A - One-On-One training is “private instruction”. Private instruction allows each student to receive undivided, personal, individualized tutoring. Our training is geared towards either preparation for potential employment with our sister company, Paradise Home Staging, or toward preparing our students so they will be able to start their own home staging business. We feel that the personalized training that we are now offering better suites the current needs of both our business as well as those of our students. However, later down the road, we do hope to be able to provide classroom training, and, eventually, offer online courses as well. Click To Hide.

A - It basically all comes down to this - we will guarantee that as long as you successfully complete our course, and as long as you are able to demonstrate a proficiency and aptitude, talent and the necessary skills that are required of our stagers in order that they may do a great job for our clients, then (upon your request) you will be placed on our list of freelance stagers and offered opportunities to work with us on our projects as they become available.  We will also guarantee that we will teach you what you need to know in order to become a home stager on your own, should you desire to start your own home staging business.  No training program, or school, however, can absolutely guarantee that every student will succeed with their training.  It is just a fact of life that some students do very well and others do not.  This is beyond our control and your success depends, to a great extent, on how serious you are, how interested you are, and how devoted your are to learn the trade.  Also, home staging requires a certain degree of innate talent.  Just as a singer cannot be taught to be a great singer, or an actor cannot be taught to be a star, neither can a stager be taught to have a great sense for color, or balance, or design.  There are always basic rules that can generally be applicable, but there is no way to train talent into a person - you either have it or you don't.  What we give you is the necessary information and tools that you need in order to put your talents and skills into practice so you can apply them to the industry and business of staging.  Also, as work becomes available, we will give you hands on experience, enough that you can take that next step toward becoming a real world home staging professional.       Click To Hide.

A - It is difficult to provide a guarantee for work because right now the home staging business, which is a tightly integrated part of the Real Estate industry, is in a state of flux and change.  The work that can be made available to you, through working with our sister company, PHS™, once you have successfully completed your training and demonstrated your abilities, will totally depend on the amount of work that we have coming in. For our own staging projects, we only use stagers who either have substantial previous home staging experience, who have obtained training and a home stager certification from one of the many mainland schools or staging organizations, or stagers who have acquired our HHSPC Staging Pro™ designation.    But work is not guaranteed - this is something that we simply have no way of doing.  Also, at this time, all of our stagers are hired on a per-project freelance bases.

In addition to, or apart from any work that our sister company, PHS, may offer to you, you are also always free to take on projects of your own, or to work for another staging company.  The choice is always yours. 

The primary purpose of our HHSPC™ training program and Staging Pro™ designation is to help people to learn the craft and business of home staging and to assist people in becoming well trained, well qualified professional home stagers.  We will provide you with tools and training to accomplish this, and, when available, we are also willing to provide you with work when it becomes available through our sister company, PHS™.  Finally, as time goes by, and as HHSPC™ grows, we hope to be in a position to connect our students with additional work opportunities with other Hawaii based staging companies which have become HHSPC™ members.  HHSPC™ seeks, as one of it's goals, to from close connections throughout Hawaii's home staging industry and community.      Click To Hide.

A - Well, first of all, we do not charge in order for you to be able to work with PHS™.  If you already have a substantial amount of previous experience, or if you have training and certification from another recognized home staging school or organization, and if you meet our other criteria, then we are willing to add you to our staging team.  But with that said, when we do hire stagers we need for them to be trained.  When we send stagers into our clients homes, we have a responsibility to our clients to provide a professional level of service.  Our stagers need to know what they are doing and they need to have a strong understanding of the science that is behind staging.  Training costs us much time, and therefore it costs money. By charging a fee, we are able to provide a much better level and quality of training, as opposed to what we could provide free of charge.  The amount of time and training that is required to take someone from a beginner to a well trained professional level is simply more then we are in a position to afford to front ourselves, so therefore we need to charge for our time.  Keep in mind that what you learn is an asset that you acquire during your training.  Your training has value - it is an investment in yourself and you can use the knowledge and skills that you obtain from our course in many different ways. Your home stager training can potentially bring huge benefits into your life for many, many years to come.

