Instead always come back to a clear idea of what you want to learn and then find the program that offers that. Then make sure they can back up their claims and find out what outsiders think of the program. Fortunately that’s an easy thing in the Internet age. You’d be amazed what you can learn by putting “name of school” and “fraud” into a search on Google.

That said, if you’ve made a wrong choice in the past it’s best to accept that and move on. Holding onto anger over past decisions will only use up your energy that you could instead be using to move forward. I know you get that since you’ve mentioned having to move forward in a new direction in your personal life as well.

Home staging is still an awesome business opportunity for you since you have a passion for color and design. If you have that natural talent and creativity you’ve got something that many people don’t have. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many badly decorated homes out there just crying for our vision!

To turn your talent from a hobby into a business, you are right that you need to learn things like how to price your services, start your business, market yourself, etc. The business side of home staging IS the focus of the Staging Diva Training Program and what sets it apart from other programs. I’ll teach you what I learned the hard way building my own business and save you tons of trial and error.

I don’t offer hands on training however, because I’m not teaching you how to decorate. I’m teaching you how to make money from your decorating talent.

You can take the courses one by one as your budget allows, and you don’t need to take them in a specific order. You’ll find a detailed description of each course in the Staging Diva Store.

Good luck and keep the faith. Your big dream IS within your grasp. Just keep focused on your goals and keep moving towards them.

First of all, congratulations on having a natural talent for how to redesign a home. For the people who don’t have this gift, it’s a mystery how we do what we do. Recognizing you have a talent that most people don’t, and that your clients can make a real profit on what you do, you must not be afraid to charge what you’re worth. Once you can do that, your current money troubles will disappear.

There are really a few issues going on here:

- how to properly charge for your services
- how to get out of the free estimate trap
- how to market yourself
- how to be less reliant on real estate agents for your business

Course 2 will immediately tell you how to properly charge for your services. With that knowledge you can make enough money to pay for the entire training program.

Course 3 will help get you out of the free estimate trap, as will the Staging Diva Sales Script, which tells you exactly what to say to people word for word so you never have to visit someone’s home for free again. Think of how many frustrating hours and gallons of gas you’ll save right there!

Course 4 will teach you how to properly market yourself and to go way beyond real estate agents.

Here’s where you should go for the quick list of all my products, priced individually to determine what order you want to do things in.

http://www.stagingdiva.com/store

My recommendation to you would be to start with course 2 plus the Sales Script and then go from there. You’ll immediately get out of doing free estimates (which are a waste of your time and a fast road to bankruptcy and burnout) and you’ll make enough with your first client to be able to afford the rest of the program, and really take your business to the next level.

Elana, thanks for letting me be part of your journey of learning how to grow a profitable home staging business!

Debra