The Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers welcomes Create Home Staging serving locations in the province of Ontario and the state of Michigan.

Create Home Staging’s owner, Monica Bunde, is a Graduate of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program and she has purchased a full listing on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

Monica uses her listing as her company website because it contains sales copy about her business, before and after photos and all of her important contact information. She can also be certain that anyone searching the Directory for a home stager in the locations she serves finds her.

Create Home Staging serves the following locations in the Province of Ontario: Amherstburg, LaSalle, Belle River, Kingsville and Leamington

And the following locations in the State of Michigan: Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and Farmington Hills.

Learn more about adding your home staging business to the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

Technorati Tags: Staging Diva, Staging Diva Directory, Directory of Home Stagers, Home Stagers, Create Home Staging, Ontario home stager, Michigan home stager

Have a look at Staging Diva events happening for home stagers this month. Please note, times indicated are Eastern (NY time) so you’ll need to adjust for your own time zone.

Ask Staging Diva Live – FREE
Wednesday, March 10 8PM – 9:30PM

Anyone who has subscribed to Staging Diva Dispatch in the last 3 months will get an invitation to join this 90 minute group conference call with home staging expert Debra Gould. Find out what it’s really like to be a home stager, ask your own questions about starting or growing a home staging business and hear an overview of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program .

Sign up right now for this event!

Staging Diva Dialog (Graduate Members Only)
Wednesday, March 17 noon to 1 PM

Staging Diva Graduates have a chance to ask Debra Gould questions in a small group on this regular, monthly coaching call.

Here’s what was discussed on the last call:

• Home staging presentations for realtors
• Home staging presentations for homeowners
• Presentations for philanthropic groups
• Presentation handouts
• Staging portfolio dos and don’ts
• Starting your portfolio with no clients
• Photography tips and cameras
• Formula for establishing a staging budget
• What to do if you’re over your budget
• Fave places to shop for accessories
• When your client ignores your advice

Find out how you can join the March Staging Diva Dialog. Just $47 gets you the live call with Debra Gould to ask your questions!

Open Coaching Day with Staging Diva – FREE (by invitation only, $75 value)
Tuesday, March 23 11 AM to 3:30 PM

Staging Diva Quiz Challenge Winners get a 15 minute one-on-one coaching session with Debra Gould.

Staging Diva Graduates get a 15 minute one-on-one laser coaching session with Debra Gould.

Invitations are sent to Staging Diva Directory members.

Staging Diva Accelerator Coaching (Members Only)
Every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment

If you’re interested in business coaching with Debra Gould, schedule an Accelerator Coaching session. It’s not a prerequisite to have taken the Staging Diva Training Program to purchase a session. When you’ve registered, you’ll get special access to Debra Gould’s online calendar to book an appointment at your convenience.

Learn more about how to get Staging Diva Business Accelerator Coaching

Technorati Tags: home stager, starting a home staging business Staging Diva Dialog, Ask Staging Diva Live, home staging Business Coaching, debra gould

Congratulations to Staging Diva Graduate Kim Nuzzaci of Moving Home Interiors (DE, MD, PA) on winning a national design competition sponsored by Pottery Barn.

February was a busy month. In addition to writing Home Staging Business Report and coaching my students, I’ve been working on a presentation I’ll be giving to homeowners next month. I also completed some home staging and interior redesign consultations and took my mother to Ste. Anne’s Spa for a weekend to celebrate her 80th birthday.

But the biggest project for the month was “blowing up” my 7 year old home staging website, SixElements.com and rebuilding it from the ground up. It launched March 1, just in time for the busy spring real estate market. I’ll discuss this project later this month since it may help some of you working on your own websites.

Thank you to the many students and graduates who wrote in after I sent out the new additions to courses 2 and 3 of the Staging Diva Training Program. I have been teaching home stagers for 5 years and many ideas continue to come from the questions you send in, or from my discussions with home stagers during the Staging Diva Dialog calls. I’m pleased to hear the new course material was helpful.

I’m serious about my mission of inspiring and empowering you to live your best life. As such, the overall theme of this month’s posts is recognizing the power you have to direct your career and then doing something about it.

Keep your marketing hat on and be ready for the spring real estate season. It’s on now and this is your opportunity to take advantage of it!

“Even if you’re on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there!”

~ Will Rogers

Real estate investors need the help of home stagers if they want to flip their properties or even just to attract a quality tenant if they’re planning to rent the property out until the market picks up.

It’s common for investor/renovators to assume that once a place is fixed up and painted, that’s all they need to do. When a home is not that big or the rooms are awkwardly arranged it makes it even harder for buyers or renters to imagine how they’ll use the space. This was certainly true in this living room, which was the first thing you saw upon entering this house.

Congratulations to Debbie Fiskum who transformed this space. What a difference her staging made! The home sold in just over two weeks over Christmas.