Our HHSPC™ Staging Pro designation program offers a solution to the dilemma that Hawaii currently has very few trained and experienced home stagers - and it is a way to fill the void, in that there are currently no other home stager training programs being offered within Hawaii.  If you would like to work in the field of Home Staging, and if you don't have training or experience but need a way to get your foot in the door, our programs are geared toward making available home stager training on a local level, so as to give everyone a chance to work in this exciting and rewarding field.  Our courses are offered to anyone who is interested, and not only to hired employees of any specific home staging company.  We offer training that can prepare you to work with us, to work with other staging companies, or to even start and operate your own home staging business. 

Currently, HHSPC™ offers the ONLY home stager training programs in the state of Hawaii.  Or fees are very low and competitive compared to other training solutions that are available on the mainland or online, and we even provide a way for you to receive hands on training.  We also offer you the potential for viable and tangible work in the local home staging market, if you are able to demonstrate your competency, talent, skills and interest in home staging.  Finally, we try to make it as easy as possible for you to be able to afford our course.  Our course is not only priced substantially lower than other, comparable courses that are based outside of Hawaii, but we offer payments plans too.      Click To Hide.

A - No, you do not have to work for our staging company.  When we have work available, we will offer it to qualifying and interested students who have obtained their HHSPC Staging Pro™ designation, and to those who have been added to our staging team.   But you are completely free to work for any staging company, or to even start and operate your own staging business.  Our first and highest priority is to provide you with the training that is necessary so you can become a "professional" home stager - this is the purpose of our home stager training program. - Your Staging Education Is An Investment In Yourself - It is Not An Expense. You can easily earn back everything you spend on your stager training on your very first staging project!  This is true whether you work for us, or if you work in your own staging business, or if you work for someone else.
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A - As time passes, more and more of our materials are becoming available online..  Also, we are now conducting some of our training in live one-on-one private online sessions, using special software.  As they become available, all of our materials will be accessible to our students in a special UserName/Password protected members only section for exclusive use by HHSPC™ students.     Click To Hide.

A -  HHSPC™ stands for "Hawaii Home Stagers Protégé Club.  It is a trademark of its creators, Paradise Home Staging and Island Music Webcasting LLC.  By definition, according to Merriam Webster's online Dictionary, the term Protégé means "one who is protected or trained or whose career is furthered by a person of experience, prominence, or influence".  In choosing a name for our organization, which serves as the umbrella for providing the very first home stager training programs in Hawaii, we felt that this description fit into what we wanted to accomplish rather well. 

 The Mission of HHSPC™ is to become a Home Stager Trade Organization that will establish unity,  integrity, guidance and excellence in professionalism within Hawaii's local home staging industry.  We seek to create localized stager training programs in order to establish a regional, island wide base of experienced and highly trained home staging professionals who are knowledgeable of our local real estate and staging markets.  We seek to reach out to our local communities, in order to better educate Realtors, Home Owners, Sellers, Buyers, Investors, Construction Industry Professionals and others about the value and benefits that staging has to offer.    We will strive to bridge and bring together industry leaders and participants in order to establish common benefits which could not otherwise be achieved on an individual basis.  We plan to accomplish our goals and objectives by offering open membership and encouraging participation by all person's within Hawaii's Real Estate, Design and Staging Industries. 

At the moment, we are a small organization, just starting out, but eventually we hope to have regular meetings, to organize staging exhibitions and shows at venues such as The Neal Blaisdell Center, and to sponsor activities that will grow and better our local home staging industry and help to stimulate the local Real Estate market and economy.  Although it is not possible at this exact moment, we hope to eventually convert .HHSPC™ into a non-profit organization, because the greater intent of this organization is to provide a framework for the entire Hawaii Home Staging Industry in order that all of it's participants can be able to work together in a unified, cooperative, stimulating and profitable environment.. 

