Making Sterile commercial spaces Luxe - The Interior Design Niche No One Saw Coming - with Nickolas Gurtler

Ever wondered how to turn a cold, clinical space into a luxury experience? Or how to finally price your work without second-guessing yourself? This week, I’m sitting down with Nicholas Gertler, a Melbourne-based interior designer who’s mastered the art of blending high-end residential vibes into commercial spaces (think Dental clinics that don’t feel like a horror movie).

We get into:
Why commercial design needs a serious glow-up
The real strategy behind pricing your services (and why you should stop undercharging)
How to scale your business without losing your sanity
Convincing clients to trust your vision instead of micromanaging every fabric swatch

If you’re ready to ditch the self-doubt and step into your power as a designer, this episode is for you. Hit play and let’s get into it! 🎧

If you want any more details about the 12 week Framework Express, check it out here https://oleanderandfinch.my.canva.site/creative-portfolio-website-in-opulence-era-style

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 4: 0:29

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 6: 0:53

Welcome back to another year of designing success. I recently had the most amazing conversation with Melbourne interior designer Nicholas Gertler. Nicholas is known in the industry for his innovative approach to transforming specifically medical or clinical spaces into welcoming and soft, almost residential feeling environments. These spaces are typically very sterile and I just love the juxtaposition of what him and his team can bring to those spaces. I had quite a lot of conversation with him about commercial design. We also talked about his strategy for pricing, which I know you're all going to be interested in. And we looked into his methods for concept development, pitching to the client. It was just an awesome conversation. Insightful look into the interior design industry. I absolutely love being able to see how other designers run their businesses and especially ones who have graced the pages of Vogue and whose work is now transcontinental or international. We heard a little bit about a New York project and anyway, I'm going to let the conversation speak for itself before we get into it though. again. A teeny bit of housekeeping because it has been a really long time since we spoke. This year, Designing Success is going to be released once a week, not twice. I have decided to put my energies, instead of editing a second episode, into running a 12 week business sprint for A small group of designers who really would like to get in and focus on a different topic each week and have business coaching and have tools and templates and be able to get that sort of focus transformation. So we'll be talking about things like profitability, procurement, sales, digital marketing, local area marketing, and really unpacking each of those topics across the week until we've done all 12. I'm very excited for it. I've already had some applications. It's not relevant if you are an emerging designer. You need to have had clients in your business and you need to have set up your foundation. If you're not sure if you're a good fit, just drop into my DMs. Let's have a conversation. It's open now. We kick off on Monday the 3rd of March and it's every Monday at 10am to 11. 30am. The group will meet, the small group. And yeah, if you're wondering if that's you, I've spoken already to a lot of property stylists, small business owners, a landscape designer. I've been speaking to quite a mix. It's about business and marketing. It's not about necessarily me teaching you how to be an interior designer. You guys have that under control. So if I can help you understand the framework express, that's the name of it please let me know in the comments. You can drop into my DMS over at oleander underscore and underscore Finch, but please note applications will close at the end of this month, February, 2025 for this small group, 12 week business sprint. All right, over to Nicholas and I.

Speaker 2: 3:44

I'm going to walk all the way back there and start with the journey that led you to where you are now. Did you always want to own your own firm? Was that the plan?

Speaker: 3:53

It's actually really funny. I come from a very creative family and we moved house a lot when I was growing up. I think I lived in 14 different houses in my childhood. So we were ever packing up and moving and then resetting up furniture. And my mom was really thrifty. This was before Facebook marketplace. I think it was a quokka back then, but she was ever finding some new piece of furniture and then we would, sell the old piece. And so there was a lot of, informal design and decoration that was going on as a child. And my mom and my father, when they were together, they renovated a lot of homes. So I've grown up seeing, walls missing and construction site kind of life. So when I was always really creative child and weirdly, I wanted to be an astronaut or a fighter pilot for a really long time. So I went a little off track, but when I went to high school, I was just so immersed in creativity and art and space and I left school to become an interior designer and study it. Got a little sidetracked and I ended up working luxury fashion for about five years which was incredible training in terms of things like customer service. And I think just the world of luxury and money and expense and beauty and materials. And I really realized that I needed to go back to where I Had planned to go. So when I was studying, I studied a certificate of interior design decoration, which I loved. And then I went on to do an associate degree in commercial interior design. I wasn't really that keen on commercial quite funnily. At the beginning, I thought in my mind, commercial was office spaces and desks and chairs, and I didn't really feel like that was interesting, or there wasn't a lot of ways to make. Commercial design, very interesting, but I thought if at least if I studied that foundation, I would have some base knowledge that if I did have the opportunity, and it did come up, it would serve me. And when I was graduating, we were putting out portfolios together and my professor said, I don't think you should. Bother with the portfolio. And I was really offended, but I was like, why is it? I think you have a really unique point of view. And I think you should do something for yourself. I don't see you going to work at hassle or what's bagger or any of these big firms. So in 2015, I started it, which is 10 years ago this year.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Congratulations. It's really important what those mentors or teachers can instill in you either they doubt you and you do it to spite them or they encourage you in a way you can really just launch you. It's really hard to get that self confidence at the very beginning to say you don't go out. Straight away with the ability to sell yourself and what you can do.'cause you haven't done it yet, right? Correct.

Speaker: 6:12

Lot of definitely. I think, and this is from what I understand, very true of all creatives. It's a sort of fake it till you make it thing at the beginning. it was definitely a lot of projecting confidence and a lot of that analogy about a duck, like paddling furiously under the water, but calm on the top was a lot of that for the first year. So

Speaker 2: 6:25

and waiting for the imposter syndrome to disappear, only to learn that all creatives. If you're going to do it well, we'll probably carry it forever. That's just, I still have it very seriously

Speaker: 6:34

regularly. Yeah, I don't think it ever escapes you.

Speaker 2: 6:36

You're always waiting for it to leave, but you're like, maybe this is just about how I handle it and how I cope with it and what my strategies are as opposed. So I think if you don't have it. They say this of parenting as well. If you don't think, if you don't doubt the way you're parenting, you might not be doing it right. If you don't constantly think you're doing the wrong thing, then you might not, care about it enough or be putting in the energy. It's interesting to me that you mentioned moving around a lot when you were young. I had a class. I had a conversation with my dad, not that long ago, who said, it does not surprise me that you went into the realm of interior design because we moved around like gypsies as a child. And he said, I feel like you try to build stability around you and you really try to build beauty around you and the house that you create is always a home. Home because that's something I've craved as a child to have that like real sense and feeling of we're here, we're staying, we're putting our mark on things. And that was like a self awareness for me that I'd never really thought of. But when he said that, I said, you know what, you might be right about that. Always trying to make everything around me feel like a home and not so much like a temporary accommodation or looking to the next.

Speaker: 7:40

For me, I get a lot of comfort and I think I try to instill this in my clients that you can find a lot of peace from your things being around you. And it's quite funny. My sister's was raised in the same environment and she's the complete opposite. She's no attachment to things. But for me, my things around me is quite soothing. I'm like one of those magpies that picks up shiny things and weaves it into their nests. Yeah, I think the sense of home, I think, is quite important, but I think that's why it's interesting that I ended up in a commercial. I think we're about 55 percent commercial about residential, but it fluctuates, throughout the year, but I have a very residential kind of approach to commercial work. So it's been quite fun to explore that.

Speaker 2: 8:16

Which really stands out. I think that's such a gift and it it allows you to explore stuff that's beyond the norm. As you say, it's not office chairs. You're not just going, yep, track lighting over there, this kind of like carpet here. It's not, it's none of that. People absolutely seek you out for your ability to make their commercial spaces feel like their client's home, their home. They have to rock up there every day. And, that's.

Speaker: 8:40

Yeah,

Speaker 2: 8:40

I

Speaker: 8:40

think it was a real shift. And I don't know if it was lockdowns that made people focus a lot more on how they feel in spaces, but we've definitely noticed that sort of residential labor to commercial briefs being a part of almost everything that we get inquiries for now. But it's also just challenging the idea of it. I'm very much the person that I'm like if it's been done this way for a long time, why? Was there a purpose and through the work that we've done, we have explored a lot of that. We actually just before this call, we had a meeting with a dentist that we're working with at the moment, trying to incorporate. a really beautiful high end luxury feel to what is a very expensive experience, generally speaking for dentists. And when you visit the dentist, but the trying to merge the complexities of the practicalities with the, a softness and with design elements and just a different perspective. And we were sought out particularly for that based on the other medical work that we've done, that's been in what we call aesthetic medicine, which is a nice word for Botox, but and skincare and stuff like that, but we've really flourished in this sort of weird niche where we've been able to really think about the human experience more. And I feel like a lot of commercial space has just been this is how it's done, or this is how it's always been, or this is how all the other spaces look. And we're really not about that. We're about Okay, let's disrupt that. Let's still make it work in function, but let's make people feel special. Let's make people feel soothed deescalate anxiety, all that kind of stuff through design. So it's been really fun. And then when we've had the opportunity to work in retail, we're doing one at the moment of completed up in the last couple of years, being able to bring my retail experience, which had a, luxury does have a sort of. Softer tactile customer service focus that I think a lot of retailers have been missing, particularly with online shopping. Why are you going into the store? What special experience are you going to get from the store? How does it reinforce the brand? So we've been able to extrude and play with a lot of different. Concepts that I think maybe have been left out of those industries.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Yeah, especially you'll think about dental clinics as an example, people are highly anxious. They're very clinical. They smell funny. They smell like the gas. You feel like you're going to hear people scream behind the doors. Like it's a drilling

Speaker: 10:47

sound.

