Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training courses are only $199 until June 30. Each of the five courses deals with a different aspect of taking your talent for decorating and turning it into a profitable home staging or real estate staging business.

Staging Diva home staging courses are downloadable audio recordings, approximately two hours in length, and each comes with detailed study notes and a homework assignment that will help you start or grow your home staging business.

When you order one or more courses online, they are emailed to you right away. You can save the recordings onto your computer to listen to whenever and as often as you like. You can even transfer them onto a CD or an iPod to listen on the go.

These are professionally edited recordings of Debra Gould, The Staging Diva teaching small groups of students. You’ll hear her present the material, which is filled with real life stories and examples from her own staging business, plus her answers to dozens of questions from her students.

Whether you’re just thinking of starting a house staging business, or you’re already a home stager, you’ll find courses that can help you become more successful. For example, a primary reason for failing in the home staging business is not knowing how to properly charge for your services. This topic is explored in detail in Course 2, “The Business of Home Staging: What you Need to Start and How to Grow“.

Another common problem for home stagers is not knowing how to market themselves or wasting thousands of dollars on ineffective marketing techniques. If you’re even thinking of distributing door to door flyers or running a newspaper ad, listen to course 4 “Staging Diva Sales & Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.” It will save you thousands of dollars and a whole heap of disappointment.

Make sure to order by June 30 to save $50 per course. There are further savings if you commit to the five course package.

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

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, make money in home staging, how to sell home staging, free estimate, home staging estimate, homestaging, learn home staging, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging course, Staging Diva, Debra Gould

So many aspiring home stagers have written me about:

• their frustrations with not being financially independent
• their lack of self confidence
• being stuck in boring jobs that don’t feed their creativity

These stories make me sad because I see so much potential for change and I really do want to inspire others with new possibilities. Why?

Because I spent 20 years feeling very unhappy with my own life and I found a way to completely reinvent myself. Now I want to share that knowledge with others. That’s a photo of me on my second appearance on HGTV. I never would have dreamed that could be me when I used to sit watching hour after hour of HGTV while I was stuck in my old business.

Whenever I’m feeling unhappy with my situation or stuck, I ask myself:

“If I keep doing what I’m doing, how will my life be any different 3 months from now?”

Then I try to imagine how I’d like my life to look instead and ask:

“What will have to happen for me to get closer to that vision I have of my ideal future?”

You might want to try asking yourself these questions too. We have more choices in life than we let ourselves believe or imagine.

Your summer may be packed with family activities but it’s also a chance for you to listen to courses that will help you have a whole new future this fall when the kids go back to school and everyone goes back to their “regular schedules”.

Do you want to go back to your regular schedule in September, or would you like to be filled with plans for a creative career that will give you more control over your time and pay you very well? What would that new future be worth to you?

What’s standing in your way right now is a lack of information about how to make it happen.

I can change that and it’s not a big time commitment either. You can listen to all 5 courses of the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program in only 10 hours, and you can listen whenever and wherever you like! Save them for a rainy day or quiet summer evening.

The Staging Diva course recordings and study notes, which are emailed to you right after you order, are professionally edited to keep only the best of the best of all my courses.

In these 5 courses, you’ll learn how I went from zero income to earning more in a month than most people earn in half a year. And I did it within my second year as a home stager while supporting my family on my own.

I tell you EXACTLY how I built my staging business from scratch on a shoe string so you can do it too! I want to share my success secrets with you and show you the awesome satisfaction that comes with doing what you love, getting paid well for it, and helping others at the same time.

The deadline to purchase the Staging Diva Training Program and sa.ve $50/course is June 30 and I don’t want you to miss it if you were thinking of taking courses to help you with your home staging business.

I’m holding a FREE question and answer call for aspiring home stagers Thursday June 26.

What will your life look like 3 or even 6 months from now if you keep doing what you’re doing? Now imagine what your life could look like with the right tools to pursue YOUR dreams!

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

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, make money in home staging, homestaging, learn home staging, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging course, Staging Diva, Debra Gould

I wouldn’t want to be dependent on real estate commissions right now. Not with the market heading south in most of the US and starting to slow in Canada.

If you are one of the over 2 million real estate agents in the United States, there’s a good chance your business is struggling. Many agents across both countries are feeling the pain. I hear similar complaints from Realtors® all over whose commissions are so intermittent that they’ve taken to staging their clients’ homes themselves for free, hoping to attract more listings and then sell them faster and for a better price.

