One of many fab color palettes from CIL Man Caves Collection

Wait until you see what paint company CIL has done to reposition their paint colors for a new audience! It’s a brilliant stroke (pun intended) that I just had to bring to your attention— not only for the marketing genius of it but for the delicious visuals. Are you as passionate about color as I am?

But first, let’s set some context as it applies to marketing lessons you can learn for your home staging business!

If you’ve been following my blog, newsletter or home staging training program for any length of time, you know that I place a  very strong emphasis on the importance of marketing. Aside from the fact that I’ve been recognized as one of Canada’s top marketing experts since the early 1990s, I’m passionate about marketing because it’s THE thing that will set you apart from your competition and win you business.

To put it bluntly, it doesn’t matter if you’re the most talented stager in the world, if you suck at marketing you won’t be in business long!

In the Simple Marketing Plan Companion: A Stress-Free Approach to Promoting Your Staging Business, I share a full analysis of how the 5 P’s of Marketing must work together. These are:

1. Product – For home stagers, that’s our staging, color consulting and redesign services.
2. Positioning – How you want your clients and potential clients to think of you and your company.
3. Pricing – How much you charge, how your pricing packages work and how you communicate about your rates.
4. Packaging – For home stagers, that’s how you look, sound and act, plus your company name and the appearance of your business logo, cards, advertising and website. In other words, your entire business image.
5. Promotion – Home stagers, this includes anything you do to showcase your expertise from your website and online activities like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc., plus all your advertising, newsletter, brochure, special promotions, strategic donations, public speaking, public relations etc. — all the “stuff” I talk about in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Training Program.

Now to our Paint Colors Befitting a Man Cave lesson!

What a perfect example of the 5 P’s of Marketing working together to bring some excitement to business category that hasn’t seen much innovation (except for new finishes and formulations). CIL is a Canadian company (available through Home Depot) that decided to go after the male market. While most paint color decisions are ultimately made by women, men still have a say in mixed households and what better way to get them involved than to cater to their sensibilities and interests?

While I’m the only one making decorating decisions in my home because I’m single, I can imagine it would be much easier talking one’s husband into painting a a powder room “Rust On My Truck” rather than “Classic Liberty Red.” And if I were doing a Color Consultation on it’s own, or as part of my home staging recommendations, I know a man would feel more comfortable agreeing to “Center Ice” rather than “Tracery,” or “Iced Vodka” rather than “Cloud Nine,” for the living room.

So check out the wonderful color palettes inside the CIL Ultimate Man Caves collection. And while you’re there, step back and consider the marketing by noticing how they’ve got the product, packaging, promotion and positioning all working together so brilliantly! It’s in the:

• layout
• photography
• color selections and room choices
• all the sell copy in the brochure
• styling of the fonts and text
• naming of the colors themselves

What do you think? Am I a total marketing and color geek to get so excited about this?

Now, think about how you market your home staging business. Are all your visual elements and your text working together to convey the right image? Please share your thoughts below.

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

Debra Gould has been writing about marketing for small businesses since the early 1990s as a frequent contributor to Profit Magazine. A home stager since 2002, she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own money-making home staging businesses. Debra is the author of several guides including: “Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business,” “14 Marketing Ideas to Rev Up Your Home Staging Business” and the “Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide: The Easy Way to Pick Color for Home Staging Projects.” These can be found in the Staging Diva Store.

Sarah Richardson holiday decorating idea as featured in the Globe and Mail.

Home stagers, the holiday season is definitely upon us and this means a gradual slow down in your home staging business over the coming weeks.

A great way to bring in extra money at this time of year is with holiday decorating. A TV News producer contacted me to appear on camera this week with my tips to “deck the halls.” They know I’m an expert home stager, yet I have never promoted myself as a seasonal decorator.

I declined the tempting offer because it’s totally not my expertise and something I personally feel intimidated by.

Everything I know about holiday decorating is what I pick up from reading news stories, like this one in the Globe & Mail featuring Sarah Richardson’s festive decor tips. She suggests combining orange and pink for an alternate festive color scheme which I found clever.  I also loved what she did with the urns pictured in this post.

For my own media opportunity, I put the word out to Staging Diva Graduates who might be interested in appearing on camera this week instead of me. As always, first dibs went to members of the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

If you’re not a member yet, you should be. It’s not only a great place for clients to find your staging and redesign business, but it also leads to media coverage and guest speaking opportunities.