Speaker 2: 10:48

people seek out sleep dentistry for that reason, or I'm way too anxious to go. But I feel like if there was, warm tea in the corner and fabrics and things that will, you know, and as you say, tactile experience and things that are just not these hard chairs and concrete floors and hard surfaces is something that everyone benefits. You mentioned the change during COVID and I definitely think I worked on a couple of commercial projects across that time and all of a sudden people were like, The weight room needs to be what, 1. 5 meters between chairs. Everything needs to be washed down every hour. And all of a sudden it felt like the pendulum swung to clinically or people were a bit too afraid to even have a cushion in a waiting room in a place, an art therapy play space or whatnot. And you're like we still have to bring and continue to keep humanity within the design. I don't think we can go the way of okay everything's just a hard surface because it's a commercial area.

Speaker: 11:42

Yeah, it's funny. I think you're right about the pendulum swinging. It almost, we caught it on the backswing which has been really great, but, I think people start to think about being inside spaces a lot more because they were spending more time at home or if they were going to a place that was a bit more of a significant experience. And I think, for such a long time, it's a lot of commercial design has gone to, I would say like shop fitter style businesses, which is nothing wrong with them and they're everywhere.

Speaker 2: 12:08

It's just like the windows look like this and this looks

Speaker: 12:11

They have a formula they like to work with. And we came in and, there's so many other of my colleagues in the industry that are working in this sort of more high end interior application to commercial, which has been amazing. I think Australia does interior design and furniture design and lighting and design. On par, if not better than some of the best in the US and Europe. It's an exciting time.

Speaker 2: 12:30

In terms of the business side of things, at what stage during creating your business, did you know that it was time to scale? Was there a specific? Bottleneck year. Yeah.

Speaker: 12:41

We, I basically plodded along for the good first half of the business, just myself doing everything from the accounting and all the creative and the presentations and getting the samples and literally everything. And it is, it was enormously taxing and I tend to bite off more than I can chew. But I got to 2022, maybe like 2021, 2022. And. It was that period of where everyone knew we were going to be able to travel. There was a huge boom for the business. All of a sudden we were working on heaps of stuff. And I scaled my business, one person then quickly added a second and then quickly added a third up to that. And that worked really well for about nine months. And then the industry really started cooling off with interest rates plummeting, or raising, the interest in interior design and construction really started to taper off

Speaker 2: 13:24

and everyone went back to Europe.

Speaker: 13:26

Yes, exactly. It was a lot of, everyone was in Greece. I think that year, I feel like But yeah, I scaled up and then I had to scale back down and we're on the scale upside of things again, which is nice. But I think in small business, you have to be able to do everything, but at the same time, having someone who can assist or a specialized skill like accounting or, Someone who's great at drafting, you're going to get a better return on your time in investment, but it's hard to let go of things for sure. I'm used to having to do everything myself. So

Speaker 2: 13:54

control is a big issue that comes up all the time in coaching around, like I'm ready, but I'm not ready. I don't want to give it over. And I also think, the mention of knowing how to do stuff is so important. I read a thing ages ago. I think Beyonce was like having a fight with one of her roadies about whether or not this could work out. scaffolding could be this particular thing. And she said hang on a second. I sat in that induction and I know what I know, and you can do it. So stop telling me no and go and do it. And I just went bow down to the queen, because I love the idea that in your business, you should be able to challenge your stuff in a way that's I've actually done the digital marketing side of things. So even though you're the digital marketing manager. I ran digital marketing for the first five years or I actually do know how we put together this or what the standard operating procedure is. And I think sometimes even though those first five years are really hard and the organic growth can, it can be a bit cheesy to take the wheel and you just hold on and everything goes faster than you can knowing how to do it. Do all of it is so great when you do go to hire and to scale and to build because you yeah, you can empathize and you know what you're asking people to do. You're not just delegating and bossing everyone around. You're like no, we're a team. That is not my special

Speaker: 15:01

skill. I'm not a great people manager, to be honest. I and I hold everything inside the business up in here and Getting all of that out is actually harder for me to do, but I'm a big believer in trusting people. I believe if you engage someone to do something specialized, when we had our branding redone, which was, I think was nearly five years ago now it was a big leap for me to hand over, like what my business looks like to the world to someone that I didn't really know. And they did such an incredible job. I originally asked them to just polish what I'd done because I'd been doing it all myself up until that point. I was relatively happy with it, but it needed finessing. And they did that. And then they showed me their version. I was like, knocked it out of the park. And I, I expect clients to trust me with my expertise. So I was like I have to like, practice what I preach here. And if, if you engage a lawyer, you engage a branding consultant or something, someone that's what they're an expert, they know what they're doing, then you've got to trust them. So yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:49

I love that. And it is exactly that same thing. It's like you put the right people in place for a reason. There's no need to micromanage them. Like you've hired them, but the only time you need to show up with that kind of stuff is during the, like the hiring process. And after that, it's we're on, we're good. Finding

Speaker: 16:03

the right person is really tricky. And I get five to six resumes a week, usually, if not more. And. Some of them are very persistent, looking for work, which is very flattering and nice. But yeah I've definitely, I've had a couple of false starts with employees where it was they interviewed really well. But you've got to have the right people. You've got to have the right personality mix in small business as well. Someone that you can get along with and laugh with and someone who wants to invest themselves into the business and do, do it at 110%. Is that what was their own? And that's really hard to find. It is

Speaker 2: 16:33

tricky because it's. In the design world, it's your design, but it's white labeled with someone else's brand in terms of whoever is doing the design for you is doing it under your name, under your brand, with your recognition. So you have to find the right relationship where they're understanding of that role. And it is yes, that's what I want to do. Cause I want to learn from you. I want to learn from someone who's 10 years into business and how we do all the things. So there's like a bit of a delicate.

Speaker: 16:58

It can be hard to. Especially for those people you're talking about that are like, I'm ready, but I'm not ready. It's hard to relinquish control where you're in charge of it. And at the end of the day, it will always be, your design. And I say to staff that I'm like I always want to hear what you have to say. I might not take it, but I always want to hear the opinion because if people feel unheard or they feel like their idea is better and it's being overlooked or not considered, it's like a little demoralizing. I might hear, yeah, and I also like people to feel invested in I think I can learn a lot from other designers and I think I've grown from stuff that I've had and I do have that they push me, outside of my comfort zone or showing me things or products or ideas that I wouldn't have thought of myself. And generally speaking, I think as a person, I'm not that open to collaborating, but then when it. And so when it comes time to actually doing it, it definitely produces a superior result. When we collaborate with architects, I absolutely love the process because their minds think in a different way than mine thinks, and we can integrate, I always say with the building, you've got the architect, like the outside of the basketball and the interior design of the inside of the basketball, so we're working on the same thing, but from a different view and, we've had some really successful collaborations, I love working with brands where You know, we have a really strong idea about how we think their products should be displayed or the business should operate. And then we're forced to use creativity to meet one of their requirements that we hadn't thought of. So I, I feel like, I can be a bit opinionated and I'm like, no, I know what I'm doing, but when you do collaborate with those other people, it can be really enriching. So

Speaker 2: 18:19

the best of both worlds, don't you? And then it gives, as you said, the client, the greatest outcome, because they've had a team of. Like incredibly talented people on their project all wanting the same outcome. It's just, yeah, working to get there when you decided to take on staff, even, one, then two, then three, did you have support in that process? Did you just think, look, it's just time. I'm going to put something on seek. Did you have an Instagram?

