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Designing Success
Designing Success from School to Studio by Rhiannon Lee is dedicated to filling in the gaps in your design course to encourage you to build a sustainable business that supports your dream lifestyle.
Are you searching for strategy, systems and support? Looking for a community to bounce industry issues around in? In this podcast, we will cover the interior design business infrastructure you need to supplement your design school curriculum with practical insights and actionable advice. We also cover all things marketing, product innovation, client acquisition, and more. Go beyond the theory, filter through the stuff that doesn’t serve you and get on with creating.
You will find real talk with industry professionals, practical tactics from business realists that leave you reenergised and focused on exactly how to improve the current landscape of your own business. For more behind the scenes of the interior design industry, check out oleander and finch in Instagram https://instagram.com/oleander_and_finch
or head to www.oleanderandfinch.com
Designing Success
Viral reels, pricing strategy & lessons you can’t Google with Emma Blomfied
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Visit the website or purchase one of Emma’s books here; https://emmablomfield.com/
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Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander and Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now, let's get designing your own success.
Speaker 10:Before we get started with today's interview with Emma Bloomfield let's hear a little something from a former F worker, also someone who's done private coaching and a two week intensive coaching program with me at Jade from Blueprint.
Hey Rhiannon, it's Jade from Blueprint Interior Design here. I just wanted to pop in and say a big thank you. You're the best in the business. There's no doubt about that. And you have been so helpful in me building Blueprint to what it is today. From the framework to our private coaching sessions, to coach in pocket, it's just been a total game changer for me. You're so knowledgeable and so passionate. That shines through in everything you do. But the biggest thing for me is the genuine care and interest that you have in your clients building their success. So I feel so lucky to have you in my corner and I love when we sit down and plan the next move together. During our Coaching Pocket last quarter, I was honestly so surprised by how much we covered in such little time. It wasn't just a skim over the business, but a proper deep dive. Analyze where things were at, implementing new strategies, things that would make all the difference. I got more out of it than I could have imagined. I would absolutely recommend it to other designers wanting to scale their businesses. And I'm already looking forward to our next one on one coaching session. So I'll see you soon then. Thanks so much, Jade.
Speaker 11:My guest on today's interview is Emma Bloomfield. Emma runs EB Studios. She's been in business 14 years. Celebrated on the week that this was recorded and just had so much to talk to us about publishing books and evolving marketing systems, processes, mistakes along the way, business advice. I just had such an epic chat and it was so lovely to connect. I know you're gonna love it. So sit back and enjoy.
Welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today, Emma. So nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's, I'm excited. It's been a long time coming or when it's booked in for a couple of weeks, you get really excited and you yeah. I love doing these interviews. I did notice this week that you celebrated a big milestone in your business. 14 years.
Speaker 7:Yeah, yesterday was 14 years in business, which is absolutely wild to think of where I was this time 14 years ago compared to now. It's
Speaker 6:crazy. Congratulations. Is it something you, I feel like sometimes I reflect on my business journey and I think, I can't even believe I got through one year, let alone as the years move on. Is that what you, what like, is this exactly the journey that you wanted when you like, tell me a little bit about the starting point that you went into business.
Speaker 7:To be honest, I never really thought about it too much beyond just wanting some extra pocket money on the side of my day job. So I was already in the industry. I was working for an interior designer. Then I went into property styling, and then I had some time as a homewares buyer and the business, which is like bubbling away on the side. It was never really okay, I'm sitting down, I'm gonna build this big business. I'm gonna end up with a studio, I'm gonna have employees, I'm gonna write books. I'm gonna have done, famous people's houses and high net worth people's homes and some incredible real estate in Sydney. That was never the goal. It was literally just, oh, it'd be nice to have some extra money because as a junior I'm not getting paid that much and I want some new clothes. That was the extent of it, and then it just grew into this thing that. Became so much bigger than that and now I obviously have much larger strategies and goals and dreams for the business and work a lot harder to do those things. But in the beginning stages it wasn't much more than just trying to have some extra dollars in the bank.
Speaker 6:Na resigned to the idea, oh yeah, we do have a business. That's not, it's longer side hustle so I better get some goals in place. Yeah, there's no denying
Speaker 7:it. It's a beast that needs to be fed.
Speaker 6:I love that. And I was curious around, 14 years is no mean feat. It's definitely for those that I've been in business seven years and sometimes I still think that's completely wild. I'm like, oh gosh, we're always learning. Could you talk to me about your best and worst business advice?'cause I'm sure you've gotten plenty over the years.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I think that's one of the things that I have invested in over time is paying for the right advice. I think a lot of the advice that's not great is unsolicited advice that people give you along the way well-meaning friends or just other people in business that go, oh this is what worked for me. You should try the same thing. And they're in a completely different field, or they're a product based business and we're a service based business. So yeah there's certainly been. Plenty of bad advice along the way, but I think paying for the right people's advice that you really respect is where the key to growth is because I can't do it on my own there. There's so many things that happen to the business in a year that I need advice on, and there's so many things I wanna do that are outside of my comfort zone, or they're big goals that I don't necessarily know the pathway to achieve those things. So making sure that I have the right people around me from a higher level perspective, and that they're people that I know, trust and respect, and also have seen their own business growth. They're the ones that I will take the advice from, not necessarily the ones that are just throwing it out there off the cuff.
Speaker 6:It's so funny because I about you, but I feel like in the first couple of years, pretty much everything came from some social media guru and some free podcast. And because you don't have the kind of income sometimes to go and invest. And I see people that do that when they actually put that almost education budget into the very early years. I see them spring forward, like they almost fast forward five years of learning just in that intention to invest in their education. And it's, yeah, it's a really important point that we can all get the advice from anywhere, but is it relevant? It, a strategy is just a strategy unless it's actually you've sat down and is it the right move for your exact goals and business. And I think that's, that one size fits all is the problem. Half the time we have such access to social media and access to information that we're like, oh, we'll just plug and play. It's doesn't really work like that though, because that's for somebody else's goal or that's, it is a great idea, but it's not the greatest idea for where you are and where you wanna go.
