Staging Diva is the nickname of and brand name for Debra Gould and her company, and since they were created in 2004 they say they have become one of the most recognized and respected names in home staging courses.
Home staging, which they say is also known as house staging, real estate staging, house fluffing, is the art of decorating a home in order to help it sell quickly and for the best possible price.
Debra Gould says that the Staging Diva course is the only available program taught by someone with an MBA in Marketing and over 25 years of business experience, who has also personally built a successful staging business.
The Promises
The website is very clear that the Staging Diva courses much more than just learning how to decorate. These courses are about “starting up and running a home staging business, making money, marketing your business, charging properly for your services, and many more elements that will add to your success.”
The truth of home staging is that a high quality professional stager is one of the key pieces needed to ensure that a property can provide the greatest return on investment, making them an important part of the home sale process.
The website says that the full program is made up of five different courses and that each course is two hours of audio recordings plus accompanying study notes, so that in just ten hours you can have “the keys to making money in your home-based business.”
What to Consider
The Staging Diva website strongly encourages their customers to purchase all of their courses as part of a large package, because they claim that 90% of people who purchase one of their courses ultimately end up purchasing all five of the courses.
The issue is that if you purchase your first course individually, then you must purchase all the courses individually and this ends up significantly more expensive than one of their bundled packages. Even though their bundled packages are priced between $995 and $1295, the website promises you will still be saving between $700 and $830.
This is obviously a giant commitment for someone to make, however, especially if they are not completely sure that this is the right field of study and work for them. The website does offer a Refund Policy for their customers, but this policy says that it is designed for people who “don’t feel that our materials are as described on the order pages.”
If you believe you fall into this category, downloadable products must be cancelled and a refund must be requested in writing within 48 hours and physical products must be cancelled and a refund requested in writing within 45 days of ordering. If these deadlines are surpassed, no refunds will be given regardless of circumstances.
What are the current students saying ?
You can also find several at https://facebook.com/the staging diva
I encourage you to check the “free gifts” tab on https://stagingdiva.com
There are plenty of free gifts to get you started on learning with Staging Diva, so you can see the quality of what you get :)
Many of our students are realtors who are looking to have an income stream from home staging.
If you just want help with the design side of home staging, and you want to stage your listing for free, then I recommend the Staging Diva Ultimate Guide to Design for Home Staging. You can read more about it at: https://stagingdiva.com/staging-design-guide/
I will take an example: in staging diva sales script, in its product page on "what you will learn", "how to build rapport with customer" and how to "structure your conversation with client no matter where they started" gave me an impression that Debra would address this clearly, however, the first rapport point was never addressed anywhere in that pdf and the second point on how to structure your conversation was also not very clearly stated (somewhat loosely mentioned).
I have to say I am pretty disappointed in her sales script product and I will advise people against buying it. To be honest, I think her product page is a false representation of what the actual content is.
Her other ebook "ultimate design guide" is very good and worth the money in my opinion.
That said, I encourage you to re-read the Sales Script. The entire script I provide IS how you build rapport with a potential client. It's the back and forth that will happen as part of the conversation when you ask them the questions I've suggested. I'm not sure what you mean about not having the "structure" of the conversation, since I've provided exactly what to say. If you have additional questions about this, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You'll find a Contact Us form at https://stagingdiva.com
I'm glad you've enjoyed the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide and appreciate that feedback.
Now to try and answer your question briefly here. Julie (who has no last name so I don't even know if she did my program) who commented last February could have got all the social media help she wanted from me if she had asked for it. I include a FREE membership in my online discussion group, Staging Diva Network, where I answer all student questions on a weekly basis. Social media changes all the time and I continually invest in my own education on the subject so that I can pass the best tips to my students. You may or may not be aware that Facebook and the others constantly change their algorithms. So a great strategy on Facebook a year ago may not be the best advice today, as one small example. That's why it's important to update Social Media advice all the time. As you can imagine, I use social media for my own business, so I can tell you what works and what doesn't.
Now as for Canadian versus American. My home staging business model works in both countries and has also proven to work in more than 20 other countries too! You have nothing to worry about as a Canadian, the content is TOTALLY applicable to you :)
Again, welcome the opportunity to discuss further and answer your questions, please visit https://stagingdiva.com
In addition to the courses, Debra offers SO many supplemental materials that are incredibly helpful. The community of SD graduates is another bonus, as we all support each other and share each other's wins.
I almost took a very expensive course, from a high profile provider of training, but thought better of it. What could I really learn from that course that I hadn’t already learned from the web, TV and books? What I really needed to learn was how to run a profitable home staging business.
That’s when I searched for business training and found Staging Diva. Debra Gould has an elegantly simple, logical, and effective business model. Right from my very first paying job, I had all the information that I needed to succeed. I came across as a seasoned and experienced pro.
I have used this business model since 2008 with great success and have been profitable since year one.
I highly recommend this education for both new and seasoned home stagers. The course was worth every penny I paid – and ironically was half the price of the first course I contemplated.
Without a strong business model, I would have made many costly and frustrating mistakes. I still coach with Debra one-on-one every year.
I am curious on how old the version of the training course is? In other words, if this was published 10 years ago, has it been updated? Design, legal forms and industry standard pricing can change from year to year.
Thank you!
These aren't major updates because the Staging Diva Business Model still works. Anyone who changes their business model every year is likely to go out of business because you can't keep changing your direction with each passing fad. You don't get traction that way. And I know this because I've been self employed for over 30 years. A home stager since 2002, and training home stagers since 2005.
I speak with Staging Diva Grads every 8 weeks by phone in our group coaching program so I know what's working and what's not out there in the real world.
As for Social Media - that IS something that changes almost weekly. So instead of putting that inside the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, I handle those questions and that discussion inside our online discussion group. You get FREE membership to that with your purchase of the Training Program. I'm in there weekly answering everyone's questions and you can search the history by category and topic so you don't miss anything on a topic you're wondering about.
For full details, see https://stagingdiva.com/home-staging-courses/
It's important to know that there are no official certifications in the field of home staging, despite what some companies would like you to believe. Home staging is a completely unregulated industry.