There are still some spots available in the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program beginning Wednesday Oct. 4, 2006.

I’ll be personally training 15 students how to take their love of decorating and interest in real estate and turn it into a profitable home staging career.

This group will graduate November 1, ready to take on house staging projects and help all those homeowners who won’t manage to sell this fall.

No need to travel, learn home staging from home with a recognized expert

I offer my Staging Diva Home Staging Training by phone in a conference call setting, for several reasons:

• I’m busy staging my clients’ homes during the day so I can’t be travelling the country teaching in person
• I focus on how to take the talent you already have and turn it into a business, so we don’t have to be sitting in the same room for me to teach that.
• Let’s face it, air travel isn’t alot of fun these days! Besides, how many busy people can afford to take three to five days out of their life to be sequestered somewhere?
• Because we’re on the phone for five evenings, two hours each, I make sure it’s all packed with content. We’re not wasting time getting coffee, chatting, driving to houses to take turns rearranging the furniture and all the other time-fillers that come with a seminar you attend in person.
• Since you don’t have to travel (and neither do I), the cost of the Staging Diva Training Program is very reasonable. In fact, it’s only $795 for the whole program right now (but it’s going up soon!). You can make that back with your first client!

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about getting into home staging, now’s a great opportunity to take action toward realizing your dreams. When you give me 10 hours of your time, I’ll give you a whole new world of opportunity. You can build your own home staging business at whatever pace feels right for you but at least you’ll finally have the tools to do it.

Here’s our agenda for the next 5 Wednesdays:

Oct. 4 - “Cash in Decorating Homes to Sell”
Oct. 11 - “The Business of Home Staging: what you need to start and how to grow”
Oct. 18 - “Taking the Mystery out of Home Staging Consultations”
Oct. 25 - “Staging Diva Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost your Home Staging Business”
Nov. 1 - “Over 30 More Ways to Make Money in Home Staging”

If you’re interested in joining us, don’t wait until the last minute or you’ll find the 15 spots are sold out. Each TeleClass lasts up to two hours, depending on the number of questions asked. Here are the start times, by time zone:

4:30 pm Pacific (San Francisco/Seattle/Vancouver)
5:30 pm Mountain (Calgary/Denver/Memphis)
6:30 pm Central (Chicago/Dallas/Minneapolis)
7:30 pm Eastern (Toronto/Boston/New York)

All students receive a full set of notes for each course to follow along with the discussion, plus the Staging Diva Home Staging Checklist which is a bonus with course 3.

Read full course descriptions, hear free samples and register

Here’s what three recent graduates say about the program:

“The Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program isn’t just about Staging - it’s about being in BUSINESS and making MONEY and keeping yourself SANE at the same time!” Victoria Willits (MD)

“I loved the Staging Diva program! I was skeptical about the format at first, but it was great. The notes were concise and easy to follow. Students asked questions I had been wondering about myself and Debra is clear and direct. I’m confident in my decorating abilities, but wasn’t sure how to run a professional and profitable staging business. Debra walks you through the entire process.” Deborah Brischler (CA)

“Within weeks of completing the program and getting my listing on The Staging Diva Directory, I got two projects worth $3,500!” Linda Schleihauf (ON)

Home staging training course descriptions and schedule

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program. With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

home staging, house staging, real estate staging, home staging training, home staging course, staging diva, debra gould

Technorati Tags: home staging, house staging, real estate staging, home staging training, home staging course, staging diva, debra gould

I have a client in Welland in Ontario’s Niagara region who wants an interior redesign consultation to help her enjoy her home more now, with the view also to making improvements which will help her sell down the road.

This interior redesign/house staging project is only available to Graduates of the Staging Diva Program. If you’re interested, email me ASAP with:

• Your name
• Company name
• Phone
• Email
• The address of your website or page on the Staging Diva Directory

Please include “Welland Home Stager” in the subject line of your email.

Also note that if you don’t already have a website or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, it will be tough to land this project. It’s hard to convince a client to hire you over the phone if they can’t see your portfolio.

This could be a great project. Because the client isn’t moving anytime soon, you won’t have the mad panic rush that often accompanies staging projects. It’s also a chance to use your creativity in a different way since you’ll not only be making recommendations that will help the future resale value, you’ll be gaining an understanding for what will make this particular client happier living there.

Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I get lots of leads on projects from all over Canada and the US and just this week, even in South Africa! I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

On that note, I just heard from my Graduate in Johannesburg and she’ll be meeting her new client next week!

You can become a Staging Diva Graduate with 10 hours of training by phone from home or you can do the entire program by listening to recordings which are emailed to you immediately after you register.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I personally build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!

