not transferable to my own business. And as I was really thinking about it, we had just put a home on the market that we had renovated and flipped. And the feedback we got was the staging was good, but it wasn’t staged. It was just my furniture that I had collected over the years and kind of made look right for the home. But it was this aha moment for me of maybe I could stage houses. I don’t have an interior design degree, but there might be something to the staging.

Alisa Sparks [00:04:33]:
And so that was really what started the entire concept of Linden Creek.

James Kademan [00:04:37]:
How cool is that? All right, so what was the answer that you gave your friend? So when you’re at the coffee shop and she’s like, what are you doing?

Alisa Sparks [00:04:45]:
I Smiled politely. And I said, this one’s for the long game and it’s going to be worth it at some point in time. And it has been. I’m thankful for the transition I made. I can look back and say with confidence, this was a good call, but it’s scary in that interim, right. Like when you don’t know, when the math doesn’t math, when you’re still building your business and reinvesting every penny. It’s a scary transition.

James Kademan [00:05:05]:
Oh, I totally understand that. I. You know, you remind me of a time I had a buddy of mine offer me a job at a place that he was working out. And I’m like, I’m actually starting my own thing. And he was like, why? It’s just one of those things where it was interesting. Where? To a point. When someone asks you a question like that, you really don’t know how to answer it, because in order for them to ask that question, they don’t really have the foundation that’s needed to understand the answer that you would give.

Alisa Sparks [00:05:36]:
Yeah, that’s exactly right.

James Kademan [00:05:38]:
Just say, like, because. Whatever. So tell me, when you first started your business, I imagine you get the website is this. Well, I have to back up a step because I don’t know a whole lot about home staging other than I have seen homes that are staged. Inserting couches, furniture, rugs, stuff like that, that once the house is sold, those go to a different house or how does that work?

Alisa Sparks [00:06:02]:
That’s exactly right. Yeah. So we own our own furniture and inventory. It started small in my garage. I became best friends with my FedEx delivery guy who would drop off new furniture every day, and I would spend my evenings, you know, assembling furniture in my garage until everything was built out. We do a much larger scale of that today. So the operations are different. But yes, I was slowly building and collecting my own set of inventory and furniture, putting it in a home and.

Alisa Sparks [00:06:27]:
And the moment the home sold, taking it out and moving it to the next property. Wow.

James Kademan [00:06:32]:
So I imagine that takes a lot of space. You have all. I mean, coaches aren’t small, right. So you have to have.

Alisa Sparks [00:06:37]:
No, they are not many.

James Kademan [00:06:40]:
I’m just trying to picture, like, my eye for a couch is like, yeah, it’s a couch, whatever. But I’m certain in the interior design staging world, there are certain couches that go with certain houses.

Alisa Sparks [00:06:50]:
There are. And you know what’s interesting is when we think about furniture, we think, yes, it has to be pretty. Yes, it has to kind of fit with a design style. Of a home. But we think a lot about versatility from a home to home standpoint. So if this is a couch that I can put in eight of my 10 houses, I’m doing really well. If this house, this sofa only works in like two of them, it’s going to sit in my warehouse eight months out of the year. And now it’s an expense for me.

Alisa Sparks [00:07:16]:
And so we really think about its ability to transfer in design styles, but we also like to think about how hard is it for to move this piece of furniture again and again? Because we are in the business of transporting furniture. And so if something is too heavy, it’s more likely to be damaged and broken. And my movers are not going to like me very much by the end of the day. Right. Like all of those things matter. So it’s that balance of quality, yet with something that’s going to function in a practical way and its design aesthetics are going to transcend across multiple properties.

James Kademan [00:07:48]:
That’s fair, that’s smart. Plus, I imagine the. There’s certain styles of couches that maybe get a little beat up as they’re moved. So I imagine.

Alisa Sparks [00:07:56]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:07:56]:
How many times is a couch or say an end table or something like that? How many times is that getting moved before you’re like, hey, this is too beat up, we gotta get rid of it?

Alisa Sparks [00:08:05]:
Yeah, great question. It depends on the type of furniture. So sofas do have a longer lifespan than some of our other pieces of furniture. We have sofas that we have transported into 30 to 40 to 50 houses and they still are working great. But you’re right, there are little things that matter for a season. We loved slip covered sofas, and they’re beautiful. But what we found is our movers wouldn’t wrap that last inch and a half of the sofa when they were protecting it. And so it got dirty really fast.

Alisa Sparks [00:08:31]:
Right. You learn these lessons the hard way. We have other furniture, like outdoor furniture, that sometimes only gets used two or three times before it has to get thrown out because it takes such a beating from the natural elements of weather and people not caring for it because the house is empty. Um, so every piece has a slightly different life cycle.

James Kademan [00:08:49]:
Interesting. Tell me the lifespan of when you first stage a house till it’s sold. Are these houses sitting on the market for a week or two or is this more months?

Alisa Sparks [00:09:00]:
It depends completely on the real estate market. I will say there was a season during COVID where it was like a feeding frenzy. Right. So a house would get staged, it would go on the market and three hours later, it had multiple offers, 200,000 over asking. Right. So things turned really quick. And but for us as a stager, that doesn’t mean we get our furniture back the next day. For us, we stage the property.

Alisa Sparks [00:09:22]:
It goes through photography, it gets listed on the mls. Then, you know, you go through the offers process, it goes under contract, then it goes through inspections. We make sure inspections are successful and the furniture is still in the home, because that matters when the buyer is walking through it again. And once all of those checks are in the box, that’s when we remove the furniture. So, so typically for us, we get our furniture back within on average 45 to 60 days on a project. We have some luxury higher end homes that take a little bit longer to sell, and those could sit for a few months.

James Kademan [00:09:53]:
Right on. And are you, when you were staging a home, is this an empty house or are people still living there?

Alisa Sparks [00:10:01]:
Most of our projects are empty homes. We find that the best return on investment that a home seller can get is if they give us an empty slate. It gives consistency across the design, lets us really tell the story. And again, our furniture is purchased with the intent of being really versatile, not just for the home, but for buyers. So I may be madly in love with a velvet green sofa. You might see a velvet green sofa and go, this is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Right. So the furniture that I own is all really neutral.

Alisa Sparks [00:10:30]:
It’s a beige sofa, a gray sofa, a white sofa. Because nobody’s offended by these things. And so giving us a blank slate is going to give you kind of the best way to optimize for the buyers that are going to be coming into your home.

James Kademan [00:10:41]:
Right on. Tell me about the art or pictures. And most people’s houses you’ll see pictures of a family or graduation pictures or grandma or whatever. Are you including some pictures like that or is it more art or maybe it’s nothing?