Speaker 7:No, and I think the people that you have surrounded yourself with that know your business, they know your goals, they know the capacity that you can work at, and so they're not gonna start throwing ideas at you that are completely unachievable or are gonna send you into a complete meltdown mode to try and achieve that. So it is important that those people know you and they know your business. And I have full transparency with the people that I pay to mentor me and coach me in terms of the financials of the business, because there's no point me sitting down with someone that's a coach that is just gonna say, okay, you need to do this, you need to do that. But we don't have the cash flow to cover those things. So the people that are advising me need to have full transparency over everything.
Speaker 6:It's really, yeah, it's such a good point. And it's so important to have that good team around you, isn't it? And you have staff now, but also, I imagine after 14 years you've got really great connections within the industry and people that you can turn to.'cause you mentioned friends and family before and I feel like that is the worst place to get business advice. Because they're probably not even a potential client. You can't even quiz them through the lens of potential client.'cause they're like, oh no, I just asked you. Or they're not actually gonna hire you. They're not gonna work for you. They've not trained the way you've trained. And but yet we so heavily ask them and care what they think. In the early days, some people I talk to, I'm like, oh, but why? What does your sister-in-law know about mentoring interior designers? Yeah. In terms of systems and processes, which we know obviously hold up a successful business, do you feel that you started Systems Strong or were you one of the people that felt that you took off organically?'cause you mentioned it was never supposed, it was just a thing to, for pocket money or a side hustle. Do you feel like you started strong or you had to go out and actively go, enough is enough. This is, not working. There's operational leaks and I know I could do a better job. And what was that process like for the business?
Speaker 7:I think it's something that I have nailed in some areas and then not nailed and then things have let us down and so this has been an evolution. In the beginning stages, I actually did a business degree. So I came at business from quite a different perspective to most interior designers because I had that framework already. So from all of my studies and all of the assignments that I'd done at university, I wasn't long out of university when I started doing the business. And so all of that kind of just got shoved straight into that framework and then I was off and racing. And I really enjoy the strategy and business side of running the business just as much as I enjoy the creativity and, the transformation process of taking sometimes it's just a block of land into being a beautiful home. So for me, I've come at it from quite a different perspective because I've enjoyed that. And so I've used that to my advantage. But then there's been. The next level of growth that's been achieved. And then new hires start, or a different area of the business starts to grow. And then you go, oh, actually there's no system or process in place for that part of the business. We've been so heavily focused on the design process and delivering a really beautiful product for the client that we've ignored our marketing strategy or we've ignored, something that happens in logistics and delivery for the client. So there's always points in every single year in business where we review it as a team. Now it used to just be me doing it, but now we would do it as a team and go, Hey, what's not working? What do we need to fix? And then knuckling down and is there a software program that we can implement that will make our life easier? Or is it that we need to change something in the backend of what we're doing? Do we need a better system? Do we need someone else on the team to help do those things? And always evolving. I think that's the key, that you've always gotta evolve and technology changes. So drastically daily. Yeah, exactly. And AI and, yeah, so many of the things that we use today I didn't have access to eight years ago or even three years ago. So it's evolving to keep up with technology as well as customer behavior staff and all the other things that come along with that when running a business.
Speaker 6:It's interesting, isn't it?'cause as much as you're like, wow, I wish I had this back in the day, you just didn't know what you didn't know. And I feel like, yeah, it has to. It's changing so rapidly for everybody so fast, AI and what's possible and renders and all sorts of, imagery and it's only going to continue to do that for the next God knows how long I, think about my children and I think, oh, their education's gonna look very different in high school.'cause what are, if everything is searchable, what do they actually need to learn? It's, I just need them to have a full-time course on critical thinking and actually do not lose the human skills that it takes to run your life. But yeah. Yeah, it, and that evolution is not just in AI and technology. I'm sure you've seen some things in the marketing space in 14 years. How do you keep up to, because what we learn and what we know when we're at university or other things like. Just, it could be 12 months and you can look back at, the way you show up at Instagram today is so different to how we showed up, up in 2020, for example. And things that were working then don't work now. And it's so quick. I, the goalposts change all the time. And so where do you get your information from to keep up to date with all of that and how, what's your approach to that?
Speaker 7:Yeah, we are pretty active on most of the social media channels and just making sure that I'm across what the trends seem to be and participating in that. We have a fairly decent following on social media, so meant that, again, you just have to keep feeding it because it's there and it's a tool that works for us. We don't really pay for any marketing, so for us it's just been a case of looking at what works and then like we really only focus on three key marketing areas. Just knuckling down on them and then trying different things. But again, coming back to hiring the right people. Some of them are contractors, some of them stop and listening to what they think and everyone as a team having a conversation around social media and who gets featured on reels and what kind of content we feature on the reels. And then listening to the clients that come to us and say, oh, I saw you did X, Y, Z and I thought that you could do the same thing for me. And then realizing that actually a lot of people wanna see that stuff. So we share a lot of the behind the scenes of how a house actually comes about, whether it's decorating or design, because I think there's an era of mystery around it with interior design where people don't understand how you go from fall blank white walls to a really beautiful van.
Speaker 6:Speaking of marketing, I did happen to notice that one of your reels went completely bonkers recently with the side table. It's 15 million views and I think for anyone, yeah. For listeners who aren't aware of it, it was simply that you were out at Globe West at the showroom and showed one of their little side table pieces that slips into the sofa. And of course, it's great functionality, it's great design. But it's like, what, five seconds? I don't know how long it is. Yeah. Literally nine seconds. Yeah. And I think it just goes to show so much that how much just trying stuff out and being relaxed with your brand and relaxed with what you put out there and not trying to be overly like, not that I'm saying it's not professional or polished, but it's probably something that was quite off the cuff, just sharing something that happened that day as opposed to this long strategy that's a month in the making. And it's all about thought leadership and sometimes it's actually just just be authentically true to what excites you in the industry. And was that sort of the experience of that ria?
