Are you walking around with a destructive label inside your head that determines the choices you make and how you live your life?

This week I met “Cynthia” (not her real name) by phone. She has been dabbling at being a home stager. I say “dabbling” because she’s done a few free projects for friends and spent money on advertising her staging business with no paying clients to show for it.

She told me about how she has always loved decorating and people have been telling her for years that she has God-given talent.

Cynthia has never used her decorating talent to earn a living before. Now that she’s 49 and her kids are self-sufficient, she really wants to create a real business and had thought that home staging would be it— except that right now she can’t seem to make money at it.

“I really need your staging business training,” she said, “but I never follow through on anything so I’m afraid to invest in your courses.”

After more discussion it turned out that she felt she “never follows through” because she did nothing with the medical transcription training she’s already taken and gave up a multi-level marketing (MLM) business selling weight loss products because she hated hassling friends, family, and anyone else she ran into to, to buy products.

Personally I could relate. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a less creative way to make a living than medical transcription and I’ve never been interested in MLM because I hate hard selling and cold calls (home staging requires neither of these).

“Can you see any similarities in the two previous things you haven’t followed through on?” I asked.

“I wasn’t passionate about either of them,” Cynthia replied.

So I asked her how her life might be different if she had a formula to follow to make money from her passion for decorating and whether she thought that would hold her interest so she could follow through. After some additional discussion about what it’s like being a home stager, she decided to order the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

The next morning, she left a message asking whether it was true that I offer a money-back guarantee (I do), and within 2 days (even before her program arrived in the mail), she asked for a refund.

Apparently she discussed it with her friends and everyone said, “Why did you order that? You never follow through on anything!”

I have no problem giving Cynthia her money back because I only want happy students who plan on taking action with the training they receive from me. What breaks my heart about her story though is that she’s lived up to her friend’s expectations rather than standing in her own power and moving forward with what she wants to do!

As a person who “never follows through,” she couldn’t allow herself to follow through on listening to the training program.

She could have listened to the entire Staging Diva program over a day or two in the comfort of her own home. Then she could have started implementing the many ways she would have learned to turn her staging hobby into an actual money-making business for an entire month before deciding if she wanted to keep it! But she didn’t. She closed off that possibility while the training package is still in the mail on its way to her door.

You see the labels we give ourselves (or empower others to give to us), are something we live into.

If you walk around telling yourself any of the following, you’ll find them to be true:

• I never follow through on anything.
• I’m not smart enough to have my own staging business.
• No one will ever pay me for my decorating talents.
• I can’t be a home stager unless I lose weight.

What negative thought or label are you walking around with?

Please enter it in the comments below so you can see how harsh and unproductive it is! After you write the negative thought, list 3 pieces of evidence that it’s not actually true, then let it go so you can embrace all the joys and new experiences that lie before you!

Seriously, play along with me here. I know you’ll find that negativity loosen its hold on you AND you’ll inspire and empower others too!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Voice of Possibility Group Inc.

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

I love flipping through color books and paint swatches, it totally brightens my mood and gives me energy. Sometimes I bring some of my color books to a client’s home to help them figure out what look and mood they’re drawn to before I recommend paint colors for their home.

That is, if I’m doing a color consultation as part of an interior redesign discussion.

When I’m choosing colors for home staging, I don’t really care too much about what the client likes or will feel comfortable living with, because in a staging situation it’s all about decorating for home buyers.

Over the past week, I’ve done two color consultations and this book by Leatrice Eiseman came in handy. It’s called Colors For Your Every Mood: Discover Your True Decorating Colors and has sumptuous photos of different rooms in a variety of decorating styles.

My first appointment was at a luxury home in Forest Hill that had been totally gutted top to bottom. It was really a challenge because the place was still a construction site, with none of the furniture or final lighting installed! The owner had her iPad with photos of things she liked, and we went from there.

In this case, I had to stay fairly neutral because I had no idea what precise colors her furniture and art actually were.