Alisa Sparks [00:10:55]:
Yeah, definitely. Do not include family photos when you’re selling a home. Now, you could have a really cute family and they could be fantastic, but the problem is the moment they see a picture of your family, the conversation in their brain changes from this is, this could be my home. I can imagine myself living here to somebody else is living here. And all of a sudden it changes that emotional connection. And so we highly recommend you don’t have photos of your family in a home. So we stick to art. We love a good mirror because it’ll reflect natural light and reflect the space.

Alisa Sparks [00:11:25]:
Our job is simple as stagers it is to showcase the property and be your marketing agency, essentially, in support from a product offering standpoint. And so we’re not really designers. Our job is not to design the space to make it beautiful. Our job is to market the property to help it sell better. And so those are the aspects we think about in every design decision that we make.

James Kademan [00:11:46]:
Fair. That makes sense. Tell me, when you first start with the house, are you going through the point of being the cleaners and maybe painters and stuff like that? If somebody’s got a wall that’s bright red or something like that, you got to knock it down to beige or gray? Or are you just dealing with whatever they have and putting furniture and art in there?

Alisa Sparks [00:12:04]:
We are just the stagers. However, if your house needs cleaning, if it needs painting, we have vendors that we work with that trust that we can certainly refer, and we’re happy to provide our expertise in this. So what I can say to you, that red wall’s got to go. Let’s paint it something neutral. But there are a thousand different colors and shades of white. So picking out the right shade of white that’s going to work for your home is something we’re happy to give guidance on to make sure that everything is ready for your listing.

James Kademan [00:12:32]:
That is so funny that you mentioned there’s a thousand different colors of white because I wanted. So I had this office, commercial office, and I told the painter guy, I’m like, just paint it white. And he’s like, well, color white. And me being the Neanderthal that assumes that white is just white. I’m like, just. Just white, white. I don’t know. Just the paint that you would get in a bucket that’s white.

James Kademan [00:12:54]:
Before you add anything, just put that on the wall. And it was so interesting because he had no. He’s like, would just give me some type of descriptor for the white that you want. And I’m like, no color. Or maybe it’s white. All the colors. Like, just white. So I had to go to a paint store to pick out the white, and oh, my gosh, there’s 5 million different whites.

James Kademan [00:13:20]:
Who knew?

Alisa Sparks [00:13:22]:
And how did the paint turn out in your office?

James Kademan [00:13:24]:
Yeah, just painter guy behind the counter. Just point at one. We’ll run with that. It was.

Alisa Sparks [00:13:31]:
How did it turn out?

James Kademan [00:13:33]:
Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t know. It’s. It’s good. I like it. I personally like the. The white everywhere because it’s easy. It looks clean.

James Kademan [00:13:44]:
But I couldn’t tell you what color white we ended up Choosing. So if we ever have to paint or when we have to paint another wall, I may have a hard time matching that white.

Alisa Sparks [00:13:53]:
So that’s fair. That’s fair. Well, and it’s interesting because, you know, a white. A white is white. Like, that’s what most people think. But one of my favorite PA Colors that I’ve used over and over again is called Shoji White. I have used it on five different renovation projects where we painted the walls. The home turned out beautiful.

Alisa Sparks [00:14:11]:
We used it. The fifth property I ever used it for. We were refinishing the floors, but before they got refinished, they had this really orange hint to them. The walls got painted, and the real estate agent called me, panicked, and she goes, elisa, you painted my walls pink? I said, what do you mean I painted them pink? The walls are white. And she goes, you need to see this. The entire house looks pink on the inside. And now I’m panicking, and I get out to the property and I walk. And sure enough, because the floors were so orange, the entire wall showed completely pink.

Alisa Sparks [00:14:39]:
So it was this subtle pink color. Now, granted, we were refinishing the floors, so once we refinished the floors, the walls turned white all of a sudden. But even something as simple as, like, picking a white paint color, there. There are variations and impacts that have to be considered to make sure that you’re really nailing it right and don’t accidentally end up with a pink house.

James Kademan [00:14:59]:
How interesting. Who knew?

Alisa Sparks [00:15:00]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:15:02]:
Tell me a story about your first employee. What. When did you hire them and what did they do?

Alisa Sparks [00:15:07]:
Yeah, my very first employee, I hired cash probably three to four months into the business. So it was a pretty quick hire for me. So a little background context on that. When I started my business, very early onto the business, found myself as a single mama of two beautiful little girls that were three and four at the time. And for me, the top priority was to be the mom that was in the carpool line to pick them up after school every day. We were new to Raleigh, North Carolina. I didn’t have somebody I could rely on and trust to necessarily take that role right away. And so my only solution was to hire fast.

Alisa Sparks [00:15:42]:
And at the time, I thought that was going to be this massive disadvantage of, how do you handle this now that you’re, you know, hiring and staffing faster than you wanted to? But what I found is it was actually my secret weapon because it forced me to get out of my own way. It forced me to create systems and develop processes way faster than I probably would have and forced me away from maybe working 110 hours a week in the warehouse and on projects and instead, like, relaying the information and replicating my efforts. So that first hire came a little bit faster than I probably would have planned for and was the biggest blessing because of it. We spent a lot of time working hand in hand together on every project until she got to a place where, from a design standpoint, she could finish my sentences. And then what was cool is I got to pivot more into the business and the sales and client interaction side. She got to really hyper focus on design. Um, and so she, at some point in time, excelled and was a better designer than I was, which was. That’s what you want as an employer.

Alisa Sparks [00:16:41]:
Right? Like, I want employees that are better at their job than I am. Um, and that’s exactly what came from it. It was a beautiful thing.

James Kademan [00:16:48]:
That is incredible. Is she still with you?

Alisa Sparks [00:16:51]:
She is not. She’s transitioned out since, unfortunately. But we’ve been able to still stay in touch and see a lot of success from it.

James Kademan [00:16:57]:
Nice.

Alisa Sparks [00:16:58]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:16:58]:
And tell me about your second employee onward.

Alisa Sparks [00:17:02]:
Gosh. The second employee onward was. Was it some. Another similar designer sort of role? But what was interesting is because your first employee, because I spent so much time with her and she was able to finish my sentences when I hired another designer to come and support that. My first employee was able to do a lot of the hand holding and training that I did on day one with her. And so it became this really beautiful thing where I still got to keep hyper focusing the sales, hyper focusing on client interaction and the business and operations. And she was able to replicate her own design skills and experiences through training. And so now we had two designers to produce really beautiful spaces.

James Kademan [00:17:41]:
Very cool. Tell me about the sales of marketing, what you have, the home staging and all that. Are you targeting real estate agents or are you targeting home sellers? Or how do you get the word out there that you exist?