Learn more about the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

Technorati Tags: home staging Niagara, home staging Ontario, Niagara home stager, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging training

A home builder in Bend Oregon needs a home stager to work on two new homes that are ready to go on the market. These are great projects needing furniture, accessories, etc.

I tell you looking at this picture, I’m tempted to jump on a plane and stage them myself!

These house staging projects are only available to Graduates of the Staging Diva Program. If you’re interested, email me ASAP with:

• Your name
• Company name
• Phone
• Email
• The address of your website or page on the Staging Diva Directory

Please include “Bend Oregon Home Stager” in the subject line of your email.

Also note that if you don’t already have a website or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, it will be tough to land these two projects. It’s hard to convince a client to hire you over the phone if they can’t see your portfolio.

It’s also worth considering that fees for either of these projects would likely more than pay for the entire Staging Diva Training Program, a listing in the Staging Diva Directory, membership in the Staging Diva Network, and with profit to spare!

Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I get lots of leads on projects from all over Canada and the US and just this week, even in South Africa! I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

You can become a Staging Diva Graduate with 10 hours of training by phone from home or you can do the entire program by listening to recordings which are emailed to you immediately after you register.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I personally build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!

Learn more about the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

Technorati Tags: home staging bend, home staging oregon, oregon home stager, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging training

I ran a free Staging Diva Preview TeleClass last night and got some really great questions from the audience, like this one:

“What was your single biggest challenge when you started your home staging business?”

My answer was “Staying motivated to keep pushing my business forward even when I had no home staging client appointments booked.”

It’s really the same challenge any new entrepreneur faces when they start a business and don’t have any clients yet, or their business hits its first dry spell. Thoughts like, “my mother/sister/husband was right, this will never work,” or “who am I kidding, I can’t do this,” or “I’m lonely and don’t see how I’m going to make a living,” start to crowd your brain and dump a wet blanket on all your dreams.

An important distinction about being a home stager is that our projects are short term in nature and often booked by clients at the last minute. So, even if you have no home staging appointments booked this week and next, with a phone call or three, your whole life suddenly looks different!

I’ve had several emails this week from Staging Diva Graduates saying things like:

“I’ve gone from one client to four and possibly a fifth in the last 10 days. Gotta love this time of year.” (Linda Shleihauf, ON)

“The $600,000 house closes on the 13th. The seller called today and wants me to also set up his new temporary residence. He will be renting for 6 months until he purchases another property. So from one contact I stand to get 3 jobs from the same client. Also, I have another consultation with another realtor’s client on Thursday. I just made a comment this morning it was too slow and then the phone starting ringing. It is truly strange how this business works. It is contagious, I get one job completed and ready for what’s next.” Gary Baugher (TN)

As I told the close to 80 people on the phone with me last night, there are lots of challenges that come with being your own boss and you don’t REALLY know what it’s like until you’re in that position.

To help my Staging Diva students deal with the new challenges of being an entrepreneur, I share my survival strategies for being your own boss in course 1 of the Staging Diva Training Program. I’ve been an entrepreneur since 1989 and started various businesses along the way. I know first hand all the trials and tribulations of living without the “safety net” of a “secure job” or someone else to pay my mortgage. I also know all the joy that comes with making your own way in the world and following your own dreams; which is why I feel so compelled to keep inspiring others to find their own path too!

To help Staging Diva Graduates feel connected and supported and to help them keep learning even after their training program has finished, I’ve created the Staging Diva Network. It’s a password-protected online discussion group for Staging Diva Graduates only.

In this community members share the joys and challenges of building their business. I answer home staging business-building questions within this forum and members also get advice from others in the group. Current members come from all over the US, Canada and Australia, from major urban centers and smaller cities. All have knowledge and encouragement to share. Right now we’re discussing things like negotiating commissions, speaking at events, challenges on first projects, meeting in New York to attend a Martha Stewart Show taping, helpful resources and more.

If you’re new to being in your own business, post your comments to this story about what your biggest challenges have been. There’s a link to Add Comments at the end of every story here.
You can listen to a FREE recording of the preview session I ran last night.

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., a leading home staging company that provides free information to raise the standards in the industry and build awareness amongst homeowners and their real estate agents about the benefits of decorating a house to sell. Debra Gould developed The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

I’ve referred hundreds of home staging projects all across the US and Canada to Graduates of The Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program. But, today is my first project in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The client has an up-market, 4 bedroom high priced home that needs home staging. She’s living in it and it’s been on the market for some time with no offers.

This is a great contact for any new or established home stager, not only because of the project, but because the homeowner works for a very high profile company in South Africa. With her business connections, other projects would likely follow if you’re able to transform her home and get it sold.