And in some cases, I didn’t even have floor color as a reference because the hardwood hadn’t been installed yet! For this home I relied exclusively on the colors I recommend in the Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide: The Easy Way to Pick Color for Home Staging Projects. I know they work in a wide variety of homes and with different lighting and furniture styles.

Standing there with the wife (at a workbench in what will soon be the family room off the yet-to-be-built kitchen, shown in the photo above), wearing my coat because there was no heat, I somehow managed to choose a color palette for this 5 bedroom, 3-story home in only two hours!

Since her husband had written out my check in advance before driving off to keep their son amused during our meeting, there was no way I wanted to go over-time. I believe in being paid for my advice, so I kept it short and sweet so we could finish within the deadline!

One of the ways I made it easier for myself to work in this situation was by opening one of my color fan decks and having her help me choose what color she thought the furniture for each room was.

Naturally, her visual memory of the actual colors may not be accurate, but I needed something to go by! When evaluating wall color options, I’d put them up against the “red” of the couch, or the “blue” of the dining room chairs, for example.

For my second color consulting client, I did a home in the Beaches area that was built in 1919. It had lots of dark wood trim (which they didn’t want to paint) and leaded glass windows.

The couple was very nice and the husband really warmed up to the whole process about 30 minutes into my visit.

When I arrived he had his arms crossed over his chest, but once we hit the kitchen and he got to show off his new restaurant-style 6 burner gas stove, and tell me about the chef certificate courses he’s taking for fun, he became much more open. It turns out he’s a very talented (amateur) photographer and we had fun hanging many of his works in various rooms of the home.

His wife served tea, and together we finalized which glass tile to use for their newly renovated kitchen, selected drapery for the living and dining rooms (from the many options she’d bought ahead of time), and selected paint colors for the entire house. In this client’s case we could have more courage with color because I could see what they liked and all the furniture and lighting were in place.

We came up with a fabulous color palette that really pulls the rooms together and works with the dark wood trim.

It was a lovely afternoon for all of us (I know because she hugged me at the end and said all her questions were answered) and I left with a check equal to what many people make in an entire week after only 2.5 hours work. I don’t say this to brag, but to emphasize that it’s possible to be REALLY well paid for your creative talent when you understand the business of home staging and color consulting!

It really is a joy to do work that you love, help people and be well-paid for it at the same time. If you’re struggling to get paid what you’re worth, I encourage you to listen to Course 2 of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at two of my color consultations for clients who aren’t selling their homes and I’d love for you to share some of your own experiences by commenting below.

Also, I’m taking a poll and you can vote by commenting below. The question is: Do you have trouble choosing colors for your own home even if it’s “easy” to do it for a client? It’s really hard for me, how about you?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

Toronto skyline viewed from Etobicoke. Credit: Chris McPhee

I have a client in Toronto, Etobicoke to be precise, who is struggling to accommodate her 5 kids in a 3 bedroom home. She doesn’t want to move right now but needs interior redesign help to make the home work better for her large family. I’m too booked up with my own staging clients to help her and I’d love to refer this project to a Staging Diva Graduate.

The homeowner prefers to use her own furniture in new ways, but is also open to new purchases.

She’s also anticipating that some renovations may be required. Personally, I look at renovating as a last resort and find with some creativity you can often make the existing space work better.

Plus, when clients are able to avoid the considerable expense and inconvenience of renovating based on our advice, they have no trouble investing in what we have to say!

I haven’t seen the house but I’m guessing it’s a fairly high-priced property since it’s in Etobicoke, where properties and lot sizes tend to be larger. In fact, did you know that in Kingsway South, which is part of Etobicoke, over 50% of households earn over $100,000/year?

It’s very common for home stagers to get asked to do interior redesign projects and often it’s the clients who would never dream of hiring an Interior Designer who call us! That’s why I’m really happy I decided to become a home stager instead of going to Interior Design School.

If you’re a Staging Diva Graduate and you’re interested in this interior redesign project, it’s really easy to apply. All you need to do is complete the form at the Staging Diva Home Staging Project Referral Service.

Please be sure to include “Toronto Interior Redesign Project” as the project location in the first line of the form.