This practice of staging your their own listings for free just creates more problems for overworked and underpaid agents.

First of all, as a real estate agent, your time is money. While you’re donating your time to help your client rearrange their furniture, sort through their junk, choose the perfect paint color for their den and decide whether or not to move the baby’s crib out of the office, do you realize the significant amount of time and money you are wasting? Not to mention the risk of offending your client and losing the listing altogether?

It’s time to do the math

If you list four properties this month and spend an average of four hours staging each of them, you have wasted sixteen hours, or two entire workdays.

How many homes can you show in sixteen hours? You could have planned, advertised and attended five open houses in that amount of time.

When you’re in the business of selling real estate, your strengths are presumably finding and selling property for your clients and negotiating the best deals for them. If you are personally staging your clients’ homes for free, those negotiation skills are being wasted on domestic disagreements over paint chips and furniture placement.

Many real estate agents approach me, looking for information on the best way to use home staging to boost their business. Before I can answer that, I have to ask:

Do you want to be a home stager with a real estate license, or a real estate agent who stages houses?

Your answer will determine what approach you should take. A significant number of real estate agents who take the Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program do so because they’re tired of selling real estate as their primary source of income with all the inconveniences this entails. They no longer want to be on call 24/7, miss family time on evenings and weekends and feel like they live out of their cars. They want more control over their schedules and to be paid for their time.
Real estate agents enrolled in the Staging Diva program are there to learn how to make a very good living staging homes, not how to stage houses for free as real estate agents.

As students of the Staging Diva Training Program, they learn how to be home stagers who also happen to be licensed Realtors®, rather than real estate agents who happen to stage their listings. If you are an agent first, your focus needs to be on turning listings, not fluffing pillows and sorting clutter.

If you fall into the category of wanting to be a home stager with a real estate license, there is a great chance you will be given a lot of real estate listings. The majority of my home staging clients are homeowners who are just about to list their properties, and they haven’t signed with a real estate agent yet. Many would happily list with me because of the relationship we’ve built as I staged their home. For a home stager with a license, that’s a great listing opportunity!

So what does all this mean? Basically, if your passion for selling real estate has fizzled out and you’re sick of being on call 24/7, you might want to shuffle your priorities and start thinking of yourself as a home stager with a real estate license. You should focus on promoting your home staging services, which is a very profitable business if approached correctly. Along the way you will also pick up real estate listings and find yourself competing with other Realtors® on a whole new level.

A good home stager will earn a tremendous amount of trust from their clients. (It’s amazing how the intimate task of sorting through personal possessions can bring strangers together!) If, at the end of the staging process— which you’ve already been paid for— you also get the listing, isn’t that better then staging your listings for free?

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

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, make money in home staging, how to sell home staging, free estimate, home staging estimate, homestaging, learn home staging, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging course, Staging Diva, Debra Gould

I have a client who has a home in the Lake City area and has an immediate need for a home stager. The home is 1440 square feet, vacant and is currently being listed for $129,900. The home is currently on the market.

Considered one of the best sailing lakes in the nation, Lake Pepin is also prized for excellent water activities of all kinds. Lake City is home to the largest small-craft municipal harbor on the Mississippi River, and has over 600 boat slips. The area is known for its spectacular scenic views and is a haven for tourists looking for excellent fishing, sailing, golfing, birding, bicycling, snowmobiling, hiking and many other activities. With all of this, wouldn’t it be a great place to start a home staging business?

We’ve made it really easy for you to apply for this home staging project. Simply complete the form at the Staging Diva Home Staging Project Referral Service.

Be sure to include “Lake City Staging Project” for the project location in the first line of the form.

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

There is a $250 referral fee but ONLY if you get any paid work through this referral.

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 the United States and Canada, and as far away as England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Israel! I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

I generate tons of traffic for anyone listed on the Staging Diva site. Only one good project would more than pay for your entire Staging Diva Training Program plus building and hosting your web page on the high traffic Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers for an entire year! When clients find you on their own from your listing in the Staging Diva Directory, I do not charge you a referral fee.

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

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program.