Speaker 7:Yeah, it was really bizarre. I literally had Eliza, our studio coordinator, film it'cause she sat down on the couch while we're in the showroom and goes, oh my God, how cool's this thing? And it was the tray that slides in and out. And I was like, oh my God, that's awesome. Let's do a video of it. So I said to her, just hold the phone there and do a video, literally nine seconds. And then I put heaps of stories up that day because we'd been out looking at a bunch of different showrooms and I was like, oh, one more story is probably gonna get lost. I'm gonna just post it as a reel and see what happens. And so I just put trending audio over the top of it, which was that lolly young, messy song, which was on every reel. And then put a sentence over the top saying Every sofa needs this. And posted it. And literally just watched it just go nuts. And it's still I'm still getting, we got over 12,000 new followers from it. It's been watched 16 million times I think. Yeah. And it's had like nearly 200,000 likes. It's just insane. I couldn't get it. I was like, why isn't it one of our interior design services? It's actually something I don't really sell that's gone viral.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And also, viral is never necessarily the intention just because of the conversion rate of those people. Whether or not they are the exact right people. Like it's a slow, steady approach. But people who could be potential clients is sometimes what we aim for more than that viral piece. But you can't help what, you can't help, when you're trying to do those things. Do you think it's been, like, have you seen any positive or negative influence so far on that? Kind of like 12,000 followers at once is a lot.
Speaker 7:Yeah, look, I think it's something that we probably won't ever really be able to replicate again. So I've taken it all with a grain of salt. Yeah. And a lot of the followers that we gained are in the us which obviously we can't help service from an interior design perspective, but I do have a book coming out later this year that will go around the world. So there's an opportunity there for us to sell the book to those people. But I think really the, at the end of the day, like what I took away from it was, it's just vanity metrics. Yeah, it looks great now that we've got 26,000 followers when we did have 14 and a half, whatever it was five weeks ago. And it, I guess it also has just reiterated to me that, yeah, really simple content with not much thought behind it and that just went off. So yeah, we're now speaking to our social media coordinator just saying, what can we do that's similar to that, that we can get? I don't think we're gonna get 16 million views on anything ever again, but you never know. And we'll give it a good crack in the meantime.
Speaker 6:And when you try to reverse engineer the. Fundamental way or reason that worked? It's got all of the right ingredients, isn't it? Because it's very relatable. It's inspiration, people are like, ah, and it's new. It's something that they haven't really seen. But everyone can look at that and
Speaker 7:I actually think that some of the comments, because it was something that slots into the side of the sofa, a lot of the comments were saying, oh, my dog would knock that over in two seconds. My kids would throw everything out. So I think that's what actually continued controversy and that's why Instagram picked it up because a lot of the comments were not necessarily super positive. They were saying, oh, that wouldn't work for me. Or then others saying, I think that's a great idea. Where can you buy it from? Yeah. And I think the US market is so used to leaving comments saying Link or send me the DM of the details, thinking that I was trying to sell something. That we had a lot of people leaving comments saying link. And I guess Instagram sees that there's people leaving comments and so therefore shows it to. Whoever. It obviously got put into the discovery feed and that's how it kept going. But I think the controversy of it was what continued driving it, not necessarily a Oh, that's a really cool thing.'cause I think people were leaving comments because they felt that they needed to say that.
Speaker 6:That's so interesting. And did you share it on TikTok as well? I'm not on TikTok. Okay. I feel that deep in my soul. I consume TikTok, but I don't think that I can. I've, for a year and a half been like, I really need to, it's this, it's that. I can see how it connects to my business, but also I am a, like super believer in design your own success and authenticity. If you're not authentically interested in showing up in that way, it can really no, not work, right? Because then you're coming. And I think that's true of a lot of interior designers because a lot of the projected brand identity is quite professional. And Pinterest sorry. TikTok is very raw, isn't it? It's very exactly just show up in your car and say what's annoying you and get people and also the comments. If you thought the Instagram comments were negative, TikTok comments are wild. I did not wanna sign myself up for that.
Speaker 7:No, me either. And our audience doesn't hang out on TikTok either, so it's not worth my time. Our time's better spent on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook. Yep.
Speaker 6:And how do you find LinkedIn?'cause I know a lot of designers are trepidatiously oh, do I, don't I?'cause everyone's ideal clients does with professional couple and like where do professional people hang out on LinkedIn? So do you find success in that area? Do you find it a worthwhile endeavor?
Speaker 7:Not necessarily from a direct to client perspective, it's more stay in contact with a lot of the business connections that I've made through networking and showing them what we're up to. So I've always approached social media from the perspective of it just being a bigger word of mouth engine, because a lot of my friends follow what we're doing on there. And then if they're having interesting conversations with people in their own network and those people happen to mention that they need a designer, if they've just bought a house or they're looking for the perfect sofa, then if they've seen that we are doing that on our social media, they'll be more inclined to recommend us to their friend rather than. Knowing what we do and not seeing it where if they can see what we're doing and then tell their friends about it. That's what I see. Instagram and social media being useful for us for not necessarily direct connection to clients. People will find us through Google. Yeah. And then they might follow us on Instagram until they're ready to engage us. And so I've taken it from that approach, not necessarily let's drum our business directly through Instagram posts.