All students who enroll in our stager training courses will automatically receive a one year FREE HHSPC™ membership, along with free annual renewals when signing up for yearly refresher training courses.  For others, our current annual membership fees are only $75.  If you would like to participate and help our organization to grow and accomplish its goals, we would greatly appreciate it if you would consider becoming a member today.  We need members from all areas of Hawaii's Real Estate, Staging, Design and related business segments and we look forward to bringing you on as an active, participating member.- Click To Hide

A - Yes, the economy is not real healthy right now, but if you need an additional source of income then home staging can be an excellent way for you to earn more money.  If you are the type of person who is socially well connected, who enjoys networking, who is outgoing and enjoys doing business, and if you love the idea of being able to let your creative side escape and you enjoy decorating and design, then you can most likely do very well in the home staging business.  Home Staging can be either a part-time opportunity or a full-time career, the choice is yours. If you do well in your training and can demonstrate great skills, a love for your work, and show dedication and commitment to your work, we can provide you with opportunities to work with us on projects that our sister company, PHS™ brings in. Or, you can start your own staging business if you like.  There are many directions that you can go and there are multiple ways that you can put your home stager training and certification to use.  Just like everything else in life, you need to commit yourself and put an effort into your investment in learning to become a Stager, but if you do that then you can very, very easily earn your entire tuition back in only a single staging project.  In fact, depending on the project, there is a good chance that you will earn a profit over and above what you invested into your training, the very first time you go out and stage a home on your own.  To be able to get your entire training investment back in only one single piece of work is truly phenomenal.  When was the last time you heard of a student taking a course and earning back his or her entire tuition with only 10 to 32 hours of work?  If you want to skip the part about having to bring in clients on your own, and don't want to run your own home staging business, that's okay.  When we have work available that we can assign to you, you can work with our sister company, PHS, and earn $25/Hr as a lead stager, or $15/Hr as an Assistant stager (sometimes even more).  At $25 an hour you'll get your entire investment back in only 32 hours!  Now that really isn't too bad, is it?  But some of our projects pay much more then $25/Hr. - it really depends on the property being staged and the available staging budget.  Higher end luxury homes bring in more money then lower end homes and the earning potential there is much better.  Also, if you are working on your own, although you're gong to be wearing a lot of different hats, including that of "salesman", you can easily earn an average of $75/Hr. We do not "guarantee" that PHS™ will always have work for you, but when we have staging work that needs to be done, we do need stagers and we do offer work to those who complete our training courses and demonstrate that they can do a good job for us and our clients.  In recent projects, we have paid our stagers as much as $1,700, and sometimes more, for a single home and for as little as 23 hours of work. So a strong earnings potential definitely exists.  The point is - stager training and obtaining your HHSPC Staging Pro™Certification, as is the case with all training programs, is an investment in your future.  Your Stager Training is an investment in yourself.  What you do with your training, how you use it, whether or not you put it to good use, and where you take yourself into your future is up to you, but this training can definitely open up new doors and give you new ways and opportunities to earn additional income, either full or part-time.  Is it wroth it?  That's a question that you will ultimately have to answer for yourself.  But if you make good use of your training then it's a very small amount of money when you consider the potential returns.
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A - As soon as you complete your training you will receive your HHSPC Staging Pro™ designation and certificate.  As soon as you successfully complete your course and receive your certificate we would be happy to provide references and recommendations.  Click To Hide

 

A - We recently began offering payment optins.  More details can be found on our fees page, or on the signup page during your registration.      Click To Hide

A - Yes, absolutely.  We are offering you the ability to register and pay for our training programs online.  PayPal is our preferred method of payment. Although we recommend that you open a PayPal account, you are not required to have a PayPal account in order to pay using their services.  Using PayPal, you can pay us using a credit card, and if you DO have a PayPal account you can also pay using funds from your checking account.  PayPal is the most secure system for payment on the Internet today and your personal information, including credit card numbers, checking account numbers, Etc., are not shared with us as PayPal acts as a third party gateway in order to complete your transactions in the most secure way possible. 