Alisa Sparks [00:17:55]:
Yeah, we focus on building relationships with real estate agents and with home and home builders because they tend to be the best point of contact as the process goes through. And so that’s really where we hyperfocus. Our sales strategies really lean towards grassroots marketing efforts. Right. And I know that’s like the not sexy version to say about a business today. Like, everybody’s like AI and paid ads and digital and optimization and we’re like, go shake some hands. But in a world where referrals matter, in a world where relationship building is important, there is no better way to build relationships than for them to see your face, for them to get to understand who you are, and for you to get to understand who they are. And so the majority of our sales efforts are really tied to networking and relationship building.

James Kademan [00:18:43]:
Nice. And during, let’s just say, pandemicy times, when houses are going to. Yeah, fast. Did you ever get any pushback where people like, I don’t need a stager because my house is going to sell in 5 minutes anyways all the time.

Alisa Sparks [00:18:57]:
And what’s interesting is, you know, when you stage a house, studies show it will sell faster and which doesn’t matter during the pandemic. Like, I don’t need 45 minutes instead of two hours. Who cares? Right? But it’ll also sell for more money. So what was interesting is people would still choose to not stage, and they’d be leaving money on the table. But real estate agents, in their defense, were very busy during this time. I remember meeting with so many, and they were like, I haven’t slept in days. I haven’t showered in four days. Like, I can’t see straight because the market was so crazy.

Alisa Sparks [00:19:25]:
And so for them to have to pause and, like, pick up the phone and call a stager and coordinate details was just one more thing. And so we did get a lot of pushback during that season of, hey, you know what? I just don’t need staging right now. Like, let’s just move on. Let’s get this market, this house sold, and let’s move on to the next piece. But Langdon Creek offers home staging, and we offer interior design. And what was interesting is, during that season, our interior design exploded because although some people were, like, in this feeding frenzy of, like, let me buy a house, the other half the world was like, there is no way I’m fighting in this feeding frenzy. I am going to stay exactly where I am. And I have no interest of trying to buy right now, but my house is not cutting the bill.

Alisa Sparks [00:20:08]:
My husband and I are home all the time now because of COVID And so we work from home. The kids are here. This isn’t functioning well. I’m tired of staring at this ugly kitchen that I hated three years ago, but now I see it every day, like, whatever that may be. Right. And so we became heavily involved in helping homeowners renovate their home into something that they actually truly loved and wanted to live in every day.

James Kademan [00:20:30]:
Nice. I guess I didn’t even think about that with the interior design. That’s totally true. Right. People were getting pools, redoing their kitchen. So interior design Fits right in there.

Alisa Sparks [00:20:40]:
It did. And every. Oh, go ahead.

James Kademan [00:20:42]:
Oh, I was just going to ask how difficult was it to get your name out there with the interior design thing? Because I mentioned there’s a lot of people that are just like, oh, I know what, there’s 50 million colors of white, so I’m a good interior designer. How do you get your name out amongst all of them?

Alisa Sparks [00:20:57]:
Yeah. So two parts to that. One is, interestingly enough, the person that knows that’s going to give you the most referral opportunities for design tends to be real estate agents and builders also, because they’re tied to somebody that’s moving into a new home or they’re really well connected in the community. And so we ended up with a very organic and natural word of mouth. And the other thing that was really great is when you stage a house and your marketing material is there, whoever is buying the house goes, wait a second, let me hold on to this business card. They do design too, and sometimes that comes around. So we had a very organic base of customers because of that, which was really advantageous. And you do have some people that go, hey, I want to design myself.

Alisa Sparks [00:21:37]:
Either, you know, I’m just going to pick a white and we’re going to call it good and it’s going to be fine, or I love design and decorating, so, like, don’t take that away from me. I want to make my own decisions. Right, but you also have a demographic of people that go, I don’t have the time. I can look at a magazine and say, that’s beautiful, but I have no idea how to replicate it. And I want to make sure this looks and feels the way it needs to. And I don’t want to have to deal with the hours of sourcing and assembling furniture and unboxing things and all that is involved in just the technical side of it. Sometimes we’ll play in the short term rental space. And what they say is it takes an average of 96 hours to source and set up an Airbnb.

Alisa Sparks [00:22:15]:
96 hours. So when you compare that to interior design, you’re looking for this substantial time investment in setting up the property and making sure that your scale of end table is proportionate with the sofa, which coordinates with the chair. And some people just say, hands off, let’s let the experts do it. And I’m happy with that.

James Kademan [00:22:33]:
That is cool. I love it. Tell me, when did you first add your second location?

Alisa Sparks [00:22:39]:
Our second location launched three years ago now, so in 2023. So we are a franchise. So each location is independently owned and operated by the franchise owner, which is a beautiful model. I’m very thankful for and has been so much fun to be a part of. But for us, the conversation really came in. About five years into the business, I kind of had this moment where I paused and realized I had accidentally worked myself out of a job, and that should be a good thing. Like, my team had it covered, my clients were happy, things were rolling well, and I kind of scratched my head and went, what do I do next? And as I was reflecting on the what’s next, What I found is other designers and stagers reaching out and asking questions about sales, asking questions about operations. And I realized we had kind of unintentionally created systems for all of these things.

Alisa Sparks [00:23:32]:
And I had answers to give them. And as I was reflecting on that experience and the answers I was giving, I realized there are probably other people out there in the world that were just like me five years ago that are in some other career that want to make a shift. They just don’t know how to do it. They don’t know what pricing structures are going to make sense. They don’t know all the little hacks about the best furniture to buy and why. And I had answers for those things. And so franchising to me became this really exciting way to share my knowledge and see what would happen. And so we launched the franchise model.

Alisa Sparks [00:24:07]:
My director of home staging, who was running my day to day at the time, was my first location owner. So she opened up her location in Charlotte, North Carolina. And for the first year, we just watched. I watched her. I was like, tell me everything, what’s working, what’s not, where do you need more training? Can we really replicate this? Can this go to a totally different city and be successful? And after her 12 months, we both kind of looked up from the process. And she had 3x to the sales that I did in my first year and made way less mistakes than I had made in my first year. And I remember thinking there might be something to this. Like, this is really working.

Alisa Sparks [00:24:42]:
And so that was really what launched the idea of, like, let’s. Let’s expand Linden Creek outside of just Raleigh, North Carolina.

James Kademan [00:24:50]:
Nice. So starting a franchise from scratch, you got to get internies involved.

Alisa Sparks [00:24:54]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:24:55]:
Every state has their rules about franchise and stuff like that. Tell me how you navigated all that.

Alisa Sparks [00:25:01]:
I hire really smart people.

James Kademan [00:25:05]:
Answer for everything, right?

Alisa Sparks [00:25:06]:
That’s correct. That’s correct. No, I mean, you need to. So great. I had a background in finance. Great. I had figured out home staging and interior design. But franchising and franchise law specifically is an entirely different beast that I didn’t know anything about.

