Will you restructure or make shifts in 2025?

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Transcript

Speaker 3: 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: 0:37

On today's episode of Designing Success, I wanted to have a talk about a mindset shift or an alignment shift that I've been working with a couple of private coaching clients this last week, specifically around moving from a volume based to value based pricing. And what I mean by that is where we understand our client deeply and disgustingly and know exactly what we want. And we shift to one client costing the same as it was previously costing to work with 10 projects. So really evaluating our pricing and going, where am I in the market? Because if I've come in just in the middle where I think everyone else is, then maybe I'm actually working towards overwhelm because I'm working with volume based. I'm getting, I'm having to work with 10 or 15 people for what I could actually just be charging one project and work on that in greater detail and closer to the project. As much as I know a lot of designers dream of having a calendar full of clients, you don't actually need to fill your calendar. One high value client could bring you way more fulfillment, bring in more revenue. help with profit margins. You'd be more details oriented and more across that one project because you're not spreading yourself too thin. So today I'm breaking down exactly how to attract, serve and retain premium clients who value your expertise and keep coming back for more, and how to adjust your current business model and actually make that shift towards that. Because that has been one of the key things that as I'm working with these designers, I'm seeing it, It's such a big shift in their mindset. I was speaking to one today and I was like, Hey, that's really cool that this particular outcome, this particular service only takes you five to 10 hours, but that doesn't mean that service should cost the equivalent of five times your hourly rate because actually other people would take 20 hours to do what you do in five. You're just highly experienced and highly skilled. So you should be charging above and beyond for The actual transformation that you deliver more so than someone less experienced. And I really want to get people in the habit of not chasing quantity of lots of small, low budget projects. Sometimes we're chasing those because of the way we, self evaluate and what we think we're worthy of and what kind of designer we think we are or what kind of experience we think we have. So in the beginning, we might be like, Oh, look, I couldn't possibly charge more than 250 for a one hour Zoom call, for example. Yes, you can, because the value that you are providing to that client who does not have the degree that you have, does not have the skill that you have, cannot see the vision that you can see, that is what they are paying for. I want to help you all build a business that's more profitable and less overwhelming. So I want you to go into 2025 working with less people for more money. Sounds like a plan, right? So the first thing you're going to need to know is the whole ideal client, dream client thing. You want to be attracting someone who respects your boundaries, values your time, understands that the transformational value that you bring to the project is exactly the style, aesthetic outcome that they are wanting to work with. This client doesn't haggle or micromanage. They trust you, they back you, they build the budget behind you. And once you've worked with one of these ideal clients, you absolutely live your life searching for more of this. You can picture them and be like, Oh my God, they aligned with my aesthetic, respected my expertise. I had the budget to create something beautiful together. And Everything that I suggested, they went off and implemented. That is our dream client. And working on knowing that client properly can help you build a brand strategy to meet that client exactly where they're at. Know some of you will be mildly aware of Bennett, who is a brand ambassador inside of the framework. He can also be purchased externally, but working with Bennett means that he asks all the right questions and you just get answer them step by step and then when you see what he provides in terms of this is who you are, this is who you want to attract, this is the sort of services you want to be building. It's actually mind blowing. Even someone like me, who I felt very confidently that I knew, emerging designers, established designers, private coaching clients. Like I know where each of these designers sits and what their pain points are and what their needs are. But the way that Bennett read it all out, even I was like, Oh yes, now I know what to create to meet these people where they're at because I can see what they're struggling with in a way that I couldn't see until he took it out of my head and put it all down, not on paper, all down in one document. Now I know I've got your attention because I know how many of you out there are like, yes, less to the hustle and more to the profit. We want to have larger projects, meaning we don't have to consistently remarket and chase new leads or manage multiple clients at once. Or do you do the exact same amount of work for one room as you do for a whole house in terms of researching, looking at the