by Debra Gould on February 1, 2010
Summary
Home staging expert, Debra Gould, shares a success story from a Staging Diva Graduate who was able to rescue her career as an Interior Designer during Southern California’s housing collapse by learning home staging.
Staging Diva Program Rescues Interior Designer’s Career
When times are tight, nobody is spending money on frivolous things like interior design. But in a recessed economy with people being forced to sell their homes and wanting to keep all the equity they possibly can, they are willing to invest in a designer who is skilled in home staging.
When Interior Designer, Linda Scaglione, found herself in the midst of Southern California’s housing collapse, she became desperate to find a way out of the sinking retail side of design.
A friend suggested that with her skills she should consider getting into home staging and that’s when Linda made the decision to take the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.
By taking her talent and experience in interior design and combining them with the business knowledge she gained by taking the Staging Diva Program, Linda was setting herself up for great success.
Linda’s home staging business is called Haute Decors. Marketing primarily to the real 
estate industry, Haute Decors is known for updating existing cabinetry using decorative painting on top of providing home staging services.
Her first project after reinventing herself as a home stager saw Linda staging a condo that ended up selling within 24 hours! On top of that, it sold for more money than many other units in the same condo development.
The remarkable success of that project led to Linda being hired to stage a 2.6 million dollar beach home that had been sitting on the market for more than a year. After a kitchen renovation and Linda’s home staging the owner had several pending offers within one week!
About the training she received through Debra Gould’s home staging course, Linda says, “It gave me the courage to start my own interior design business specializing in home staging. For anyone wondering if the investment will be worth it, I say ‘Go for it’!”
About the author
The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area.
by Debra Gould on January 27, 2010
Summary
Home staging expert Debra Gould offers five tips for handling walls in home staging, in a story on one of NAR’s (National Association of Realtors) highly visited websites.
Excerpt from “Staging Tips: 5 Tips for Tackling Walls” by Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine:
“Walls are a key element of home staging. They are the canvas showcasing the greatest attributes of a house. But where do you start when preparing a home for sale? Staging Diva Debra Gould, president of Toronto-based Six Elements Inc., offers up five rules of thumb for handling walls in home staging.
- Remove personal pictures: Those wedding portraits and baby pictures have to come down, as do diplomas and awards. Personal items such as these are distracting to potential buyers. You want them to focus on the home itself, not who the current home owners are.”
Read all five tips for tackling walls at Styled, Staged, Sold.
by Debra Gould on January 25, 2010
Summary
Home staging expert, Debra Gould, shares stories of men and women who have completely reinvented their lives to become home stagers.
Will you give yourself permission to reinvent your life?
Watching the comments pour in after posting an article about a registered nurse and mother of four finding great success and creative fulfillment as a home stager inspired The Staging Diva, Debra Gould, to share more stories of those who’ve changed careers to completely reinvent their lives.
Marketing consultant turned home stager, Debra Gould says, “It’s rare today for anyone to keep the same career for an entire lifetime. We’re all living much longer than our parents’ generation, and many people at the traditional retirement age are realizing they still have many years ahead that they’d like to be productive, not to mention doing work they would love.”
One of the comments that came in was from 62-year old Carol who shared that after working for 36 years as a hair dresser she made the decision to make a change and start her own home staging business.
Pauline commented that her career in criminal law had her so miserable, she would find herself literally getting sick on her way to work in the morning. Since changing her life and becoming a home stager, she’s eager to start work every day.
“Reading those comments made me dig deeper and take a closer look at what other Staging Diva Graduates have done in their lives before turning to home staging, and there were several cases where people made a very drastic change,” says Gould.
One of those Staging Diva Graduates is Fran Matsumoto, co-owner of Pristine Staging in Beverly Hills. Fran had worked as an airline employee and also as the office manager to Rodney Dangerfield and his wife Joan before reinventing her life as a home stager.
The mother of a large “yours, mine, ours” blended family, Jayne Steuart’s career was spent caring for eight children, waiting for her turn to do something for herself. With her youngest child now 14 years old and her own work off the back burner, Jayne is having the time of her life as a home stager and owner of Pearl Home Staging and Redesign. (Read about one of Jayne’s home staging success 
stories here.)
In her early 50s, a layoff saw Donna Dazzo out of a 25+ year career in the field of financial services. Rather than taking that time to find another job in her industry, she started her own successful home staging business, Designed to Appeal. (Read more about Donna’s success as a home stager here.)
Gary Baugher left a secure management position he’d held for 15 years at a car rental company to start his Nashville home staging company, An Eye 4 Change.
Ken Sater in California started his home staging business, Creative Home Visions, after working for 18 years in mortgage banking and 14 years in the insurance industry. (Read more about both of these men and their stories here.)