This project will be referred first to members of the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers at no charge. If there’s not a Directory member available for this project, it will be open to any Staging Diva Graduate with a professional Internet presence. (It’s difficult to convince a client to hire you if they can’t review your home staging portfolio, after all!)

If you get any paid work through this referral, there will be a $250 referral fee, which you can build into your redesign consultation fee if you’d like. It’s entirely up to you. Remember you’ll be making money on this project from not only your consulting fees, but referrals to painters or handymen, plus you can make a commission on any furniture they buy if you follow the advice I give you in Course 5 of the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program!

Because of all the traffic generated by my many home staging websites, I get lots of leads on staging, color consulting and interior redesign jobs from all over the United States and Canada, and as far away as England, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, South Africa and Israel! I will only refer jobs to Staging Diva Graduates.

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

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of 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 businesses.

Creative types getting into the home staging industry often get sucked into wasting hundreds if not thousands of dollars on training by making these 5 common mistakes. Here’s what you want to watch out for:

1. Taking home staging courses from someone who has never been a successful home stager.

Staging Diva Debra Gould featured in 8 page spread in National Post Homes, Summer 2008

This is especially common because many companies claiming to offer you home staging credentialsare lead by people who have never earned a living as home stagers.

If you don’t think that matters, consider how likely they are to teach you things that work in the real world.

It’s easy to avoid this mistake, all you have to do is Google the trainer’s names—and company/brand names— you’re considering. You can also check them out on LinkedIn to see their employment history and education. Pay special attention to the dates.

2. Chasing after home staging credentials because you think these will give you credibility.

This is a common mistake when you’re entering a new field and worried that potential clients won’t take you seriously.

The first thing you need to recognize is that contrary to misleading claims being made in this industry, there is no such thing as an official home staging credential. If you are “certified” or “accredited”, it just means you took a particular course. This is a completely unregulated industry and anyone can offer “certified courses” because there is no law or regulation to stop them.

When I started teaching home staging courses in 2005, I deliberately chose to avoid calling Staging Diva Graduates “Certified,” because I find this misleading to potential students as well as the general public. Remember this was my choice! It’s doesn’t mean you’re any less “Accredited” as a Staging Diva Graduate than anyone else from another program. I just don’t play this marketing game for the reasons mentioned.

You can choose to call yourself “certified” no matter what program you take, since there’s not really any such thing.

The second thing to remember is that you won’t get automatic credibility if you say you’re a “Certified Stager.” Seriously, even in legitimately regulated fields (medicine, accounting, law), I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people you wouldn’t trust no matter how many university degrees they have on their wall.

And, did you know that home inspectors aren’t even regulated? If you don’t need a special credential to call yourself a home inspector (where a mistake could lead to someone buying a property with hundreds of thousands of dollars of hidden defects), it’s unlikely there will be any great rush on the part of governments to regulate home staging.

How to gain credibility when there’s no such thing as “certification”

You get credibility from the quality of your work, the way you treat your customers, your knowledge and contributions to your industry, your marketing efforts and any media attention you receive. The right home staging courses will address all of these factors and teach you what you need to know to present yourself in a professional way.

So make sure you find out exactly what you’ll be learning rather than just letting “certification” be your guide. Take a proper look at the description of each course, get a free sample, talk to your trainer.

3. Assuming that because a home staging course is endorsed by an association that it’s more official.

House and Home Magazine recommends contacting Staging Diva to find the right stager.

There are many associations claiming to be the voice of the home staging industry. Some provide useful information to their members.

If you’re assuming home staging associations are completely independent and objective, dig a little to find out if that’s true.

Most are owned by people who also own home staging schools or offer training themselves, or their boards of directors are made up of trainers. So, naturally they’ll endorse their own programs.

Others charge a fee to home staging training companies to be endorsed by them. So if they don’t endorse a particular program it may only mean that the training company didn’t choose to “apply” to be recognized by them.

If an association is not completely independent, you cannot assume because a home staging course is recognized by them that it automatically means it’s good training. If might very well be a great program, but you should look closer to make sure it meets your needs.