We build a professional webpage for you within 7 days of when you submit your Directory materials for less than the cost of a nice blender (I happened to be reading Christmas sale flyers filled with kitchen gadgets so I know!). You even get a custom company brochure that website visitors can download, and a print version that you can hand out in meetings— it’s included in the cost of an annual hosting plan! Get the full scoop on how to join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers here.

Anyway, back to seasonal decorating . . .

If you’re more comfortable than I am with the art of decorating for the Christmas season, and you love doing it, consider how many people are too busy or overwhelmed to take this on themselves. You might decorate the inside and outside of their home, decorate for a Christmas or New Year’s Eve/Day party or even transform an office or showroom for the holidays!

Home Staging is not equally busy all year round because it follows real estate cycles.

In the Staging Diva Program I discuss ways for you to even out your cash flow by combining your staging business with things like:

• interior redesign
• color consulting
• professional organizing
• seasonal decorating

What you choose should not only come from your desire to make money but also be a function of your interests. I don’t believe in starting your own business only to do things you don’t like! If you’re going to make the effort to be your own boss, make sure you consider what your interests and natural talents are.

If you love holiday decorating and have a natural talent for it, then why not go for it?

There are no rules when you’re an entrepreneur. If you see an opportunity that inspires you then why not take advantage of it? The idea that you should only build a business that you’ll REALLY want to work in, is a theme that runs throughout the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, especially in course 4 “Staging Diva Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.”

I don’t act on every opportunity that comes my way, but I certainly consider the ones that inspire me. When it’s something that just isn’t “my thing” or I’m too busy to take it on, I refer those inquiries to Staging Diva Graduates as I did with the TV News story for this week.

To be honest, I don’t even plant my own outdoor urns for winter and I always hire someone else to do it for me. I’ve never used little white lights in them but Sarah has given me the idea to try it out this season!

Home stagers and redesigners, have you been approached by potential clients to help them with their seasonal decorating? Do you do any marketing of that service?

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. An entrepreneur for almost 25 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.

This was the condition of the living room when I arrived to conduct a home staging consultation. I’m standing on the stairs for a bird’s eye view of the scene for you.

By the way, that’s a great home staging portfolio photo tip for you. You can get stronger before and after photos to showcase your work if you stand on the stairs and shoot down on the scene (with a wide angle lens of course).

I have to admit just looking at all the baby paraphernalia took me back to my own first year as a new parent. It’s really incredible how one tiny baby (who isn’t yet holding up her head) can take over an entire living space!

So what do you do when you have to provide home staging advice to a new parent?

Here are some home staging tips to keep in mind:

Your client is overwhelmed as a new parent and the prospect of selling their home and moving is probably enough to put them “over the edge.”

There are severe limits on how many changes you can request of them. After all, a quiet and happy baby comes first (in their minds), not a perfectly staged home.

They hired a home stager because they recognize they need help, so don’t be afraid to provide it.

Keep your advice to the point. There is limited quiet time, energy and focus to devote to you, so don’t beat around the bush.

Be direct, but deliver your staging recommendations with kindness.

Organize/do whatever you can for your clients in this first visit, so they aren’t left with an overwhelming “to do” list after your home staging consultation. If you’ve taken the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, you know that a home staging consultation should usually also be a working session and how that affects your income and how much staging you will do.

Help your client figure out which baby items can be put away until after the house sells and which ones are immediate must-have’s. In this one room I spotted a bouncy seat, playpen, swing and car seat! Not all 4 are necessary every single day. By the way, where did our own mothers put us down before all these contraptions were invented?

Few parents have the time/energy to run upstairs every time the baby needs changing. Work out a method to keep what they need hidden away on every level of the home. For example, a decorative and covered basket can hold baby wipes, clean diapers, etc. so they are always handy but aren’t spread all over the coffee table.

Eliminate unnecessary furniture when you can’t eliminate baby stuff. For example, in this room I recommended putting the tall wine rack with glasses in storage and pushing the playpen over if that was a “must keep” item. The tall shelf looks terrible where it is, regardless of the baby situation. It competes with the fireplace and looks awkward from all angles.

Home stagers, what other advice would you provide for those of us doing home staging consultations for new parents? Please share your comments below.

