Results Driving Habits of Top Interior Designers

Today's episode is a  for anyone teetering between hobbyist and professional in their  interior design Business.  I'm sharing what sets apart those who are just dabbling from those who are determined to have successful businesses. Over my years of coaching, I've pinpointed common traits in the most successful creatives—habits that aren't always just present, they can be learned and mastered.

If you've ever felt like certain skills or mindsets were out of reach, this episode is your wake-up call. From battling imposter syndrome to identifying  and harnessing your  potential, I share not only personal anecdotes but also actionable strategies that have propelled designers from uncertainty to undeniable success.

Today, you'll learn about the seven habits that successful entrepreneurs consistently exhibit, providing you with a clear roadmap to elevate your design business. A focused discussion on where to channel your efforts to achieve remarkable growth in the upcoming quarters.

Whether you're struggling with self-doubt or simply need a nudge to step up your game. Don't miss out on this episode filled with insights, encouragement, and a clear path forward in your design career. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Designing Success: From Study to Studio"! Connect with me on social media for more business tips, and a real look behind the scenes of my own practicing design business.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. Today's episode, I want to talk to you about the difference, between people that are just doing this for a hobby and people who understand that they need to level up and run an actual business. So I have identified over a really long time working with hundreds and hundreds of creatives and coaching them some familiar things. So things I see in people who are quite successful in that endeavor, they're Got the same habits or they have the same approach to things. I recognize it a lot. It's something I feel like I've always had as well, being a very ambitious person in my twenties and thirties and in my corporate career. And there's just some telltale signs, or specific habits that I feel like are repeated and they're teachable habits, they're learnable skills. So if you see that one of these things maybe isn't as strong as it could be in your business, that's where I'd be. That is absolutely where I would point the fire hose when I'm looking at what sort of skills I'm going to need to invest in or what am I going to need to focus on in Q2 and Q3 so before I actually share the 7 successful habits of entrepreneurs that are killing it in this space, here are some of the reasons I feel really well placed to talk you through them. During the first two years of my own self care. Small business as it was back then. I suffered really intensely from imposter syndrome and I know we all say that and yeah, there are still some days where that does come up for me. Probably rarely, if I'm honest, but it definitely is a thing, especially if I do something new or in launching something new, or I'm like, I've put all this love and energy into creating something for designers to help them get better, but what if they don't love it? Or what if they don't like it? That sort of thing. It does come up occasionally. But in the early days, I felt like I tried to keep myself smaller than I should have been. So things like I downplayed how well my e designs were actually received, like by how many clients or how busy I was. I don't know who I thought would care or would comment or would be like, get in your own lane. You shouldn't be doing really well. But it and I think it kicked off and went really well. And a lot of that had to do with COVID. And I've talked about this in earlier episodes. There's episode three of this podcast goes through my own transformation. But I felt unworthy to have so much success early on. I had a lot of guilt around whether or not it was. because of the pandemic, because I hadn't gone out on my own without that push. Maybe it was just that people were stuck at home that they wanted to work with me, but not really my work or who I was. So there was a lot of that. I was also really embarrassed to share publicly that I even did interior design. So one of the things that I remember being really afraid of was telling people that I run my own business, that business is the business of interior design just calling myself a designer, any of those sorts of things really bothered me in the early days. I just felt really uncomfortable. It took me ages to even pipe up at kinder drop off and say, Oh yeah, What do you do? I'm a stay at home mom. I run my, those sorts of things. Having those conversations was really hard for me, which is really unusual because I came to interior design from 15 years of corporate senior leadership experience. And so I found heaps of the things. Starting a business actually really easy things like business planning was easy for me, marketing, accounting, invoicing, like I'd been running big academic accounts for travel where they would send over purchase orders and we would have journaling back and forth. And so the accounting side, to me, it was the same things like trade supplier relationships and knowing the net and the gross on the invoice and the margins and all of that was just second nature did not bother me. It was that earlier stuff that I just mentioned, like saying that I was an interior designer. That was probably the hardest stuff for me. Now that I've helped hundreds of new and experienced designers, as I mentioned, I see the same sort of stuff showing up over and over again. It's such an opportunity if you can recognize those familiar traits and then think, okay they're, for me, they're people who get the big results out of the group mentorship. So I'm like they all have the same sort of specific skills or specific values. And I