Speaker 6:I love that perspective. I saw a reel or a TikTok or something a while ago and it made me laugh so much. And it was like once a month you should have these like dinners with your friends and do a PowerPoint presentation about what it is you actually do at work because your friends are your biggest advocates and half the time they don't properly understand the, they have no idea. You run idea. And so they're like, my friend's a designer and they don't know what that kind of means, or she's a keynote speaker. But they don't say your name in the right context, in the right rooms all of the time, unless they have a true understanding of what you do day in and day out. And I loved that because I thought about my own network and I thought, yeah, they top line get it. But they also know a lot about. My mentorship and courses and things involve, they just know they exist in a roundabout way, but would probably only speak my name to a potential homeowner. And I only take one client like that at a time. So I was like I need to have my PowerPoint presentation dinner with my friends. That's so true. Yeah. It's a good reminder to people listening to be like, when was the last time, like when you caught up, you actually said, Hey, if you hear of anybody who's renovating or building or looking for kitchens, and but talk to them about your niche and what it is that you'd love to do, just so they know to say your name, because that's what they wanna do. They wanna help. They wanna say your name to someone who is a good fit. Exactly. And we forget that I think, or we don't wanna be we won't take it up any space, but it's no, they wanna help you as much as you wanna grow their thing, like their business or whatever that looks like.
Speaker 7:And if they've watched our videos showing that we do a turnkey service where. People move back from overseas or maybe they're just busy and they don't have time for it, and we're showing everything of the team making the beds, putting the towels in the bathroom, putting the hand soap on the kitchen bench, literally unpacking the whole kitchen for them. Then my friends get it and they go, oh yeah, cool. Like I understand what her business does, and then tells everyone else in their network about it.
Speaker 6:Yeah, which is so nice.'cause then when they're in conversations with the HR department and someone's moving over from the states and you're like, Hey, I do know someone who can do that, whereas your name wouldn't come up if they didn't specifically understand the nation and the area in which you service. You mentioned before a third book coming out. Congratulations. That's out in June, and I just think that's so incredible. One book is incredible. Two book is, what's the next adjective? Amazing. But third three books, it's crazy. What has that journey been like in terms of, pitching to get published in the first place, and then once the book came out, was it everything that you expected? What did it do for the business, the career? What's that been like?
Speaker 7:It was a kind of wild ride. I never pitched for the book to be published in the first place. I was with a friend of mine who was publishing her book and her publisher came on set one day when we were doing some behind the scenes photos for her shoot. And I just happened to off the cuff mention to the publisher, oh, I've always wanted to write a book one day. And I still to this day don't even know where those words came from because I don't think I'd ever really thought about it that much.
Speaker 6:All the best laid ideas are like that, aren't they? If you put any thought behind those yeses, you freak out. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7:And she said what would you wanna write about? And I said, look, I'm running decorating workshops mostly in rural and regional areas of Australia teaching the five principles of interior des interior decorating and interior design. And just rattled them off. And I said, if I did a book, it would be illustrated. I don't want anything to be photographed because then it'll date. And we know how quickly interiors change. And she goes, I think it's a great idea. Come chat with me. So I went and met with her. She offered me a deal on the spot that I then wrote the whole manuscript. I had an illustrator do all of the illustrations and then they sent me back, the author sign off for it to go to print. And I was like, oh, but what's the book called? What's the front cover look like? What am I signing off on? I've not really had a lot of conversation with you guys about this. And they were like, oh no, don't worry about it. Like we'll send it to you really quickly. They sent it to me and it was horrendous and I absolutely panicked and I was like, I can't put my name to that. I dunno what to do. And ended up getting lawyers involved and long story short, got out of that contract with that publisher, but had this whole book that I didn't know what to do with.'cause I was like, I've just spent. The better part of 12 months preparing this, that kind of been for nothing. And it was around the same time that another friend of Mine's book got released as well. And I went to her book launch and just mentioned in passing to her publisher what had happened with me. And she gave me her credit, her business card and said call me like, it sounds like it's going down the GLA and I know exactly who I could send you to instead. So literally messaged her the week after when it all really turned bad and she said, okay, meet me tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM at this cafe. I met her, showed her everything, and she goes, okay, you need to speak to Heidi Grant. And so went and met with Heidi Grant. They loved it. We signed the first book and that was out in 2017. And then they came back and said, we think you need to do a second one. We've always seen this as like a trio kind of thing. So I did the second one and then a lot of time passed between the last one. That was 2019 Covid happened. I thought. I don't really have anything else left to write about. I've said it all already, but then this, there was like this thing that just was brewing in the back of my mind. I had a lot of friends that were renovating during covid and or doing, things around the house and they kept coming and asking the same kind of questions like how do I, how high do I hang the light above the island bench? Yeah. The plumber's here, he wants to know, where do I hang the toilet roll holder? And I was like, I've written a book about this stuff. Like, why is everyone asking me these questions? And I went, you know what? None of the books, although they've been illustrated to show certain parts of the book that I want highlighted more than others, there was no diagrams that said this dimension or that dimension. So this third book obviously has more of a renovation focus as well. The last ones were more decorating focused, but this one has proper dimensions showing you like when the electrician's in the house and he wants to know when to hang your dining pendant, this is the diagram that you can refer back to help you make those decisions. So I've worked really closely with the illustrator to make that happen and I'm really looking forward to it coming out and being able to pass it to someone and go, this is exactly what you need to get you from the very beginning of a reno all the way through to the end.
Speaker 6:I love that. And such a great market. Like Australia obviously is like a world leader in DIY and renovation. I feel like it's just hit that. Yeah. And also. Thinking outside of the square a little bit. Design students, it's great just to understand standard bench heights and standard, like you don't know that until you've had the onsite experience. And so it's not about correcting someone's ideas or doing anything, but having a reference book right beside you as you learn, as you grow and experience is priceless. I feel like those early days of doing e-sign and dialing in, and even dialing in into the United States and just thinking, oh gosh, I've gotta do the imperial, I've gotta do all of the like conversions and I've gotta do this. Yeah. I ordered. Not the same but a kind of a similarish kind of book from the states in their measurements. And I had it next to me all the time. And I found it such a great resource to actually be like, spatially, these are your numbers that are gonna work before you invest. Before you build, before and as you say, most especially when the trades get there, that's when the homeowner or the renovator or the self designer is panicked because they're getting asked questions that Yes. For us seem very simple after you've had experience, but in the beginning you're just like, who thought? Who? I never knew the toilet roll placement was intentional. Like I just thought it was like wherever you think to reach to, but it's actually there's a whole big about, or you think the trades are gonna make that decision for you. Yeah. And the trade is looking at you. If it's up to me, it's builders wife, like that's it. That's all you're getting. You may wanna chat to someone first. I think that's fantastic. I can't wait to take a look at a copy. I'm excited. Pretty fun. Yeah. You mentioned earlier working on some famous houses and all with famous people. Is there a particular celebrity if you could dream, a little dream that you'd like to design their space?