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Debra bought, staged and sold 6 homes as a single parent, while her child was aged 14 months to 12 years.

In my last post I introduced you to home stager Kimberly (not her real name), who had amassed enough home staging furniture and accessories to fill at least ten 2-bedroom condos. She is a wonderfully talented decorator and home stager. Her work looks like it could be in a decorating magazine.

In part 2 of this cautionary tale for home stagers thinking of investing in their own home staging inventory, I’ll share some of the classic mistakes Kimberly made so that you won’t make the same ones. And for those of you who know you’ll never allow yourself to get into this situation, you can read on and feel smug about your own business savvy!

Unfortunately, Kimberly didn’t approach her home staging business with a business focus. Instead, she was obsessed with how lovely she wanted to make all her clients’ condos look.

“Creating beauty” was her driving force, rather than making money.

There’s nothing wrong with allowing your desire to decorate beautiful spaces be what keeps you inspired, but unless this is a hobby, it’s also critical to remember that you’re also creating a home staging business that’s supposed to make money!

Kimberly did amazing work. I saw the photos, and honestly they all looked like they were magazine shoots out of decorating magazines. She really did everything up to the nine’s from beautiful furniture and window treatments in every room, to dishes on the breakfast bar. Her home staging projects looked lovely, and she can be very proud of the creativity she brought to it. But her creative talent was not only a strength, it became her biggest weakness.

In her desire to be a home stager and decorator, Kimberly forgot that she was also a businessperson. She needed to make money in her home staging business, not just feed her own creative desires.

She also didn’t understand that the way she structured her staging business meant that she was really in the furniture rental business. Since she didn’t realize that, she also didn’t realize how quickly she was headed for bankruptcy.

The date she had to pay off her debt was fast approaching and she had no cash flow because her inventory was all tied up in open-ended contracts.

Kimberly made the classic mistake of setting it up so that people could have her home staging furniture and accessories for up to a year for a fixed amount. This meant there was no ongoing revenue stream if the items remained with the same client month after month after month.

Unfortunately, she assumed that if her home staging customers only needed the items for a few months, it would be like being paid for the whole year. Which it wasn’t because she was charging too low a percentage of the retail price (her first mistake). She assumed that she’d be able to re-rent the items 3 or 4 times in a single year and that by the time the debt was due she would have made enough in home staging rental fees to pay for it (her second mistake).

Making her contracts so open-ended that way, and not ensuring that she had a steady cash flow coming in, she had nothing to protect her when the real estate market slowed down. Her clients’ luxury condos were not selling, and she had all her home staging furniture and accessories tied up for at least a year with no other income coming in (her biggest mistake). By the way, I should mention at this point that she had a lawyer help her with the contracts! Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have brought a business mind to the task either!

Rather than realizing what was happening, perhaps because she was so driven by her desire to decorate, Kimberly kept repeating the same mistakes.

She’d get a new project, she’d go out and get the furniture and do it again and again. In fact, I distinctly remember her describing a new project where she had inventory from an already sold client project to use. She had it all moved in for the new home staging client and spent a day moving it all around. Then she decided this furniture wasn’t exactly “right” for this particular project and went out and bought new inventory to suit the new project.

Naturally, her expense of moving all her original inventory in and moving it back to storage again, plus the new expense of buying an entire condo’s worth of new furniture  was hers to bear. All she did was bill her originally agreed upon fee. When she described this to me, I knew I was talking to a decorating addict or perhaps a shop-a-holic!

Very scary. When I listened to her I kept thinking, “Is there no one in her life that saw the road she was heading down, least of all her husband?” It was amazing. I couldn’t believe how she got herself into that situation.

I wanted to share Kimberly’s story with you, because if you are going to get into the furniture rental business, then you need to approach that carefully with a lot of business analysis and your eyes wide open to the potential pitfalls.

Not only are you investing in furniture, you’ve got to pay for storage and insurance. Then you have to think about how the furniture is getting from wherever your storage is to the client’s home. So that means you now have to start hiring a truck and movers, etc. It’s a complex way to do things that involves lots of overhead.

In Course 2, The Business of Home Staging: What You Need to Start and How to Grow, and Course 3, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations, I teach home stagers how to work with their own inventory in more detail. But I also teach you how to work without it (and make lots of money along the way), so you don’t have to get into all these risks.