see it time and time again. So I've pulled together a little list. I'm going to share it with you of seven successful habits of entrepreneurs that are right now killing it and how to go about getting them. Okay, first habit, get to properly know your clients. So not guessing, not thinking, Oh, my potential client is this age and she likes gelati and she likes to visit the beach and that sort of stuff. No more guesswork. Ideal client avatars are important specifically when you're starting up, but there gets to be a point where it's okay, no, I need to know what my actual clients are struggling with and how can I actually help them? So that is about really wanting to understand them so that you can market properly to them and you can properly solve their problems. Ask your potential clients. Do Insta polls, ask your Insta audience, ask some friends when you're next out for dinner, like proper deep questions about what problems are they having, what holds them back from hiring an interior designer, what sort of perceptions do they have about interior designers, do they instantly think It's 10, 000 to get me on the phone. Do they think my entire role is a waste of time? Like I have been out for dinner with friends and said, tell me honestly, I will not be offended if you just think my job is fluffing cushions and there's no chance in hell you'd let me near your house. I need to know that if that is the case so that I can address that in my marketing to be like, here's exactly what a designer does. Here's exactly why you need me. And here's why I, you can afford me and I am for you. So don't shy away from these big questions because they will help you really go deep into what it is that your potential client needs from you. The second part to getting to properly know your clients is to actually listen to them. So when they tell you something, don't override them because it's not your assumption. It's not your problem or as in you're not experiencing that problem because you find design easy. Make sure whatever they say to you, you're taking notes and that you use the exact language that they used with you back to them. This is like a marketing hack that works. It totally works. If somebody writes something in your DMs, replies to a story, feels oh, that's so relatable because of this, take what they have said to you and think about how you make a piece of content in that exact language back to them. Because if they're feeling that, chances are there's a whole list of people who are also feeling that and they are your potential client in the world of, in the online busy world, the best communicator gets the lion's share of the clients. So you really can't afford to half ass this, like you need to get in there and be like maybe you're thinking, I don't actually, I'm guessing my ideal client, I don't really know who they are, how will I get to know them? Reach out, speak to someone, get help, find out. Ask all the questions. Don't be afraid to pop into people's inboxes and say, Hey, I noticed you've interacted with lots of my mood boards lately. This is definitely not a sales would you like to work with me? But you seem like a, ideal client of mine. And I'm doing a little bit of research just for my marketing. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? That's not weird. If somebody messaged me that, I'd be like, absolutely babe, I'd love to help. Especially if I'm in and around their audience and I've liked a few things. Maybe that is weird, maybe that's just me, but I feel like the world is a much more open and sharing place than everybody gives it credit for. You just have to ask. Okay, the second habit that I see commonly is consistent behavior. So consistency not just because the algorithm says you have to do it or you feel like you have to be consistent to get a good result, to succeed. It doesn't mean frequency. Consistency doesn't mean frequency. It means that however much content you can afford the time and energy to put out into the world, you can commit to doing regularly at the same time. So say that looks like only three pieces of content for you a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That's fine. The consistent piece is that you show up every Monday, Wednesday, Friday without fail. You never skip one. You never think, oh, can't be bothered today. I'll just do two this week. It's consistent. And the reason that it works so well for your business is it has multiple effects. If you never ignore or skip it And you are consistent. It does a few things for your business. It makes you feel like you're the kind of person who does what they say they're going to do. That gives you self worth. You know that you're there for yourself and that you made a promise to your business and you didn't let it down. It also makes you feel like you have an always on focus on marketing and that you feel in control of where your next inquiry comes from. You are in control of how good that content is. Don't give me three pieces of content a week if they're all got no heart in it. You're not even interested. You're just putting out what you think. People want, or you haven't even thought about what people want. You haven't done that first bit. You don't know your audience and you're just going, she said, be consistent. So three times a week, I'm putting like a quote tile and a lamp that I saw. You need to put in the effort and you need to be consistent. And I would rather see you just show up once a week. every Monday with a new thing and mean it and have good quality content, then show up for me every single day with stuff that you don't even like. So there's no chance your audience does. The third one is more of an advice piece, but it's something that I see all the others doing if they don't know the answers. So don't be intimidated by words that feel hard. If you don't know what something is, go find out. Google it. Watch a three minute YouTube. Ask