Speaker: 18:43

Cause I felt like if I was going to get the right people, they should already been. Like they should already know about the business. This is the tricky thing. Anyone can be an interior designer. You can learn how to be an interior designer. But do you like what we do? Do you have something to contribute that would be a good fit? And, sometimes I get presentations. I'm like, you would never be a good fit here. Like looking at your portfolio and there's like nothing about what I do and what you do. It's not that it's bad. It's just, it's a different vibe. But I didn't really have any support. I did speak to a HR consultant about like payroll mapping, for example. So I had no idea what salaries I would be up for or how that all works. We had someone draw up employment contracts for us so that we knew that we were like somewhat covering our bases. And, Understanding superannuation and all that. So there was, Was people that I reached out to'cause I wanted to do it properly. And I've been an employee and now that I'm an employer, I wanted to be a good employer, so I wanted to make sure that my staff felt valued. And, there's flexibility in their job and. That they were protected and I was protected and that it wasn't a one sided arrangement because I've definitely been in those. I always think of Richard Branson, who says, we keep your staff happy. The customers will stay happy. And I'm a big believer in that. You want to feel supported at work. You want to feel valued at work. You want to feel visible. And I wanted to make sure that what I was doing when I was bringing people in was being able to deliver that experience. So that I, I could keep delivering the level of service that I wanted to deliver to my customers and clients. So yeah, it was a little bit of support, but other than that, it was just finding my way. What I did do when my first hire was I set a documentation task mostly because, Documentation drawing and knowing what you're drawing and 2 different things. And the very 1st she had the computer skill, but she didn't have the construction experience to know what she was drawing. So she only lasted 6 weeks. She gave it a fair crack, but yeah, she, her portfolio was great. And I was oh, okay it looks good, but did you just do the assignment? Yeah, and realistically drafting most of the people in small business. I know when you get to this level I'm not drafting, on a day to day basis. So being able to pass that time consuming skill onto someone is important, but knowing what they're drawing and making sure that the design and the idea is documented correctly. I need to make sure someone can understand what that means and what that looks so I did set a task for the short list of people that I, that I was looking at hiring and yeah, when they presented the, presented it back, it was also a good way to weed out people who were hardworking.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Say there's a clear front runner usually because you're like. Yeah, the first person to send

Speaker: 21:02

it in is they were really hungry for the job and the person who paid the most attention and the person who was really detailed and whatnot. So yeah, there was definitely, I can't remember, but someone gave me that advice, actually. I can't remember what it was, but someone told me set a task

Speaker 2: 21:15

so you can assess

Speaker: 21:16

people.

Speaker 2: 21:17

So you can actually see what it is that, cause there's no point getting into two and a half months into your three months probation before the first opportunity to see that there's some learning opportunities there, or that's not quite how I would like it. Yeah, I love that. In terms of. Running a business involves all the moving parts. We even when we have stuff, there's a lot of being the Swiss army knife and being able to finance social media, managing staff and emotions, doing all the things. Is there a particular area that you find most challenging?

Speaker: 21:47

I would say like the accounting in a way.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Is it the first place you outsourced?

Speaker: 21:52

It wasn't actually, and I still do a lot of it myself in terms of the base level of monitoring it and paying the tax and all that stuff. I do that myself, but the bookkeeper is fantastic in terms of understanding how the superannuation system works, which is really complicated and changes all the time. And the ASIC filing fees and all that. So she's been helpful a lot with that. And I just. For me, there's money well spent that I'm not like trying to read some forum online, trying to understand what I'm doing and making sure it's all correct. So that's good. We have an accounts person that sends out the invoices, which is great. Accounts and following accounts is almost a full time job for us because we work on so many different things. Clients are late with payments and we have to defer an invoice because the project is taking longer or, it's such a, it's a huge job. So having that, He's pretty helpful as well. The other thing I will say is managing people is my weakest suit. For sure. I'm not the best at coordinating. I can coordinate myself, but I can't like coordinating others is tricky. And I think going forward, we will probably potentially the next hire might even be a practice manager or someone who's in a dual role as a designer and practice manager, just to coordinate everything. There's a lot of moving parts to the business and across, I think we're working 11 different projects at the moment.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Yeah. In all different phases at all different. Correct.

Speaker: 23:04

So just coordinating in the timelines and stuff, and we're getting better at using software like programmer to track those things. But up until very recently, I kept it all in my brain and it's not necessarily most feasible.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Yeah. Incredible to me how long people can run with. The original systems and softwares before, because it takes time that you don't have to learn to save time. And I always say that. And it's it's no, all the time. And I'm encouraging people to explore different AI technologies and different things that are coming in. I absolutely appreciate you have to stop what you're doing. Put that to the side and give a couple of days. And also we all know how frustrating, even something as simple as the first time you used Canva, you moved like a robot. You didn't know where to find things. And now you could do it with your eyes closed, like it just really doesn't matter for most people. And yeah, it's just finding that time and valuing that importance of it will change next year if I actually commit to it, but I have to do that.

Speaker: 24:00

It's even tricky, like I had a pretty good foundation with my studies in terms of the Adobe suite and the softwares that we use, but they change all the time. And I'm like, where was this button gone? So you do have to keep up with it a lot. And I feel lucky that I feel I consider myself a tech savvy person. But yeah, there's the software changes all the time. And there's even new functions that, A great to explore and it can improve your workflow and we've only really scratched the surface with AI in terms of what that can help with. I speak to a lot of business owners and there's some who are, recording like their client meetings and then transcribing them and getting chat GPT to analyze, the important things and it's so interesting because, the. ChatGPT probably has a better handle on what the client was really talking about versus what you absorbed.

Speaker 2: 24:42

I don't know about that. I'm going to challenge that one in terms of, because I do transcribe it and I built my own custom GPTs that do all the tasks that I want inside of my business. But when ChatGPT has the transcript, it gives you a very sort of black and white and it's understanding. But I feel that, we talk about the humanity of design and the emotions, and sometimes our clients don't have the language of design. So sometimes in the meeting when we're there. You'd be excellent at pulling out client briefs and really challenging that and it's only hearing the black and white text that you got. So I feel like it's good and it's fine.

Speaker: 25:14

It would be useful to us for the fine detail that they might mention a few times that we didn't absorb. If that makes sense, we were focused on the high level and it's the low level things that, so I feel like it would be useful for that, which I think is like what you're talking about, that black and white, and the direction that you

Speaker 2: 25:26

can give it. So you can say, this was my human understanding of this brief. Can you pull out anything I've missed that was repeatedly requested from the client or give me 16 ideas from the client only language that you think, and you just play around a bit and you can get really good at

Speaker: 25:42

technology. I don't ever see myself using it for idea generation. I just don't. I know some designers are doing that and I can see the value in it, especially

Speaker 2: 25:50

I'd forget the skill of my own kind of looking into my brain

Speaker: 25:55

for it. I don't think that's for me. And not to say it's bad, but I just don't think it's for me. And I'm, I have a highly developed Visual imagination. So I can see the design first in my brain. And I think if I wasn't able to do that, what am I doing really then? Like you could ask chat GPT to generate some ideas for a living room. And it's really, you're just designing with the computer. I think that's the value and the handcraftedness and the human touch that you are paying these high prices for when you engage a designer. But I don't think I'll ever use it for that, but definitely for streamlining things for emails, for operations and stuff. It's

Speaker 2: 26:26

fantastic. Yeah. Really good technology. It's really good.

Speaker: 26:31

Something that disappeared out of nowhere, almost like it going for a while. We use AI all the time in small ways, but this. Full like it's funny that you

Speaker 2: 26:41

say that because I am exactly the same. So even in my designs, I would always, cause I could visually see it while I'm driving home from the client's house. Like it's already done. I just need to find the things to get the idea for what I've already visualize and then I'll do the entire design and then sometimes I'll be looking for something to before I something to amplify my concept to the clients I go and it's almost like reverse engineer. I go to Pinterest and try to find keywords from my idea to find a concept or a picture that someone else has got to show them a bit of a mood board or whatnot. And I find that really interesting around AI, cause I would be exactly the same. I'd need to create off platform. And then if I wanted it to write up the client brief to make my actual documentation go faster, or put that sort of language in, then I'd be happy to go back and verbally say, this is what the design looks like. Can you just write up a paragraph that's a client brief and get that done really quickly. But I would never go to it to say. I don't know what to do in this room, or I'm not really sure, or show me coastal, show me this. I would never be able to, I don't think it would be able to perform. And if you've seen any of the visual technology of AI, it's nobody's jobs at risk. If you see some of the rooms that it comes up with.

Speaker: 27:55

Yeah, it's actually really funny. A client sorry, a designer friend of mine, she showed me design, design a room that. That he's in the style of Nicholas AI thought it was and what I would do. I was like, this is very not right. But, you didn't get

Speaker 2: 28:07

the job. Sorry, chat.

Speaker: 28:10

Pretty much.

Speaker 2: 28:11

Now your projects span across different countries, including the U. S. And I get a lot of questions having worked also in the U. S. around What made you say yes to the first job in the U. S.? Weren't you scared that you wouldn't be able to source or that you don't have the trade partnerships? And I was just curious how those opportunities started for you. Did you go after them? Did they come to you? And have they presented any roadblocks at all?

