Furniture, furniture, everywhere there’s furniture! Many folks ask us how we stage our executive rentals and I usually reply the same way you do, only faster. You see, if you need to stage 3 new units, each one a 2 bedroom or 3 bedrooms in less than a month, you have to learn to work efficiently. If you think of packing up your house, the average 2 bedroom house requires an 18-20 foot moving truck and the average 3 bedroom requires a 26 foot moving truck, and how much furniture, linens, cookware, dishes, utensils, electronics, etc. you would see it is not hard to see how it can fill up a truck that size.

Now multiply that by 3 houses or even 5 and you see why we need to do things more efficiently. We have created systems so that we know which items can be ordered and from where. We know which items need to be bought locally and where to get the best pricing. We also know where to get that much furniture at the best pricing, even with shipping costs. One of the ways we are able to get that much furniture at the best pricing is by building relationships with liquidators who get truckloads of furniture daily. We just have to take the time to go through their massive warehouses and find the pieces we want.

Then once we find them, we label them with the addresses and dates they are to be delivered. This system works great for the most part. If they are not too close to the units we are furnishing, we will either drive to their warehouses or fly in. It makes for some very long days as they have multiple warehouses, but we can get the largest portion of our needs met there and this is the best use of our time.

Sometimes the guys don’t do a good job packing the items, like you see in the two pics, and they get broken. It is the risk we take to save us the time and energy and we have to file a claim with the trucking company which can be cumbersome, so we only do it if the total of the items is above a certain dollar amount. Although it is a bummer when it happens, the time and money saved makes it well worth doing again and again. Most times I am able to quickly replace those pieces and keep moving.

When we only know 1 way of doing something we oftentimes will view it through that filter and so we may only see the negative side of something, or we may not see the benefit behind why someone may choose to do something differently. In this scenario, you can clearly see that even if I risk broken items at times, the amount of time and money saved far outweighs that risk. When my liquidators have to go out and pick up all that furniture then bring it to their warehouse, it may seem like a tremendous amount of work, but it is a huge benefit to them when shoppers like us come through and purchase several truck loads at a time because they have done a job no one else saw value in.

The business world is full of people solving problems and making money from it because no one else saw the need. That is why it is so important that we not try to be all the same but celebrate the uniqueness of each of us so that we can each fulfill our purpose, one that will most definitely not be the same as someone else. We need cashiers, police officers, laborers, landscapers, etc. but we also need those willing to go to law school to be judges, those willing to create a product and take the risk to put it out to the market, and builders willing to take risk to build entire communities. When we all work together, we are able to meet each other’s needs and fulfill our purposes.

Thus, creating new adventures for us all!!