My Fave Ways to Self-Promote Without Feeling ‘Salesy’

check out the framework for designers who need business and marketing skills that stretch them beyond what they learned in their degree. https://www.oleanderandfinch.com/the-framework-for-emerging-designers/

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.

Grab more insights and updates:

Follow me on Instagram: https://instagram.com/oleander_and_finch
Like Oleander & Finch on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/oleanderandfinch

For more FREE resources, templates, guides and information, visit the Designer Resource Hub on my website ; https://oleanderandfinch.com/

Ready to take your interior design business to the next level? Check out my online course, "The Framework," designed to provide you with everything they don’t teach you in design school and to give you high touch mentorship essential to having a successful new business in the industry. Check it out now and start designing YOUR own success
THE FRAMEWORK ( now open) https://www.oleanderandfinch.com/the-framework-for-emerging-designers/

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue providing valuable content to aspiring interior designers. Stay tuned for more episodes filled with actionable insights and inspiring conversations.
...

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:12

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleandra 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 can 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.

Speaker: 0:36

On today's episode of Designing Success, I wanted to have a chat about self promotion and specifically how to get comfortable talking about your wins, like just not feeling salesy but being able to pitch yourself and get the word out there to potential clients that you are in fact the best in the biz and why they should work with you and what makes you different. It can feel really cheesy. It can feel really salesy having to show up all the time. And remember, for you, you feel like you're in your stories. Every single day saying, book a discovery call, reach out, work with me today. This is how these are my services. That's how it feels to you as the business owner. But for the viewer, the potential client or the audience that you're building, they barely notice it. They're too busy thinking about themselves and worrying that salesy. Self promotion is one of the biggest challenges for designers. And of course, they're coming to me with all the big problems. I don't know how to price. I don't know what services to offer. I don't know how to get myself started. Or even if they're a couple of years down the line, I want to tighten my systems, my processes. But these little switches to your mindset and little levels up to your skill base can be the difference between. hitting repeated 10K revenue and above months, or having lumpy income and like hitting 2K and then 12K and then back down to 1K and so on and so forth. So regular self promotion is a really important part of your business and it doesn't have to look salesy or self centered or self focused or narcissistic. There are heaps of ways that we can share our wins, our skills, other people's like other clients, success jobs to build a reputation and attract new clients. So in this short episode, I'm going to share 10 subtle, but authentic ways to talk about your achievements that will feel natural or could feel natural more so than just jumping on and saying, Hey, I want you to work with me. And things that will help build trust and show off your authority in the you some expertise without bringing the cringe. All right, let's get into it. Firstly, we want to reframe self promotion as sharing value rather than bragging or having a massive ego or wanting to tell everyone how excellent you are, what you share and what you talk about should always be about the pain points and the problems of your potential client anyway, not about the you in your business, not your issues, your problems. We want to showcase the So that clients want to see more examples of your work and understand exactly what you bring and what you deliver. And those are the sorts of things that we want to do. Instead of focusing on yourself, we want to highlight the client and the transformations that you, obviously, the outcomes that you provided that client and the way that client felt. You can spotlight client client emotion of the week. This client's frustrated because her husband refuses to let go of the Jason Lazy Boy and we're going to have to work with it. This client over here is feeling all the feels because the slab has just been poured and we're about to get stuck in, just showcasing different emotive language and how you are right there beside them the entire time advocating for their project and helping them move forward. You can also use some other emotive language. My client wanted a space that felt family friendly and seeing their reaction was one thing, but seeing the family experience the home is a whole nother thing. I've always found that having real conversations in my Instagram stories, for example, about client projects without compromising their personal details, without showing their floor plans, without telling their home address, I will happily face to camera and say in this knockdown rebuild, I have this issue. This is one of the things we're trying to overcome at the moment. We really want to put in these custom doors and we're having trouble with the permissions, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. Client spotlights have for too long just been like a slab of text with John and Julie, New South Wales, down the bottom. We're in the world of chatGBT. No one believes your testimonials, even though I know that they're real. Because we're going to Canva like graphic designing them and making them look beautiful. I'm guilty of this. I am not throwing shade. I do it all the time because I have a template. I just throw it into there. I should have just screenshot the conversation. Definitely. So I tried to share a mix. But when it comes to client spotlights, do try to talk, and I call it the language of clients, in your stories. The more jobs you can share bits and pieces. I updated the Preston project. I'm over here in home in Kilmore. I've got this going on. You're using locations, you're using situations, you're spotlighting the clients Without shining too much of a light on what they're doing, but it's speaking the language of clients. It's telling potential clients. I have lots of projects. Lots of other people have put money into my business, have entrusted me with their biggest asset, their home, and everything's going great. Thanks for asking. The next one we always talk about and love a little swipe before and after, but what you say about the project can be such a profound way to share your expertise in a non salesy kind of way. So talking about, this client reached out to me and they were having difficulty with X, Y, and Z. Maybe they had a really tricky wall. Some sort of issue to overcome together, or there was a reason that they needed to reach out to a professional designer. And this is all the things that we considered during the project. And this is how we resolved every single one of their pain points. And this was the end result. Did I nail it? Vote here, lots of engagement, lots of sticker taps, a big swipey thing, whatever you can put in your stories. This is a really great one. I love a bit of green screen before and after to talking about. showing all the problems inside of the room beforehand, and then how you solved each and every one of them. That is the kind of content that people who are aware of your brand and considering possibly booking you in the next six to 12 months are lapping up. They are living for those transformations and really starting to see what you can bring. The third one is project milestones. So sharing wins or milestones within a project, like finalizing the design concept, delivering conceptual. Presentations completing a major phase, getting the renders together meeting the client in their office, presenting the selections, finishing the procurement and selection file, and maybe sharing some of that. It shows potential clients the progress. The process and the dedication that you have to your current client base. So things like, just wrapped up the design phase for an exciting new project. I can't wait to see what the clients think. I can't wait to see this come to fruition. I personally am all about concept A, that gets my vote, but here's concept A, here's concept B. Can't wait to hear what the client thinks. Things like that. So taking people on a bit of a journey. Of course, that's not salesy at all, but it is showcasing, it is self promotion. It's showing how hard you're working and what you can deliver. This next one I don't see done nearly enough. I think it's really important and that is around sharing your own experience. Upskill or learning journey or education. Talk about the business books that you're reading, the courses that you've paid for, the conferences that have helped you grow as a designer, the rooms that you put yourself in, the networking, the other women, this positions you as a committed professional without directly promoting your services. It also shows you as somebody who is humble, who understands they don't know everything. I'm much rather somebody on my project who's always looking to upscale and level up and learn more as a lifelong learner like myself, and not someone who's no, it's fine. I've got it all under control. I don't ask questions, what's going on there? Yeah, An example, just finished an amazing course on sustainable design practices. I'm really excited to bring some of these new techniques and materials to my upcoming projects. Brilliant. For those who did my AI workshop recently, a lot of them were resharing in their stories. I'm working, I'm doing it smarter, not harder for 2025. I'm all about it. I'm going to watch the replay. I'm going to sit, I'm going to practice, I'm going to make sure that I can implement these systems inside of my business so I'm no longer stressed out and things are moving fast for me.