Speaker: 28:34

The short answer is yes. All of those things were like frightening and still are. Here. You know where to get everything, or even if you don't know, someone who will know if you needed something very specific or a specific trade or a specific supplier. So I built that library and in a strange way, that is what the business is. It's the connections. It's the relationships. The address book, all of that. So I have all those in Australia, but the U. S. we do not obviously have that. It actually began with an Australian resident who lived in the U. S. who actually originally contracted us to design his home in Miami. And he came to us because he didn't find the type of design that he was looking for in the U. S. It's a very different style. It tends to be chunkier. There's not as much connection to the indoor and outdoor. There's a lot less focus on minimalism and clean details. So we were a good fit aesthetically for what he wanted to do. So we began work on that, but then, unfortunately, his house was in a it was a tsunami or flood. But anyway,

Speaker 2: 29:29

it was a hurricane. It was a flood. It's something like that. It

Speaker: 29:32

happens all the time down in Florida. But anyway, he got damaged and it didn't go ahead. But so we were really disappointed because the house was going to be really cool. And I think it will resume at some point in the future but at this stage, it's not. But after that, he was just a really fascinating client, really lovely guy and was working in He had invested heavily in a fertility business. Obviously, commercial surrogacy and fertility is legal in the US, which is not here. He wanted to bring what we had been doing in cosmetic medicine. And again, that residentializing of what is a really, Personal, intimate fragile, emotional time and expensive time to the clinic designs that hit in this chain of fertility practices. So we just did top line for that, which was more just here's the concept. Here's the vision. They had some local like contractors who interpreted that it ended up quite far from where we had seen it. That was more to do with the kind of complexity of the job, but it was tricky, even just understanding what the paint brands are and what colors and the names of some of the things that we have a different to there. So it was quite tricky. So we didn't really do much in the US after that. But my partner and fiance is actually American. I have just completed his place in upstate New York, which has been fantastic. And we're about to undertake a retail space in New York City. So I'm going over in a couple of weeks to try to find a space. But yeah, it's daunting, like the way things are done. And it's a very different game, even though it's the same type of business. Yeah, it's daunting. It's exciting, but it is complicated. It's a lot more time investing in researching. It almost feels like going back to being a student in some ways. But it's leaning on the relationships that you have. And I've built relationships with designers of the U. S. That's been fantastic. I have designer friends in Australia who have also worked in the space. So it's just relationshiping and leaning on that to find a way through.

Speaker 2: 31:10

Yeah, that's so interesting. One of my largest projects I think ever was in Miami. And again, Weather Effect was big, modern, organic, amazing property. I was so excited because we've been through the concept development and everything, and it just is on hold as well. I feel like there's a lot of money down there. There's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of construction a lot of weather issues. You

Speaker: 31:29

know, hard

Speaker 2: 31:30

into it, but just expect delays.

Speaker 9: 31:32

Let's take a teeny break in the episode just so that I can give you a little update on what it is that I'm offering in 2025. The Oleander and Finch business has changed so much in the last couple of years and I just want to be really clear around the sorts of ways that I can support you in your business. So I obviously do have Not obviously, but I have designed clients. I take one design project at a time by application and that ticks away in the background and that's purely so I have a finger on the pulse so that when I'm working with students, I'm like, Hey, yeah, I understand your frustrations because things change and because I refuse to, you can't claw my white knuckled hands off working with clients. I absolutely love it. It lights me up. And it's my creative outlet. So I like to do that. The second thing that I offer is the framework and that is. The foundational course that's been running for a couple of years now. It helps support emerging designers to understand the business and marketing skills that it takes to run a successful interior design business. Or more importantly for that one to set up a successful design business. It walks through all the documents you're going to need to have a master copy of. It gives you the templates of those documents. So you just need to apply your branding. It helps you decide on your branding. It has over 40 snackable lessons in video format so that you can learn the business of running an interior design firm. So whether that's marketing, whether it's sales, whether it's finance, it's all the things that I wish I'd known or someone had filmed a video lessons and given me all of the templates. So that ticks along now that is almost half the cost that it used to be because. It's just built itself into such an amazingly tight ship that I show up once a week for support calls. But other than that, everything that you need is beautifully laid out for you and it's very self paced. It's 447 enrolment for that and 99 a month. So it's Super affordable in terms of investment before you have clients coming into your business. You can purchase that on the website anytime. Just go ahead to www. oleanderandfinch. com. The second thing that I offer is the framework collective and that is a and it's a small group of six designers that runs for 12 months. My 2024 cohort is currently halfway through. They're loving it. They're getting things done. It's been incredible. I'm watching them get ready to hire staffed that some of them are opening. street front studio spaces. It's just, it's been incredible. I really, yeah, I love love, but that is closed. It will open at some point in 2025, probably around September or later in the year for another round of just five people for another year. So keep your eyes peeled for that. And in the meantime, my private coaching is two weeks intensive that I do. And that's a ceiling smash program where I meet with you. I hear what all your challenges are. We build out a Trello board. We build out the answers and the roadmaps and all the corresponding templates and AI solutions. And you get all of my AI Custom assistance and yeah, we just work intensively on your business for two weeks and then you're good to go. And lastly, the Framework Express, which is the new one that I've released. And that's for people who don't want to do two weeks intensive, and they don't want to do 12 months with me, but they do need business coaching and they do want access to all the AI assistants. They do want a masterclass to teach them how to use AI properly and how to level out their processes, workflows, systems and get stuck into understanding, profitability and I'm going to be doing a video on scaling in general, making sure that everything is in place so that they're ready to really grow in the second half of this year. Hopefully that's broken down for you, the core offers that Oleander and Finch we'll be working with in 2025, which is, one is obviously for my design clients and the other three, it's just about finding what is the right fit and where do you fit? Are you an emerging designer and established designer? Do you need private coaching or do you prefer a group environment? If you ever have any questions, please visit me over at www. ollyanderandfinch. com or on Instagram at oleander underscore and underscore Finch. Okay, let's get back to it.

Speaker: 35:44

It's all these opportunities came to me, not through, I didn't seek them and I didn't like them. I think you should try and find them if you're not ready. I think if you should take them and try to figure your way through, knowing that it's going to be tricky and building that time into the fee, obviously, but, design is a global. It is a everyone experiences it. It's bringing your version of it, but the reason they these opportunities came was because we have developed brand and a developed aesthetic. And if you can't buy that anywhere else, you have to come here and, so that's how it happens. And I

Speaker 2: 36:14

thinker a lot of American homeowners specifically are looking for the Australian aesthetic. Like we are a as you say, a powerhouse in design and they are well researched and because. Because of social media, because of other things, they have complete access to the things that are happening down here. And a lot of people are seeking a different look. It's not another granite countertop, they actually do want a change. And I recall dialing into quite a few consultations and like beforehand being like, yes, force it countertop and thinking about all the different terminology. But at the end of the day, I

Speaker: 36:49

feel work is my favorite one. That's a 100 percent understand what it means. Seems to apply to a lot of things, but.

Speaker 2: 36:55

And also some of the room things, they're like the utility room, the thing, and I'm like, hang on, even grand room being, you're like hang on, how grand does this room have to be? It's, I think the most important thing that I learned just exploring the U. S. space would be being really honest about My shortcomings in terms of I'm learning here as well. Like you came to me. I'm so happy for the opportunity, but there will be, I might need to ask you about a few local retailers. I might question some of the terminology or language and that's not because I'm not able to do this. It's because I'm doing this in basically almost a foreign language sometimes.

Speaker: 37:29

It's all funny. You always think of America, obviously the UK as well as like the same culture as Australia, but it isn't, it's a different, it's a different game, even though we speak a

Speaker 2: 37:38

different design language. Like you look at European homes and the use of color and the use of character and all the things that happened in the UK and Europe, very different, even driving two hours in the opposite direction can give you an entirely different kind of thing.

Speaker: 37:52

It's also funny too, because the profession of interior design is so much more highly valued in those countries compared to Australia. Yeah. Down here, we're on the pillow fluffer, cushioning fluffers sort of level, whereas over there it's on the same par as an architect and sometimes even more important. So I'm very

Speaker 2: 38:07

DIY here. A lot of people are just like I have Pinterest, so I am a designer. I was like, it's a little bit different to that though. Yeah,

Speaker: 38:14

very much but it's just a difference in culture and I've really enjoyed working there. We'd love to do some more European things, but it's a bigger challenge. It's a lot more complicated. That's it. I know I've worked in the UAE, for example even that's complicated. There's different regulations, which you really just can't keep up with. And it's tricky. Australia is highly regulated compared to some places in the world. The U S depends state to state. So yeah, it really does depend, but. I wouldn't recommend it to you until you feel like your business is established and you've got the time and you've got the gumption to give it a go.

