Okay, spill.. What are we all charging?

In this conversation, Rhiannon Lee discusses the critical importance of proper pricing in the interior design industry. She emphasises that underpricing not only affects financial health but also impacts brand perception, client relationships, and personal satisfaction. Through real-life case studies, she illustrates the detrimental effects of low rates and provides actionable strategies for designers to reassess and raise their prices effectively. The discussion also touches on the emotional toll of undercharging and the necessity of valuing one's expertise and time.

Raising rates is not just about money; it's about valuing time and expertise.
Underpricing can lead to resentment and burnout in professionals.
Real-life case studies highlight the importance of value pricing.
Mindset shifts are crucial for overcoming pricing fears.
Effective pricing strategies can transform a designer's business.
Brand perception is directly linked to pricing strategies.
Emotional well-being is affected by how much one charges.
Setting minimum project fees can help filter out the wrong clients.
Time tracking is essential for understanding true costs.
Practicing how to communicate pricing confidently is key. 

"It's not just your reputation that comes into play."
"You are not a junior anymore. Why are we charging like one?"
"You need to be paid accordingly."
"You are worth so much more than that."
"You can't be doing chats for $99."
"Your pricing tells the market how to treat you."
"Don't undersell your time and expertise."
"It's about running profitable, sustainable, respected businesses."

Chapters

00:00 Understanding the Cost of Underpricing
02:51 Real-Life Case Studies: Client Experiences
05:59 The Importance of Value Pricing
09:08 Transforming Mindsets Around Pricing
12:07 Strategies for Raising Rates Effectively
15:11 The Emotional Toll of Undercharging
17:55 Brand Perception and Pricing
21:04 The Impact of Pricing on Business Sustainability
24:08 Overcoming Pricing Excuses
27:02 Final Thoughts on Pricing and Value