Speaker 7:Oh my gosh. Maybe in the States. I feel like the Americans do design in such a different way to the way that Australians do it, and over there, when you're building an interior designer, is a need to have. Whereas I find that in Australia it's a nice to have. So over there it's like a non-negotiable, like every single person that's designing would do would hire an interior designer. I feel like Molly Sims, she's that actress and model. I would just love to do her house. I don't know why she shares a lot about her house. I follow her on Instagram and I feel like she'd be fun to design for.
Speaker 6:Put it out into the universe. You never know. Yeah, it's always good. And it's interesting, the difference, isn't it? Because yeah. I feel here when people are building, whether it's volume builder or not, there's a sort of a sense of the builder will supply us with a quick consultation with someone to inform us on the colors and we'll move forward. And that, for one to stepping very carefully on what I'm saying here, but that seems to produce consistently a look and feel that's about resale and not about a home and how you live. And it doesn't always automatically reflect the family that are actually building. It's more about these warm grays all have the same undertone and they're all gonna work, so that's fine. And yeah, I do wish that we had more of that approach. Even 50, I take 50% more, to be honest, where people are engaging because what's actually happening and what, listeners will be nodding their head, I'm sure at the moment, is that you're getting people reach out and by this, the point that they're overwhelmed and unsure, things are locked in and things can't be changed. And there's this real sense sometimes to scramble, to rescue the desire. And so you come in, all the finishes and fixtures are neutral. Beige out in the house and they're like, bring me all of the grit and the substance into my design. And yeah, I feel like it would be so nice if we were engaged a lot earlier. Do you think that's like an education piece for us to be constantly explaining to people or do you just think it's a cultural thing that will just take a little time to shift?
Speaker 7:I think it's a bit of both. And I think also builders are cottoning on more and more that it makes their life so much easier when they have a designer that's done everything before they have to get to the pricing stage of the job. So they're out there doing the right thing by everyone and making their lives easier by saying to the client, have you thought of engaging a designer?
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 7:And then if you do, this is how it would make the process smoother. And yes, it's an upfront cost, but you'll save money in the long run because I'm not gonna come and ask you a thousand questions and you are not gonna go and buy the wrong tiles. I'm not gonna have to coach you through. Because there'll be someone else that can do that well at the beginning, and then it's just a, and they can get to everyone. Yeah. And they can do what they're hired to do. My brother's a builder and he constantly complains about, oh, I just wish that they would just walk out for someone like you that could help. He is I don't know the answer to the stuff they're asking. They're saying, do they think that this tap's gonna go with this tile? And he has a bit of an eye for design, but a lot of builders don't. They're literally just no, I'm really good at doing the practical stuff and I'm not gonna start advising you whether or not that Splashback works with that benchmark.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And must be quite frustrating for them because at the end of the day, they've come in, they've got a certain amount of hours to do the productive work that needs to get done, and they were hoping that, that would be dealt with. At the side, whether it's with the designer or in person. And they do get asked a lot of opinion pieces around what, again, dependent lighting placements. They're like, that would at least be the electrician. I don't know. But they, the go to is that builder because they hold that relationship with the homeowner. And I think you're right that a lot of builders are starting to move towards recognizing what that could be in that relationship and having that other person be the sounding board.'cause the designer Yeah. Just holds so much of the project information and do that. I find that, yeah. And then we work as a team. Yeah, absolutely. And it's almost to the point where I'm seeing more and more designers that I'm speaking with that have got relationships where it's become an inclusion where they're actually like, it is a non-negotiable that they have even just a small consultation, but it's like there's a three hour consult. There's three hours of interior design involved in this quote, and that is because it saves a builder like 10 hours of stupid questions. I shouldn't say stupid questions, but like it saves them so much time that they're starting to really see the value. So I've definitely agreed with that shift. I'm seeing it more and more as well. Yeah. I'm gonna flick us back to systems. I know I spoke about it before, but it holds everything together. Is there a single system or process that you think made the biggest impact into EV studio?
Speaker 7:We custom designed our own project management spreadsheet, I guess you'd call it, because I couldn't find one that fit everything I needed. To do.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 7:And anyone that starts working with us, the girls laugh and they're like, okay, when are you gonna show them the W document? They're gonna freak out.
Speaker 6:Wait to see if that person comes back from lunch on day one. Once they see the spreadsheet.
Speaker 7:Yeah, look at the spreadsheet. It's a big like working document. And we are working with a web developer to try and automate a fair bit of it because it is still a spreadsheet that runs the majority of the business. But I just didn't find that Asana on Monday or.com or any of those types of sites worked for us because I wanted to have a lot more flexibility with the data that I was putting into it. So I had someone, I think it was on like one of those like freelancer sites, like work or something I had, yeah, I had someone custom build it for me. So every year we start a new one fresh, and it pulls a whole bunch of data. So it's like a CRM as well as a financial tracking tool. And then obviously project management as well. So we run every single project through it. We know the status of every single project. There's a lot of manual entry that still needs to happen with it, which is what we're trying to automate, but we're getting there and it just is the easiest way for everyone to have a snapshot of every single order that's being placed in the business. Every single status of every single project, the monthly revenue, monthly expenses, every lead that's come in, every lead, we've converted all the client details, and then we have goals and metrics around each of those
Speaker 5:things.