a friend. Come and DM me, I don't mind. Ask anyone. Ask someone if you're in a group membership. I'm sure you have enough people, peers, in your creative industry that you could say, Hey, there's no stupid questions and it doesn't matter. But if you ignore something and put your head in the sand that's critical to your success, you won't succeed at it. A strategy is just a plan. Client acquisition is just acquiring a client, signing up a client, getting a client. Procurement is just ordering and getting the items for your client on their behalf. P& L, profit and loss, it's literally just how much you made, how much of that you can keep, how much of that you need to spend on expenses to run things. Conversion rates, they're just the amount of people of everyone interested who you actually spoke to, who said yes to your offer. Business gets to be simple when you get help, when you understand it, those sorts of things. Yeah. At the start, of course, if you don't know them, they're like, Oh, this is uncomfortable because there's a lot of new language, but give yourself grace. You've probably. I don't speak to that many interior designers who do directly high school, university interior design. Of course it happens. Mostly I speak to people who are like, Oh, I haven't studied something new, learned something new, opened my own business before, and I'm in my late thirties, early forties, mid thirties. To late twenties, something like that. So give yourself grace because you haven't done it before. You're not going to pick it up and be amazing at it. And you are going to have to ask some questions. So this is the bit where I just think, do not be intimidated by big words that feel hard, words you haven't come across before. If you don't know what eBit is, come and ask someone I feel like this episode is getting a bit preachy. Sorry. I'm very passionate about making sure you guys have the right tools and knowledge to make your businesses amazing because it's absolutely achievable for everybody. You just have to know which activities are worth focusing your attention that will actually move the needle in your business and which things won't. And the things that won't are the things that we put so much attention, their brand colors and professional photography and fonts and what the website looks like. They are all so valid and important, but for me, they're just not the primary things that will get your profit moving and will get you into business. They are the things that will help. And they, I would never say don't do them. In fact, we're organizing something really exciting soon for those of you who don't have personal branding. But they are not the primary focus when you first get started. The next habit that I see is learning to say no. Trust me, the difference between startup and scaling creatives is their confidence and their knowledge that, you only have one space on a calendar on any given day to put a job in. And if I put that job in, you better believe it's going to light me all the way up. Because I don't want to fill my calendar today with a job that I was like I suppose we need the money or I see all the red flags, but I'm just going to do it anyway because I don't have any other clients. I might as well put it in because then I start to build my marketing, build my voice, build my brand, and I get quite busy. And I've got something in the calendar that I took when I wasn't confident and it was scheduled timeline to kick off in three months time. In that three months, my business has really taken off. And instead of, and somebody contacts me and says, Oh, can I start in a week? And I'm like, I've actually got a job booked in, but the person who contacted me is my dream client. Cause I've gotten better at marketing and I'm attracting my ideal client. The job is amazing. It's modern organic. It's everything that I want to do. And I have to say no, because in that calendar, I have previously locked in something that does not light me up, a style that is not actually my niche, or I've locked in someone whose red flags I could see from space, but I did it anyway, or a really low cost booking that I was like, Oh, it's not even really worth my time, but I'll do it for exposure ish. Those sorts of things will really damage your business mojo. And I want you to think really carefully. I am so protective of my calendar. You'll know that if you've ever reached out to inquire with me or want to do things. I'm like, here's the link. Here's my calendar. Take what you need, but I'm only ever making available time that I'm willing to do those particular activities, whether it's. Jump on a mentor call, record a podcast interview or do something. It's all on my timeframe so that the time that you cannot book is sacred time with my children. I am protective of my calendar because I don't want them to ever feel second fiddle to my business. So if you have recently said yes to any clients who are styles you hate, full of red flags, low cost work, et cetera, it just means you're still learning. It's not a problem. It just means you're not scaling yet. You're still in the set up, take anything kind of zone and that's okay. But promise me this, you will celebrate the first time you send a thanks but we're not really a great fit kind of email. Come and tell me because I love hearing that, I love you going, oh my god I did it, I didn't have anything in the calendar, but I said no because it wasn't right, it didn't feel right, it didn't give me all the good vibes and now that space is still open for my ideal client to fill it and it will be filled. Trust me on this. the next one is around relinquishing control. Control is a big one when you hear the interviews that I do with lots of designers, we often talk about, oh yes, like when you run your own business, year one, year two, year three, like no one can do what I do. You couldn't send an email because it wouldn't be in my