I’ve run my own home staging business since 2002 and staged many vacant homes as well as ones that people are living in. I have not invested in my own inventory, and I have made a lot of money doing it that way as have many of my students.

Kimberly never took the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program but hired me to help her with one-on-one business coaching after she found herself $100,000 in debt!  I wish she had spoken to me two years earlier because I could have saved her so much grief (and money). I helped her restructure her pricing strategy and develop new terms for future furniture rentals. We also developed a strategy for her to maximize the value of her current inventory and turn some of it into cash to pay down her debts.

I’ve taught thousands of home stagers and personally coached hundreds of others. Their questions, challenges and triumphs provide a rich ground for the examples and tips I share with you in this blog (though I never use anyone’s real name without their permission).

Please share your feedback to this story and any advice you would have given Kimberly to avoid the situation she found herself in. Do you use your own home staging inventory?

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. An entrepreneur for almost 25 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.

If you’re a home stager thinking, “Gee, if I had my own home staging inventory I could make all these homes look so much prettier,” you need to read this cautionary tale.

Kimberly (not her real name) lives in a major US city and was staging high-end condos, using all her own home staging furniture and accessories. She does not have a “package” from a previous career, an inheritance, or a wealthy husband. But, she has a vision for how wonderful all her clients’ homes could look when decorated properly.

To put her creative vision into action, Kimberly bought everything she needed at stores whenever they were running those “don’t-pay-a-cent” events where you can get what you need on credit, and you don’t have to pay for it for another 2 years.

That’s how Kimberly amassed all this home staging inventory— project by project. Every time she had a new condo to stage, she would buy all the furniture and accessories for that particular condo. Then another project would come, and she’d go out and do it again.

Kimberly believed that since she didn’t have to pay for her home staging inventory for a couple of years, she could make a small fortune in the meantime.

She assumed she was going to rent her furniture several times over the two years.By the time the payment due dates arrived, she imagined she would have made all this profit from renting and re-renting the items out to her clients. At least that was the “logic” of it in Kimberly’s mind.

She never took the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program but hired me to help her with one-on-one business coaching after she found herself $100,000 in debt!

Catch the rest of Kimberly’s story on Thursday. In the meantime, if you’re already a home stager please share your experiences with buying and renting out your own home staging inventory by commenting below!

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. An entrepreneur for almost 25 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.

Graduates of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program know that while I teach the pros and cons of having your own home staging inventory, I’m a big fan of not having it. It’s really not necessary to invest tens of thousands of dollars in home staging furniture, art and accessories and I say this as someone who has staged hundreds of homes, many of them vacant or only partially furnished. There are tons of pitfalls of furniture rentals for home stagers.

Early in my home staging career I was invited by an “established” home stager to tour through a condo she had staged. She was selling her furniture rental inventory and assured me I could get a real steal by buying all the contents from her.

She was quick to point out that she’d made $5,000 staging that property so my investment would pay back quickly. What she didn’t know was that I had already staged a number of vacant properties using inventory from an actual rental company and made just as much profit as she did, without having any of her overhead. Needless to say I didn’t buy what she was selling and appreciated that early view of how much better my business model was than hers. After all, she was selling her inventory! If she was making so much money from it, she wouldn’t be doing that!

I’ve been a home stager since 2002 and have communicated with thousands of home stagers over the years in more than 20 different countries. A certain pattern has been obvious to me throughout that time.  The home stagers most likely to go out of business within their first or second year are the ones who maintain their own inventory. Their sizable upfront investment, plus the ongoing cost (and hassles) of storage, pick up, delivery, cleaning, maintenance and insurance usually have a lot to do with this.

Many new home stagers believe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Their situation is “special” they tell me, “it’s different where I live.” Hey, if you really want to get into the furniture rental business, go for it! But before you do, I’d like to share some actual comments word-for-word that home stagers have shared in emails with me, on Facebook, etc. I’ll leave their names out since they might not want this to be public:

“Had another Glamorous Day in the life of a Home Stager: Inventory maintenance in +100 heat followed by a refreshing round of washing and drying one of my tubs of bath towels.”

“I have selected each and every one of our pieces of inventory, and including cushions, towels, bedding, artwork, accessories and hard furniture we own around 7,500 pieces of stock. While that seems a lot, when you cover off pillows, cushions (oh the cushions!!) and then designer accessories, the list grows quickly.”