Speaker 2: 38:44

Yeah. I also, I think that was my number one concern. The first time I said, yes, I was like, Oh, so litigious in the U S though. If something goes wrong, where is my sort of sense of. Global protection. I spent a lot of time on the phones to insurance brokers and other people to be like, yeah, but can we just tighten up that service agreement with a whole American section if that's okay. Just because I felt nervous and I didn't need to be, none of that, but you always do need to be really protected. And that was one thing that I felt to feel like I could give a yes. I needed to explore that. I felt really comfortable and confident that I wouldn't be caught out trying to do something in another country. And then that not being the right thing to do. One project that really stood out to me recently that I saw was your menopause clinic project. Very thoughtful, empathetic design, really fearless approach to color and form, which is, quintessentially the aesthetic. But it addresses an experience that you weren't prepared for. Won't personally go through and, when you're collecting the client brief for something like that, how did you immerse yourself in that perspective and translate their needs into such a non clinical environment that you would be loving to go to?

Speaker: 39:49

To be honest, a big chunk of it was having the right client for this. So she. I would say is a real outlier. She is British and had worked in a very different type of environment to Australian medical. And she came down to Australia. She actually was trying to go to us, but it was during COVID and it didn't end up the way, but she's working. Gladly have

Speaker 3: 40:08

her.

Speaker: 40:08

Yeah. Honestly, such an incredible woman. She's been a really fantastic friend as well. And she was the ultimate client in that she wanted to do something outside of the box. She appreciated the value of the design. She knew she couldn't do it, and that's why she wanted someone. And she spent a lot of time researching. And her original kind of vision was, I should hire a woman as a woman's space. But she didn't really find anyone that she resonated with aesthetically A and b who had the experience in de medicalizing if you want medical spaces. So I met with her and we really hit it off, and I loved her. Revolutionary approach to something that are, I've been documented doctor or menopause doctor, but I've been to surgeons and doctors before. And it's a very unpleasant experience. It's fluorescent lighting. It's carpet tiles. It's the 2010 Women's Weekly magazine on the coffee table. But it's always the same. And it's unpleasant. But what I loved about her approach was, that she was trying to address a societal problem as well as a medical problem, if that makes sense problems wrong word, because for her, and for me, after learning so much about it is that menopause is not a problem. It's not just not sick. It's a transition to change. It's like the same as puberty. You're not sick when you go through puberty. It's very natural and normal, but we don't talk about it. And I was lucky enough to grow up in a very matriarchal family. I watched my mother, my aunt, not so much my grandmother, but my mother and not go through it. I have a lot of older female friends that I watched go through this same experience. And it was a very, a real honor for me to be able to contribute to that pro to that project. I did get a VA big crash course in menopause. I know a lot more about yes, the vaginal dryness than I did before when I started. But it was really fantastic and I think. Where she wanted to go with it was very helpful and that we were really aligned with what we would do. And she wanted to incorporate design as part of the treatment and to de stigmatize, to de hospitalize, to de medicalize really what is a consultation and helping, she's almost like a Sherpa through this whole experience that you're going to go through. So it didn't need to be medical. There was obviously some medical considerations. We did have to design an examination bed and, I just looked at everything that was on the market. I said, we're just going to do something custom because I can't, at least it's just, it's scary and vulnerable. And it doesn't

Speaker 2: 42:16

matter what, if you're going to copy what's already there, you're only just going to have the same experience. Yeah.

Speaker: 42:20

And it's just, we really wanted to make it feel like a very special experience. And for her, what really resonated the most was she wanted to empower women. She said that to me about 50 times in the first couple of meetings. And it really stuck with me. It was a really fantastic project to be a part of in that context. And, but also having someone that trusted us to go, I know that this has not been done before. I know that I don't know what I'm doing. I know about medical menopause and medicine, but I don't know anything about design. And she really trusted us to roll with it. And we definitely pushed it, push some things that I think in almost any other client would not have been open to but it's been a complete success and she absolutely loves it. All of her patients love it. So it's been really fun.

Speaker 2: 42:56

You've got to push if you're trying to break taboo, don't you? Like you do sometimes.

Speaker: 43:01

Her branding that she had done with a consultant was this sort of like softer, olivey, natural green color, which was pretty and it was nice and whatever. And we did do a mood board that spoke to that branding. And then we did another concept that was all these reds. And it was like, it was meant to be. Bold. It was meant to be challenging. It was meant to be empowering. And all of my designs are very personal. They come from a personal experience, whether that be a film I watched or a place I'd been or something I'd seen or experienced. And I thought a lot about red lipstick and watching, the women in my family, that Superman pose, like a woman puts on red lipstick and all of a sudden she's confident, she's brave, powerful. And that really stuck with me as far as color. And there was a lot of pushback oh, is red going to seem like blood? And I'm like not in this context. So it's been a big triumph. Probably a bit bolder than we've probably been with projects in the past, but it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 43:49

Oh, it sounds great. And it looks great. And yeah, I just think it's so fantastic that there was a male designer trusted with that. I think it takes a really special designer to almost Get over that sort of challenge of her probably thinking I need a woman for this job. And I think that speaks volumes to your ability to understand, empathize, translate the client brief pitch really well with the concept. In terms of your pitch process, how do you communicate the design ideas when they are bold and they are brave? And maybe it's pulling someone really out of their comfort zone because clients generally have A roundabout idea, but of course they're hiring you as the expert. So their idea is and I think that's still probably quite far away from what you're

Speaker: 44:30

thinking. I usually say to clients, respectfully, what they know about design is like this. And then what I know about design is like this. So they like those things, but there's so much else in the world that they don't know that might like even more. And it's my job to create something for them. A big impediment I think interior designers have, particularly in Australia, is this I want to see an example of it done, or you're not going to when you're looking at the design, it's going to be the newest thing. It's going to be a fresh taken as fresh concept, but that doesn't mean it's coming from an experience to an experimental place. This is the 10th year I've been doing this. We understand human psyche, how people use spaces more than people who. Live in their own homes, for example, like we understand how you can be elevated through design. How does I can respond and how you can interact with space? So it doesn't come from an uneducated place. But when we communicate ideas, it does vary a lot. And I feel like I'm still trying to find the best methodology for that. And sometimes it depends on the person, the type of client, for example, when we work on a commercial project, and there might be multiple decision makers, whether that be. A retail project where there might be a director as well as manager full of

Speaker 2: 45:36

people,

Speaker: 45:37

correct. So it can be a bit more complicated when there's multiple people to impress. We generally, if we feel like that's going to be an issue, try to pin one person as the decision maker and speak to that. And sometimes that's just your experience where you're like, I think this is the real decision maker. And sometimes it's not the head on show. But yeah, it can be a little tricky in that way, but. We try to be as digital as possible for a couple of reasons. One, it's better for the environment. We don't need to print as much as we, we have to. And, the foam core boards of sticking things on those days have been long since passed. But, even with sampling and things like that, not, we don't need to oversample and where we don't need to, but we try to be digital as much as possible. We can be quicker. It's easier to present, particularly when we're working in different states, different countries. I don't always fly for a presentation, so I need to be able to present the ideas and the concepts in a 2 dimensional, 3 dimensional context. That's not in real life. We have different stages, the movie board phase, which is both my favorite and my least favorite because it's the idea generation and it's the most free part of the project where, anything is and the ideas are free flowing. But it can be very difficult for that experimental energy for someone to understand it. If they're not particularly creatively minded, which most of our clients are not. That's why they've come to us. So particularly working in medicine or finance or, retail or whatever,

Speaker 2: 46:51

anything that's a bit dry.

Speaker: 46:53

They're not visual people. So sometimes, and we've really shied away from in our mood boarding images of other work, because people will be like, Oh I don't like this. Yeah. Like this detail or this vibe, and we recently presented something for an office space and I pulled an image from the June films that was just like, so sci fi and weird. And I'm like, I know how I'm going to make this work for the reception desk. And I needed to have the image there for my own reference to make sure it'll pull together. But she's I don't understand this one. This one's scaring me. And I'm like, it will be cool. You will like it. There's a lot interior design, so much of it is selling the idea. And if you're confident in what you're selling and you know what the vision is going to be, that's really important. After the mood board phase is where it's a little bit easier, where you start showing your 3D concepts. We build everything in 3D so the client can get a feel for the flow of the space. They can start to see the detail you were talking about, or the relationship between materials and so forth. It is tricky because in this day and age with rendering and how good presentation technology has become, it's never going to be as good as real life. It's never going to, seeing it in a three dimensional context and being in a three dimensional context is very different. But clients and customers have become so much more accustomed to seeing these images that they Not panic, but they can be a bit like, Oh, I don't know. And it's you have to, this is just the direction you have to trust that will come together. Some clients are great. Some are this is what you do and you do that. Other clients are like, Oh, I've also thought about this, and this. We often have brief changes. I think when we start presenting concepts and then they're like, Oh, actually, we don't want to do that. We want to do this now that we've seen it. People can also have very grand ideas that they've seen if they've started to do a bit more Pinteresty looking and being married to an idea. And I have to repeat this to myself often, but like sometimes the best idea does not work for this job and you have to file that away for something else. Yeah, people can sometimes get really married to things that are not possible or just not a good idea.

