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Journal: Live your best life

We think, live, and breathe luxury. With a talent for elegance and backgrounds in the home fashion and luxury real estate industries, we love connecting people and helping you live your best life. Marketing keeps us up at night. Sumptuous products dance in our heads. Bringing you the inspired people and places behind the dreams, inspires us.

Networking Like You Mean It

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Before online business networking, the only option was face-to-face networking for business. Typically, this was primarily achieved through trade show marketing and loyalty programs. “Schmoozing” or “rubbing elbows” are expressions that may come to mind when business professionals introduce and meet one another while establishing business rapport. Today’s focus has moved toward online marketing due to the ability to track details of each campaign/encounter and justify the time and money expended in setting up such campaigns.

People aren’t electronic campaigns, and people like to do business with other people they know and like. So, although digital techniques have been proven to be a highly effective source of making those connections, face-to-face networking at conferences or mixer events can tip the scales in your favor.

We’ll start by saying networking is hard. People meet, make small talk, promise to talk again, and neither of you ever calls. Follow these quick tips to change the narrative and turn your networking time from a brain drain into something that energizes you and grows your business.

Ask Questions; Get People to Talk about Themselves

How many times have you stood in the sidelines trying to come up with that perfect pitch? What can you say that will make yourself known?

You’re focusing on the wrong thing. People love to talk about themselves; let them.

Ask them genuine questions and get to know them. Find out who their ideal client is. Who their referral partners are. They not only will remember you for being the person that made it easy for them to talk about themselves, but they’ll probably actually like you and want to send business your way.

Talk about Yourself

Talking about them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend some time talking about yourself. Chances are they’ll make it easy and ask you the same questions about yourself. Rather than just parroting similar answers, advocate for yourself and your business. Make them comfortable with you by telling some stories that can be related back to business. Talk about your favorite kind of client; keep it positive and don’t talk about your least favorite. Be confident. Tell them what you do and why you do it. Your goal is to present yourself in a memorable way so they’ll think of you when they are looking for referrals to pass on.

Talk about Business

We all have personal lives and it is highly comfortable to fall back onto a backlog of funny and cute stories. Just remember that networking is “work” and if personal topics exceed business topics it becomes a social gathering. It’s important to get to know each other, but your end game is not to accumulate new best friends you are there to find out how this person can help refer your business as well as other helpful introductions. Stay focused on what you do, what you don’t do, and who you consider being a good client.

Discuss Your Niche

You must set yourself apart from all the other people in the room also networking. You can’t simply say you design, sell, or build houses and expect someone to send you referrals based only on that generic explanation. Be more specific. You are an interior designer that does aging-in-place design. You build luxury homes in Paradise Valley. You specialize in selling homes in the North Central Phoenix area. Do you charge for initial consultations?

Details like this will help them think of someone to send your way. When we make referrals, we refer individuals that we know enough about them to know which clients will be a great fit.

Be Intentional

It might initially seem important to meet as many people as possible. This is not speed dating. You need to set your sites on those individuals who can be of benefit to you and you to them. You are not there to hit a quota for the evening.

Just spending time networking will not turn into referrals. You must go into this knowing who you are professionally so you can confidently sell that to the other professionals at the event. You need to preliminary understanding of what you or your clients are looking for in a referral partner to determine whether the two of you are a good professional fit.

Networking is an Investment

Your best referral partners are people you meet with regularly. It’s easy to say you’ll pass business after one meeting. But highly unlikely. It’s important to nurture the relationship to show you’re determined to help each other.

Serve as a resource when they have questions. Have lunch or coffee every quarter to see what’s new in their business. Keep them updated on new laws or trends that might affect their clients or on opportunities to partner or present.

Look at your referral partners as more than just a referral stream—recognize how they can add value to your clients. Clients love to feel like they’re being taken care of by a team of professionals.

Networking is all what you make of it. And you’ll get as much back out as you’ll put in if you know what value you bring to the table and what you are your clients are look for.

If you see us at your next networking event, stop by, and introduce yourself. We’d love to hear about your business.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH: Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca

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We love discovering fabulous new products and are especially thrilled to share products featured locally so our readership can experience such luxury for themselves. An added benefit is to be able to say the founder of the brand is just as delightful as the product is sumptuous. That’s how we feel about Sandra Jordan and the Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca Collection headquartered in California.

Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca

Prima Alpaca “Gold of the Andes,” once treasured by Incan royalty for its softness, beauty, and versatility, remains one of the most treasured textiles available today. This natural fiber is brought to market utilizing a time-honored process thousands of years in the making. From raising of the alpaca, shearing, through manufacturing of the textile the process is earth-friendly as well as creates jobs for textile workers in Sandra’s native Peru.

The luxurious textiles of the Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca Collection are prized for their elegant drape, silky softness, and velvety touch. I can attest to its luxurious hand and sumptuous texture as having experienced it first-hand at John Brooks showroom.

Not only luxurious to handle, Prima Alpaca is quite strong and hypoallergenic, making it suitable for upholstery and throws, curtains and wall coverings. The intense sun indicative of the Southwest, known to wreak havoc on drapery and walls coverings, may have met its match with Prima Alpaca. It’s innate ability to reflect light and resist solar radiation helps the textile keep its appearance over time, and makes it naturally stain-resistant.

Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca

With the holidays upon us, look no further for the perfect gift for a special client or best friend, the Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca Collection includes custom throws handmade to your design specifications.

The spectacular palette of natural shades such as dove gray, russet and inky black in a rich array of patterns can be found at John Brooks and is available through your local interior designer.

Images: Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca

Conference Goers: 15 Types You’ll Either Meet or Embody

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Each season a fresh burst of conventions and expos pop up throughout the business landscape. Most conferences provide continuing education breakouts as well as opportunities to offer conference-goers the opportunity to do a bit of multi-tasking.

So what should you actually be doing at a convention? Should you focus on networking or just try to make connections with smart people? Maybe simply take notes and try to learn a little something during the breakout sessions? Whatever you are hoping to do, you need to identify who you will embody as well as other conference-goers so you don’t derail your plans.

Here are 15 typical types of conference-goers you are most likely to meet or embody. Understanding them can help you figure out how to stay on track and meet your personal goals for attending the conference or seminar.

The Networker

The networker is there to meet and make lasting connections with other conference-goers. They typically have a lot of social media connections and can most likely be found chatting up multiple groups of people during happy hour, handing out business cards, or making real-time LinkedIn connections.

If this conference-goer sounds like you, just make sure you brush up on your ground game – networking mistakes are easier to make than you might think.

The Sponge

The sponge is there to learn as much as possible. He or she attends conferences to soak up every ounce of knowledge they can. This person has the difficult task of juggling a laptop, smartphone, and notebook, in addition to identifying which sessions to attend and which to miss.

The Innovator

The Innovator attends conferences in the hopes of being inspired by other conference-goers and striking a creative streak. Entrepreneurs, thinkers, and problem-solvers would fall under this bucket — people who seek inspiration for their next brilliant idea or invention.

The Collector

Collectors may attend the conference to learn and bring back information to their team, but they’re not going to miss out on all the swag. I mean, sometimes all you really need in life is a free drink koozie, a pen, and a squishy stress ball.

The Superfan

The Superfan is very active when it comes to conference-related social media activity. This person never forgets to include the keynote speaker’s Twitter handle in hopes that they will retweet or reply. And if there’s a chance to meet the speaker at the conference the Superfan is first in line.

The Escape Artist

Escape Artists are really looking for a Get Out of Work Free card without using vacation time. Sure, they might learn a thing or two and meet a few interesting conference-goers, so they can report back, but playing hooky is their main mission. Escape Artists benefit from preliminary planning so they can get the break from their day-to-day job while still bringing back a ton of value for the team.

The Job Seeker

Job seekers tend to have different goals when attending a conference, depending on which stage of the job hunt they find themselves. A job seeker might attend an event to learn about companies, opportunities, and people they’d like to work with.

Job seekers are also likely on the lookout for opportunities to give potential employers an elevator pitch in person, along with a resume or portfolio. If this is you, come prepared with your pitch.

The Deal-Maker

The difference between a Deal-Maker and a Networker is that a Deal-Maker attends a conference focused on creating business partnerships. Partnerships could include co-marketing or co-branding opportunities, sponsorships, or speaking opportunities. If this is you, take a tip from the Networker’s playbook and make some lasting relationships first and leave the business for after the conference.

The Blogger

The Bloggers’ role at a conference is specifically to get fodder to produce some form of content for their blog. They can often be found listening intently to keynotes and breakout sessions while writing down an outline or quotes on a laptop.