voice. You couldn't do social media because it wouldn't be right because that's not me. No, I can't outsource that because then it wouldn't be me doing it. It doesn't feel right. aligned, but you can't do everything, especially in a business where you trade time for money. So there does come a time where you might look to outsource. And outsourcing is an excellent option for scaling or growing your business. But I do want to make a note here, obviously you want to choose the right things to outsource. Outsource the things that don't bring you joy. Outsource the things that, if I was to say right now, what you have to do to deliver this project. Whichever of the items that make you roll your eyes, go find someone who will do that for you. And I'm going to make a little note here to say if you outsource 3D drawings or renders to another interior designer, please don't try to stiff that designer by paying less than you would charge Like a client to get you to do it yourself because it doesn't take any less time or effort for another designer to do it. But inside of the industry, I see so many people saying, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I need to outsource this rendering or get 3d rendering. Can anyone help me? And then heaps of people who do B2B renders and 3d renders pipe up and say, yep, DM me, here's a look at my work. Here's my hours, et cetera. And then the designer who asked for help was like, I'm not, I don't want to pay that because they can do the work themselves. But newsflash, you can do everything that you outsource, whether it's a copywriter, whether it's a graphic designer, you can do all of this stuff. You just get a different level of professional outcome. And my tip to you is if you want to start outsourcing, start building a fee line inside of your fee proposal that talks about 3d renders and and architectural drawings that is equivalent to the fees that you have been quoted hourly by the B2B. designer who will do it for you and then simply be the middleman that collects the money from the client and pays the external designer to do that part of the job so that when you pull everything together another part of what's in the drop box is all the drawings that have been done and you might want to build in a small buffer for the fact that you have to communicate what the client wants and that you have to check the designer's work. I think that is reasonable but it is very unprofessional for you to say Yep, no problem. And charge your client 135 an hour for you to do 3d renders and then get another designer to do it for 65 an hour. That feels so ick to me. So I just want to bring it up on the podcast because working with a lot of people in my group mentorship that do offer B2B services. This is a challenge I see all the time and that we're always working through on how to make that relationship business to business really beneficial for both parties. Okay, number six. Upskill, learn, grow, ask for help. I'm just going to bunch all of this together but curious creatives who seek out others who've already done what they want to do or who find someone to follow and mentorship, basically go and ask and say, Hey, How did you get in? I get this question all the time. How did you crack the U S market as an e designer in Australia? Because what did that look like? What did you have to consider? And there's just, it was such a big, and I'm going to use the big scary word like strategy, but it was a strategy. It was super intentional. I knew I wanted to work in American homes. I knew what I wanted to do. And. What tools I needed to be able to do that. It helped that during the pandemic, people understood that zoom was going to then promote cross international conversations as long as the time zone allowed, like there's heaps of goes into it. I'm not going to go into that in this episode. If you want to hear more about getting into the U S market as an Australian designer, let me know my DMS and I will Structure a episode all around that. But basically, I knew I wanted to do it. I would go and talk to people who had done something like that. That's the best place to start is to be curious, find out who's done it, find out who can teach you how to, don't they have phone lines that you can call that where there's Nintendo specialists on there who have just played like six or seven games. Oh my god, I'm going to sound like, ridiculously not knowledgeable here because I don't game, but play heaps, say Mario Kart, I'm going to reference a very old reference, and they play it so they know exactly like, where to avoid the potholes and where to find secrets. things and all that sort of stuff and you can call them and get help. Just think of it like that. Somebody's already done something, you just want them to shine a light and let you know, don't go down that road. It ends here or you can go if you want, but this is my experience. I don't recommend it. And then you get a bit of a, you're making informed choices, not just trying everything out that we've already tried out for you. And that went nowhere. Look for people who have particular skills that they can teach you, like skill sessions and things, whether that's you want to learn Notion. Many of you are aware of Notion. Notion is life changing. It is business changing for sure, but it is just something that it's quite intimidating when you first log in and you don't always know what on earth you're doing. So just find someone who will do a one hour skill session with you and teach you All the big shortcuts and everything you need to know to get around fast. Perhaps I'll teach you tech or automation, marketing, processes, systems. People who seek out people who are ahead of them in the road to get help from move fast. When I started, there was no such thing as someone willing to show you behind the scenes, behind the curtain, into the inner workings of their own business and strategy, let