Speaker 7:So I can do a snapshot of that at any time and open up, we have a dashboard for it and the dashboard displays. How many inquiries we've had, how many of them have converted to booking consultations, and then from those people that we've met at consultations who then paid to become a full blown service client. And then we have percentages that we need to hit per month to reach that. And before, when we weren't really doing that, we, it was a bit hit and miss. And now that we're really tracking it in that way, which we've done for a couple of years now, we pretty much always hit the goals because we can see it. And if you don't have it in front of it, you're not gonna do it.
Speaker 6:That is so important and I think it's so easily like head in sand for a little bit and then oh, I can check it if I want to check it. But that's not enough. It's not about that The data exists if you wanna go hunting for it. The truth of the matter is you probably won't go looking maybe a monthly review maybe, but I think if you are tracking towards a goal, there's, especially if you have staff, because people work on reward, they work on competitiveness. There's all sorts of like parts of the psychology of people. That means that if they've got eyes on the target, if they've got eyes on where they're tracking towards, I think it's fantastic. And I love that you just went and did that. I have a similar thing in notion where I just could not find a single, like everything was split into a tech flow of at least five different applications. And that's something that you see very much across the interior design industry. And yes, there are certain ones that do better now more time to design program at DO side. There's quite a few that are getting better and better, but at the same time, I work with a lot of emerging designers, so I wanted to build them something that was free because they can't afford the subscription. Exactly. So I was like, you know what? Let me build everything that we need on Notion, and then inside of my course, I can teach you that CRM and when you have the money, you can decide if you wanna go and upgrade, that's fine. I won't be offended. I just want you to have a solution when you start. And I think that obviously comes from your business background and acumen and the ability to like be very solution focused and be able to be like, look, I know what I need. I just need. Someone on Fiverr or some, someone in an internet nerd forum to give me the guidance to get stuck in and make the thing that I need. So I love that.
Speaker 7:Exactly, because at the end of the day, it also, if we're organized, it means that the client's programs projects are organized as well. And we want the client to have a five star experience. We like to think that anyone that comes to work with our studio could liken it to going into a five star hotel. And you don't have to think about needing anything because it's already been presented to you or it's just one phone call away to make that happen. And if we're not organized in the backend, our business, then it's gonna show at the front end that the client receives.
Speaker 6:Absolutely. I was laughing, I was looking the other day into AI agents and some of the things that you can automate with those and looking at how they're now at a position and at a level where they can manage procurement and quoting and all of that kind of stuff. And I just see your eyeballs do what everybody's ears just did. Like what? And then that term like strong thing about control as a creative, I don't know, maybe I just speak for myself, but I feel like a lot of people I speak to are like, I don't, I'm not sure about, getting staff or I'm not sure where I can relinquish that control or I like to be across it from a trust perspective. It's kind an interesting conversation to wonder, would you ever outsource, like the procurement, the financial side? Your business is in charge of paying the invoice, right? I don't know that I really want AI going off and ordering$65,000 worth of furniture under my name. I feel a bit weird about it. How have you approached AI and all the changes that are coming in?
Speaker 7:Yeah, we have integrated a fair bit of it because there was just so many things that I was still doing that I was the roadblock to the business. And so every time we've had a new hire, we've rewritten our like operations and systems and processes, and every single time I was like I reckon there's a software that could do that. And then you'd search for it and it didn't exist, or, that's why we're working with our web developer to build out a bunch of things that will help us because there are so many things that are available now, but where do you wanna focus your time and effort and where do you wanna actually, like you've said notion before, that's something that I've started to look into because I know that the spreadsheet is just a Google spreadsheet, but notion exists and that could be something that we could implement. You sign up, you do the demo, and then you're literally like, oh my God. But trying to move everyone over and trying do the setup of all of that.
Speaker 6:It's a very intimidating software in the beginning. I'm not gonna pretend that when I introduce people to Notion, I expect them to go, oh, fantastic. We manage all of our operations. That's a learning curve because it's a, it can do a lot. It's pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Yeah. But we're working a lot with all sorts of different AI software and automating so much of what we're trying to do because at the end of the day, interior design is basically just run a logistics business. Yeah, there's a creative side to it as well, but a lot of what we're doing is getting things from A to B and finding those things in the first place. And that doesn't necessarily have to be done by a person. There's definitely ways that we can implement software and AI and whatever else to help us instead of having to have someone wasting their time in our studio doing it when they could be doing something else that is way more beneficial to the client than. Doing data entry.
Speaker 6:Yeah, a hundred percent agree. And also just like thinking about staying in your zone of genius and doing the things that you do well, like that creative stuff is fantastic. But also I feel like about 80% of what we do is very much problem solving and thinking, and you can get support of that through AI as well. Like people keep forgetting. The fundamental most simple thing is just to go and say, I'm having an issue with X. This is where what my kind of blockers are, or this is why I can't seem to think of the solution straight away. Give me 20 ideas to get me moving towards that solution. Or like uploading a photo of something and being like, I. This is everything that's in my fridge plan, my shopping list. It can literally do that. You can upload a photo of your agent, something's broken. Talk to me like I'm an absolute beginner because I am. I can't fix it. And then give me a bit of an indication. We are not saying that you take the information from AI and you implement it and run with it without questioning, but it's it just gets you so much further to then be able to pop into a Monday morning meeting and say, I did a bit of Googling AIing over the weekend and this is the starting point. And yeah, and I just love the idea of. Asking, so Chacha Pati has tasks now, and I'm not sure if you've used that, but it's about setting repeatable things that it can go and do for you maybe while you're asleep and then give you all of that data first thing in the morning or late at night. And my late at night one will always introduce me to new trade suppliers that operate in my market and what's new in the showroom. And like those sorts of things are fantastic because I was busy doing other things. A chat tutee was, knows my aesthetic, has rules behind it as what I'm looking for, and will just give me like two lamps, a side table and a thing. And I'm like, fantastic. I'm staying on top of it daily, but I'm not giving it the kind of a attention, as you say in the studio. It would take me. Two and a half hours to find something new and exciting because I don't even know what I'm looking for. I don't know. I'm searching for new trade suppliers and I don't know who they are. That's gonna take forever. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Or you have to wait until there's a trade fair, which is only a few times a year and you could have had it within 24 hours.