styles, source, obviously the volume of sourcing finishes, fixtures or furniture or whatnot. It's increased when it's a whole house, but when you're in that zone anyway, adding more rooms really isn't that much of a big deal, but you still take your client from the onboarding process all the way to the offboarding process, regardless of whether they do one room or a whole house. So for many of us, it becomes time to be like, you know what, I'm going to need to go for the whole cake. No more just eating a slice at a time. If I'm doing it anyway, I might as well do it, go big or go home. Working like this is really great because you, then you start to live the actual. Life of alignment calls and checking that projects work for your calendar and what you wanted and the size that you wanted Making sure when you're having those calls, you really feel like the client trusts your expertise and style the process just becomes smoother Everything's more fulfilling. I really love it I think once you have worked with one or two of those people They're worth waiting for, and so it's worth saying no to a couple of projects that are like, quick and dirty, that come in and it's tempting to be like, Okay, I'll take the money, it's pre Christmas, I'll just do a quick one hour consult. But at the end of the day, you find yourself pulling together the documentation for it, and you're just not, You're just not lit up in a way that you would be if you're like, Yes, it's kickoff day for this big project, and we're doing this, that, and the other. This won't be appropriate for everybody's business, but I think you know what I mean when it's, when I'm saying now is a perfect time to really decide for 2025, what does it look like for me? How many projects will I need? I just pulled together the pricing using Percy, the pricing calculator for one of the girls that I'm coaching this week in Coaching Pocket. And I think you'll find it's really interesting in that we made an assumption that our financial goal would be 100, 000 a year. And it really broke it down to, look, you only need to get three projects around the 25, 000 mark for the year and you will have made 75k, right? As in, this is your overall financial goal for the year, 100k. 75 of that can be made up of three 25, 000 ish projects. Some will go over, some will go slightly under. Then we want to do five services that are single room services, sitting around the 900 mark across the year. That'll make you almost four and a half grand across the year. And the remaining revenue will come from a signature service, which averages around 3, 500. You will only need to do six 3, 500 projects throughout the course of the year to make up the extra 20, 000. Okay. So where is our revenue coming from? 75, 000 is in three large projects. Four and a half is coming from five single room projects and then six whole house projects at around the 3, 500 mark is 22k. So your total revenue, you've got 75 from the bespoke projects, four and a half from the five single room projects. We've got 22 coming from the six whole house projects around the 3, 500 mark. Which gives you 22K a year, which is 101K. And this is not your business. These are not your projects. I haven't even gone into the service. offerings and what this designer actually offers. It's quite different to what a lot of designers I work with offer. But you can see now we can actually pick a number, a financial goal and reverse engineer from the things that you offer in your business how many of each could make up the perfect year for you. So that's really reasonable for her. Three big projects, five single room projects, six whole house projects. And that's it. She's made a hundred and one thousand six hundred and sixty seven dollars for her year. That makes it so much more manageable. And if you are interested in doing some of these pricing calculations with Percy, We have a Black Friday sale on. All of my AI assistants are heavily bundled into mini bundles, or you can buy them individually. If you have any questions, just come and see me over at oleander underscore and underscore finch. But I worked with Percy to plug this sort of calculation together in minutes. And I think it really shows you how possible something like six figures actually is. If you have a year's experience or so up your sleeve, this is absolutely something you could do for your own business. These small tweaks are so important because it means that we leave less money on the table and start attracting the right clients, people who see your value and, we mentioned hustle or not going hard or a volume. It's really good if you know that I just need to get three https: otter. ai and then I'm willing to do, you know, 5 or 6 little single room projects. That is what I'm going to chase the hardest because those are the projects I want the most outside of that I'm willing to do 6 or 7 of these whole house renos and then I'm willing to do, 5 or 6 little single room projects. If you got a, and I have done this before in my business where I've had a post it note for each of the services and how many I need. And as I sell each one, I crossed it off and it just made it so tangible and easy to track. And I was like, we're on track for a hundred K here. This is how we get it done. I hope for some of you that might be helpful because it is really good when you reverse