Alisa Sparks [00:25:21]:
And so I think with any, you know, growth moment you have in your business, you have two options. You either learn, and then you’re going to make some mistakes and you learn from those mistakes, or you hire somebody so much smarter than you in that aspect and you lean on them. And so for me, this came down to hiring a franchise attorney that was well versed in this, that could guide me through the process from a legal standpoint, but also hiring a franchise consultant that kind of said, this is what franchising really is. Here’s what’s working in your model, here’s what’s not. Here’s where you still need to build something out. Here’s what’s working well. And so it has been this continued leaning on experts in the industry so that I can cut my teeth on it, learn from them, and get there faster.

James Kademan [00:26:04]:
Nice. I want to ask you something about the franchisees themselves. So years ago, we’re talking forever ago, I had a printer repair company, and I was looking at franchising that a franchise company had reached out to me, and they’re like, hey, do you want a franchise? And it was one of those where I felt like I kind of expanded as much as I could locally, but franchising seemed like, hey, that’s good. Anyways, the franchisee people, we started to do due diligence and stuff like this. And I realized, and I’m going to dare say smartly, though, I think it was just pure luck, I thought, you know, maybe printer repair is kind of a dying industry. So I decided not to franchise. But one of the other things that was going through my head was if I was me back when I wanted to start my business, would I consider a franchise versus just being like, oh, I can figure it out and just be James’s printer repair or whatever. So tell me about your people.

James Kademan [00:27:05]:
When you come across a potential franchisee instead of them just starting their own thing. And because people don’t necessarily know what they don’t know, how do you say, hey, man, you don’t know what you don’t know. We got it figured out. Jump on our model, and you’ll be way more successful, much more quickly. How do you tell them that? Or how do you essentially market yourself that way?

Alisa Sparks [00:27:29]:
You know, what’s been interesting for me is I thought that that exact question was something or an objection I’d have to overcome. Often I have Rarely had that conversation. Typically, it’s the reverse. They come to me and they go, I’m not the expert, I don’t know what I’m doing. I know that if I learn from you, I can get there faster. Let’s talk. And I kind of scratch my head and I go, oh, okay. You understand the value of expertise, right? But it’s the same concept of, you know, when I decided to franchise, let me hire an attorney, let me hire a consultant.

Alisa Sparks [00:27:57]:
It’s individuals that are really business minded, understand the, of getting education and learning these things from somebody else. And I think sometimes you can even go through your journey of going, I’m going to start my own home staging company. And you start to do the steps and you realize just how much you don’t know the more you go into it and then you go, pause, pivot. Maybe I can learn from an expert. One of our franchise owners, she had a her own business prior to joining with us. She had her own corporate career, started a business in home cleaning. And one of the things she said to me when we were in the discovery process, she said, I know how much work it is to start a business and figure out a totally new industry. I have zero desire in doing that again.

Alisa Sparks [00:28:37]:
Just give me the playbook. And so it’s been interesting to see that what we’re finding from our franchise owners is it’s really the reverse. They see the value in the playbook, they see the value in the coaching and the mentoring and the community, and that’s what they get excited about. You know, we jump on weekly or bi weekly calls, one on one with each of our franchise owners to coach them through whatever it is they’re dealing with in the business in that season. Whether it’s I’m hiring my first person or you know, we’re scaling faster than I know what to do, how do I handle this and what inventory should I buy? How do I better pitch myself in this sales conversation, you name it. So they get this custom one on one coaching, but there also is this community element. So every Friday they get to jump on calls all together and just talk through wins, successes, challenges, losses, sharing that. And that’s something that as an entrepreneur you don’t get when you’re doing it alone.

Alisa Sparks [00:29:31]:
Entrepreneurship can be really lonely sometimes. And that was something I remember feeling in my own Linden Creek journey is sometimes it’s just, you wish you could pick up the phone and call somebody else and go, talk me through this, remind me that it’s going to work out right and What I get to watch on the flip side is my franchise ownership, where one might be having a slower season and go, it’s going to work, right? And three other people go, it totally works. Yes. And watching them be there to encourage and support each other in this is one of the things for me that I watch. Being the solo entrepreneur that started this eight years ago, that is worth so much more than they know. And it’s something I’m really grateful that we get to provide them.

James Kademan [00:30:09]:
That is so interesting that you say that. I’ll just tell you really quick anecdotal story.

Alisa Sparks [00:30:13]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:30:14]:
Yesterday, I was teaching a couple guys how to ride motorcycle in the back parking lot of a school. And it was interesting because they’re just going around, whatever, a few hundred yards or something like that. I’m teaching them how to break and all this kind of stuff. And the guy takes his helmet off and he’s just dripping in sweat and, like, it wasn’t that hot out, but he was thinking, and the adrenaline’s going. And it was interesting seeing him like that because I was like, oh, yeah. I remember being in that same position when you’re so nervous and you don’t have the muscle memory. You don’t know what’s going on, and you kind of take it for granted now, like, business is successful, we’re going along, we’re growing. Let’s go this direction.

James Kademan [00:30:51]:
And you almost forget what day one was like when you’re a little bit frantic, a little bit scared, and every once in a while you’re like, is this really going to work? It’s very interesting to put that in perspective.

Alisa Sparks [00:31:04]:
And I’m sure you probably felt like this yesterday even, but it’s a really great reminder for you on the coaching side. Right. And on the teaching side, and even for our more established franchise owners, it’s so cool for them to go, oh, yeah, I remember being like that. I guess I have really come far because so often as business owners, we’re so focused on what’s next and looking ahead, and, you know, I’m not where I want to be and really, like, hard on ourselves, that it’s so refreshing sometimes to pause and go, but look at where I came from. Remember all those challenges that I overcame. And so we find that these conversations are a massive win for everybody across the board, and they just help us all grow professionally and personally, and we’re grateful for that.

James Kademan [00:31:45]:
Totally, totally agree. Tell me a story about the. The locations. Each one of these places have their own warehouse full of furniture.

Alisa Sparks [00:31:53]:
They do they do. And I think what’s so fun is, you know, none of us in our cards said, like, someday I want to have a warehouse full of furniture. Right. And so heavy slugging and, you know, big equipment and pallet racking and these are the things we talk about. But each location does have a warehouse that they operate out of. They have a team that helps and support all of that. And it’s an exciting part of what they. But it’s also a different level of ownership that happens when it is their sofa that they bought with their money that gets to be utilized, that they get to generate revenue off of also.

Alisa Sparks [00:32:25]:
And so what we find to be so fun with each of these locations being independently owned is you can have the best general manager in the world running a location and they can care so much. But something different happens all of a sudden when it’s your own pennies that you invested into, that it’s a different level of care for your clients, it’s a different level of care for your inventory, for your systems operations. And so we see a lot of success with these independently owned locations.