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. We 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 stager, home staging, home staging business, home staging Lake City, home staging Minnesota, home stager Lake City, home stager Minnesota, home stager Town of Lake City, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging training, directory of home stagers, home staging directory

Many home stagers fall into the trap of doing “free estimates.” This is a short road to burn out and financial ruin! You’ll spend hundreds of hours, and hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars in gas over the year, driving from house to house for potential clients who may even know in advance they have no intention of ever hiring you (regardless of your estimate).

Lots of people are just looking for free advice and as soon as you agree to go see them to look around and tell them how much staging will cost, you’ve fallen into what I call the “free estimate trap.”

It’s not a pretty place! You’ll arrive at their door, filled with hopes of paying work and the best of intentions, only to be peppered with questions like: “What color should I repaint this room?” “Do you like the sofa on this wall?” “Would you furnish this room or can I leave it how it is?” “Should I replace this carpet with a floating floor?” and on and on.

It’s very hard to refuse to answer these questions reminding them you are just there to provide an estimate. After all, you’re trying to build a rapport and hoping if you impress them with your knowledge they’ll agree to hire you.

Every time you agree to do a free estimate, that’s probably 2 to 4 hours that you’ve used up and will never get back. That’s time you aren’t selling to someone else.

You may be thinking, “I only spend 20 minutes on these, so it’s no big deal!” You may only spend 20 minutes in their house, but how much time did you spend:

- on the phone booking and/or re-booking the appointment
- putting your makeup on and deciding what to wear
- figuring out how to get there
- organizing what you’ll take and rehearsing what you’ll say
- driving to and from the appointment (possibly getting lost or being stuck in traffic)
- preparing an estimate
- typing up the estimate, worrying about your formatting, spell checking it, second guessing yourself, etc.
- sending the estimate
- repeated follow up to see if the prospect got it, whether they’ve made a decision, etc.

The key to avoiding the free estimate trap is to build that rapport and impress the prospect with your knowledge over the phone. You need to know what to say when someone asks, “I’m thinking of staging my house, how much does it cost?”

If you say the right things, in the right way, and in the right order, they’ll agree to booking a paid home staging consultation with you at the end of that conversation, even if you’re one of the most expensive home stagers in your area and they’ve never met you in person before.

With a script of what to say, you can stop falling into the “free estimate trap” and make sure your valuable time and expertise are being used with paying clients. In the new Staging Diva Sales Script: How to Avoid the Free Estimate Trap and Turn Homeowners Into Home Staging Customers in One Phone Conversation I share exactly what I say word for word to turn prospects into paying customers even when they’ve never met me in person before.

Learn what I said to homeowners that got me from zero sales to $10,000 a month in my second year as a home stager.

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

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, make money in home staging, how to sell home staging, free estimate, home staging estimate, homestaging, learn home staging, home staging training, sales script, home staging sales, home staging business, home staging course, Staging Diva, Debra Gould

Looking at the photo of me with the drill and tulips you’d probably guess these are my favorite home staging tools. Actually they come a close third and fourth. The most important staging tools a home stager has (other than their innate talent) is a measuring tape and paint swatch book.

Don’t make the mistake of getting one of those small, light, easy to carry “girly” measuring tapes or those fancy new laser ones (which can’t measure furniture).

You need a good old fashioned contractors-grade tape measure. It’s bulky and usual neon colored (so they can find it in the drywall dust I guess), but it does the job. I can measure huge rooms and any size or shape piece of furniture. It’s also easy to measure where the windows are on the wall (critical for planning furniture placement).

While I can walk into a room and instantly know if the furniture is in the wrong place or it’s the wrong size, I do rely on my measuring tape to help me decide how to move it all around. Don’t leave home without it!

My second essential tool is my paint swatch Designers Kit, the kind you get from paint manufacturers. Imagine one big “box” that you can carry on your shoulder that has every color you’d see in a paint store display. Not only does it contain 2500+ colors, it gives me larger samples of each. I recommend paint colors in many of my home staging consultations, plus many of my clients want me to pick colors for their new home.

As an aside, when you’re recommending paint colors make sure you also specify sheen level. I once had a client paint her front door with flat paint (which isn’t washable and shows all finger prints and scuffs) and her stucco wall in high gloss (which magnifies every bump as the light bounces off the shiny paint).

Learn how I recommend colors, my favorite choices for every room in a house and how to get your own Designers Kit.

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

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Learn about all the Staging Diva products and services.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, learn home staging, real estate staging, home staging tools, color for home staging, home staging training, Debra Gould, Staging Diva