Speaker 2: 48:42

Yeah, it is hard and it's hard in a commercial sense when, as you say, there's a boardroom of people or there's a hierarchy of people or like you're dealing with somebody and you haven't always had the conversations with every single person who might come across and be asked their opinion and the conversation that I can imagine that you have quite early because you use this word quite a few times when we were just chatting around trust and I feel like you would be At onboarding stage and at discovery call, if that's the process, really saying to people, I'm glad you're interested in what I do. I'm, you're confident in what I do. You need to also be confident because if you're bringing me and I'm going to do what I do, like I'm not, you don't really report to other people. It's not

Speaker: 49:21

often, but occasionally I have to have the reminder conversation that what I do. That's why you hired me. To do that requires you to take your hand off the pen and let me do and the reason that those projects turned out the way that they did was that I was allowed to, the trust was placed and it can be tricky. Some clients are better than others. We're working with a residential client, a second house. We've done for her and her family. The first one was a complete triumph. They loved it. They sold it for a complete huge profit, which is why they engaged us again. And even still, there's a lot of I'm not sure and I don't think I want to swap it to this. And I can just tell the type of person that she is more controlled. She needs to feel in control of it. And sometimes that has to happen and you have to roll with the client in that way. I often try to explain more so to residential clients, but if it's an individual, when we've done individual retail for one person, for example. I would say to them, there will come a time in this project where you will feel like you aren't sure if you made the right decision, or you are unsure about the direction that it's going and that it's normal, it will resolve and you'll be happier than you ever thought you would be. I've never had a client who was like, I don't like it when it's been built.

Speaker 2: 50:27

Pick up this conversation at the end if you still feel a bit unsure I'm happy to talk then, but until then, it's just a nervousness.

Speaker: 50:34

You have to just remind people to trust you and. The confidence to do that takes a while, if you're not 100 percent sure of yourself. It could be tricky, but, and it doesn't always work. Sometimes people will still not trust. And when it's spending, hundreds, if not millions of, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, I understand that's a big thing to trust. I would say I would probably be a very difficult client if it was me.

Speaker 2: 50:56

I don't want to be on the others. Commercial clients can have really complex needs, especially you've carved out a niche for yourself, which, you're probably learning along the way. You're not made. medically trained, or there's things that you might be needing them to guide you through a lot. And they also have really big budgets, I imagine, because they're really big jobs. How do you approach pricing in a way that reflects your work, shows your value? Or has that been a trajectory where you've slowly been able to move that pricing needle up as the jobs go up? Or what's your approach to commercial? Yeah,

Speaker: 51:30

it has. Pricing I think is one of the trickiest things. There's no real industry standard for things. There's not really any education on how it should go. A lot of designers hold it very close to their chest because we're all competing against each other for things. I definitely know there's designers who undervalue themselves significantly and they win fantastic projects. We've lost projects to some of these designers. And I'm like, I know I went in with a fair price, but I know what they charge. And that's probably why they did win it at the end of the day. If you like a couple of different designers and 1 person is cheaper and you vibe with them. Okay. Then maybe that's who you would choose. But it comes down to knowing and this just comes with experience. How many roughly how much time is going to go into it? The complexity of the job. Is it going to be a fun project for you to take on? Is it going to net you fantastic portfolio? Is it a new sector that you're going to be able to go in? There's so many considerations. I have 3 different pricing methods that range from hourly rates to square meters to number of rooms. And then we have, complexity filters that go in. I, is this a really complicated person? Do they seem like they're going to be really. Time consuming,

Speaker 2: 52:36

the sustainability focus that I have to continue to

Speaker: 52:39

do the right fit for us, even, are they speaking about a lot of things that we don't know a lot about that is important to them? There's so many different complexities and different things that go into knowing how much to price.

Speaker 3: 52:50

Yeah. I

Speaker: 52:50

will say our prices have jumped significantly from where they were five years ago. And that comes from

Speaker 3: 52:56

experience.

Speaker: 52:57

Yeah. The experience we've had, the media that we've been able to have the awards that we have won demand

Speaker 2: 53:02

and experience. Yeah, that number,

Speaker: 53:05

At the end of the day, it's not to say people with less experience. I was one of those people too. And, I. Believe so strongly. I committed so much and I knew every project was getting 150 percent for me. So there's nothing wrong with that. But yeah, the price is reflective of you pay, you get what you pay for. And that's why I think it's great that there's different designers at different price points. If you are a little bit harder up on budget, then you should be hiring someone with less experience because that's what's within your range.

Speaker 3: 53:28

But,

Speaker: 53:29

If you're spending a lot of money on a project and you want to do something that's really complicated, then like having someone with that experience might be helpful. Where it can fall over and has been a. Difficult thing to navigate is I think working on tight budgets, is it can be very difficult to be very creative on that. When there's less money, there's less available options to you to make things special. And especially when we've competed in awards where we know we spent less than a hundred thousand dollars on my project and we competed against a 20 million building, it's like very, it can be a little disheartening at times. Bound

Speaker 2: 53:58

by the client brief and budget.

Speaker: 54:01

When you think through magazines, sometimes like what a weird choice, but they're like, maybe that's what the client wanted. You know what I mean? Like sometimes I'm sure I definitely think there's work that we've done that I've looked back on and gone, really wish they hadn't asked us to do that. I really feel like if we'd done, if we'd done what I wanted to do, it would have been better, that's how it ended up. And I'm not the person living in it, working in it.

Speaker 2: 54:18

And you don't get the backstory, like you said, like in awards and other things you do the initial meeting and someone said, the only non negotiable for me is this. And, people will see the end imagery and just think that was a weird, yeah, weird

Speaker: 54:29

choice. Pricing is, it's a tricky one and an evolving thing. Something with DAA I would like to do more in terms of, Creating some industry standards or some guidance that people can follow. I would love for designers to price themselves fairly, so that we're not bringing all of us down. And we're lifting each other up. And when we're competing, I would love to compete not on price, but on merit, on aesthetic, on personality, that kind of thing, rather than who was cheaper. And if it's the right client, they don't care. They'll hire you. We actually recently we won a residential job and the client actually asked us to, Just engage us for mood boards and another designer as well, because they want to be sure they were choosing the right person who for them, which never happened to us before. And I was like, love a lot of competition. Very competitive. So it was really great. And it was a, we were able to win the project on our fee, but on well. We were able to deliver in our creativity. So it's a bit

Speaker 2: 55:19

like your job interview from earlier. And that's what happened with my Miami client is I pitched for that modern organic house against another American designer and they paid me for it. I did. The whole thing was basically like phase one being prepaid and then whoever design connected with them the most is where they were going to go. And I loved it. Must be just a competitive thing, but I really enjoyed that. What I will

Speaker: 55:42

say is though, like never do anything for free. Someone was not going to be a great client. Anyone who negotiates too. Everyone likes to negotiate. Everyone likes a bargain. Don't get me wrong. I negotiate on products for clients all the time. But if someone negotiates

Speaker 2: 55:54

too hard, it's a lack of

Speaker: 55:56

value. Like they don't understand. I think I think it's important to understand what you're worth and it's hard to say no to that at the beginning. There's definitely been projects we've done that have been a financial loss significantly, but there was a benefit in that we got into a sector. We got in with the client for future work, sometimes there's those things that kind of pay off. But. I would never do anything for free. I get asked all the time. So you'd be surprised.

Speaker 2: 56:15

Oh, wow. That's the nuance you were talking about in the pricing then, because it is a very complicated equation. And sometimes I'm saying hang on, what is the actual return on investment? Are you guaranteed photography? We'll, if you're already guaranteed a print media feature, what's that worth to you? Because a digital feature alone is 10, 000 to be in that space on that page. So just really understand your numbers and you might be able to like, bring your feed down to get that job. If you're getting free media or you're getting, if there's another thing involved, there's

Speaker: 56:43

a payoff. And yeah, but generally speaking I generally say that finds respectfully. I don't negotiate my fee because I don't go in with Patty. I never do. I'm like, this is a fair price. We recently started work on a project with an architect and he said to me, I was surprised. I thought you'd be like double the price. And I was like we will. We can, if you like. Yeah this financially makes sense for us, but good to know going forward. Yeah, I love that

Speaker 3: 57:06

feedback.