Speaker 4: 8:30

I interrupt today's episode for just one second? I want to talk to you about the framework for emerging designers. I am opening it up in just a matter of days. I don't have a limit on how many people I'm going to take into this cohort. Whoever's ready and would like to strategically work with me on a weekly basis for the next 12 months to really set up and design a sustainable business That they can plug and play and use over and over that will support their lifestyle and not burn them out. And all of the things I'm here for you. I'm here to help you. I'm not doing a rah, rah, doors open, doors closed, painful launch this time. I don't even know what the framework is going to look like for intakes for 2025 at this point. There have been a lot of changes this year. There are a lot of changes ahead. There are a lot of things that I no longer have to do because I don't actually need it to be. As big of a course as it is because I have built an army of 13 support assistants that are there to take you from the beginning to the end of the course and do it all for you. With you, of course, they're AI, but also for you, which never existed when I wrote the framework. So now somebody helps you, Calculate your pricing based on market research. That's Percy, the pricing calculator. Mary sets your services. Yumiko finds your unique value. Bennett works on your brand voice and your brand command and your ideal client and everything you need to know about what kind of business you want to run. Marius does your Pinterest. Otis does your Instagram captions. Sylvie plans seven days of content for you every week. It is phenomenal. I have given you an entire boardroom of virtual staff so that you will have to do less and less. It's crazy to me. I feel so sorry for the first year version of myself who had to do all of this the hard way. Anyway, that's it for me. If you are serious and if you are interested, please reach out to me over on Instagram at Oleander underscore and underscore Finch. I will also put a link to the information page on my website for the framework in the show notes