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A - Currently, we are offering the ONLY Home Stager training courses that are local and Hawaii based.  Many of the mainland courses require that you travel thousands of miles in order to undergo only two or three days of training. These courses are priced at hundreds of dollars above what we charge, and when you add in the costs of airfare, hotel accommodations, transportation and other expenses, the costs add up very fast - you can be looking at a few thousand dollars.  Also, you have to be away from the islands during the time that you receive your training, which means that if you are currently employed you are going to need to loose some time off of work. There are a few courses that you can take online, but these courses also cost more and they do not address any of the issues that are specific and unique to our particular market here in the islands.  HHSPC™training is local.  It not only gives you everything you need to learn and know about the business of Home Staging, but we also provide your training from a local, Hawaii perspective.  We give you the information that you need in order to successfully work and do business in the Hawaii market and this is extremely important.  HHSPC™ connects you to the local Hawaii staging and Real Estate Industry.  We also provide our students with local work opportunities and hands on training in real Hawaii homes using real Hawaiian style staging techniques.  This is the kind of training that is impossible to get from any of the mainland training courses.

Another important difference that distinguishes us from the rest of the crowd is that our course focuses on teaching you the science and theory of home staging, rather then spending a lot of time teaching you how to run a business, like most of the other home staging courses that are out there these days.  And Finally, our course is taught on a "one-on-one" individualized, personalized basis.  This allows us to provide each student with a higher level of training and it gives us a great deal of flexibility when it comes to scheduling your training around your life and activities.  We don't do classroom sessions - instead, we give you a unique, highly personalized training experience that you will find nowhere else!     Click To Hide

A - No, you do not need any previous experience of any kind.  However, if you do have previous decorating experience or Interior design training, it can be beneficial.  The main things that you do need, however, is a strong desire to learn, a love for the kind of work that stagers do, determination, commitment, and it always helps to have a bit of talent too.  If you are the type of person who can easily visualize how a room could look when things are re-arranged, or how an empty room can be transformed, you're on the right track.  If you are the type of person who has a knack and feel for balance, color and style than you have talents that will help you tremendously.  Staging is about creative and natural talents, as well as about learning the science & techniques, the goals and the philosophy's that underlie the work itself. To be truly successful you need all of these ingredients,      Click To Hide

A - Many of the mainland courses teach you how to set up a business.  They teach everything from how to set up a sole proprietorship to how to setup a corporation or an LLC, how to register your business, how to do your taxes, and even how to do your bookkeeping, marketing and sales.  Some of these courses actually focus more on this side of things then they do on the actual science and techniques of "staging" itself.  If you are planning to start your own business, we will teach you some of the basic things that you will need to know in order to get started, and we will teach you the areas that are unique or specific to our local area here in Hawaii.  And, like other courses that are offered on the mainland, we will even provide you with some of the basic forms and contracts that you will need in order to run your business, and teach you how to use them.  But we also recognize that there are a multitude of very excellent courses out there that are specifically intended to teach "business".  Our home staging courses are not intended to substitute for quality training in the operational side of business - I.E., accounting, legal matters, Etc.  Our courses deal with and are primarily focused on the areas that are specifically related to the act and practices of Staging, as it relates to Real Estate, and in particular, Hawaii Real Estate..  This is what you are primarily paying for and this is what we seek to deliver.  We focus more on "the science and creative side of staging" then on the business side of things.  You can take business courses at almost any college or university, but home staging courses are not as easy to find, especially here in Hawaii.  We are here to fill in that gap.
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A - Yes. Of course you can. But just like anything in life , what you invest in time and effort, and in yourself, will usually come back to you. If you are operating your own home-based staging business and you work just 10 hours a week at $75. per hour, you can make $3000 in one month, or less. If you work for a staging company, you can still earn well beyond what most people earn in a typical "job". Most Stagers tend to earn great incomes, especially for the time invested and for the time spent on the job.      Click To Hide

A - Yes - first of all, we can build and set you up with a beautiful, professional website for your business, and we provide hosting services as well. We have our own web server, co-hosted in Houston, Texas and it is plugged into the largest and most reliable Internet backbone connection in the nation. Our website and hosting fees are exceptionally low, and we even give you a dynamic website; which means that you get the ability to do your own updates and website changes without having to know any kind of programming languages or special technical stuff. We also own and operate a full-service Video Production company and we can provide you with greatly discounted video services, which will allow you to provide your clients with beautiful online streaming video presentations in order to assist them in marketing the homes that you stage. Additionally, we can also list your staged homes on our Real Estate Investment websites, giving your clients additional exposure so they can sell their homes faster and easier.      Click To Hide

A - To be totally upfront and to the point - No, absolutely not.