alone literally give you pre made documents. Full email sequences masterclasses, webinars, video tutorials, how to do like last week's Canva hack, for example, things like that are all sitting inside the framework and the resource library. And that stuff just, it blows my mind that you would have access to that on entry into your business just by investing 199 per month. Anyway, I get off topic. It's I feel very passionately that I. I can't even tell you how quickly I think I would have hit six figures in my business if something like the framework existed. Okay, drum roll. This is the most important habit you can adopt for your business. Let go of your small business energy. I'm just going to say that one more time. Let go of your small business energy. It's limiting, it's bullshit, it does nothing to serve you. Why can't you be the next Shane McGee or Kelly Wurstler? Whoever you look up to in the design industry, there is no difference between how they started and how you started. There is a difference. These seven habits, tenacity, determination, and never letting go of the prize. You need to dream so big. Dream so big. Think giant styled studio full of staff and like camera crew in to see what we've done in the big reveal and a warehouse of high end furniture, like mood board that stuff. Not, maybe one day I'll get a VA. That's not big enough. If your dreams don't make you uncomfortable, they're not good enough. If you don't look at them and think, yeah, as if they're not good enough. Successful entrepreneurs think and act like CEOs. They know that their business is a valuable asset. It needs to be invested in, nurtured, developed, and protected. They have huge goals and aspirations. All of their sentences start like when we hit 60, 000. When we hit seven figures, I want to work with this coach or I want to attend this seminar. I want to fly to the States for this retreat. I want to learn more from that person. I'd love to be in a room with Mel Robbins. It's never a case of if this business ever does well enough you really need to have that conviction from the get go that this is something that is absolutely going to succeed. It's going to take off. The DMs, phone calls, coaching calls, coaching pocket, Voxer, the whole lot who are still saying to me, I'm just panicked. This isn't viable that I'm not going to be able to make this work and keep on holding onto this dream. And that all this effort that I'm putting in, I'm going to one day have to turn around and say to people, it didn't work. I completely failed. I had to go back to, getting a job at Coles or it's tough. There is a reason not everybody is a solo business owner. It is really tough. There is so many times where you're like, I don't know where the next client's coming from. So I don't actually have financial security. This is a huge change. Many of us came from six figure corporate roles that were just guaranteed. We clocked in, we clocked out. Yeah, we did massive hours. We had massive responsibilities, but we also had guaranteed. Super, we had guaranteed holiday, annual leave times, specific sick days. There's no sick days in solo business ownership. There is, I'm not going to infect anybody going into the office. So I'm just going to have to do that. Now we do slow down. Don't get me wrong. I'm not about saying to you should be showing up when you're not feeling well. Like I have built a business and designed a success that allows me to say, I'm going to take my kid to the movie today to hang out with him because he's, here and we can or I'll do a couple of hours late at night editing a podcast and therefore I won't go into the studio till 11am tomorrow. Heaps of benefits. I'm getting off topic. The point being, you are going to feel many times like, Oh my God, I don't know if this is working. And I don't know if I'm truly loving it the way I'm saying I'm loving it. You're going to have heaps of doubts. That's just part of the journey. But people who succeed always just have this way of manifesting that success through language, through just sheer tenacity and the ability to say, if is not a question. It is a matter of when. Okay. I hope you got something out of that today. I hope you recognize yourself in all seven of those habits. And if not, the power is yours to change that. It is a simple reach out to me. If you want a skill session, I will happily share anything I know, automations. If you just need to know how to use bots on Instagram or Zapier or some of that stuff, that's like scaling stuff. I'm totally here for it. Happy to help. If you are like, no, I just want to practice. proper plan in place for the next six months to nine months or the end of the year. And I want to know that every activity I'm doing is profit driving, growth activities, things that move the needle. I'm sick of wasting my time. Just come and see me. And I am not the only Oracle. Connect with whatever coach you connect with. That is the beauty of so many business coaches and so many marketing coaches and people who can help you find someone who's done what you want to do. Find someone who's going to drive the greatest result out of you that you feel like you connect with on a personal level that you're like, you know what, I could sit down with that person for an hour and they could ask me all the right questions and just get the best out of me and help me message myself, market myself and get on track and go work with that person. Anyway, I'm getting fired up again because I really love this stuff. And I really love seeing what happens when these seven things click into place. Join me again on Thursday where I will be chatting to Heather from Oak and Orange. Many of you will follow Oak and Orange on Instagram. You'll be aware of their dream house projects and it was a fantastic chat and I know you're going to love it. So I will chat to you then. Okay, bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.