James Kademan [00:32:51]:
Fair. Tell me a story about the furniture itself. Are you buying or getting some buyer’s group to like, hey, we need 50 of the same couch because we have all these franchisees, or are they individually buying whatever it is they think is cool? And that’s where it is.

Alisa Sparks [00:33:07]:
Yeah. So when we started Linden Creek as a franchise, the big question is like, how do we create brand consistency? How do we make sure that if a franchisee is in Princeton, New Jersey, they’re getting the same experience as one that’s in Dallas, Texas? And, you know, we, we expect that with a chick fil A, right, you’re going to get the same chicken sandwich. But how do you do that in something that’s creative, like design? And so what we found to be the biggest answer is it’s going to come heavily from our systems, of course, but also from our inventory. And so each of our franchise locations purchases the majority of their inventory from the Linden Creek shop. And the Linden Creek shop is really cool because it has built really strong relationships with furniture vendors throughout the country that are tried and true, that we have great experience with that put together really good quality products, but also allows us to get really strong buying power because of it. So we get to pass along this massive savings to our franchise owners that they wouldn’t get just starting out their own business on day one if they were to go to these vendors. And the flip side is we also get brand consistency because of it. And so it’s been a really cool win win.

Alisa Sparks [00:34:12]:
It also means we get to have very honest conversations of, don’t buy that dining table. It’s like 150 pounds heavier than it looks, you know, or this one scratches easier because of the finish. So we really recommend you buy these instead.

James Kademan [00:34:25]:
Clever. Clever. So the franchisees are essentially purchasing furniture through you. So does that mean that you or some people on your team have to go out and find that furniture?

Alisa Sparks [00:34:40]:
Yeah, they do. So we have a creative director on staff as well as other designers that can be part of the sourcing process. But primarily, our creative director has the opportunity to manage existing vendor relationships that we have and negotiate better buying power and kind of determine where are the trends going. Who is Linden Creek in 2026 spring, but who’s Linden Creek going to be in the fall of 2026? And how does that brand transcend over time? Which is exciting. We’ve had a lot of fun in the last year, really building out some pain points that we were experiencing as a brand. So, for example, in home staging, you want your art to be pretty lightweight. You don’t want it to be glass, because glass doesn’t reflect very well when an MLS photograph is taken because of the reflection of light. So we do framed canvases, but getting large framed canvases that actually are attractive, that are affordable, is much harder than one would think.

Alisa Sparks [00:35:33]:
And so we had the opportunity last year to partner with a local artist who licensed out some of her artwork for us to mass manufacture and sell to our franchise owners. And so we manufactured our own art line and did a partnership last year to support both the artists, but also to support our franchise owners to kind of solve this pain point that we were all experiencing in the industry. Because for once, it finally made sense, because there are enough of us all involved. We created our own pillow line last year as well for the same reason. Like, we love quality. We want down pillow inserts on all of our pillows. We want to size up in scale. It’s really hard to find that at affordable price points.

Alisa Sparks [00:36:12]:
And so, again, because we’re not just serving Raleigh, North Carolina. We’re serving the country. We have the opportunity to go in, be a more competitive buyer, and solve some of these problems that we were all feeling independently before.

James Kademan [00:36:25]:
Oh, that’s cool. That is super clever. I guess. It didn’t even dawn on me about pillows. That means you’re staging the living room, but also bedrooms and rec rooms and all that kind of stuff.

Alisa Sparks [00:36:36]:
Laundry rooms. I mean, the number of dryer balls that I own in my warehouse is ridiculous. So if you ever need laundry done, I mean, like, our warehouses are great places to stop by.

James Kademan [00:36:46]:
Huh? Who knew?

Alisa Sparks [00:36:48]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:36:48]:
How clever is that? All right, is it to the point where you add coats on the coat racks and stuff like that so it looks kind of lived in? Or is it more, I guess, vacant than that?

Alisa Sparks [00:36:58]:
A little more vacant than that. We try to avoid closets. There was a season where we used to stage closets and then clients would be like, oh, you know, I really need a Louis Vuitton, whatever. And I was like, that’s a lot of Louis Vuitton to put in a closet. I don’t think the budget is going to last. So we keep our closets pretty empty. But, you know, if you have a scullery or a walk in pantry or things like that, oftentimes we’ll stage that and bring in, you know, rice and beans and those sorts of details to make it feel truly finished.

James Kademan [00:37:23]:
How cool is that? With your. So you said you franchised three years ago, is that right?

Alisa Sparks [00:37:30]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:37:31]:
And how many locations do you have now?

Alisa Sparks [00:37:33]:
We have 24 locations.

James Kademan [00:37:35]:
That is hella growth. Holy cow. I mean, how are we talking every two months, something like that?

Alisa Sparks [00:37:43]:
It’s. It’s exponentially growing now. So the first year, well, the first year we just had one, then we were up to five, then 15 the next year. And so we’re seeing some, some scalability on this. Now. It really came down to like, let’s test this. Does this really work? Is there feasibility around it? Let’s work out our kinks. And now that we’re ready to go, let’s go.

Alisa Sparks [00:38:02]:
It allows us to provide more support to our franchise owners. The bigger we get, the more we get to support. And so for us, we want to scale, we want to be picky, we want to pick the right owners that are just as passionate about building something beautiful as we are, that are going to be hustlers and go getters. But we’re having a heck of a lot of fun as we find them, fall in love with them, and get to partner with them for the next 10 years.

James Kademan [00:38:24]:
That’s awesome. Tell me a story about what you look for in a franchisee.

Alisa Sparks [00:38:29]:
Yeah, that is a lesson that I have learned over the last few years. I think, you know, on day one, I was like, oh, it’s people that love design. Maybe it’s people that already have a staging business that want help. Maybe it’s real estate agents. What we’ve found actually to be the most successful is more a reflection of my actual journey of recognizing and realizing that. I started Linden Creek because I love design, but in within a year, I was out of a lot of the design work. My team did most of it. I became a business owner, right? I was responsible for the sales and the HR and the operations and the accounting and marketing and all of that.

Alisa Sparks [00:39:06]:
And so it took a moment of pausing and realizing that what we’re looking for in franchise owners isn’t a designer. I’m not looking to hire staff members. We’re looking for other people that are just like that, that want to be business owners and happen to do it in a really beautiful space. And so we look for individuals. Most of them come from backgrounds in some sort of corporate experience, whether it’s sales, marketing, hr, that want to build something of their own, want a playbook so they can get there faster, happen to have a love for design, but it’s actually easier to teach the design principles than it is to teach the business principles, which is fascinating, but. But true. And so we. We look for that.