4. Assuming that all testimonials you read are legitimate.

You’ll never know with 100% certainty unless you contact the person giving the rave review personally. If  the website running the testimonial uses incomplete names or doesn’t provide a photo and location, consider this a red flag. There should be enough information provided to show that there’s a real person behind the words, and to make it possible for you to Google them if you want to.

Really read through these testimonials to see what kind of things they talk about. You’ll gain some insight into the types of people that take various programs and what they were looking for and why. If all it says is “great program” that might mean it was great for them, but it doesn’t mean it’s great for you.

Different students have different needs. Consider yours when you’re evaluating any home staging course.

5. Believing that the presence of media logos on someone’s website means the person is a recognized expert in the home staging field.

Sadly, anyone can put logos on their website, whether or not they’ve actually appeared in that magazine, newspaper or on a particular TV show.

So don’t take logos or claims of media attention at face value. Look for actual TV clips, visuals of the actual pages they were on, or story excerpts that appear credible. Sometimes you’ll even find links to the story on the media company’s website. I provide these wherever possible when I mention a story or any Staging Diva media appearance.

Conclusion/Next Steps

The key message here is take some time to consider what you’re being told rather than taking it all at face value. There are great home staging courses for people with different needs. When you have a better picture of what you’re looking for and why you want to take a course, then you’re in a better position to evaluate whether you’ve found the right one.

Less than an hour of research will point you in the right direction to find the right training for you.

If you need more help, consider reading these 15 questions to ask before investing in home staging courses. You’ll also find The Staging Diva Difference explains what makes my own program unique in the industry.

If you want to learn more about making a great living as a home staging, I hope you’ll grab your free subscription to Home Staging Business Report! Simply fill in your name and email in the box at the top left of this page and you’ll receive an email update whenever I write an article here. Generally once or twice a week, tops, you’ll have a summary of the story with the opening paragraph and you can decide if you want to click through and read the rest. A great way to stay on top of home staging job postings too!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Voice of Possibility Group Inc.

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

As you look for ways to boost your home staging business, it’s hard not to notice the For Sale signs in your very own neighborhood and wonder if they don’t offer a home staging marketing opportunity.

Many home stagers ask me what to do about houses that are already on the market. Should you approach the real estate agent who has the listing, or the owner of the house to promote your home staging services? And how long should you wait after you see the house go on the market?

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, Voice of Possibility Group Inc.

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 7,000 Staging Diva students across the United States, Canada, Australia and 18 other countries around the world. Debra is the author of 5 guides and is frequently profiled in the media.

Not Candice, just a typical interior designer:)

Have you ever watched Candice Olson of HGTV’s Divine Design? When she has to pull together an interior design concept from her impressive collection of fabric swatches, tiles, furniture catalogs etc. all within easy reach of her clean desk?

We all know that the “reality” in TV “reality shows” is quite scripted and what makes a great TV show often has no resemblance to real life.

Regardless, as home stagers, we don’t need massive collections of fabric swatches and product samples because for the most part we’re working with what clients already have. Even when we do an interior redesign project, we don’t need to draw from such an extensive array of possibilities as you’ll see on TV.

If you’re like me, much of the business clutter you have to deal with is stacks of paper filled with ideas, business receipts, business cards from people you’ve met, rough sketches of ideas or measurements of clients’ rooms, etc.

In other words, we collect information as opposed to objects!

The piles of information on my desk often makes me feel overwhelmed as soon as I walk into my home office! I keep generating ideas for new marketing methods for my home staging business, or new products or course ideas for teaching home stagers, or ideas to add to one of my 10 websites, and they get added to one of the piles.