Speaker 6:And even that's curated right? By the people who pay to be there and whatnot. So I do really like the idea that it has delivered some stinkers. I'm not gonna pretend a's perfect and it's delivered a couple of things that I've been like, wow, I didn't actually know that existed, or, that's a really great thing. So in terms of staying on top of trends and staying just fast tracking all the things that are floating around in your brain, there's so much Yeah. Ahead for us, I think, which is amazing.
Speaker 7:Totally agree.
Speaker 6:I'm just gonna round out today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit around your approach to pricing. I feel like pricing is one of those things that, how do I. I think there's more importance put on it than it actually deserves in terms of your approach to pricing your, like where you are at in the marketplace. So many people are desperate to find out what is industry standard, which new flash there is now, and what is what is everybody else doing? But I think we forget that you can actually reverse engineer your own goals to support your goals and what you wanna do, and then you can get a growth number on that. And that's actually all you need to know about pricing. It's become this huge epic conversation in the industry. I find that everyone's go-to is, I just need to find out what the proposal and what the what the fees are. But it's anyway. What's your sort of approach to pricing and how has that changed over 14 years?
Speaker 7:I think everyone's obsessed with trying to find out what other designers charge and you go they might be running a completely not profitable business. Why do you wanna copy that or, yeah. They might have completely different expenses, and so that doesn't make their pricing right. I think you need to just really stick in your own lane about it and price it the way that you know works for you. So like I've definitely been guilty of trying to do all of that in the past for us. We know what our numbers are. I know what it costs to run the business. I know what it costs to hire staff. We know when we've taken too much time to do and deliver a project. And so we have guidelines when we are pricing that help us work that out. But again, we stop and look at it every couple of months and go, hang on a minute. We just lost that proposal. Did we lose it from a pricing perspective? What feedback can we get from the client to understand, did they not see the value? Did they get another price that was a lot cheaper? Or what was it that we could improve on? And just constantly changing it. Like it's not something that we set at the start of the year and then go, okay, cool, like it's gonna stay that way. Forever and every project is so different, and I think that's why designers struggle so much because how long is a piece of strength? Like you really can't tell whether or not that person's going to have a thousand questions for you, or they're gonna be the easiest client ever that literally sends you three emails across the span of their whole project. That's the thing you have to estimate from the beginning, which makes it difficult. It's not necessarily the scope of the project, it's sometimes the communication method that the client has and trying to cost out your time in advance when you've literally spent maybe an hour with them of yeah, okay, they seem really lovely. And then next thing you know it is Hey, here's a text message. Here's an Instagram dm, here's a WhatsApp picture. Like all these different methods of communication that they then start contacting you with that you have to go I'm not sure I priced my services to fit.
Speaker 6:Interesting. All of this
Speaker 7:communication. Yeah,
Speaker 6:everybody put, it's like a job interview. I feel like they put their best foot forward with the client brief and things, and then it's eight hours after the deposit's paid. It's like you've got no chill, like you're sending me text messages about bar stools at 11 o'clock at night, and I'm not even doing a kitchen. I don't understand. It's like dating.
Speaker 7:It's the same thing. Yeah I find it hard to give advice on the pricing element because it is so specific to every business, but I think as long as you're aware of what it costs you to run your business and how much you wanna be taking away from that, I think females in particular undersell themselves quite significantly, and that's something that needs to change because men will just be like, oh yeah, it costs this much. And that's how it is. We will sit and kind of review it and then panic and then overthink it. And worry that we're not worth that much. And then when the client rejects it, we go, oh all of those thoughts that I had of just being substantiated by the fact that they've not accepted my proposal. But that may not have been the reason why they didn't go with you. It might have been'cause they didn't like the shoes you were wearing. You just dunno what it's,
Speaker 6:I do love that approach though because just as every room is different, every quote is bespoke. And yet I speak to so many designers who change their pricing either annually or financial yearly. Like just, it's the 1st of July, a price rise. And they go out and they publicize that and it's you don't ever need to talk about your money or explain or justify a price rise. You experience and demand have changed in the last 12 months. And my experience and demand change by one every job. So if I wanna change my pricing up a little, down a little, play with it. Find the pressure point. Push till I get a no and then go, oh, there she is. Yeah, I better not do that. That's too high. And I don't think there's enough playfulness or fun in pricing at all. I think people just go I can't change it. No, I, that's more almost like more of a product based approach as well. Like I feel if a product is costed out, the manufacturers everything that a product is selling for a certain amount, then that business has a responsibility to probably communicate that change. But a service changes between service providing to service providing, and each and every job is so different that you don't need to justify your pricing or like yesterday's pricing is today's, none of today's business. You don't actually need to talk to anybody about why it's different. And just as you say, and you can recognize nuances in that I'm not gonna say to a client, oh, yours is a bit different to a friend of yours who referred you because she wasn't a pain in the ass. And I can tell you're going to be like, I'm not gonna be able to justify that. So I would never try, I would just be like, her quote was for her brief, for her quote, and this is the one for yours. And that's the end of it. Are there any misconceptions about the design industry that you think are out there? Not just for people coming into the industry, but as a whole?