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Transcript

0:29

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, took time to write down the step-by-step framework, so now 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. Today, I don't just wanna talk about raising your rates for no reason whatsoever, but I actually wanna look at running the numbers, thinking about modeling the different possibilities, calling out our mindset blocks, and just looking at what it's actually costing you to stay affordable or staying cheap, or even just staying in your comfort zone, because let's be honest. That's exactly where you are. If you are concerned about even exploring what is possible when it comes to your pricing, it's not always just about the money. I mean, this is your time. This is your energy, this is your brand positioning. I, I was speaking to someone I was coaching the other day and saying, well, hang on a second. You have two arms in your business, property styling and interior design. And if you are charging without blinking six to$8,000 to property style or to style something for sale, but then you are. Saying it's$1,600 to do a whole house renovation. I would be questioning immediately if that designer was gonna do a good job, or if that is a dodgy kind of reno that I can be expecting or, or like not the best advice or certainly not the best outcome. It's not just your reputation that comes into play, but I do find that resentment fosters very quickly when we don't charge the right amount, and I. Often say it's not your client's fault. If you begin to resent the project, it's usually because you never actually gave your clients the ability to pay you full price.'cause you undercharged yourself. And then you got annoyed at them when they were asking more and more of you and you were like, well, you haven't even paid that much. That's because you didn't give them an opportunity to pay you fairly and correctly so that no resentment will foster in the projects. The best projects that I have done, I have felt really well rewarded for my time. I've felt respected. I have felt mutual trust, and all of that starts with pricing. Okay, so now I'm gonna bring the receipts because I am the person who's speaking to everybody all of the time. Every single one of these people are real. I'm going to keep them anonymous. Obviously, uh, I have not asked their permission to share these stories because I'm just keeping them in third person, but they are actual people I've coached or worked with over the course of the last 18 months. Specifically, I think it's really important that we check the receipts from time to time, and we do look at what real life designers are charging and what's going on out there. So the first one I wanna speak about, client number one has 12 years experience and was still charging$150 an hour. Have. Has not, or had not raised her prices in over a decade. Now think about that. A decade of experience. That's wild to me. So you have gotten 10 years better at being in the design industry, the precedents, the projects, the things that you would've been exposed to, the things that you will have learned, the education that you bring to projects now based on things that you've done over the last decade, and you are still charging what you charged. Effectively when you had two years experience or less. That is insane to me, but not uncommon. I actually do hear that a lot. Uh, I haven't, you know, really put my pricing up in the last, since I started, or I don't do it every year. I am in no way suggesting that you should annually buy financial or calendar year increase your pricing. I think it's time to put the pricing up when the pricing isn't right to begin with. This designer that I spoke to was fully booked, really great word of mouth, really great referrals, but financially stuck because she wasn't really profitable, right? She's running a business that was modeled for 2015, and one thing that struck me straight away was how emotionally drain that she sounded, and she wasn't. Proud of her pricing. So we're in a group setting and I was like, okay, over to you client number one. And she was like, oh, I'm charging this. And the fact that she hadn't explored value pricing in any way and was just like, I'm a set$150 an hour have always been that way. I was horrified. I was like, you are not a junior anymore. Why are we charging like one? And not even that, like no shade. Whatever, if that's the right number for you, it's the right number for you. However, you have a decade of experience and I've got girls entering as graduate designers on 1 75 into the market here in Melbourne. This is a Melbourne based designer as well. There's no way she should be less than someone who's just graduated with 12 years experience. I also liken it to, in one of my coaching calls a little while ago, I spoke about when I worked as a wedding coordinator and I was in charge of the entire venue, the kitchen, the chef. All the wait staff, all the bartenders, all the E everybody. That was my job as the wedding coordinator. I would host the bride and groom and. Event, coordinate and manage the entire function center on the day of the wedding. I was the highest paid person in that room because when your uncle gets drunk and tries to smash the bathroom window and or steal the light fittings or do all of that stuff, I am the one that is called to placate him, remove him from the ven, like, you know. Damage control. I know what I'm doing. I am the person who has the run sheet. I tell the mc when to speak, when to throw open the doors for the bride and groom like that was all my responsibility. If there was emergency in the kitchen, the chef would come to me. I, the buck stops with me essentially. So I was the highest paid person in that venue at any given wedding. Now, can you imagine if I was just like, oh, I charge$150 an hour. That's what it is for me to do venue hire, but then the chefs on the salary. That means for the amount of weddings we turn over in a week. The chef earned more than me. Great. They do an amazing job. The bar staff earned more than me. They're casual. Waitress who's still in high school, was earning more than me. Like there's a real discrepancy, and I think we need to remember that as a designer on site, you are triaging pro and problem solving and advocating for your clients and bringing the outcome together, using all of the different trades and all of the different tools that you're. Proposal and you are puppeteering or event managing the entire transformation, be it a new build, renovation, et cetera. So you need to be paid accordingly. You need to be at the top tier, or you need to be the person who just like the wedding coordinator is everything. Every disaster is gonna come through you, so you need to make sure that you're not getting paid less than somebody who's. Perhaps contracting in for a couple of hours and is qualified or not qualified at their skill. So really, really need to