Added to that, I’ve kept literally thousands of emails and I often have 20 web browser tabs opened at any one time, all things I want to get back to but don’t have time now. Over time, I forget what they are and why I wanted them and there’s no way to keep it all organized. Or at least I didn’t think so until I discovered Evernote 2 days ago! Here’s a quick intro video to this FREE web-based application that will give you a flavor for what it can do for your home staging business:

I’m really excited about this and have already started setting up “notes” for the different webpages I wanted to refer back to and read, emails I need for later and more. What’s most helpful is the ability to “tag” each item. Within minutes I set up tags for things like:

• Home staging blog post ideas
• Marketing ideas for new home staging course
• Jean’s home staging project
• Cheryl and Peter’s color project
• Updates to my FREE report on the economy for home stagers
• Template ideas for new website

I also love that when I’m viewing my “notes” inside of Evernote I can look at everything tagged with only one of these choices and that it shows me a visual of it as well as the start of the text in a preview window. Since I’m a visual person, this really works for me and is better than looking at a stack of To Do items on paper or an inbox filled with hundreds of subject lines of emails.

When you’re inside Evernote, clicking on a particular “note” reveals all the content. In the case of a webpage that’s the full page, with all the hyperlinks preserved! Now I don’t have to keep all those browser tabs open which always slow down the application.

If you have a smart phone or iPad, you can also put Evernote on those and all your content will be automatically synced between your devices. Imagine shopping for a client and immediately taking a photo of the parking receipt with your phone and putting it into that project’s folder right along with photos of items you’ve found while shopping, or whatever!

Have any of you used Evernote before? Did you find this review helpful? Please share your ideas for how you have used , or might use, this FREE application by adding your comments! I’d also love it if you share this post with your friends and fellow stagers, after all who doesn’t want to start the new year all organized for whatever lies ahead?

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

Debra Gould has been supporting herself from a home office since 1989. During that time she lived in 8 different homes and had to set up many new ways to keep things running during her moves. 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.

Home stagers often get frustrated in their home staging marketing efforts to real estate agents. An Ottawa home stager summed up many of our frustrations with this comment on Facebook:

“Answer me this….why are real estate agents so cheap they don’t care about VALUE & RESULTS they only care about the cost?!”

The shortest answer to her question is that most real estate agents are making very little money right now and they’re not willing to spend any more than is absolutely necessary on a listing, especially when they don’t know if the house will sell at all.

Real estate agents aren’t employees with guaranteed pay checks.

Home stagers have almost no ongoing expenses to keep their businesses running and we get paid when we provide our services when we follow the Staging Diva formula for starting and growing a home staging business.

Unlike us, real estate agents have considerable ongoing expenses with no money coming in until a deal closes. Without this positive cash flow, really why would they want to spend money on your home staging services when they won’t get it back for many months, if at all?

This is one of the MANY reasons I advise against putting all your marketing efforts towards real estate agents which is a common mistake made by home stagers who haven’t listened to Course 4 of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

That said, real estate agents are one of our 4 key target markets. They can help build awareness for the importance of home staging in general and for a preferred home stager’s services in particular.

To better your chances that a real estate agent will recommend your home staging business over your competition, here are 5 secrets real estate agents need to hear from you:

1. Home staging will make it easier for you to market and sell your listings because your MLS photos will be 100% more enticing, and once visiting a property, home buyers are more likely to make an offer on a home that shows well.

2. With 70% (US) to 90% (Canada) of home buyers searching online before ever calling a real estate agent, you will attract more leads with better photos, not only for the staged listing but from active buyers who will want you to show them other properties too.

3. Home stagers can address problems head on and tell your clients the things you don’t want to say for fear of losing your listing. With so many people selling a home due to divorce, a home stager is an independent third party who will save you from having to get in between the different opinions of each spouse.

4. Home staging is a service you can recommend to your clients as a faster way to sell their home for more money, but it’s not a service you personally have to pay for.

5. Your clients don’t want to hear you recommend a $10,000, $20,000 or $50,000 price reduction because that’s money right out of their pockets. Home staging services can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a consultation up to several thousand dollars to fully furnish a large or very high-end home. In every case, the cost to your client will be significantly less than the price reduction. This makes for a much easier conversation with your clients and keeps you on the “same team.”

These are only some of the many marketing ideas, strategies and tips I share in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Program, “Staging Diva Sales & Marketing Secrets to Boost your Home Staging Business.” In this home staging course, I also share how to build your home staging business without spending any money on advertising  while attracting home sellers who are prepared to really invest in staging their homes for the real estate market.