The Teacher

The Teacher is the person sent to the conference to return with the best takeaways and relay that knowledge to teammates. The Teacher takes excellent notes and if you have a company wiki, they will most likely create a page on there with the lessons and best practices from the conference. Maybe even formally present upon return.

The Frugal Tourist

One of the great benefits of attending an out-of-state conference is that your company is picking up the tab for your flights and hotel room. The Frugal Tourist understands this strategy all too well and will optimize their trip to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing. Perks such as sightseeing shouldn’t be your sole mission for attending a conference, but if you can tack on a vacation to the end of a highly productive work week, why not. Just make sure you bring back a ton of valuable information for your team before you start kicking back.

The Thought Leader

The Thought Leader’s main mission is to stay successful and most often are actually the conference speakers. They’re experts on a given topic and are there to talk to the crowd about it. Thought Leaders have probably written books and countless blog articles on the same topic, have high numbers of followers on social media, and are high energy.

The Spy

Then there are conference-goers who attend events to test the competitive landscape. The Spy comes ready to check out the competition. They compile and analyze this information and turn it into a plan of action. Attending a conference as a spy is actually a popular sales tactic; it can offer your team some valuable sound bites that can help close future deals.

The Salesperson

Similar to the deal-maker, the Salesperson is there to close deals and sell their products or services. However, the Salesperson is usually only interested in selling their company’s core products and services and not building strategic partnerships. This interaction could happen during the conference or after the conference has ended, giving the prospect time to consider the deal.

The Partier

The Partier is the person who takes advantage of every social aspect, entertainment, and free drinks available. We all have a little of the Partier in us and should take advantage of trips to the snack table or for a beverage during otherwise awkward or uncomfortable silences to regroup. But don’t miss out on embodying one of the other conference-goer personas so your conference experience is both fun and productive.

Preplanning your approach will help you make the best of your limited time and leave you with a positive and enriching experience.

What other types of conference attendees have you met? Share with us in the comments below.

To read the full article see The 15 Types of People You’ll Meet at a Conference

6 Real-Estate Staging Secrets to Make the Sale

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With the barrage of imagery from Pinterest and Instagram filling our smartphone, desktop monitor, and tablet screens, it’s no wonder we have become so visually driven.

Setting up the perfect “selfie” is not limited to pictures of our friends and family, but they need to see the perfect image has spilled over into our everyday expectations such as in buying or selling a home.

Real-Estate staging has become not only a trusted design-industry secret but also a mass movement. Having a home professionally staged is important because it pulls the stop out of the home’s potential in ways most people cannot envision. Real-Estate staging not only creates beautiful interiors but sets the stage for complete lifestyles.

Here are some go-to techniques used by top real-estate staging professionals to convey the true functionality of each room when getting a home ready to sell.

EGI 86Ernesto Garcia Interior Design

Show the potential. Many people find it difficult to perceive the potential of a room and struggle with visualizing how to lay out furniture or use certain rooms when they’re empty, cluttered, or lack flow. You can create a feeling of expanse and luxury with furniture selections, accessories, and accents in all rooms of the house. Nothing makes a home feel more awkward or small than poorly placed furnishings.

EGI 84Ernesto Garcia Interior Design

The kitchen is mostly about accessorizing and lighting, keeping things interesting and complementary to the space; such as a fresh basket of fruit or floral on the kitchen counter.

Mark Boisclair Photography, Inc.Liz Hepper Interior Design (Photographer: Mark Boisclair Photography, Inc.)

Scale, texture, and tone. Conveying too much of your personality in the home is harmful to the buyer’s experience. A home stager will assess each room and supplement with what is exactly the right fit. Furnishing selections and colors should tell a subtle yet distinct story for each room. Allowing the viewer to embellish the story in their minds. Base furnishing choices on what is available, budget, and a strong design instinct.

New-York-City-6-copy-1-1100x824Liz Hepper Interior Design

Focus on the bedroom. Bedrooms are typically one of the hardest and most neglected spaces in creating that perfect look. Paying close attention to walking spaces around furniture pieces is as important as in the rest of the house. And, if flow is disturbed, it can fall apart instantly. The goal is to make it look anything but bare and uninviting. Throw out all stops on blankets, comforters, and accent pillows in cozy, complementary colors, and textures. Strive to have a luxurious, fully layered bed in each room that beckons you to jump in.

