1. How long have you been at Foxy?

Haha… well…. *pretends to think*…. I started 5 years ago when I was…

Eva: “Wait wait wait…. FIVE? Isn’t Foxy Home Staging four years old?”

Yeah, I officially started 6 months before we branded it as a company, as a sole trader. I remember doing my very first consult while holding baby Charlie in my arms when he was only 3 months old. Fortunately, the Agent just had a baby as well, so she was very understanding.

2. What do you remember about your beginnings?

We spoke about this before, the Impostor Syndrome. (–> such an amazing article, give it a read!)

Oh, and lots and lots of shopping! In hindsight, I should have created my wholesale accounts earlier, that would have made my life so much easier. I’ve never been a shopper though; I just find it a waste of time. I’d much rather just go to the store, tell people what I’m after and they get it off the shelves for me. Efficient shopping I think it’s called.

But it’s definitely made me shop less for our house, much to Jake’s delight.

3. What is your favourite style?

Scandi. Because it’s everything that my home isn’t – simple, clean, and minimalist.

5. What is your favourite bed you’ve ever styled?

I’d say it’s the one from the other day –on Old Logan Road! There’s a bit of a story with this one. I did the consult and as I started taking pictures, my phone ran out of battery. So I only took one photo and that was all we had for our selections.

In my head, the wall in the master bedroom was sage green – so we brought in green linen and green cushions. But then we walked in and realised that the wall was actually light blue. It just so happened that we’ve packed a random extra bag of cushions and made an impromptu bed. It was so random…. a total mistake but it worked out so well!

7. What is your LEAST favourite room to style and why?

Hmm… outdoor. There’s nothing special you can do outside. Even if you’ve got a huge outdoor space, you simply put in an extra setting and that’s it. There’s nothing “extra” special you can do. And also – outdoor furniture is SUPER expensive. It’s the most expensive furniture we own, but prospective buyers love it. It epitomises the ideal lifestyle for them, even though nobody would actually buy such expensive outdoor setting for their home. Or at least nobody that I know.

8. What was your biggest FAIL?

My actual biggest fail costed us $15,000 – we did a Foxy TV episode on this. We were updating the back end of our website server and I forgot to check where the online quote requests were going through to. Long story short, I’ve missed like 30 quotes! On average, we convert 2 out 3 quotes, so we’ve missed out on a lot. When I realised, I called every one of them, explained the situation, apologised, and in the end I locked in 6 of the jobs.

But there was a silver lining! That particular FoxyTV episode resonated with a lot of agents and sparked a lot of conversations about our transparency and honesty.

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But the team might say that my biggest fail happened when I was 38 weeks pregnant, just about to have Ally. It was a stinking hot day, the team were installing a property on Cedar Street and I told them it was number 36, but it was supposed to be 63!

We didn’t realise it until they unloaded the entire truck onto the driveway and then had to carry all the furniture 10 houses down.

Eva: “Oof… has the team ever forgiven you for that?”

Thankfully they did forgive me straight away, because I just had no excuse. When they rang me, I said “I have no words, I’m so sorry. It’s literally pregnancy brain.” And that was the only time I ever blamed anything on that. It was a hectic week – I installed an apartment the day before, then I had a day off and the next day, as I was walking up to have a C-Section, I was on the phone locking in another job. It never stops.

9. What’s the funniest moment that you can remember?

Funniest moment? Hmm… I can think of the most cringeworthy. Let me preface this by saying that we see some crazy things at consults…

The most memorable one (for the wrong reason) would have been this tenanted property I walked in to and found out that the tenants could not hear me, because they were very involved with some passion… at 10am on a Wednesday… while waiting for removalists.

Thanks for reading!

If you want to follow Phoebe’s journey about running a successful home-staging company, make sure to give us a follow on Instagram @foxyhomestaging, we regularly feature behind the scenes footage and share lots of property styling tips & tricks.

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