“In one of the more recent stories I’ve heard and possibly the most romantic, Sophia Mose ‘escaped’ 
her job in London where she worked as a lawyer, to the countryside of France to work as a home stager,” says Gould.
Sophia writes, “I’m not having an easy time getting clients as Home Staging is an unfamiliar concept here, but I’m not giving up. If it doesn’t work here, we’ll just move to a more populated area! All the time, people are questioning my choices and telling me that I’ll regret it, but you can’t listen to that. You have to give it a try, otherwise you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
About the author
The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area
by Debra Gould on January 22, 2010
On the January 9, 2010 episode of HGTV’s “The Decorating Adventures of Ambrose Price,” home staging expert 
Debra Gould aka The Staging Diva takes Ambrose under her wing, teaching him how to stage a home to sell.
The show follows Ambrose and Debra as they visit three homes that have been staged with Debra explaining what was done right and what was done wrong in each of them.
Later in the episode, Ambrose tried out his new home staging skills on a condo by himself. The show ends with Debra offering her critique of what Ambrose did with his newly acquired design skills.
Watch the Video
Click to Watch!
by Debra Gould on January 11, 2010
Summary
Home staging expert, Debra Gould, explains to aspiring home stagers why they don’t need to spend a fortune on accessories, bedding and towels before starting their business.
No need to assemble a collection of accessories to become a home stager
There’s no rule that says you have to go on a shopping spree, racking up credit card debt buying accessories, art,
bedding and towels, in order to become a home stager.
If not being prepared to incur these types of expenses has prevented you from taking a home staging course and starting your own business, you need to know that you don’t have to own any of these things in order to make staging your new career.
When The Staging Diva®, Debra Gould, is staging someone’s home, she uses her clients’ money to buy accessories, bedding and towels and when the staging project is finished, those items belong to the client.
About her process, Gould says, “It works very well. I get paid for my time to go shopping and I’m shopping with my clients’ money. The client gets to keep the receipts and the packaging, so when the house sells it’s up to them if they want to keep that stuff because it’s theirs. If they want to return items to get a different color to match their new home, or if they don’t want to keep any of it – that’s up to them.”
Some home stagers enjoy building their own stash of vases, candles and other accessories, but before you start such a collection, consider the bother of storing those things and keeping track of them. Many homeowners will love the fact that they get to bring all those fabulous accessories you purchased for them when they move to their new home and it’s less work for you.
When it comes to artwork, many furniture rental places rent art as well but it can be difficult to find appropriate art for home staging. The Staging Diva® Art Shop makes shopping for art effortless. Each piece was selected for home staging and galleries are organized by room. On top of that, when you choose your piece, you also pick your mat and frame and it’s shipped right to your door.
Before letting something like this stand in the way of you following your dream of becoming a home stager, do a bit of research to see if you’re over complicating things. Search the Home Staging Business Report, Gould’s home staging blog, or subscribe to the Staging Diva Dispatch, Gould’s monthly newsletter. They’re must-have resources for any aspiring or established home stager because both are packed with inspiration and practical advice.
About the author
The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area.
by Debra Gould on January 8, 2010
Summary
For the fourth consecutive year, Debra Gould’s Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program has been featured in the bi-annual Entrepreneur Magazine Startups Guide. Gould’s is the only home staging training program to be featured in all of the past eight issues of this popular resource.
Staging Diva Recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine for Fourth Consecutive Year
(UNITED STATES) January 8, 2010 – Anyone considering a career in home staging today has lots of options as far as 
obtaining their training goes. However, with the virtual nature of the majority of these home staging courses, it can be difficult for an aspiring home stager to determine which courses are legitimate, which really are too good to be true and which will actually provide the caliber of training they’re seeking.
For the fourth year in a row, the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Business Startups Guide. The Staging Diva program is the only home staging course to be included in all of the past eight issues of this respected guide.
About being featured in the Startups Guide for the fourth consecutive year, The Staging Diva says, “In this day and age, it’s difficult to obtain the trust of consumers. There are a few ill-reputed home staging courses that do not deliver what they promise. Unfortunately, not everyone researches a company properly before investing with them. Since others have had bad experiences, this makes some aspiring stagers understandably gun shy when it comes to selecting home staging courses. Seeing Staging Diva featured in Entrepreneur Magazine Startups Guide for the eighth time should inspire confidence that this program is the real deal.”
To learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program and to read reviews from people who have taken the program, visit stagingdiva.com for full details.
About Staging Diva
The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained over 4000 home stagers to start and grow their own businesses.
Debra has gained international recognition through features in major media in the US and Canada including: This Old House, HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, Global TV, City TV, The Wall Street Journal, Women’s Day, Reader’s Digest and more.
Contact
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
Six Elements Inc.
416-691-6615
debragould@stagingdiva.com
http://www.stagingdiva.com
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