Most people understand the value of training and education.  An investment in education is an investment in yourself.  The "value" of your investment is the knowledge and experience that you acquire during your training.  It is NOT about a "guarantee" of work - it is about how you put your training and knowledge to work for you, in your own personal life.  You can do this by working with us, but you can also do this by working for yourself or for someone else.  The training is an asset that belongs to you, once you have successfully completed it - it is an asset that can potentially remain with you for many years into the future.  I don't know how to make it any clearer here.  If you are only looking at your training in terms of one single job, working for a single employer, then your view of your career direction is apparently pretty narrow and you are probably not making the right career choice in the first place.

Many, many years ago, back in Oregon, I started out in professional broadcasting (commercial radio and television).  In doing this, I attended our local community college, where I spent 3 years taking various courses and learning the trade.  I didn't go to college to learn the profession because of one specific job at one single radio or television station though.  And I didn't take the courses because I just wanted a "job".  I pursued professional training in broadcasting because I was deeply and truly interested and committed to a career in that particular field.  I truly LOVED radio and television and I wanted to know everything that I could possibly learn about the industry.  I absolutely loved the work, and to have the opportunity just to hang out in a real station left me in awe and brought excitement into my life.  For me, getting the training was fun and rewarding in and of itself.  I enjoyed my time that I spent learning radio and television, and I never looked at it as something that I needed a "guarantee" in as far as getting a "job" was concerned.  I had the confidence in myself that as long as I did well and was able to prove myself, and as long as I could show evidence of my worth, I would eventually get work.  My belief and investment in myself spawned many fun, rewarding, and wonderful experiences - including actual paying "jobs" in several Pacific Northwest radio stations (not to  mention many opportunities to meet a number of very well known and famous people).  After relocating to Honolulu in 1988, I went on to work at KIKI Radio, one of the top stations in Hawaii.  After approximately three years at KIKI, I also found employment at several other stations, including a television station where, over 7 years time, I worked my way up to a department head position.  There I was in charge of Master Control and our networks broadcasts on O'ahu, Maui and the Big Island. 

Today, in addition to operating Paradise Home Staging and HHSPC, I also operate a part-time video production company.  All of this was made possible because of the foundation that I built from my original training that I received back in Oregon.  I spent several thousand dollars taking broadcasting, advertising and other media and business related classes.  This was an investment in myself and it was money well spent because it is still, to this very day, giving me a return on my "investment".  So, for me, when someone asks a question such as the one above, it actually comes as somewhat of a "shock", that people can be so totally narrow minded as to not be able to see the value of training and education, beyond the noise on their face.  To me, this is an almost offensive, unbelievable display of shortsightedness and narrow-minded tunnel vision.  If a person can't see the "value" of education, the value of an investment in THEMSELVES, and if all they are looking for is just a simple "job", and if they expect others to pay for their education so they don't have to take responsibility for your own actions and future,  then I think they have deeper issues and problems, other then deciding whether or not our home stager training course is something that is right for them.  I know this is a harsh statement, but I believe it to be completely true and I am just being totally honest here!       Click To Hide

A - At this time, all of our training is done on a personalized, one-on-one basis, as opposed to a classroom training environment.  We offer this training in either of two ways (or in some combination of each).  You may either receive your training in person, by traveling to our office in Punaluu, which is located on O'ahu's Windward shore (near the North Shore), or we can conduct your training online, live, via telephone & computer using special software that allows your computer to connect to our computer here.  In this scenario, you are able to view our computer screen (this is one way only) so you can see our training materials while we discuss and cover the materials on the phone together.  Either of these two options work well for the theory part of our course.  The hands-on training sessions will need to be on-location, out in the field, and in person.  These are usually on the leeward side of the island.
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A - As soon as you sign-up, we will work with you to set up a training schedule that will work within your time requirements.  If you are working a full or part-time job, if you have children to take care of, if you are going to school or have other things going on in your life, or whatever your situation, we will try our best to provide your training at times that will be convenient for you and that will work within your schedules.  This is one of the advantages to personalized, one-on-one training because it allows us to be very flexible in scheduling.
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