EGI 95Ernesto Garcia Interior Design

Splurge a little. Having a focal point in each room is as important as nice bedding. Select art and florals that complement the scale of ceilings and walls. Fragrance right to the room adds another dimension to the experience. Cinnamon in the kitchen, a soft scent in the bathroom, and fabric softener in the laundry room are just a few. Consider music suitable for the home and its future owner.

real estate staging

Don’t blow the budget. Splurging doesn’t mean blowing your budget. Start with big impact, low cost items like decluttering, painting, and updating window treatments. Pull furniture away from walls and embrace empty walls. It not only opens up room flow but can make a space look larger and allows prospective buyers to visualize their art and belongings in your space. Finally, add life to each room with a floral or green plant the right size and shape.

Keep your eye on the prize. Every dollar spent gets you one step closer to yielding a return. In an age of image heavy content, the value of real-estate staging has become more a necessity than it is luxury, as you compete for space in the conversation.

Have you had a positive experience with staging your home for sale? Please share your comments in the space below.

Single Women Pay More for their Home Loans

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If you are a single woman looking to buy a new home, you will want to read this.

Even though single women statistically default on their mortgages less often than men, they are denied credit more often and get charged more for their loans. In addition, even though single ladies typically make larger down payments according to the Housing Financing Policy Center of the Urban Institute, they typically have lower incomes.

Single women are one of the largest group of homebuyers in the marketplace, averaging about 15-20 percent of home purchases. Second only to married buyers with a 67 percent buying average and men only accounting for about 9 percent of home purchases.

In The Urban Institute study they looked at a national database of mortgage transactions compiled by the federal government as well as proprietary information on borrower-credit characteristics from an analytics firm.

The study revealed single women pay slightly more for their mortgages in spite of their superior repayment record. Some of this attributed inequality is because of “weaker credit characteristics” at the application stage resulting in subprime, or higher-cost, financing.

The authors argue that in fairness, “we need to develop more robust and accurate measures of risk to ensure that we aren’t denying mortgages to women who are fully able to make good on their payments.” As the pattern of lower default rates by single women borrowers remained persistent throughout all three years of the study period.

Real estate agents say single women are more emotionally invested when buying a condo or a house and are buying to fulfill a dream. Whereas men are more interested in the tax write-offs and financial gains.

But the more disturbing factor is that single women are simply paying too much for their home loans. The Urban Institute study attributes this to “Given that more than one-third of single women borrowers are minorities and almost half of them live in low-income communities.”

However, the 2011 Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics doesn’t believe gender discrimination is to blame: “While the persistence of gender disparity may suggest discrimination, we offer a different explanation: Women pay higher rates because they are more likely to choose lenders by recommendation, while men tend to search for the lowest rate.”

What does this mean? It could mean thousands of dollars in extra payments for women on a 30-year mortgage. A man pays $26,000 less than a woman in interest over the life of the assuming he gets a 5% mortgage rate while she gets a 5.4% rate.

So ladies you may not always be able to get a better price on a mortgage but it is most certainly worth a shot. Do your homework and double-check those referrals by comparing interest rates online through websites like LendingTree.com.

Sources: Do Women Pay More for Mortgages? and 6 times it’s more expensive to be a woman

Facings of America: Tile for Your Beautiful Spaces

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Good things come to those who wait. That’s just how I felt when I walked through the doors of Facings of America in Scottsdale, Arizona for a design networking event.

A second generation owned and operated business, Facings has a reputation of having one of the most extensive tile and stone offerings in the industry. Since 1967, they have been direct importers of tile and stone from around the world with a special emphasis in European stones and tiles. Facings’ inventory is supplemented with tile, stone and other related products from top domestic vendors.

On this particular visit I was greeted by a very attentive woman who promptly gave me a tour of the facility. I was quite impressed during this brief but highly enjoyable tour. She was not only able to thoroughly answer all of my questions but offered up informative facts as I expressed interest in different tiles and displays. Facings is open to designers, architects and walk-in clients, offering the same excellent customer experience.

Facings of America

What was particularly impressive was the large selection of natural stone, ceramic, porcelain, glass, terracotta tiles artistically displayed on boards and in vignettes all designed to help make product selection easier. Such a remarkable collection is sure to meet your exacting standards as well as project budget requirements.