engineer the client numbers that you want to work with for the year, not just the because then I can be saying like, Overall, I'm only working with, 22 clients in 2025. So I don't feel the constant pressure of marketing to hundreds and hundreds of new leads. It's not like that. If I want to work with 25 people, I'm like, okay, I need to be I need to be in the awareness zone of about a hundred people in order to have some conversion and some nose. And yeah, you can start to work to some different numbers. There's also some opportunities you may have missed for 2025 around. An upsell strategy or adding on things, I know there are people out there who are including elements to their design deliverables that really should be additional scope or added on. I love working with designers to build like a menu of things that people can pay for to add on that they were probably already including. So one of the things that I often do in coaching is okay, tell me everything. Talk to me about the last three jobs that you did. Okay. Where's the opportunities here to actually make one, one or more of these deliverables a revenue stream because you're over delivering, but in order to be able to charge premium rates and to move into that higher end space, you really do need to build a brand that positions yourself as the go to for that aesthetic, for that kind of technical drawings, for whatever it is that's inside of your niche. this is what you really need to do. So maybe there's some work you need to do on your marketing and your branding between now and the middle of Q1, for example, when your prices go up to meet those ideal clients. So I'm throwing a lot at you today. I know that, especially if you're like, Whoa, it's nearly Christmas. I just tuned in. I thought you were going to do one of those, like how to celebrate yourself and wrap up the year. I will do some of that, but I just thought it was timely reminder that now is the perfect time to reassess. Your processes, your systems, and your pricing, like you can define your ideal client very quickly using Bennett, for example. And then once you know that you're going for a client with a minimum 3 million home, please stop charging 150 for your in home 90 minute consultation, because they will think that you are. not experienced enough or at a level enough to take on their project, they are going to spend so much money implementing your ideas and your designs. So when you devalue your ideas and your value as a designer, they're unsure. There's a misstep or a disconnection. The client's hang on a second, you're coming into my 3 6 on redoing the kitchen. But you're charging 150 for 90 minutes of your time. It doesn't compute and it's discombobulating and it makes them question it. And it just makes everything harder. So I think you really need to have a think about if your ideal client is in that more affluent area, if your ideal client if the homes or the income of that ideal client are higher, then you probably want to position yourself a little bit higher than the average as well, because you'll be delivering, big results. Another way we can move away from this volume. strategy of just having like low cost entry level design packages and lots and lots of clients because you really don't need lots you just need the right ones is to start to qualify those people in whether it's your website if you have a questionnaire start asking questions do you have a budget in mind for the designers fees for this project is it zero to three thousand three thousand to five thousand five thousand 50, 000, starting to get people to select from a drop down box means that they're really starting to consider how much they are going to pay for their designer. And that could help you weed out people who don't even think they should need to pay for your help. They're like, it's just a few I just, Need to ask a few questions or it's just this. I hate the word just. Anytime anyone ever in Discovery, Alignment Calls or Inquiry says, I just need, I know they're not valuing me or what I can provide because they're already what I do by saying it's just this. You don't know that, Susan. I haven't heard the scope yet. It actually, so many times finishing touches, just a few finishing touches, is like 42 selections or more, and that costs money. Restructuring your business for 2025 isn't only about raising prices and hey, maybe you've got your pricing and it's in a really good pocket and you're hearing some no's, you've got good conversion rates, you're feeling really good about where you are. Like just raising your price to raise your profit is a bit lazy. Like sometimes if you're in a different level of business, you might actually be able to just deliver something. things faster and charge the same rate. So I'm talking about my AI friends. I'm always talking about them. But if you know that you're working with a team of four or five tech AI tools that now do all of your emails, plan your social media, get it all right, attract way more of that high end client because they know your brand command, they know what's going on. It can free up some of your time, reduce your overwhelm, boost your profitability. It's all win win here. And now is, along with pricing, now is also a time where you go, do I need a system restructure? Am I using too many different applications? Is there any opportunity in my