This home staging project is only available to Graduates of the Staging Diva Program. If you’re interested, email me ASAP with:

• Your name
• Company name
• Phone
• Email
• The address of your website or page on the Staging Diva Directory

Please include “Johannesburg Home Stager” in the subject line of your email.

Also note that if you don’t already have a website or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, it will be tough to land this project. It’s hard to convince a client to hire you over the phone if they can’t see your portfolio.

Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I get lots of leads on projects from all over Canada and the US. I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

You can become a Staging Diva Graduate with 10 hours of training by phone from home or you can do the entire program by listening to recordings which are emailed to you immediately after you register.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I personally build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!

Learn more about the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

Technorati Tags: home staging Johannesburg, home stager South Africa, staging diva, home staging training, home staging business

I hear from aspiring home stagers and others new to the business who are afraid that they’ll be held responsible when a home doesn’t sell for a certain price.

While I’m not a lawyer, I can shed some light that should alleviate this fear.

No home stager should say to a client, “if you follow my advice I guarantee you’ll sell for this amount.” You can talk about other successes you’ve had with clients. For example, if I’m talking to a homeowner with a house in the $300,000 to $400,000 range, I’ll tell them the true story of my client who was on the market for 3 months with a best offer of $350,000 for his house. I did a 90 minute staging consultation with him, advising on what to get rid of and what to rearrange. He took my advice and sold the following week for $361,000— an $11,000 increase in his selling price!

Or, if I was talking to someone with a more expensive home, I’d tell him the true story of another client who had a house sit on the market for 4 months. His agent wanted to drop his $949,900 asking price by $50,000, so he called me instead. Investing $1,000 in my advice, he sold the following week for 98% of his original asking price.

In addition to using your “success stories” to illustrate the financial gain other clients have had using your services, you can say “I believe these changes will increase the value of your home by more than what they will cost you.” Notice this is not a guarantee and you’re not saying by how much the value will go up.

A common practice of less scrupulous agents is to “buy a listing” by telling a client they can get them a higher amount for their home.

Some clients are stupid or naive enough to pick an agent based purely on the selling price that agent says they can get, even if it is out of line with what other agents have told them the home is worth.

What happens when the house goes on the market and doesn’t sell at that price? The agent gets the client to keep reducing the price until someone buys. Are real estate agents legally responsible for not getting the initial list price of a home? NO! Why would a home stager be responsible?

By the way, any home is only really worth what someone pays for it. The rest is just conjecture.

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program. With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

I’ve seen thousands of houses, because I’ve bought 6 of my own and because I’ve staged hundreds for clients over the last few years.

Getting into staging finally gave me a reason to embrace my compulsion to look at almost every house that comes on the market in any area I’m remotely interested in!

Despite seeing thousands of homes across all price ranges and buying 6 of my own to live in, it’s exceedingly rare for me to actually fall in love with a house. I’ve never even loved the ones I bought, though I loved them a lot more once I staged them to live and then to sell!

Well, it happened this weekend and I was hit hard! Thankfully this house is enough out of my price range that there’s no risk of me buying it. Otherwise I’d have a “for sale” sign on my own lawn this week, which isn’t practical since I’m in the middle of one of the two busiest seasons for home staging with lots of clients to take care of right now.

What made me fall in love with this particular house? It was the waterfall in the courtyard. You could hear it from anywhere on the ground floor because the house was built around it. The house was also staged beautifully so there was nothing to destroy the “magic of falling in love.”

There are many reasons someone falls in love with a house and it will have a lot to do with what life stage they’re at. I’m feeling really stressed at the moment, so the sound of a relaxing waterfall was enough to make me spend 3 hours trying to figure out how I could buy such an expensive home right now.

For someone else, it may be the cute nursery with the adorable little clothes hanging beside the crib (yes I’ve used such staging tactics), or maybe it’s the lovely reading corner positioned just where the afternoon sun pours through the window overlooking the garden… there are lots of reasons and lots of little cues we can use as stagers to help the magic happen.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
President, Six Elements Inc.

Home staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva is president of home staging firm Six Elements Inc. and has been featured on HGTV, GlobalTV, CityTV, CNNMoney, MoneySense, Entrepreneur Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Woman’s Day and more. She has staged hundreds of homes in the $190,000 to $1.5 million price range and taught close to 300 women all over the US, Canada, and in Wales, Australia and South Africa to start and grow their own home staging businesses.

Home staging training course descriptions and schedule

I need a home stager to work on a vacant home in the beautiful wine country of Kelowna, BC.

The home is newly renovated but it needs furniture and staging to sell quickly and for top dollar.

