Interior Design Business

Why would it be bad for your design business to grow too fast? Growth is good, right? Well, yes and no. Your business needs to be set up to handle growth. If you experience rapid growth that you’re not prepared for, your business will not be able to support it and you’ll end up losing money and making rushed decisions. That’s not what we want.  Valerie Priester is here to walk you through the numb...

What do you do when your inner voice becomes your inner critic? It happens to us all. Unfortunately, we’re much harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else. I bet you’d never talk to your loved ones the way you often talk to yourself.  How do you get past that voice when it’s telling you that you’re not good enough or you don’t have what it takes? The truth is, you’ll continue to get in your ow...

How much time do you spend putting out fires? You’re going to need to get some of that time back if you want to scale your business. If you’re involved in every day-to-day task behind the scenes and you’re responsible for putting out every fire, your business cannot grow sustainably. It has to be able to function without you. So… how do you make that happen? This episode of the Interior Design Bus...

Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? I think a lot of us designers do. Wanting your work to be perfect isn’t a bad thing, it shows how much you care, but it can get you into trouble. The thing is, nothing’s ever really perfect. If you’re always waiting for the perfect time, perfect product, perfect skill set, or perfect anything, you could be waiting forever. The real magic happens when you f...

When old clients come back to work with you again, how do you tell them that your fees have changed since the first time you worked together? If you’ve been here before, you’ll know that I teach designers how to get paid what they’re worth. One of the first things we always work on in that process is design fees. Getting your design fees nailed down isn’t too hard, but communicating those fees and...

Do you know how many clients your business could handle without becoming overloaded? In this episode, I’m going to pitch a scenario to you and ask you some questions about how you’d handle it. The point of this exercise is to get you thinking about how prepared you and your business are to handle growth. If you feel like you have to work more and more in order to take on new clients, your business...

I bet you didn’t start your own business so that you could work 60 hours a week, never take a vacation, and miss family events.  You might often find yourself in those situations because you’re a people pleaser, you don’t want to turn away business, and you feel bad saying no. Those are just a few of the things that tend to affect us as designers and how we undervalue our time.  In order to move a...

What do you wish you knew about marketing for designers? By the end of this episode, you might just have your answer.  There’s a lot of information out there about SEO, social media, and all things marketing, but it’s hard to sift through and none of it is focused on designers.  Our industry is a little different from others. There are things that need to be done in a certain way and in a certain...

“If only I had another day in the week, then I could get it all done.” “If I just had two more hours in the day, I could finish everything.” How many times have you said something like that? For me it’s a lot, that’s for sure, but those aren’t real options, so let’s chat about what you can do instead to take back your time.  In this episode of Interior Design Business, we’re talking about how to f...

What does it take for a designer to be a good leader? Let’s find out.  Valerie Priester and I are back for Part 2 of this episode all about leadership. In Part 1 we talked about learning from your mistakes, building confidence, and getting clear on your vision, and in this episode, we’re covering the self-care side of leadership: how to stand up for yourself, set boundaries, and outsource.  Steppi...

When you started your design business, leadership might not have been the first skill on your mind, but the truth is you are a leader from day one.  Whether you’re leading yourself or a whole team, the way you lead is important. In this episode, I’m joined by coach Valerie Priester to talk about what it takes for a designer to be a good leader.  We’re talking about things like having a growth mind...

I’m back with coach Marsha Sewdass for Part 2 of this episode all about healthy boundaries. It’s all very well to tell you to set more boundaries, but how do you implement them?  Sometimes you have to start small, so the small thing we’re starting with is a simple two-letter word: no.  In Part 1 we talked about how to identify areas in your life that need boundaries and carve out enough self-refle...

Do you find yourself constantly rushing out to job sites, responding to emails late at night, and taking calls on the weekends? In this episode, I’m joined by coach Marsha Sewdass and we’re talking all about boundaries.  If you feel like work is encroaching on every hour of your day and you don’t have the time for your personal life that you wish you had, you probably don’t have enough boundaries...

Just because a business looks like it’s doing well, doesn’t mean it actually is.  You might have a lot of money going through your accounts, but how much is left over at the end? If it’s not as much as you’d like, what’s going on there? Let’s get to the bottom of it.  It can be hard to pinpoint why you’re not making any profit when it feels like you’re working hard, getting clients, and finishing...

What is a luxury mindset?  This is an important concept for interior designers and service providers, so I wanted to dedicate a whole episode to it.  There’s a misconception that once you start getting luxury clients, you’ll become a luxury designer, but it just doesn’t work that way. Your luxury mindset needs to come first and the clients will follow.  In this episode of the Interior Design Busin...

Have big price tags ever caused trouble for you in your design business? I have a lot of stories about designers getting in trouble with big price tags, but probably not in the way you’re thinking right now.  I’m sharing some of these stories with you in this episode to demonstrate how your money mindset can clash with your client’s money mindset and get messy. You don’t want to let your own money...

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  These are words to live by when it comes to your systems and processes. Here at IDBA, we have a really effective process for bringing in clients and jobs. It builds trust with your clients and sets you up to get paid for more and more work. The problem is, sometimes we get in our own way. We feel the need to get creative and stray from the processes that we know...

How do you take a lead, turn it into a prospect, and then turn it into a good design job? In this episode of the Interior Design Business podcast, I’m sharing my process for turning leads into prospects and prospects into paying clients.  This is one of those things that you need to have a process for in your business. Without a clear and repeatable process, a lot of leads are going to fall throug...

When you jump into a job too fast, things tend to go wrong.  I get it; it’s exciting when a new job looks like it’s going to be a good one, but you need to know everything about it before you say yes and especially before you price it.  In this episode, let’s talk about how to slow things down and avoid saying yes to a job too quickly. The advantages of a slower design process are that you get pai...

How do you make remodeling jobs profitable? Maybe you love working on remodels, but you always find yourself losing money on them. That’s a lot more common than you might think. Is there a solution? This episode of the Interior Design Business podcast has the answers for you.  Remodels are a big business these days. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars exchanging hands every day in the remod...

How often are you pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone? I know it’s hard to do, and you can’t do it all the time, but the truth is if you never leave your comfort zone, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities. In this episode of the Interior Design Business podcast, I’m going to try to make it a little easier for you by sharing some practical reasons and ways to get out of your comfo...

Have you ever had a job go sideways because a client wanted to get involved with the purchasing process? There are ways to allow clients to make their own purchases if that’s what they really want to do, but it’s really important to know how to protect yourself in those situations because they can get messy if you’re not careful.  In this episode of the Interior Design Business podcast, I’m sharin...

How do you handle clients who are difficult to work with? A lot of business owners dread facing challenging clients because they don’t know how to handle them professionally while still sticking to their boundaries. It’s not fun dealing with challenging clients, but it does happen, so let’s talk about it.  In this episode, I’m covering things like when to walk away from a situation, how to end a j...

Do you love remodeling jobs as much as I do? I love the imagination and creativity that goes into taking something run down and turning it into something amazing.  A lot of designers enjoy remodeling jobs but they don’t know how to make them profitable. That stems from not knowing how to handle and position yourself with the contractor, so in this episode, I’m covering the mistakes designers make...

Do you have boundaries in place (in writing) to protect you in your business? The actions of your clients can reveal that you’re missing boundaries in some very important places, so I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. In this episode of Interior Design Business, I’m sharing what kinds of boundaries you need to have in place, how to communicate your boundaries effectively and professionally, a...