business to streamline these standard operating procedures? And now is the time to learn tech. Let me say it again. Now is the perfect time to learn tech. Why? Because we're going to quiet down with client. So there's not as much pressure to get out, this project's due, these selections, they're waiting on this. I'm waiting on this quote. I'm working, I'm meeting the builder on site. You have a bit of time. And I actually really enjoy leveling up my business over the Christmas break. I always read a lot of business books and do those sorts of things, but this will be the time. And every time I've done major shifts in my business, I have pretty much, I moved my business over to Notion about to, Maybe three years ago over that Christmas break and all I did was watch YouTube clips on how to use Notion and really level up and upscale So that I was using that downtime to get better at that because I get frustrated with new tech. Like everybody, I'm not perfect. People are always like, Oh, you're the robot girl. You know how to do all the things. It's Oh, not without like really yelling at my computer. Like, why isn't, the sort of coding and things that I'm putting in the backend, sometimes it doesn't work in the testing. And I don't know why. And it's a lot of problem solving. So I do enjoy the challenge, but it does, it's not always smooth. So these quiet times, like you can expect a whole lot more. AI support assistance for me in 2025 because I will be building them over the break. But if you're curious about this sort of technology, then now's the time to start listening to some podcasts. You can go back. I've got a couple of episodes specifically talk about AI. I've got some AI masterclasses that I've run and some replays that are available to you. If you'd like to DM me, absolutely come and say hi and let me know what you're interested in. We can talk about it, But the whole intention is to be unapologetic about getting faster at what you do and streamlining and gaining experience. This is called being a better business person. It's not about apologizing or saying, Oh, I practiced over the holidays and now I've got someone doing my emails and stuff. So it's not taking me as long. Thanks. So I'll pass that on to you and you pay half as much. No, you're just getting better at business. So your clients are paying for the outcome, not the hours that you put in. And if you can deliver like amazing work in three hours instead of six, because you're using better technology and tools, that's a win for everyone. You could do two jobs in the time it used to take you to do one. There's also a lot of work that we do in these coaching in this coach in pocket private coaching that I do where we pull back and reassess creating different packages instead of hourly rates going with value based or flipping it. It just depends on the actual needs of the designer. I. Always, there's no secret lean on value pricing. I think it's better for the clients because there's no surprises. It's better for the budget. It's better outcomes for all. But there are times where it does work the other way and that can be the exact right fit for that particular service or designer. Sometimes we find it really appropriate to, I was talking about qualifying leads before, but sometimes it just makes sense to put on the website and put into your mind that our design packages start at 6, 000. And that way we're qualifying right now. If you're coming to me and you're looking for assistance in your home and your budget is around 200 to 800 to work with a designer, I'm not the designer for you. And I will do another episode on this because I know people like, Oh my God, I would never say I'm not the designer for you. And it's actually you will, when your experience level gets there, there will come a time where you're like, you know what, I don't think this is a great fit for my project calendar because I can only take three bespoke. Packages a year or three big projects like I mentioned in the calculations at the beginning of this episode So I want to make sure all three of those are projects I'm, so so excited about like I want to be in there doing my best work for those three and It can be really terrifying to turn down something that's maybe 9, 000 worth of work, but it's in a complete different direction. But it can also be one of the best things that your business can do. And one of the best things you can do for your own confidence, because once you set your own boundaries and you have said no to money in this way, everything changes from there. You're all of the sudden the universe provides. I don't know. I'm not we were enough to say like what it is that happens, but I just know what happens. I just know that. And remember, if we're realigning your business for 2025 to go after a more sort of premium client or high end residential, those clients aren't shopping based on price. They're looking for what you deliver, your expertise, how they connect with you. They're looking at the types of selections that you make. And if you're pricing yourself really low, you're sending them the wrong signal. You are sending them a signal that says, I am for the every person. like affordable budget interior design I am basically helping those facebook groups that are like mums who renovate or flip diy came up products That's who i'm going after and so you