The client read my article on why selling an empty home is a bad idea and she’s sold on the idea of staging, but can’t find anyone locally.

This home staging project is only available to Graduates of the Staging Diva Program. If you’re interested, email me ASAP with:

• Your name
• Company name
• Phone
• Email
• The address of your website or page on the Staging Diva Directory

Please include “Kelowna Home Stager” in the subject line of your email.

Also note that if you don’t already have a website or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, it will be tough to land this project. It’s hard to convince a client to hire you over the phone if they can’t see your portfolio.

Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I have lots of leads on projects from all over Canada and the US. I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

You can become a Staging Diva Graduate with 10 hours of training by phone from home or you can do the entire program by listening to recordings which are emailed to you immediately after you register.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I personally build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!

Learn more about getting listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

The Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers welcomes newest member, Manhattan-based Laurie Mahoney of Designed, Staged and Sold, Inc.

Laurie was a model home designer and photo stylist for 25 years prior to graduating from the Staging Diva Training Program this month.

As an Ethan Allen Designer/Stylist, she did extensive work on their monthly catalogues and the coffee table book “Ethan Allen’s New American Style: Stage-by-Stage Decorating for your Home.”

A chance phone call from someone she used to work with designing model homes, led Laurie to the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program.

Proving that when opportunities come your way, you just need to jump in and take action, within weeks, Laurie completed the Staging Diva program and launched her new business. Now, she’s realizing a lifelong dream to be an entrepreneur and take her love of decorating out to homeowners who always wondered how their own homes could look like the ones they see in books and magazines.

Laurie’s background as a photo stylist combined with all the model homes she has decorated for builders over the years is a dynamite combination for homeowners and real estate agents needing a home to be decorated to sell for top dollar.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Learn more about Staging Diva Training

How to join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

Home staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva is president of home staging firm Six Elements Inc. and has been featured on HGTV, GlobalTV, CityTV, CNNMoney, MoneySense, Entrepreneur Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Woman’s Day and more. She has staged hundreds of homes in the $190,000 to $1.5 million price range and taught close to 300 women all over the US, Canada, and in Wales, Australia and South Africa to start and grow their own home staging businesses.

In the fall of 1998 I closed my marketing consulting business and moved to tiny Salt Spring Island. I wanted to do something more creative with my life and having no idea what that would be, I needed to move somewhere that my cost of living would be significantly less.

I’ve always believed life is the adventure we make it, and the year I spent in Salt Spring was quite the adventure, made all the more so because I was completely outside my comfort zone on every level.

While living there, I discovered Robeez shoes (pictured here). They were invented by a local Mom, Sandra Wilson, and at that point she had just moved her fledgeling business out of her basement.

She got her start as an entrepreneur after being downsized from her job in the airline industry. At home with more time on her hands, she tried making comfortable shoes for her toddler to learn to walk in, making her first “Robeez” out of old leather purses that she cut up.

Fast forward less than 10 years and Sandra’s shoes and booties have become one of the best known brands of baby footwear, sold at thousands of boutiques and high-end retailers like Nordstrom, Saks, Bloomingdales’ and Neiman Marcus.

I was especially delighted to read this week that Sandra sold her private B.C. company, Robeez Footwear, to U.S.-based Stride Rite Corp. for $30.5 million! Wow!!

If you’re tempted to think being widely successful is only for “other people”, stop right there! I’m sure if someone told Sandra when she was sitting at home cutting up old purses in her basement to make shoes for her son that in a decade she’d be a multi-millionaire she would have thought they were nuts.

And, I’m willing to bet that along the way she’s had many moments of self doubt and sheer panic. Every entrepreneur does. The trick is realizing these are moments to keep going, not to retreat into the “safety of the familiar.”

My mission is to inspire my clients and students with new possibilities for how they live. Whether it’s a staging client discovering new opportunities because they suddenly have an extra $50,000 after I staged their house, or it’s helping one of my students leave behind a soul-sucking career or unhappy marriage because now they have a way to be financially independent.

I find stories like Sandra Wilson’s inspiring because it shows us that with courage we can accomplish big things. Not all of us are going to grow $30 million companies and that’s OK! Her success does not diminish ours.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
President, Six Elements Inc.

Home staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva is president of home staging firm Six Elements Inc. and has been featured on HGTV, GlobalTV, CityTV, CNNMoney, MoneySense, Entrepreneur Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Woman’s Day and more. She has staged hundreds of homes in the $190,000 to $1.5 million price range and taught close to 300 women all over the US, Canada, and in Wales, Australia and South Africa to start and grow their own home staging businesses.

Home staging training course descriptions and schedule