She writes, “Taking the Staging Diva Program helped me to speak more effectively to agents, investors and homeowners and to convince them of the value of home staging. I gained insight about marketing my business and that continues to be an ongoing process as I follow Debra on Twitter and keep up with her blog posts. By doing the things Debra recommends in her program, you can build a profitable business.”

Read the rest of Debbie’s home staging story here.

Don’t be critical to the point of being paralyzed by a need for perfection, but it’s important to put real time into making your home staging portfolio as strong as you can. I sometimes take 30 shots of the same room just to be able to pick the absolute best before and after angle. It’s tedious to sort through them all afterwards, but it’s worth it because having the right photos will get you business.

As we head into the first real estate season of this decade, make sure your own portfolio is up to snuff. If you need help, the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide will teach you what you need to know to win clients. You’ll find:

• detailed copywriting tips for writing about your services as a home stager
• how to get strong testimonials
• how to brief a designer so you get a professional looking logo
• how to avoid the pitfalls most stagers make when shooting and choosing their before and after photos
• and more

The Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers welcomes Silk Purse Innovations, located in Connecticut.

Silk Purse Innovations’ owners, Susan Paganini and Sallie P. Borkowski are both Graduates of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program and they’ve purchased a full listing on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

Susan and Sallie use their listing as their company website because it contains sales copy about their company, before and after photos and their contact information. They can also be certain that anyone  searching the Directory for a home stager in Connecticut finds them.

Silk Purse Innovations LLC serves the following locations in Connecticut: Hartford County, Litchfield County, New Haven County, Tolland County, Windham County, Middlesex County, New London County and Fairfield County.

Learn more about adding your home staging business to the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

Technorati Tags: Staging Diva, Staging Diva Directory, Directory of Home Stagers, Home Stagers, Silk Purse Innovations, Connecticut home stager

Congratulations to Staging Diva Graduate Adam Luttrell of Tasmania-based Shift by Design on the third birthday of his staging business! That’s an important milestone when you’re an entrepreneur of any kind.

Adam writes, “It wasn’t until I updated my portfolio from the last five major projects that I realized just how far we have come in the last three years. When you start out you do it because you know you can, but even with that motivation and knowledge behind you it is amazing how much you learn from wonderful mentors such as Debra, peers and simple, old fashioned on the job training. Our designs, layouts and ability to see what will fit in a room has magnified greatly over time. Our photos are better, our presentation is more professional and all this comes over time.”

One of the things I love about what Adam says is that he acknowledges that our staging and decorating skills improve over time.

It was always my dream to run my own business, which I finally did full time just before I turned thirty. Ever since, I’ve always loved reading stories about entrepreneurs. There’s a certain comfort that comes from reading about others in your own field, or one you’re moving into.

That’s one of the reasons I want to gather interesting stories about what life is like as a home stager. I have many of my own quirky client stories and I know many of my readers do too. I’d love to hear your story and it could potentially end up in my new book, which will be published in 2010 and featured on Amazon and elsewhere.

“Life as a Home Stager: An Inside Look at What It’s Really Like in the Home Staging Business” is filled with heartwarming, funny and sometimes shocking stories about what it’s really like being a home stager. Inspiring and informative, this book will give you an honest look at what it’s like to work in this exciting and creative industry.

To participate, you might tell us about:

• a client who was going through a particularly difficult or life-changing event when you staged their home and how you helped them through the process.
• a tricky staging project and how you rose to the challenge.
• a client’s strange choice of decor and how you convinced them to change it.
• a funny mishap or a silly mistake you made while staging a client’s home.
• how your staging career has affected other aspects of your life.

Staging Diva Graduate Pauline Stevens recently commented on one of my blog posts with this story that could easily be submitted for the book. I’m including it here as an example:

“I worked in criminal law before becoming a professional home stager. I ran my own law office with my husband. But after a number of years, I was hitting the snooze button more and more and when I finally got on the road to work, I had to stop 2 or 3 times to vomit on the side of the road.

I took one year off to get well again (I had lost over 50 pounds, couldn’t hardly eat or sleep) and then started looking at what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I’ve always been passionate about decorating yet I still had the mindset of wanting to really help people. I remembered my grandmother telling me when I was a small child to ‘choose a career that you have passion for, that way you’ll never have to work a single day in your life!’ She was right.

Now, with home staging, I don’t hit the snooze button – I’m up before the clock even rings! I look forward to what I do. Though I haven’t reached the point yet where I’m making as much money as I was in criminal law, I’m darn close. But even if I wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. I’ve never worked so hard in my life and loved it so much!”

To be part of this exciting new book, you don’t have to be a professional writer. Anything you submit will be edited, you just have to give us the interesting story to start with. If you’re selected, you’ll get a free copy of the book once it’s printed PLUS the bragging rights of saying you’re featured in a published book, adding to your own credibility as a home stager.

> Learn how to be part of this new book and get your copy free!