Home stagers, have you found any other phrases particularly helpful when explaining the benefits of what you do to real estate agents? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting below.

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

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

Tree decorated by Monica Bunde for her client.

As a home stager you have many creative talents that can help you make money, especially during the holiday season when there are fewer home sellers looking for our home staging services.

Staging Diva Graduate, Monica Bunde of Create Home Staging takes her staging hat off at this time of year and promotes her services decorating for the holiday season.

For example, she just completed a holiday decorating project for a local senior’s home. She says that “A tree, a Santa’s village display, exterior pillars, railings and urns were transformed into a festive winter wonderland. The seniors were so very excited, almost as excited as I was to do it … and it’s those little things that just make this time of year so special.”

You could call Monica an international stager as she runs her staging business in both Ontario and Michigan. This is not as uncommon as you might think! Several Staging Diva Graduates spend part of the year in one location or travel back and forth between cities, states (and even countries), depending on the season, where other family members are, etc. That’s why when you join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, you can choose up to 4 states/provinces and 10 locations to serve.

Monica will be continuing to build her home staging business in the new year with a regular home staging column for a local news website, Today’s Windsor. This is an excellent marketing strategy for establishing yourself as a home staging expert and to have your name and company name appear more prominently in Google search results. Way to go Monica, you’re off to a great start for 2012!

Have you had any success marketing your holiday decorating services? How about writing for other publications or websites? Please share you thoughts and experiences here!

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

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

What a journey it is becoming a home stager! Many of us are born home stagers, we just don’t realize it for many years. What I mean here is that it’s a journey discovering who we are and what we are meant to do. Along the way, we take hundreds of baby steps that take our dream and make it tangible by bringing it into the world where we, and others, can see it.

There is something really empowering about manifesting our dreams into something that exists outside of ourselves.

For years I had wanted to be an artist. I used to spend hours at craft shows hanging around the exhibitors, like a groupie hungry for any piece of information that would help me figure out what their secret was. How had they found the courage to create and to put their work out there for the world to see, judge, and hopefully, buy?

Eventually I gave up my six-figure business to find out and do it myself. Everyone said I was crazy, after all I was a single mom with a mortgage! I just realized one day that life is too short and that our passion doesn’t just show up one day and say “Here I am!,” it’s actually something you CHOOSE!

I built my first website to promote my art in 1999. I knew I needed a photo of myself to put up there so I did my makeup, propped my digital camera up on a bunch of books on a table to get the right height, and used the timer to take a bunch of shots of myself.

It took me hours to get it right— running back and forth between the camera and where I would stand, trying to get the angle right and the lighting! How much easier it would have been to have professional lights or a tripod (I couldn’t afford either one) or even someone around to help, but I was new in town and didn’t know a soul (except my kid who was under 4 feet tall)!

After kindergarten pick up that day, I showed her my live website (a project I’d been working on non-stop for about 3 weeks), complete with artist photo.

She burst into happy tears and said, “I’m so proud of you Mommy!”

That was definitely one of those great “Mommy Moments,” not only because she was proud but because I knew I had taught her an important lesson about following your dreams! She had witnessed the power of taking action rather than sitting around complaining or waiting to be rescued by someone else. This is a critical lesson for everyone, but I feel it’s especially important for girls!

I was reminded of this story recently when one of my Staging Diva Graduates took my advice about setting up a Gravatar so that her photo would appear next to her blog comments all over the Internet and she wrote, “Thanks! It was so fun to see my picture pop up everywhere. I didn’t realize how vain I was until I saw my picture and loved it!”

It’s not vanity though! It’s the thrill of seeing a tangible example of your dreams being out in the world. It’s scary at first, but it’s really gratifying and gets easier with every step you take.

Staging Diva Graduate, Traci Sampsell of The Finer Stage wrote, “I saw the first draft of my business cards today and I haven’t felt this proud since I graduated from nursing school! This is completely different, though, because it’s all my own!”