“I am so upset! I am out of the country and I just heard the house that I staged was broken into. They took a lot of my inventory and the owner said he has nothing to do with it: it is my problem!”

“Anyone have storage suggestions for lampshades? I’m tight on space, so putting a couple into a plastic tub is not very efficient. They’re currently in boxes which is not very protective either.”

“I already own enough stock to furnish 12 large condos but since the market slowed down all that inventory is tied up indefinitely. Now whenever I get a new client, I have to go out and buy more stuff. I bought everything on credit but a year from now I’m going to have to come up with close to $100,000 to pay off the debt.”

“A REALTOR just called to see if I was interested in purchasing the inventory she just purchased from another Home Stager who’s leaving town. Anyone else interested?”

“Vacant House was Staged. Stager put up rods and drapes. In buyer’s Contract, they asked for window treatments. Sellers knew they were not theirs, so it was crossed out and agreed to by buyers. At Closing, the Buyers wanted the rods, as they were affixed to the home and not disclosed as being Stager’s inventory.”

“Yes, that’s me double parking a U-Haul filled with my home staging inventory because there’s nowhere else to park that’s anywhere close to the house I’m staging.”

So if you don’t want to take my word for it, based on my years of experience and all the home stagers I’ve taught or coached, I hope these comments have let you glimpse the realities of owning your own home staging inventory.

Consider also the potential hassles and liability of bringing bed bugs from one property to another (or potentially your own). You can read my free report on how home stagers can protect themselves from bed bugs here.

I’d love it if my readers would add their own experiences with the pros and cons of having your own inventory. Please add your comments below!

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. In Course 3, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations, you’ll learn how to make money staging furnished homes without having to use any of your own home staging inventory.

I’ve been writing about how houses actually “speak” to the home stager, suggesting how they are really meant to be presented. Fabulous comments from my readers have prompted me to take yet another angle on this continuing story.

Nancy Lee of An OrderLee Home observed, “Not only does every room shout it’s own story to me, but I suspect good staging finds a way to tell the story so buyers can hear it and understand how their own story will fit into it.” I love the poetry in how she phrased the importance of a home stager creating an environment that the potential buyer can imagine themselves living in.

Leah Fritz of Perfect Place Home Staging added, “I see some places as being depressed and sad when I first arrive, and finally free and happy when I’m done.” She’s so right!

There’s also another layer and that’s the transformation of the homeowner or home seller that inevitably takes place while you are staging a home.

Usually when I arrive for a home staging consultation, the client is visibly tense. After all, moving is right up there on the “Stressful Life Events” scale along with divorce, death, and job loss. When you consider that these are also 3 common reasons to move, you’ve got a situation potentially fraught with anxiety.

More often than not, my client has never worked with a home stager before so they’re a bit uncomfortable when I arrive because they’re inviting a “stranger” into their home and they’re not totally sure what to expect because it’s a new situation.

That’s why it’s so critical to handle the opening of your meeting very carefully. Subtle things like how you’re dressed, your facial expression, body language and how you open the meeting will set the tone for your home staging consultation and how your client responds to your advice. I cover this in detail in Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations.

If you build the right rapport and put your client at ease, during your home staging consultation, you’ll notice their stress level will go down steadily as they start to see the magic you can create, often with only minor changes.

By the way, when I say “home staging consultation,” please know that this is also a working session the way I do it. Much of the transformation of the home can take place during this first meeting. As the home changes, you’ll see the seller change too. Their whole body language, expression and breathing shifts when they’re no longer under the weight of all that was “wrong” with the house and all the confusion they had before you arrived.

That’s another part of why I love being a home stager, we help people and make a difference in their lives even before they actually sell their house!

Home stagers, have you experienced the transformation of your client right along with the staging of the home? Please add your comments below!

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are more than 4000 Staging Diva Students in over 20 countries. Debra is frequently profiled in the media for her home staging expertise and is the author of 5 guides for home stagers.

Deborah an interior designer who is in the process of adding home staging to her services (an excellent strategy to recession proof an interior design business) writes:

I am about to embark on a home staging project that requires rental furniture. If it turns out that buying furniture would be more cost-effective, would you recommend that?

There would be the selling aspect at the end which could be a challenge, but overall I think the client would save money over a 12-month period with purchased rather than rental. What is your advice?