Speaker 7:Yeah, everyone just thinks that what we do is like super glamorous and that you get to swan around wearing nice outfits and walking through houses. That's a small portion of it. But what you don't see is like how many hours I will spend at my desk. And that's just the reality of growing a business. I'm sure that there's easier things that I could be doing could probably go and work for someone else for more money and less stress, but I get so much fulfillment and satisfaction out of what I do that's why I keep pushing and that's why I hire people to help with all the coaching and mentoring and then I take their advice and implement it. And that means sometimes working until late at night to get those things done, because I see the value in spending time doing that. I do have a fair bit of flexibility with how I spend my week outside of me scheduling meetings, but I'm in control of when I'm scheduling most of those meetings. So if I have a really, hectic admin schedule and I've just gotta get stuff done, if I wanna redesign our proposal software template, or if I wanna sit and completely. Redo our pricing. I can schedule that into my timeframe. I don't necessarily need to wait until there's the perfect gap because that will never come because there's always someone from me at some point in time. So I think the misconception is that a lot of it is that it's a fun and oh, what a fun like Philly job. No, there's a lot that goes into running a business. It's not just choosing cushions and choosing wallpaper. We get a lot of satisfaction outta doing it, and there's a lot of creativity, which is the fun part. But at the end of the day, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes logistically to make a house come to life, or to furnish a house in full, and to have a team of staff and to help nurture them in their careers and make sure that they're headed in the right directions as well. And then also making sure that you're fulfilling your own career goals too. So there's so much that goes into it that doesn't really get spoken about and we don't share on Instagram because who really wants to see me sitting at my desk at eight o'clock at night trying to work out what part of the pricing structure needs to be redone? Because that's boring. Yeah. No one wants to see that. Do we share the fun bar? Yeah. It's glamorous. Yeah. We share the fun bar'cause that's the bit that people wanna see. And it is fun seeing wallpapers and, the way that paint can transform a room, me sitting down and rewriting a design proposal, not really that interesting.
Speaker 6:How big is your team?
Speaker 7:So there's, we have contractors that work for us when we have bigger projects, but at any one point in time, there's generally between four to six of us.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Wow. And how do you you mentioned before nurturing their goals and their trajectory in their careers, but without a HR department, I just find sometimes we forget like how much the business owner themselves carry a lot of that emotional stuff and the guidance into standard operating procedures. The expectations like when, it's like when a staff member is representing your, like a personal brand as well, your name, it's it's so much bigger than just going, Hey, I think I'll just pop a seek ad out and see if I can get some help. Was that a big transition period in your business? Did you feel like that was wild when you first took on your first staff?
Speaker 7:I think the hardest part is that you have your own design aesthetic, and that's so much harder to teach than the bare bones of design principles. And that's what I struggled with when starting to go through the hiring phase. I think for some people it just won't ever be something that they need to worry about because they don't want the goals of having to do that, and they don't want to have to train staff and they wanna have more creative control over it. For me. And the opportunities that came our way. I knew that with the things that I wanna achieve and what I wanna do, it was a no brainer that we needed to take staff on because I couldn't do it all. I've got, I've got books, I've got other interests in other areas of business. I have other parts of the business that still relate to design, but not necessarily design work. And I want to continue to grow a really successful studio. So it's a thing that you just have to take on board, that staff come with it. And so just making sure that the fit personality wise is important because we all work together. We all work in the same office, and we need to all get along. And then really honing their design skills to make sure it fits with this is, the EB Studio look and feel. This is what clients are expecting when they engage our team and making sure that if someone else on the team is doing part of that project, it still has the same look as if I was doing it as well. And that's where you really need to focus your training because systems and processes you can learn because we've got training manuals, there's heaps of videos on a lot of the software systems that we use. And so they can learn that in their own time and pretty much anyone can learn that. But then in terms of the design aesthetic of this specific studio that you're working for, you really need to get into the head of the director of that studio to understand why do you choose that sofa fabric, and then why did you know that armchair was the right armchair for that project? Or why did we only do a hundred percent wool rugs for that house and we didn't bring anything polyester in. So all of those things need to be things that I say out loud or at least try and find a way to create some kind of system and process for the girls to understand. That's what the decision making process is like when I'm choosing items for someone's house, it helps that I have some decorating books that I've written all of that in.
Speaker 6:Yeah, read this on day one, you just drop all the coffee table books on their desk.
Speaker 7:Exactly. And we have, a fair few Instagram posts for you to read that explain my design aesthetic. And we also have a lot of portfolio images as well that tell that story. So if they're ever not sure it's an easy, quick refer back to Emma's books or the portfolio on the website and just reiterating like what it is that makes the EB studio look happen for someone and how can they can replicate that themselves too.
Speaker 6:I really love that insight though because I think there's a lot of people that worry heavily about losing control, not being the designer who did the designing. And I just love that explanation'cause it just articulates that you have creative sign off, you have creative license, you're also supporting them creatively. That doesn't mean you have to hold the pen. So you can actually be like, bring back to me in your, you pitch that to me first and then we'll go pitch it to the client. Or keeping yourself in. Yeah. Again, using the terminology of zone of genius, but keeping yourself doing the things that bring in the business. People wanna see you as Eeb Studio, they wanna meet you. Like those are the things we are like, I'll absolutely be present here and here with the touch points. It's essential that I'm there, but at other times, actually, as long as you've had eyes across it, it can still go out and represent you and your name and your brand without you having to Exactly, yeah. Physically do it. And. It's something way back. I think one of the first interviews that I did in this podcast, I spoke to Carleen from Cedar and Suede and she unpacked a little bit of how she selects all the materials, but she doesn't do the render, she doesn't do the drawing, she doesn't do the documentation. And she's got different people that play different roles inside of her business. And it's very smart to understand that you wanna grow. And the way to do that is actually to manage and delegate and support other people to do what you can't feel. Yeah.
Speaker 7:You need to do. And empowering them too, because they have their own careers as well. So it's all part of the process of everyone's involvement.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for all of that insight. I feel like I could go and write my own book now, but it would very much be your story, so I won't do that. Thank you so much, Emma. Wanna chat to you again soon. Thank you. Okay, bye for now.
Speaker 12:I hope you enjoyed listening to that chat. As much as I enjoyed having it, Emma was an absolutely delight. If you would like to reach out to her in any way or learn more about her books, please see the show notes for all of the links, and I will be back in your ears next Thursday with a solo episode. Bye for now.
Speaker 13:That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you've found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. Just like you for your daily dose of design business tips, and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at Oleander and Finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www.oleanderandfinch.com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.