Yes, another step in the journey made tangible by having an actual business card. They cost under $100 but their value is priceless in the confidence boost they give you, and the money-making clients they can bring you!

Staging Diva Graduate Katherine James of Set Sale and Go Home Staging wrote after her first project, “Debra, I had them eating out of the palm of my hand using your tips. The job went incredibly well and I could not tear the smile off my face after I left. I had to strongly resist the urge to skip back to my car in case the clients might be watching from their doorway.”

Staging Diva Graduate Red Barrinuevo of Redesign4More compares the excitement of starting his staging and redesign business to the day he got his first bike from his dad. Special moments we never forget because even as they’re happening we know they are life affirming and life changing.

Staging Diva Graduate Jodi Whalen of Pear Tree Home Designs shares that she realized how far she’d come when she closed her books on her first 3 years as a home stager and realized she tripled her revenue every year!

Perhaps you’re thinking it’s different for us, that this couldn’t be your story too.

Maybe you believe I don’t understand how hard it can be. I’ve never publicly shared my whole story, but I do not lead a charmed life where everything just “falls into place.” I’ve worked my way back from abuse, serious health challenges, and more.

I do know what it’s like to feel hopeless. I also know life is the adventure you make it and that you are the one to choose your adventures.

So the first step is to choose. The next is to find some (even small) way to make your dreams real each day. Whether it’s:

• Taking your professional picture.
• Going out to a networking event to talk about your business as though it exists (even if you’ve never had a client before).
• Learning from others who have already done what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Or any one of a thousand things you could do today, tomorrow, the next day, next week and on and on.

I promise one day (not so long from now) you will look back in delight and amazement at how far you’ve come!

Home stagers, please comment below and share any action you’ve taken this year towards realizing your dreams, I know you’ll get a kick out of seeing the progress you’ve made while inspiring others just starting out.

If you’re totally new to home staging and just beginning this journey, please share what baby steps you plan to take in the months ahead to take your dream and make it tangible by bringing it into the world where we, and others, can see it. You’ll find your transformation begins just by declaring it!

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. There are now 4,000 students in more than 20 countries following her formula for business success.

Too many home stagers hold themselves and their staging businesses back because they’re afraid to make a mistake. We want everything to be “perfect.” It’s a natural tendency— we don’t want to look foolish, make a mistake or disappoint someone.

But here’s the thing, if you’re not making mistakes in your home staging business, then you’re not moving forward! In this video, Derek Severs shares some great examples of why we need to allow ourselves to fail.

Personally, I think women suffer from “perfection-itis” even more than men. After all, we’re told from the youngest age to:

• Keep our things neat.
• Color inside the lines.
• Make sure our hair looks pretty and our clothes are clean and matching.

What does this have to do with building a successful home staging business?

Since I’ve been a home stager for 9 years and teaching others for nearly as long, I know that home staging appeals to perfectionists. After all, there are few jobs that reward you for obsessing over the precise location of a painting, the angle of a throw over the side of a chair, or how neatly the bathroom towels are hung. Being the perfectionist I am, I LOVE that!

Watching Picasso paint “Bullfight Horns Attack Matador” in this video was such a great example of how a “master” doesn’t get everything right the first time (and how our assumption that they do holds us back from even trying).

How about that surprising study of which group in the ceramics class made the best pots! Seriously, if you skipped past this video, take a few minutes and watch it. There are some real insights that will help you move forward as a home stager and grow your staging business.

We are all capable of so much more than we imagine.

If we always play it totally safe and don’t allow ourselves to fail we never find the outer limits of what we can do. I agree with Derek that “everything is an experiment.” Coasting through life gets incredibly boring after awhile. Are you bored yet? What new thing can you try to put you back in that “growth mindset”?

Has being afraid to fail held you back? Have you been comparing your “inside” to others’ “outside” only to always come up short and convince yourself that you’re not good enough to even try?

I really want to know if any of this strikes a chord with you, please share your thoughts below!

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

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989. Some ideas and businesses have worked out better than others, but each has brought “lessons” that made the next thing better. Debra 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.