Speaker: 57:07

Yeah, it's nice. But then we also have clients who we never hear from again because we were too expensive and it's it's, I've used to hear these things to hate it. Cause I was like, oh, it's so easy for them to say, but they aren't your client if they can't, if they don't want to pay and it sucks to let a lead disappear. Sometimes it's a really exciting project. We've recently pitched for something in Willara in Sydney that I don't think we've won. Yeah. And it was a huge fee. And I was excited about the house. I was excited about the possibility. And I don't think people are generally, oh, it was too expensive. A lot of people will never say that. A lot of people will just ghost you and you never hear from them again, which sucks because I'm like, I'd rather

Speaker 2: 57:39

get the feedback and know where I can make business decisions.

Speaker: 57:42

Or, I often say to clients if the fee is too high. Outside of the range, there's things that we can do in terms of reducing scope how involved we are how much travel we do, there's a lot, there's a lot of things that can, we can work towards it. But the other thing that's tricky with pricing, I would say is we have a very strict methodology in terms of how we work, how we get paid, how the money structure works. And clients, I wouldn't say often, but want to do it the way they want to do it. And I'm like, yeah, I don't go to Coles and say, I'll pay you after I've eaten dinner. You know what I mean? It's there's a methodology that has been practiced over the last decade of what works and what doesn't. And I don't really like to deviate from it because I know whenever I do, it's always more complicated.

Speaker 2: 58:20

Client takes the reign as soon as they play with your payment methods or process or anything. Like I start to get really anxious if I even have to have conversation about, I'd rather do it this way. I'm like Run your own business then and do that.

Speaker: 58:33

Correct. Or, sometimes another designer is prepared to do this. And I'm like, that sounds like a great fit

Speaker 2: 58:38

for

Speaker: 58:38

what you want. It's not really for us, but I was just talking to Ruby before. It's really tricky because as creatives, I don't know why, but we tend to think we should apologize for charging money and that we. We don't deserve money and we'll do it for free, whatever. But I'm like lawyers charge every six minutes. They get on a phone to you for three minutes. You're getting it, you're getting a half, a 3 payment, a three minute payment. We should be charging for our time. We shouldn't feel this way. And I don't know why creatives tend to feel this way, maybe because it's I think

Speaker 2: 59:05

it's guilt because we love what we do so much. Actually it could be that.

Speaker: 59:09

I'm still wondering, is it a creative thing? Everyone can do creativity in different skill levels and different amounts. Everyone has creativity in them. Some people have one milliliter and some people have a gallon. It's different, everyone has an opinion. And I'm sometimes like, oh, I don't need this. It's a luxury.

Speaker 2: 59:28

Guilty of perpetuating that inside of the industry as well. Constantly calling it. This is, we can have phone calls or conversations and the pricing isn't right. And you're like, look, it isn't for everyone. It is a luxury service. Maybe you aren't the best fit for the firm. And yeah,

Speaker: 59:43

we tend to look at money through our own lens. Like to some of my clients, my fee is a drop in the bucket. It's my family's in it. Terrible. It's what a rip off. I would never spend 5, 000 on a bag. I'm like for the people that are supposed to be buying that bag, that's 50.

Speaker 3: 59:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 59:58

But would you buy a 50 bag? So it's just what abundance you have. And we sit, we can only see the world through our own. I will say though, that gets warped and distorted as you become a designer. When you start thinking 5, 000 was reasonable for an armchair and someone looks at you and they're like, Oh my God, that's, I would never spend that. I'm like, that's very reasonable.

Speaker 2: 1:00:13

Yeah. I say this all the time inside of my course. I will often say to people, talk to me about your pricing. Talk to me about what you'd pay for an interior designer. And of course, you have no need for an interior designer because when you close your eyes, you can visualize the kitchen and you can make all the selections. And so you completely minimize the worth sometimes in the early days, specifically, because. To you, it's very easy. And so you've never had to reach out and get a quote for your house or you've always been the person who has just been able to pull things together and curate in a way like that bower bird or that, bird collecting all the pieces. You don't really think about it. It's very easy. So you don't really think about what you would pay. And actually it's all irrelevant because our clients are not us and they can't do what we do. And their budgets are so different.

Speaker: 1:00:57

It was great when I engaged LBD Studios, who we now share an office with, to do my branding. And when the price came back, it was very far from what I'd imagined it might be. I think people have an idea of It's probably X amount, right? And if it comes back and if it's within, people will go ahead with you if it's close to what they thought it was going to be generally. But when I got the price back, I was like, Oh my God, that just seems like so much money. And where it fell over was I wasn't understanding the value and I didn't really get it until the project was over. And it was like bunny ball spent, but at the time, if you've never done it, and I think that's a failing of creative industries, particularly interiors and something I'm really passionate about working with the DAA is to champion and advance our profession to get people understand what the value is and how it can change your life. We just photographed this week a project in WA. We worked on for four years with an architect. And I stayed in the house, which is the first time this ever happened with the client. And it was amazing to see him live in it, open the drawers, flick on the light switches and see how he interacted with the house. And he just could not tell me how often. Every day is paradise. So many things I didn't realize were difficult can be easy. I feel amazing in my house. I'm so proud to have people to my house to entertain. I want to have people over. I feel proud to show people that this is my house and what I've done and that value. I wish we could communicate more because I think if people could feel what he felt at the end of a project and go, what an amazing investment this was, we would, as an industry, be turning work away. And you hear that

Speaker 2: 1:02:28

all the time, isn't it? It's I the kind of like the off boarding process and the last conversation that you have is I never expected it could be like this. Like I still paid you and I still engaged you. And I still said yes to you until the last minute. I obviously doubted you. And then right at the last minute I went you're leaving now. And I just thought you should know, wow, you did a good job. Bill

Speaker: 1:02:48

was sitting in his living room and he brought up the concept perspectives and he was like, it's literally this, like it's. It's so amazing. And I looked at this image every day for years and now it's here and it's real and I'm sitting on it and touching it and it's so much better than I thought it was going to be. So I wish we could, as an industry champion that more, I wish I, as a designer and my team and I were able to communicate that more and I don't know how we do that, but when we have inquiries, be like, you've made a great decision to even think about hiring someone because change your life. And also anyone who's built it or anyone who has renovated can attest the complexity of doing it. Just the time saving alone. I remember there was this fantastic

Speaker 3: 1:03:25

interview.

Speaker: 1:03:26

Yeah. I remember this interview with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and they had Jay Leno or late night or whatever. And they were saying, you've just built a house. How was that? And they were like, the number of decisions you have to make is just crazy. Like this light switch, that light switch, where do we put the switch? Are they all on the same switch? And that was the example.

Speaker 2: 1:03:43

Like they don't care. I don't care if I'm the homeowner and not a designer and people asking me 26 questions about the location of a single PowerPoint or light switch or blah, blah, blah, I'm, I have switched off well before that conversation started because I don't think they really have that. Interest like they do

Speaker: 1:04:01

something like I would say a hyper aware and sometimes it's not a bad thing because the way everyone lives is a little differently and everyone likes the idiosyncrasies of their personality and how they live and cook and they even all that you can really address with design, which is fantastic. We did a draw once for a client who loved tea and she just wanted to have a pull out drawer and had all her tea. So she wasn't always rummaging in a bucket full of tea. I wanted a tin for it. And that was a huge luxury to her and it was fantastic and really fun to do. You couldn't see it in any of the photos. It was invisible to everyone other than her, but it made a really big difference. And not something that would have applied to me. I don't drink tea, so I wouldn't have cared. But those idiosyncrasies and applying those can be really useful for clients. From a commercial perspective, it's actually harder to find those things where I've been fortunate, particularly working in retail, for example, is I've done luxury retail. I know what the back end looks like. I know what the operations feel like, and to know, ask the right questions and you have to prompt it really like it's blood from a stone sometimes being like, where are you going to put the coat hangers after the sale happens? What's going to happen with that? And ah, or Where are we going to put the suit bag so that when a client comes to pick up their suit, it's easy and quick for you to do, to, to bundle it, prepare it and so on. So what's the FBOS situation going to be? So many of these questions that brands don't think about. We're working on a plumbing showroom at the moment and it's been quite interesting because we're like can you provide us a list of the products that you want to display? Because we're trying to flip, you Bathroom showrooms on the head as we like to do flipping and. We wanted, we're trying to absorb the information about how they're going to work and how they're going to be in the space and what the sales process is going to be like, but we're also trying to give them tools and influence that through design. For example, we're trying to use what we're calling dynamic displays so that not everything has to be on display overwhelmingly, but we have the tools. Things in drawers that can be pulled open and the display can be digested in a bit more of a at the client pace rather than overwhelmed. Like when you go to Ikea and you have to follow the path and you're like, I've got to go

Speaker 2: 1:05:51

this afternoon, I'm dreading it.