In addition to a dramatic selection of tiles, Facings also carries a generous line of architectural features that complement many of its stone flooring options. Facings designs and fabricates some very beautiful and unique architectural features with most pieces hand-carved by Italian artisans in the heart of Tuscany. Architectural features include columns, fireplaces, fountains, balcony balustrades, pool coping, and door and window surrounds.

Facings’ design consultants have a wide-range of design experience and have completed an extensive two-week certification program. Clearly a very effective training program as evidenced by my tour guide.

Tile and Staff of Facings of America

Facings offers full warehouse support. When orders are received, they are inspected for quality and can be stored in their warehouse until needed on the job-site. This level of accommodation helps reduce job site mishaps as well as maintaining the pristine condition of the materials pending installation in your project. The warehouse storage policies are a welcome benefit to designers and tile contractors in helping to keep projects on time and within budget.

Facings has 15,000 SF of showroom space between its two valley locations. Both fully stocked and waiting to assist you with your next project.

What type of business entrepreneur are you?

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What type of business entrepreneur are you? Depending where your business falls in its life-cycle determines what you should be doing to help get you to the next stage of business success.

Each day lenders work with a variety of business entrepreneurs and, no matter their age, experience level or type of business, lenders find business entrepreneurs all fall into one of five categories, depending upon the stage of the business life-cycle they’re navigating.

The Crisis Manager is facing a code red situation. This business entrepreneur is dealing with a critical event that could kill their business and action is needed quickly. Typically they need a bit of financial relief and a little breathing room such as debt restructuring, changing the type of finance or changing lenders entirely.

The Plateaued or the would-be expander. These business entrepreneurs aren’t failing but they’re not setting the world on fire, either. Whether the management team is suspect or there’s just a lack of growth, these companies need a little direction such as pointing them toward the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) to propel them into a more proactive mode.

The Contented is a happy entrepreneur whose business is booming and their finances are in good shape. This is a good time to consider securing a line of credit since it isn’t immediately needed it’s a good way to secure a good rate and prepare for potential pitfalls ahead. It’s also a good time to see a small business attorney to develop a succession plan.

The Expander is a business entrepreneur who is succeeding, but could still take things to the next level such as adding a new production line, developing new products, or to expand facilities. They are prime candidates for an SBA loan or asset-specific financing rather than general cash flow financing.

The Exiter may sound like a superhero, but they are really someone just looking to maximize the process of cashing out. This sounds easy, but it actually can be both complicated and time consuming. Typically, the clean-up process should begin three years before the actual sale. Choosing the right legal or financial advisers is crucial and it’s equally important to complete tasks such as shifting debt off the balance sheet.

There may be five main stages of entrepreneurship, but each requires vastly different aging approaches that must be fine-tuned to tackle each unique circumstance.

Source: Which Stage of the Entrepreneurial Journey Are You In?

The Power of Home Staging – Sale or Stale?

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Well, I can start with the statistics. According to the National Association of Realtors 2015 profile of home staging report, over 95% of Buyer’s agents say that home staging has at least some effect on the buyer’s view of the home. The report also reflects an increase in sales price and a faster sale correlated with staging of a home. It seems to make sense, right?

A professional stager brings perfectly placed, trendy furniture into a vacant home to define each space. They choose appealing accessories, pop color with throw pillows and area rugs, and of course the ubiquitous bowl of bright yellow lemons in the kitchen. It all comes together to create just the right vision in a Buyer’s eyes. I have been on upwards of a 100 home tours, and although I am not a Realtor® or trained designer, I do know that a staged home, has a certain “wow-factor” over a vacant home. To a typical buyer, defining spaces, furniture placement, and the like, can be a huge challenge in a vacant property. Staging provides visual stimulation for the buyer that “revs up” their emotions. Suddenly they can picture themselves living in the home!

Home Staging
Lauren Ellington – Realtor

There are always exceptions to the rules. I recently was on a home tour, and during the Realtor® feedback session, there was a strong recommendation to stage a new built home that was on the tour. This newly constructed home had stunning architectural accents, beautiful flooring, plus typically unseen fine finishes. However, another Realtor® advised to the contrary, stating that all of the extra touches would have gone unnoticed if it was staged. After back and forth debate, ultimately the rest of the agents agreed. No staging needed on this lucky listing!

Home Staging
Nicole Wolf – Green Street Communities

Depending on the part of the country you reside, selling your home is competitive. Staging can pack a powerful punch of pizazz to your listing, to gain that slight edge needed to get the home sold.

Top Image: Lauren Ellington – Realtor