Alisa Sparks [00:39:49]:
Our franchise owners are wildly competitive in a good way. They love each other. Collaborative, but, like, they all want to be number one in sales. And so we look for that because that’s who our culture has become. We see a lot of success with it, and so we want to keep building on that.

James Kademan [00:40:05]:
How do you find them? Like, what questions do you ask to figure out if they fit that mold?

Alisa Sparks [00:40:10]:
Yeah, we really look for three key things, and I’ll ask lots of questions around it, but, you know, are you. Are you good at building relationships? You don’t necessarily have to be good at sales. We can kind of teach the one on one on getting your foot in the door, but are you good at building and maintaining those relationships? Do you have a lot of friends? Do you have a good network already or know how to network? And so a lot of it sometimes is observation. So franchise prospect goes through multiple meetings over the phone and virtually with our team and different team members. And then the last step is they actually come out to Raleigh and spend the day with us. They spend the evening before with my husband and I. We do dinner, we drink wine together, we laugh, we have fun. We let them kind of put their hair down, if you will, and like, really be authentically them.

Alisa Sparks [00:40:56]:
And then the next day is kind of a little more business. They meet the whole team, but we get so much time to interact with them that a lot of it comes almost more from observation than it does from what they Say, because everybody’s going to say the right things. Right. But it’s your actions that are going to really, truly reflect. Are you able to converse well and build relationships and show enthusiasm? Are you asking the right questions when you’re put in these settings about business? Or are you asking fundamentals of, you know, design questions more around pattern play? Right. But we, as we observe their behaviors and the questions they’re bringing up, it’s a really good indicator for us of whether or not they’re going to be the right fit.

James Kademan [00:41:35]:
You know, that is so interesting. I wonder if I could interview employees that way. Take them out to dinner, have a few drinks and just see if they’re smart or jerks. Have you ever turned anyone down for being a franchisee after meeting with them?

Alisa Sparks [00:41:52]:
We have. We’ve turned a lot of individuals down. And again, it’s not because they were bad people. I’m sure they would be wildly successful at what they’re doing, but they maybe were more focused on design than they were on growing and scaling a business. And I knew that three years in they’re out of the design side and they’re probably going to be miserable because they’re going to miss designing. Right. And so there have been instances like that where we’ve said, hey, probably not the right fit, but really beautiful. If you want to build your own business, you’re going to do great.

Alisa Sparks [00:42:21]:
Or others that maybe don’t have the same ability to adapt. In a tech world, we use a lot of software and technology in our day to day might not seem like that with a warehouse full of furniture, but making our operations work is very tech heavy, tech heavy. And so the importance of being able to adapt new software solutions, to learn quickly, all of those things are important. And so if, if we feel like it’s not going to be a great fit, we will openly say no.

James Kademan [00:42:48]:
Well, I can imagine from a software point of view, imagine just inventory of keeping track of what furniture is at what house and where’s it going to next and all that. That’s a. That is more than just a spreadsheet, I would bet.

Alisa Sparks [00:43:02]:
That is absolutely right. There’s a whole brainchild behind the scenes that’s making that happen.

James Kademan [00:43:07]:
Is that something that you in the software game? Is that something that you had built or something that was an off the shelf product?

Alisa Sparks [00:43:14]:
There were off the shelf products when I started Linden Creek that I was using. But the unfortunate thing is I had to use multiple software products to make the business work. And then like seven spreadsheets also Right. And so we found that there was an insane amount of time spent on administrative tasks instead of actually serving the client. And so as we started to scale the idea of franchising, I ended up building my own software solution. Right now it’s proprietary to Linden Creek, but it allows us to manage what sofa is in which house and where is it going next and when is that install coming back and when can I use it again? Another home. It manages all of our clients and email correspondences, payments, invoicing, you name it. So it becomes this kind of one stop shop that simplifies the entire administrative process so we can actually focus on the things that matter most.

James Kademan [00:44:03]:
How cool is that? Tell me a story about building that, because that is more than just a flipping a light switch, I imagine.

Alisa Sparks [00:44:10]:
Yeah. I would say for a girl that had never built a software platform, it’s not for the faint of heart. If you’re in the software game, you probably are like 7,000 steps ahead of where I was. So kudos to you. It’s a learning game. It’s learning to have the right partners and the right individuals and really understanding what your product is going to be long term and shooting for that goal. So I will openly tell you one of the biggest mistakes I made as I built this is I was like, here’s going to be a phase one, it’ll do this, in phase two, it’ll do that. And I didn’t do a strong enough job really conveying to our developers what it was going to look like at the end of phase two.

Alisa Sparks [00:44:45]:
I was just like, here’s phase one. That when phase two came in, it felt chunky. It was like this and then this. And they don’t talk to each other as well. And there are these convoluted nuances. Where had I started at the very end and we backed up, it would have been better. And so we actually have done a complete rebranding of the software solution, rebuilt the entire thing as a way to go. Let’s start over.

Alisa Sparks [00:45:06]:
This is the end point. How do we do this better? So software development is exciting again. It leans on experts that know so much more than I do. I get to learn an entirely different language when it comes to software development, which is really exciting and a way for me and my designer brain to somehow communicate with a software engine that knows nothing about design. But it’s been a really exciting journey. It’s something that I look at it now and I go, there’s no way we could do what we’re doing today. Had I not built this resource. It’s something for us that allows us to better manage and see what our franchise owners are doing so that I don’t have to wait for their P and L to show up 45 days after something happens.

Alisa Sparks [00:45:46]:
But I can see how their activity is today and know if there are red flags. Right. Or if there are challenges that they’re about to face so that we can talk about through coach on it, or if they’re absolutely crushing it, but they maybe don’t know the, like, big, scary part of crushing it that happens of, like, running out of inventory. And so it gives us a chance to kind of warn them before they know. And so we’re thankful for that side of it too, because it allows us to better serve our owners and educate and coach them throughout each season.

James Kademan [00:46:12]:
That is super cool. So when did you first start or let me just back up a step. When you decided to get the software built, you had to find a software developer.

Alisa Sparks [00:46:23]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:46:23]:
So how tough was it to find a software developer?

Alisa Sparks [00:46:27]:
It was challenging. And you just have a lot of. You have a lot of conversations. Right? I think it’s the same sort of process to me as it is when you hire an employee for the first time for a role you’ve never hired for. There are seasons in. In my organization where I’ve had to hire for something where, like, I haven’t necessarily done that job. Like, I know enough to kind of stick it together, but I haven’t done it and done it well. And so my big strategy, anytime I’m hiring for a new role that I’m not as familiar with, is to have an insane number of interviews.