Home stagers, I’d love to hear your advice and points of view on this home staging business dilemma. Please add your thoughts and I’ll summarize the best and add my ideas in a future post.

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

Intrepid entrepreneur, Debra Gould, developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses. There are currently over 4,000 Staging Diva students across the United States, Canada, Australia and 18 other countries around the world. She is the author of 5 guides and is frequently profiled in the media.

Isn’t it amazing how little care some real estate agents seem to put into their real estate listings? From bad MLS photos to typos in listings, I know most home stagers have seen it all.

In the more relaxed spirit of summer, I just saw a funny clip from Ellen which pokes fun at bad real estate listings. Thought you’d enjoy these examples of what not to do when selling a home!

On a more serious note, what are the worst things you’ve seen real estate agents do after you’ve carefully staged one of your client’s homes? My pet peeve is the real estate agent who walks into a home I’ve just carefully arranged for photography and throws his coat over a chair, leaves his shoes in the middle of the hallway, dumps papers all over the dining room table and then takes the listing shots!

Has this or similar happened to you? Please share your experiences by commenting below.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the home staging courses to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Prior to becoming a professional home stager in 2002, Debra bought, staged and sold 7 of her own homes.

I’ve been addicted to decorating since I was a kid. I remember insisting that my room be painted a deep turquoise, and my rattan headboard white, because I could totally picture how one would stand out against the other and compliment the pale creamy-yellow duvet. At the risk of revealing my age, I’ll admit it was the 1960s. Even now I can see that decorating scheme in my mind’s eye, and it still looks cool.

As a teen, I painted murals on my bedroom wall and also the high school cafeteria. In my first marketing coup and “payment” for my creative talent, I managed to convince the vice principal of the high school to exempt me from swimming as reward for decorating the cafeteria. Hey if you don’t ask, you never know!

Then came adulthood and a series of rental apartments.

Finding the perfect bedding, shower curtain and towels were always highest on my list of priorities since I had almost no budget for furniture and painting the actual walls was against my rental agreements.

When I finally became a homeowner with my first real estate purchase at the age of 29, I was in heaven! There was still no real decorating budget for my tiny condo, especially since I had just quit my 6-figure job as a Marketing Director to become an entrepreneur. No matter; with a few cans of paint and the right accessories, I could create magic. I even managed to get about 12 years of use out of the ugliest sofa you’ve ever seen by putting a piece of plywood under the sagging cushions and covering it with a huge canvas painter’s drop cloth. Sounds like something a home stager would do, right? I hadn’t even heard the term at that point.

About 7 years later, I had created as many different looks as I could think of for my condo and it was time to move so I could get my next decorating fix.

Condos and houses seem to speak to me and I knew I had reinvented the same space as many times as I could. Within the next 4 years, I bought, decorated, and sold 5 more real estate properties, living in them all along the way! It was not until the last one that I realized I was born to be a home stager, and launched my home staging and redesign company Six Elements Inc. with no more information than:

• Knowing I was talented at quick makeovers and decorating on a shoestring
• Knowing I could decorate a home to appeal to buyers
• Wanting to keep decorating without having to keep moving all the time
• Believing I could use my marketing talents to market myself and my home staging services
• Believing I could make relatively easy money selling my knowledge and expertise to home sellers who wanted to sell their homes fast and for top dollar

Many Staging Diva Students and Graduates have told me similar stories of knowing they were born to decorate. Some rarely played with dolls because they were too busy decorating and redecorating their doll houses. When I heard that, visions of cut up Kleenex boxes and creative uses of empty toilet paper rolls came flooding back to me as I remembered the complex floor plans and “furniture” arrangements I’d lay out on our basement floor! Even then I recall thinking real Barbie® houses and furniture were kind of lame because there was no creativity to it (or at least that’s what I told myself because there was no way I was getting the real thing!).

The funny thing is, ever since I started my home staging business in 2002, I haven’t had the constant urge to move anymore! I’m convinced it’s because I can get my decorating fix working on my clients’ homes. And it’s actually quite creative having to make something beautiful out of furniture I might never have picked on my own.

Did you start decorating when you were a kid? What’s your first memory of decorating or realizing it was something you just “had” to do? How do you get your decorating fix now; are you a home stager? Please share your story by commenting below!

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

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. Her Home Staging Business Training Program has over 4,000 students in 21 countries.