Speaker: 1:05:53

There's a million, there's a kid running around and there's there's stuff to look at and everywhere. It's wouldn't it be fantastic if it was able to be at your pace and kind of discover things that, how you want and only see what you want to look at a certain time. Yeah, we're trying to, give those tools over, but those tools won't work if the sales team don't understand how to interact with it and how to incorporate it as part of the sales process. So it's design just goes so much beyond cabinetry and finishes. It's psychological. It's human behavior. It's anthropology. It's all of those things. So it's a real interesting career and you don't know those things at the beginning of your career and you will not, and there's no way for you to know them. You cannot learn them in any degree. And he said, or any post

Speaker 2: 1:06:30

degree mentorship, like I have one of those, but I still want the girls in my course to make their own mistakes because they, I could just film a lesson about a lesson that I learned, but you will never feel it and avoid it unless you've been through it because you actually had to. Do that thing that was like, Oh, cringe, that was awful. All that cost me money. Or I lost sleep over that or that, that really worried me. If you never experienced any of those human feelings, then someone's just said, just avoid that. It's not the same. You, it's just not the same.

Speaker: 1:07:00

I think as a designer, my. I go through life. I don't know. I know a lot of other designers do this too, but I think I go through life always looking at how space or an interruption could be improved. For example something I find at restaurants is I'm like, when you want someone to order another drink, you cannot find someone, but when you've got a mouthful of steak, you're like, how's your meal going? There's someone standing right there. And it would be so lovely to have a discreet little button, like on an airplane that like a little light went off or like whatever, so that you could summon someone. And I think every time I go to a restaurant, I'm like, wouldn't it be great? Rather than maybe I'm like, Oh, excuse me. We're trying to make significant eye contact with one of the waiters. And that could be culturally

Speaker 2: 1:07:33

misunderstood and things as well. Like when you travel and other things. And I've worked waitressing way back in the day. And I think someone whistled at me and I was like, have you lost your dog?

Speaker: 1:07:41

You need to grab someone's attention to help you. So it's would be fantastic for that. Even somewhere to hang my, whenever I go to a restaurant, I'm known for carrying a bag and I'm like, where do I put my It's expensive. I'm not putting it on the floor. Do we have a hook? Is there a chair? Just little experiences and just trying to find ways. And I think about those things that I filed them away. And when I do get to work on those types of projects, I'm like, Oh, wouldn't it be better? We did some concepts for a retail fashion brand that didn't go ahead, but the sales process. I've always found very overwhelming in that one second was, but in their stores, and there's just millions of products everywhere. And from an accessibility perspective, I was like, this is quite tricky to maneuver around all these racks and everything's packed closely together. And we really wanted to change the game in, in that context as well. So I'm always thinking about the human experience. And I guess that will be my advice to younger designers is start noticing when things don't work and then filing that information away for when you get to work on that type of commercial job and how you can improve it.

Speaker 2: 1:08:34

Yeah, make the world a better place. I love that. Can't always

Speaker: 1:08:36

be fixed to be fair.

Speaker 2: 1:08:38

But it's good to try it out and it's good to suggest it. And it could be the change where we have somewhere to put our bags and we can call politely the wait staff. Some cultures have it

Speaker: 1:08:47

in lots of parts of Asia, they give you a little stool for your purse because everyone has a Birkin. Sometimes some parts of that, then they've got it ahead of the game. I don't want to see them in Melbourne and paying, 25 for a piece of toast or whatever it is. And I'm like, we could fix this.

Speaker 2: 1:09:02

Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed the transparency around the pricing models that you have. I think it's really important for designers to understand. It's not always just one way and I'm exactly the same. I believe in value based pricing. Which I've learned through experience to calculate for my own business, but I have an hourly rate. I have an idea of how long things are going to take me. I have an idea of all the differences and I can put a retainer on a project if I need to, and I get to know the client. And it's actually not about understanding a particular industry standard and then applying it rigidly and going no, I'm an hourly only. And, I, this is going to take X. I think that's the responsibility.

Speaker: 1:09:44

It won't work for every client, right? I think you should always have a base that you wanna work to. But ways to flex, flex it when you need to as well.

Speaker 2: 1:09:53

And having a bit of a minimum expectation is a great idea. Just thinking, my, the kinds of projects that I take on start from X, you can communicate it to a client when needed, but you can build around that really flexibility. The conversations I have, I feel there's less flexibility just because there's less understanding and a lot of, as you say, like secrecy or not feeling confident that they're running the pricing or choosing the pricing. So I loved hearing about that because I think it will give a lot of the listeners. Some inspiration and some ability to sit back and go, actually I don't just need to have three packages at that price. Like I can actually be more creative with pricing by sitting down and thinking about my pricing models and payment method.

Speaker: 1:10:35

Especially the beginning. You don't want to lose a job that will give you experience. We'll give you a portfolio, we'll give you connections. If there's a way that you could stay involved is great. But this is a verse that I don't take for myself, but sometimes there's things you shouldn't take because it's too small for you, that's not profitable there's no benefit. Sometimes the client's just super lovely and you really want to work with them and you take it and you're like, what a complete money suck this ended up being.

Speaker 2: 1:10:57

But That's the stuff that still ignites you and makes you love what you do, and it's the reason you show up. And so sometimes it's almost like lawyers do a pro bono every now and again, they still want you for the three minute phone call, but they sometimes want to do something to give back. So

Speaker: 1:11:11

I guess also to like people that shouldn't ever feel like they. A silly for not knowing because it's not easy to do. It's not. Don't be wrong. This formula is that I could follow to be okay. And for example, we probably spend 1 hour per square meter as an average. I would say on jobs. And we could probably work it out that way. Okay, cool. It's 500 square meters. So it's. 500 hours, and you could probably calculate that minus your staff and your overheads and the super and the tax and the rent. And that probably is a, I would say, a fiscal is a clever way to price things, but it's complicated and you need to spend time developing that information and knowing what that is. And, I think the further my business goes, the more we will move in that direction of trying to quantify it a little bit more. And the

Speaker 2: 1:11:53

procurement phase and just set things on top. Yeah

Speaker: 1:11:56

like, when it's just you doing it, your hourly rate can be 10 cents an hour, really. But when you have staff who you have committed to an hourly rate or salary, then that. Productivity and output has to be recouped. So it changes the game when you expand for sure. Yeah, it's a complicated thing. People shouldn't feel bad for not understanding. And the best thing is to try to talk to build relationships with other designers. The way we bill and our pricing method came from someone who mentored me early in my career based on their experience and there's a, a lot out there and most people are generally prepared to share at least the cliff notes, maybe not like the exact dollar figure, but it can help you in that regard too.

Speaker 2: 1:12:32

I truly believe, like I've reached out to lots of people and I've been reached out to many times and I'm like, Hey, like obviously I'm not gonna give you commercially sensitive figures, but I will talk you through the process, what the decision making process, like why I decided to do that method. And I'll get on the phone with you and talk you through anytime you like. I just, obviously I'm not gonna give you my p and l, like that's totally different, but For sure. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Speaker: 1:12:54

This was really fun and we'll chat soon.

Speaker 2: 1:12:56

Yeah. Love it. Thank you. Bye.

Speaker 8: 1:12:58

How good was that? I'm really excited. You can hear it in my voice to have the interview sessions back and to, I've got a lot of cool people lined up to speak to Nicholas was so down to earth. He was so easy to chat to, and he has such a passion for sharing his knowledge within the industry. I just know if you needed anything, you could probably reach out to him and his DMS and you'll find all of those details. In the show notes, just a little reminder before we go that we currently do have an opening in the Framework Express, which is a 12 week business sprint that kicks off March the 3rd. So if you are somebody who feels like they need business coaching, but they don't want to do like a two week intensive, and they also don't want to do a 12 month course, this is perfect for you. It's get in, get out. Get untangled, get it all sorted. It's really about scaling and building better business operations. So you have that capacity to scale as well. Anyway, I'd love to talk to you about the details. I have everything planned out. So if you want to know what's happening week by week and just get a gauge about whether or not you feel it could support you, I know it could make your business look totally different when we finish up mid May, those people who are with me in this sprint will be feeling such a relief on the ways that they approach the second half of this year. And you guys asked for it and I am simply delivering the thing that I hear the most. I want to be in a small group. I want to be in group coaching. I don't want to do a year of it. And I don't want to do one on one for just two weeks because I also have to run my business all the other day. So I don't have that sort of intensive focus. I hope to see you there. There are currently around six spots left. It's a maximum of 10 and I'd love to have a chat to you if you think one of them should be yours. As I mentioned at the top of this episode, the podcast is now delivering once a week episodes. So I'll see you next Thursday. Bye for now.