immediately say you're looking for someone else someone who wants to work on projects at that level and And most of the time that's not actually what you mean You're just trying to find an area into market that doesn't look too scary But that will be because of your own money mindset stuff. So I'm not going to give you all my coaching for free. I know I give out lots of stuff, don't have anything left for 2024 now to work one on one for coaching and I have opened my books up for 2025. And I am getting girls who are serious about making these sorts of restructures and looking at scaling their business next year and looking at getting it right from the beginning and learning the tech tools and learning how to pull it all together in the first couple of weeks of next year. Those positions are starting to fill up and Q1 is already looking okay, there's a lot of you out there who are like something needs to change. Just to recap, there's a few things if you're not working with a coach or you have no intention to do that I would be doing at this time of year, right now, and that would be auditing my current processes, write down the steps that you take for onboarding, designing, delivering, look for any operational leaks, any areas that you can simplify, Automate, delegate, learn a better learn to work with the virtual support assistants that I have. Maybe they can help with proposals, they help with pricing, all sorts of things. And are there other AI tools that could streamline your client communications or streamline an area of your business that you think you spend a lot of time in? Only you know what that looks like. The second thing that I would assess at this point is whether or not you need to raise your rates. Testing small increases now with new clients, see how the market responds. If you're hearing no 20 percent of the time, you're priced correctly. An 80 20 split is where I feel quite comfortable. I think, yep, you need to be hearing no. If you've never heard no from anybody, you have a pricing problem. If you, and I know that it's really scary and I hear all the time, I'm just gonna reduce this. just slightly because I don't want to miss this opportunity. We don't want to miss any opportunities but you can't underprice yourself just because you're worried about missing opportunities. Another opportunity will come along and that is the mindset that you need to get into for 2025. If you're serious about moving in to an intermediate level, a bit more experienced designer, someone who picks and chooses their projects, this won't be. This won't be something that's coming up for many of you that are listening. I know a lot of emerging designers listen and you're like, Whoa, what was this whole episode about? You're freaking me out here. This kind of episode probably isn't for you, but bookmark it and come back in 12 to 18 months when you are ready to start, make some strategic big shifts in your business to go after bigger goals for the following quarter. Okay. And the last thing I want you to do, or I want you to think about at this exact point in November. For January is to switch to marketing to premium clients, shifting your messaging, targeting higher value projects, speaking to their specific needs, speak to their affluency, speak to showcasing premium finishes, premium projects in your portfolio, use some social proof, start moving and shifting so that you're no longer talking to that Kmart Mums in that affordable zone and we're moving up to premium zone. So looking at the postcodes that you want to serve us, looking, all around and saying, who do I want to be next year? And who hires this person? Who works with this design firm? Just really break it down. Use Bennett. If you need to use Bennett, just message me and I will hook you up. I will show you where you can buy him. You can use him over and over. And he articulates your brand like nothing I've ever seen before. It's really quite freakishly good. So it's not a lot of things. It's just three things. If you are thinking that next year needs to look different, I need you to think about those three things now. How do you leverage tech? How do you tweak the pricing, tweak the messaging, and start targeting the ideal client even more? And where will you build boundaries into your business where you feel comfortable to say no to the work that will not light you up so there is room when the project comes in that is the right project for you. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a business friend or another designer, someone who you think would be like, yes, I need to re listen to this and actually go through this restructuring process right now in November in time to come out roaring for 2025 and things could just look totally different. We're going for value, not volume. So if that sounds like you and you need anything from me, Please pop into my DMs anytime. If that sounds like you and you need any help getting across all of this in your business, you can apply for private coaching. You can come and talk to me. The books are open for 2025 and it's something that will just completely change the way that you walk into 2025 when everything has been audited, assessed, and come out stronger. Okay, that's it for me this week. I will chat to you on Thursday. Bye for now.

Speaker 2: 26:38

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.