Kristy Craig Anderson went from home staging out of a garage to a $10M firm

Entrepreneur/company 

Kristy Craig Anderson has had a knack for decorating since she was a little girl. “My mom and I didn’t have a lot of money, and we moved from apartment to apartment, like every six months,” she recalls, “It was hard for them to feel like home because it was always somewhere new and they were small. And so I would always design them. I would take bed sheets and put them up as curtains. And I would paint shoe box tops for artwork.”

When Anderson grew up, she pursued a career as a middle school principal — but decorating was never far from her mind.

Then, in 2014, when the real estate market heated up, she moved from decorating on the side, out of her garage, and watching others do it on HGTV to home staging on her own. 

She was all in within six months.

“I left a very long, wonderful career and it was so scary,” she says, “but it was worth it.”

A decade later Dwell & Co. now brings in $10 million in annual revenue through its staging and design services and two retail stores in Tampa. The company has 43 employees. 

Dwell & Co’s mission, says Anderson, 49, is pretty simple: “We create homes.”

Best advice 

“The best advice I ever received was from a mentor and a fellow perfectionist. She said ‘if you are a perfectionist in business, you shoot for 80% because your 80% is likely everybody else’s 100% and then you don’t get mired in the details, and you don’t fail to execute.’”

She joined a trade association for staging early on, which shaped her business operations and understanding of the market and she encourages everyone to join similar organizations in their field. 

Another piece of advice she tries to do daily. “I have a few amazing women who just teach me to be a better human. And I think that is the most significant thing that translates to business, when I can just show up here every day a better human.”

Biggest mistake and how you overcame it

“Not charging enough in the very beginning, and luckily,” she says, “I learned pretty quickly that I would be miserable and starving and not be able to pay a mortgage if I kept doing it.” 

She notes staging is physical and time consuming work that would quickly lead to burnout. She learned how to properly charge from trade organizations and market research.

Tipping point 

In 2017, Anderson brought on Jeff Kale to the staging business. The two had known each other through his family’s furniture company and decided to join forces. 

“That’s when we went from like, kind of struggling and we’re just trying to pay the bills, et cetera, to okay, let’s meet the demand that’s out there, let’s get a really strategic approach to this,” Anderson says “The capital, of course, is nice and is the help. But more than that, it’s just great to have that foresight and insight and strategy, and so I think that partnership was really the tipping point for our organization.” 

The company opened its first retail store two years later.

What would you tell your 16-year-old self given what you know now about starting and running a business 

Remembering what it was like to ‘pretend to be cool’, Anderson believes that skillset will eventually come in handy and encourage her younger self to keep at it.

“I think in the beginning of building a business, you kind of have to fake it till you make it a little bit,” she says. She also notes that the reckless behaviors that teenagers aren’t afraid to take chart the course for risk taking further down the road.

“Those risks have been the ones that have changed my life as far as the risk of building a business, and then all the risks you take inherently and just running a business.”

Biggest threat to your company and how you handle it

Competition is what keeps Anderson up at night. “Our direct competition, from a retail perspective, are brands that are a lot bigger than us,” she says. “They are national, they are international, and they have a lot more power, and they have a lot more money.”

“I try to recognize that our gift is that we are small and that we can provide unsurpassed customer service and design and manufacture our own designs. I mean, I really think that for a little company, we’ve been able to do a lot. So although these big brands keep me up at night, I think we’re doing a great job of being a little guy right now.”

Best/toughest parts of being an entrepreneur

“There are so many things about being a business founder (and) entrepreneur that are rewarding. The biggest for me, as you know an artist or creator, is just this idea that you’re creating something from nothing. It’s so cool to me, and I love that, whether it’s a design room or a piece of artwork or a business, that to me, is fascinating,” she says. 

Additionally, she loves creating with people and watching her team grow and find their purpose through her business.

Regarding challenges, managing work and home life is tough, having become a first-time mom nearly five years ago. “For me, I don’t really believe in this idea of balance. I think balance is really just accepting that your life is imbalanced, and sometimes you’re going to work a lot and not be there for the kiddo and vice versa. But mom guilt is real, so I just shout out to all the mom entrepreneurs out there, because it’s tough.”