Alisa Sparks [00:46:56]:
Like, at least to talk to 10, 20 people and ask questions in the interview process that will actually educate me about what are people consistently saying, what questions are they asking? And that gives you a good indication of who might be a great software fit. So we do the same thing with our vendors. If I’m looking to bring on somebody to manufacture art, if I’m looking to bring somebody on to build software, then it’s, let’s have so many of these conversations that even though I may not be experienced in this industry, I can understand what good experience looks like and be able to rely on somebody. And then reference checking is wildly important. Talk to past clients. What were their experiences like, what went well, what didn’t go well? Talk to others in the community. Are there other individuals you know in your network that have potentially worked with software organizations before? And do they have recommendations?

James Kademan [00:47:45]:
That’s fair. It’s the custom software thing is so interesting to me because I feel like there’s. The sky’s the limit as far as the tools that you can have built.

Alisa Sparks [00:47:53]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:47:54]:
The challenge. I guess maybe this is head trash, but I’m just curious about this. You have all these developers and one developer saying, hey, use this language. Another says, hey, use this language. And maybe you have this software developer develop it, but then either they get hit by a bus or get hired off and now you’re like, hey, we gotta update. Because whatever Windows or Apple or whatever is updating, so we have to keep up with that. Who do we get to update this proprietary software? We have the foundation of our business. Tell me how you’ve navigated all that.

Alisa Sparks [00:48:24]:
Yeah, great questions. Because we have hit all of those challenges and nuances. I think it’s important again, to know enough about the software world to understand what are some of those common languages that don’t just sit with one development team. Because if somebody gets hit by a bus tomorrow, you need to be able to bring somebody else in that can complete those sentences, that can solve for those solutions. We also found having a bigger team is helpful because if one of their developers is out of pocket, at least seven other people can step in if needed. And that customer, you know, references is also important. Hey, what did past customers do? Have they been with them for the last five years? Has it only been six months? Why did they leave after seven months? You know, understanding those things is really beneficial, but knowing enough to know that you need to be asking for that universal locations or universal language so that you’re not locked into something that’s going to be challenging to rewrite and rebuild is huge.

James Kademan [00:49:19]:
Right on. Did you stay with your first software developer?

Alisa Sparks [00:49:23]:
We did not. And again, that’s not uncommon to hear or see.

James Kademan [00:49:27]:
No, not surprising at all.

Alisa Sparks [00:49:28]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:49:29]:
Not even a little bit.

Alisa Sparks [00:49:30]:
Most that are in this journey are like, yep, that’s how that goes. We started with one. We learned a lot of lessons along the way. They built us a really great starter product, but we hit challenges again because we wanted to go from here to here. Right. And so when you go from B to C, all of a sudden you recognize there’s something different in the infrastructure that’s needed. There’s a different level of support that’s needed, there’s a different level of speed and development that’s needed. And so it was a learning lesson for me to.

Alisa Sparks [00:49:55]:
To be more mindful about. Like, you don’t piecemeal software. You go, here’s the Behemoth. And this is what we’re shooting for and how we build it. But it gives you a chance to work with the development team and know whether or not it’s the right fit as well.

James Kademan [00:50:08]:
Nice. When you were meeting with these companies, did you end up meeting with software developers or did you meet with the salesperson and then once everything got signed or whatever, then you get the developer or tell me how that sales process worked?

Alisa Sparks [00:50:24]:
A little bit of both. In most of these scenarios, you end up working directly with the sales rep first. That’s the introduction and it’s honestly my least favorite part. Their job is to sell. They don’t know software the way that your developers are going to know software. And so for me, it always came down to like, let’s get the sales guy out of the room as quickly as possible. I want to actually talk to the developers. Let me ask those questions.

Alisa Sparks [00:50:44]:
Let me better understand, let me have a transparent conversation of here’s what I want. Because the sales rep told me yes to all of this. But I know you, dear developer, are not going to say yes to all of this. So what am I really asking? Right? So yes, a sales person is always involved in that process. But I think the big biggest piece is asking the question, if you’re going to be their customer and working with them long term of can I talk with your development team then? And rephrasing all of those questions, re asking, you know, scope questions and understanding of capacity because that’s the true unlock of knowing whether or not they’re going to be capable of something that is.

James Kademan [00:51:20]:
That’s so funny that that is true. So universally, yes, all the salespeople sell rainbows and moonbeams and all that. And then the technical people that are actually doing the work are saying like, yeah, no, this is what can happen.

Alisa Sparks [00:51:37]:
That’s exactly right. Which is why, you know, from a consumer standpoint, it’s important for us sometimes to try to get past that if we can, or ask the really pointed questions, get to know the team. And you know, I always use this as an example for us internally to look and reflect. We have salespeople on our team, right? And so I always look them in the face and go, listen, XYZ down and down the hall in the office is going to want to punch you in the face if you tell somebody something that they’re not capable of doing. And they have every right to want to do that. So, like, we don’t over deliver or we don’t under promise over promise, we over deliver that’s our job. I would rather you not close a sale and a client be overly impressed with what we’re doing. But over promising is disappointment for both sides of the party, and it’s.

Alisa Sparks [00:52:19]:
It’s just not worth it.

James Kademan [00:52:20]:
Totally agree. I love what you said about getting the salesperson out of the room as fast as possible. So, like, we got your brand. Let’s get the people that can actually do the work to chat with them. I love it.

Alisa Sparks [00:52:31]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:52:32]:
Tell me what has been your biggest challenge so far in building all the franchise?

Alisa Sparks [00:52:38]:
Gosh. Biggest challenge. I would say the biggest challenge is we are growing really fast, which is a great thing. The challenge that comes with fast growth is your systems that worked internally 12 months ago probably don’t work today. The people that you had on board 12 months ago, some of them are, like, ready to level up and take the next responsibility. Some of them are not. And you’re requiring a different. Different level of skill set.

Alisa Sparks [00:53:03]:
And so I think the biggest challenge for us is because of the fast growth, it’s requiring us to question and reframe and rebuild systems that we had in place, requiring us to grow and build a team very rapidly, which has been a beautiful thing. Again, you hire for expertise, and so you get to bring in these heavy hitters that you’re so excited to work alongside. But it requires a level of plasticity from you and from your team to kind of pivot and adjust and understand that what Linden Creek looks like today is not what Linden Creek is going to look like in three months. And just because you were really comfortable with this sop, it might change a little bit in three months. Internally, behind the scenes, while we really fine tune and perfect who we are and how we can deliver the best possible experience for our franchise owners.

James Kademan [00:53:51]:
Nice. How do you keep your franchise owners on that, that that level of, like, this is the service that we offer and prevent them from cutting corners or trying to make an extra buck here or there?