Speaker: 10:34

one that gets forgotten a lot is part of my onboarding process is actually to announce the new project or partnership in advance. Inside of my story. So you're excited. You've just taken a deposit. We're starting a new project. It's kicking off in July. The build starts in January. We're doing major selections and 3D renders and whatever, like just talking about it. That builds excitement. It shows that clients are consistently choosing you. Just like I said before, other people are putting their money behind them to back you in. And it just also speaks the language of clients, shows you've got lots going on. It's really exciting. It could be just as quick as something like the mood board that you're working on in black and white and saying, I'm thrilled to start a new project for a family looking to create a cozy, modern farmhouse vibe. Can't wait to dive in, 3D and color version coming soon or something cheeky at the end. I don't know. That will be up to your personality, obviously, but that's not anything where you had to do face to camera stuff. You could just literally share some slides and talk about the onboarding of the new project. This one also gets missed off a lot and that's educational tips related to the work that you're doing. So if you learn something on site, share something on site. Oh my gosh, I was just chatting to the tiler today and I didn't realize such and such. And if you're doing renovations or you've ever considered this kind of tile, did you know that's how you pronounce it, for example? Or did you know that this, I don't know, I'm thinking on the fly. So these are not real things, obviously. And That's not my jam. And I'm not here to make stuff up. However, it is really important if you can just share a quick tip or a piece of advice, start a conversation, it builds engagement, you're in the project, you're on site, you're just doing a bit of did you know, like example, one tip for creating a cohesive look in open spaces is pick a consistent color palette and repeat it in small ways through the room. So I have just picked X color from X artwork, and instead of make it a major feature in this room, I've just referenced it twice here and here, whatever. I am, again, thinking off the top of my head, so these examples are not perfect, but I think you know what I mean in terms of the way we deliver like an educational tip like that is so much better than, Three ways to avoid budget blowout in your renovation, or ten things to look out for people aren't reading that kind of content as much, so we're just getting really fatigued with it, and we're just tired. Just popping on in your stories and saying, hey, can I let you in on a secret? I had no idea about this, and the electrician has just filled me in, and I'm like, excuse the pun, literal lightbulb moment. It's natural. It's organic. It's relatable. It's a conversation. It's not a lecture. It's not a TED talk. And it is so good for your audience to see you in your passion and when you're working and when you're picking up on things. I think one of the biggest problems is so many designers try to look more professional and they put a barrier between them and the everyday homeowner by being like, I am a luxury interior designer, residential properties, I wear a blazer, I have many leather bound books, I carry, you know, whatever. Versus saying, I was on site and I did the dumbest thing and this is what happened and it's just funny and it's okay to let it be. Yourself show that I think that has been one of the big successes of my brand is I have always just been me I am I will have a giggle if I got it wrong if I said it wrong, you know I did a whole series of interior design terms that we mispronounce or that A lot of people mispronounce like i've very rarely been to an in home where I haven't heard someone say they don't really love rattan And i'm like, okay cool It's just funny to me and I think, yeah, there are a lot of us that maybe take ourselves a little bit too seriously and it does put a barrier between the engagement with the audience and the know like, and trust that you're trying to build and the ability to do that if you're always showing up as a perception of who you Think an interior designer should be, instead of who you actually are, your skill is not in question here. You're not less of an interior designer. If you dress differently or you act differently, or you are relaxed and you make people feel relaxed and that you go into a home and you instantly put them at ease, that's actually a skill to celebrate. That's not something you should hide. The last tip for easy ways to self-promote without being cringey and creepy. Is just reflect on a specific challenge that you might have had in a project or that you've been looking for ages. Like we all know the hunt. I just need a bar stool. It needs to be cat friendly. It needs to be kid friendly. It can't be weave because they don't like it. We can't have fabric because they have children. They don't want timber, like all those things that our clients give us. That's okay, so there is. It's nothing on the market yet that fits this brief. I guess I'll get searching, talk to your audience about that. It's the best thing to say. It just shows you problem solving skills. It shows you in a professional light. It shows that you take your client brief seriously. You don't just override them with yeah, okay, whatever I've given you these timber tractor stools. Anyway, I don't really care if you didn't want timber. It really shows that you will spend hours and hours in the background, and therefore it shows the value that you offer in order to get to the solution that is right for the client. So showing up, oh my gosh, it felt like the curveballs in this project kept being thrown directly at my face. When we realized the furniture delivery would be delayed, I worked with the client to create like a temporary setup and keep things functional while we waited. We had to use a marketplace stools that are poorly fitting under the bar. If you see this image here and show the image, it was only five weeks. The client could. Get on with X, Y, and Z. This is the outcome and tap to see the finished product worth the wait, question mark, vote, whatever engagement stickers, just examples. These are random examples. I'm fully making them up as you can tell. So in your world, what does an example of that look like? Because I've just given you nine different content ideas of ways to showcase your To self promote, showcase who you are without feeling salesy, talk about your wins, share your work with confidence. It doesn't have to feel uncomfortable and you don't have to feel, you can be unapologetically, you don't have to feel like, oh gross guys, I'm sorry, I have to talk about this, that and the other. Those are all interesting pieces of content. If somebody is serious about following your brand or ever working with your brand, they will eat that up. Those are all things they want to see before and afters. Tell me about the project. Tell me about the process. Just don't do it in a really boring way. Try to challenge yourself to sort of pop in and just have a conversation. Alright, so here's my challenge. Pick one of these self promotion strategies and just try it this week. It's teeny tiny steps to improvement, right? So maybe it's not a face to camera thing. Maybe it is as simple as a new client spotlight, but talking about, I'm onboarding this and show a bit of the onboarding documentation or say I'm really excited. I haven't had a project of this scale for a little while, or I'm We've just opened the books for 2025 and I've onboarded two clients this week. And I'm so excited for our new. Welcome packs, our new presentations for the 2025 client. I don't know. But that is my challenge and it might not be client spotlights. Maybe you'll talk about project milestones, like finalizing the concept or you'll do behind the scene moments, something silly on site. Maybe you'll do something you're learning, something you're reading, something that's helping you be a better business person. Maybe you'll talk about your processes or announce a new project. I'll leave the decisions up to you. Of course, you have control of your own business. You design your own success. I will speak to you again next Thursday. Cannot wait. Bye for now.

Speaker 3: 18:17

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.