Alisa Sparks [00:54:03]:
Yeah, well, there is a franchise agreement in place that legally prevents them from all of that. But, like, we don’t want to say, hey, the agreement says so you have to do it right. For us, the biggest thing is the services that we offer, the things that we do. The service that we provide is the way it is because it does two things. It serves our client best, and it optimizes our profitability. And so what we find is if somebody is maybe navigating towards wanting to go a little rogue right in how they’re offering something or what they’re offering we pause and we go, let’s break this down. Let’s sit down and talk about what the client experience was like because of that. Was your client frustrated? Yeah.

Alisa Sparks [00:54:39]:
Okay, interesting. Why would your client have been frustrated in that scenario? Right. So let’s talk about client first, and then let’s go look at the back end. How many hours did it take your team because you decided to navigate away from the sop? Cool. What were the cost of inventory? Now it’s like, map this out. How much money did you make at the end of this? And they’re like, oh, shoot, I only made $150. And you’re like, that’s why we don’t do it. And so, you know, sometimes math is the biggest opportunity for, like, these educational opportunities and seasons.

Alisa Sparks [00:55:08]:
You know, in franchising, there’s a level of, like, you said to do it. So I’m just going to trust it. But you’re going to have some franchise owners that question it and go, I think this makes more sense. And so we just see it as training opportunities of like, like, okay, do it. It’s going to be a little painful. And then we’re going to talk about why that’s not in existence right now. Because we want to protect you from those things. And usually they go, yep, that makes sense.

Alisa Sparks [00:55:28]:
Never going to do that one again. And you’re like, okay, cool. And you move on your way.

James Kademan [00:55:32]:
Right on. Are your franchises split up by zip code, or how do you split up areas?

Alisa Sparks [00:55:38]:
Yeah, our franchise owners, we do split up areas. We want them to have a dedicated protected territory that is theirs and they have full ownership of. So it is a buy zip code area.

James Kademan [00:55:48]:
Gotcha. Right on. Because I see quite a few in North Carolina.

Alisa Sparks [00:55:52]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:55:52]:
And I guess you guys kind of have the east coast covered there.

Alisa Sparks [00:55:57]:
We’re getting busy in there, which we are absolutely loving.

James Kademan [00:55:59]:
That’s awesome. Then I see some Texas. So you broke into that market. That’s awesome.

Alisa Sparks [00:56:03]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:56:05]:
Was that just somebody knew somebody or how did that happen?

Alisa Sparks [00:56:09]:
We started to navigate west a little bit, and so suddenly there was some interest that started happening in Texas. And once interest starts in one state, we find that it kind of of trickles down from there. So we’ve seen a lot of new growth and interest in Texas, which is exciting. So we are now in Austin, Dallas, and Houston.

James Kademan [00:56:26]:
That’s awesome. Lisa, we don’t have a ton of time, but I do want to ask you something about interior design. I definitely am not an interior designer. When you walk into a house just any Given house, what is the first thing that your eye goes towards and maybe causes you to roll your eyes?

Alisa Sparks [00:56:44]:
Oh, I love that question. If. Now let me ask you this. Is this a staged property that you’re trying to sell, or is this a home that you live in?

James Kademan [00:56:51]:
Let’s just start with a home that you live in.

Alisa Sparks [00:56:53]:
Okay. If this is a home that you live in, the one thing that makes me roll my eyes, as silly as this sounds, it’s going to be furniture that’s so perfect that you don’t feel like you can live there. I am a huge proponent, and this is controversial in the design space, I’m a huge proponent that a home should be designed first for function and second for beauty. That you should not be afraid of your kids or your grandkids, like running and jumping on the sofa and them wrecking something or breaking something. And so sometimes when I see a home that’s maybe aesthetically beautiful but is so pinned up and poised that people are afraid to move and it feels like a museum to me, that’s not home and it’s a missed opportunity. So I would say that would be my number one.

James Kademan [00:57:31]:
Oh, that’s funny. It reminds me. It was that Ferris Bueller. When Ferris Bueller is talking about his friend’s house, he’s like, it’s like a museum. It’s very cold. You can’t touch anything.

Alisa Sparks [00:57:41]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:57:41]:
Oh, that’s funny. How about a stage house? What? When you look into a staged house, not staged by your people or any of your franchisees, what makes you roll your eyes when you walk into one of those homes?

Alisa Sparks [00:57:52]:
A stage house is a simple one. It is all about floor plan and potential photography opportunities. So the job of a stager is this. The first time you’re going to see the home is through a photograph on MLS. And so if you walk into a room and see that Photoshop and it is a missed opportunity because you hung the art on the wrong wall or it’s overly saturated in. That, to me, is the eye roll. I’m like, that’s the first, you know, 20 seconds somebody’s going to interact with a home. That photo moment has to be impactful and important.

James Kademan [00:58:21]:
That is genius. I never even thought about the picture or photoability of a room. I was just fixing walking in there. That is clever. I’m going to ask you a question without trying to piss you off, but maybe I will go for it. You look at MLS and you see the fake furniture and all that kind

Alisa Sparks [00:58:38]:
of stuff in those images.

James Kademan [00:58:39]:
Just tell me your Opinion on that.

Alisa Sparks [00:58:41]:
Okay. Virtual staging. Fantastic. To get you in the door, full stop. And I will transparently tell you that virtual staging has made massive improvements over the last few years. There are some spaces I’ve seen where I’m like, that’s really good virtual staging. The challenge with virtual staging, and we hear this as feedback from our real estate agents, is once the home buyer walks into the empty house, all of a sudden there’s a letdown. They don’t remember what the virtual staging looked like.

Alisa Sparks [00:59:05]:
Like they’re paying attention to the scratch they now see on the hardwood floors. It feels very utilitarian. They’re kind of checking, does this room work or not? The emotional experience and engagement that they had on the photos doesn’t transfer over into the home. And so we don’t see the same return on investment from that perspective.

James Kademan [00:59:22]:
Gotcha. Oh, I love that. This is so interesting interviewing people in different verticals, because these are things that I never would have thought of. But. But now let’s just say that that makes complete sense. I love it. Elisa, how can people find you?

Alisa Sparks [00:59:38]:
Yeah, check us out at lyndon-creek.com you can take a look at some fun projects we’re working on, see where we’re located. You can also follow us on Instagram at lindencreek.

James Kademan [00:59:48]:
Nice. I love it. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and strength and successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold, as well as Live Switch. With Live Switch, you can take live videos with your clients to save you time and money. Check them out https://liveswitch.com If you’re listening or watching this on the web. If you could do us a huge favor, give it a big old thumbs up, subscribe and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends and those friends that may be interested in owning a franchise that’s in the design and staging space, as well as someone that may be selling a home that needs some design and staging.

James Kademan [01:00:42]:
We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Alisa Sparks of Linden Creek. Alisa, can you tell us that website one more time?

Alisa Sparks [01:00:49]:
Yes, it’s https://Linden-Creek.com.

James Kademan [01:00:52]:
I love it. Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link fun drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.