understand our value here with client one. We immediately bumped up her hourly rate to$225 an hour. So she's gone from one 50 to 2 25, where I would like to see her sit with that much inquiry manned ize. Perfect. So let's look at the math. 80 hours a month, billable at$150 an hour. Should be looking at. Clearing at$12,000 a month, 80 hours a month at 2 25 an hour, she's looking at$18,000 a month, which is$6,000 more revenue per month, or 70 2K extra per year. That's a really big hidden cost of years of lost income and creeping resentment that almost make you wanna throw your business out. Get in the bin. I don't want that for anyone. If you are feeling like you recognize client one, please come and see me. Come and chat to me. If you have 12 weeks, come and join the framework Express work. We are about to do this process again for a small group of six women kicking off on the 30th of June, and so they are starting their financial year and they're really gonna get this right. Please don't be client one. All right. Let's talk about client two. A regional designer charging$120 for in-home consults. We heard things in conversation, and this was in an entirely different coaching environment, not a group coaching, but a private coaching where she said to me, no one where I live will pay more than$120. What am I gonna say to that? That's not fact. That's your belief. That's your money mindset. That's your assumption about what other people will pay to have you and your expertise visit their home. Because I don't actually mind it. This person was in regional New South Wales and I don't like, you know, I look at all the areas and I do understand I will to a point, allow this as. Something that is interesting for me to know feedback, but often it is absolutely a projection of what you're not comfortable saying. I charge 4 95 to come over and have a look and get started. I knew I probably couldn't pull this designer to 4 95, straight from one 20, so I spoke to her a lot about what. Her inclusions were how we could make them client-centric. How I can help her elevate what she actually delivers after an in-home consult. And if I could do that, would she meet me at 3 95? So I was, I showed her a lot of examples of designers who had less experience than her who on their website were already saying it's, you know, it's 3 95, 4 95, for me to come over to the home for an in-home consult, just to build that confidence. So after a little bit of begging, she allowed me, especially because I was talking. I'm getting off track here, but I was talking to her about what, even in regional New South Wales, you know, they're aware of Sydney prices, so you absolutely can push it a little bit. So we raised her in-home consults to 3 95, added a more professional or polished structure documentation and what we would provide afterwards. And we also looked at a model that really didn't rely on it being a one and done service entering the home, but more around it. Being the initial conversation that's had around a project in order to pitch for the work and to send a fee proposal, and a scope and all the other things. I checked in with this designer recently. She's now booking three to four consults a month at this new pricing. Here's the math, previously, four consults at$120 each. In home is$480 a month. Now I happen to know this person would be spending between 90 minutes and two hours at each property and at least an hour and a half to two and a half hours of follow up to pull together documentation and a bit of a wrap up and and conversations about future relationships and work with those people. So$480 to do what would effectively work out to be about two and a half days work once you pull together all the additional stuff, which is. Not good. Now, let's redo the math. If you have four of these in-home consults at 3 95 ago, you are looking at 1580 a month, which is an extra$1,100 a month, or$13,200 a year that you were leaving on the table. It's the same number of consults. It's just a completely different financial outcome, and the market won't flinch at this. Absolutely not. This was. Definitely a, this is what I did at the very beginning to get my foot in the door. And I feel weird about saying to people, it's gonna cost you 3, 9, 5 for me to come over to your home. But you are worth so much more than that if you've, we all know once you get into a consultation and in home consult, you are, it's raining ideas you are saying. All the things that you know immediately, you give so much more value than you give yourself credit for the ideas. You know, if somebody says to you, we are not sure about replacing the tile in the en suite, and they've given you the brief, and you kind of know what you're going with, all of a sudden you're like, yes, I'm seeing tiles of Ezra. I'm seeing Moroccan or handmade or artisan. I'm seeing this. You are sharing a lot of what your design vision is, and that is worth money. And the money it is worth is a lot more than 120. All right. Let's talk about client number three. Client three came to me with the following scenario, so she was offering$99 consultations. I think she saw it on TV where someone was like, we do a measuring quote. It's$99, and just thought that feels comfortable. It's cheap. You know, people will say yes to$99 and I'll just get in there and get sorted. She was providing documentation for that$99, so very similar to the client. Number two we were just talking about, but she was completely burned out because PE. This was popular. She'd done a lot of local area marketing and had a lot of stuff out and about in the town that called out this$99 deal and she was running two and a half, three hour consults in home.'cause once they get chatting, you know, things can get outta hand if you don't have boundaries, if you don't understand how to manage those in-home consults. And little side note, while we're talking about it. One of my favorite ways to coach people into keeping on time with these in-home consults is super simple. It is set an alarm as you pull up to the house, walk to the door, meet the homeowner and say, Hey, just letting you know I've popped my alarm on because we only have a 90 minute session today booked. The alarm will go off when we have 20 minutes left or 15 minutes left. Whatever you. Think and don't be alarmed when you hear it. I just wanted you to know that because it can help pull us back on track and make sure that I've got everything I need. When I hear that alarm. Now, this is something I do because I had trouble holding boundaries when people are really chatty or they wanna tell me things I was really struggling with. Booking a paid 90 minute consult and being in the home for two hours. So now with this strategy, I set the alarm, the alarm goes off, and I'm able to very kindly reaffirm those boundaries with people and just say, there it goes. Okay. Oh gosh, that means we've only got 20 minutes and I've only seen one room. Let's get cracking. Or, oh my gosh, that alarm's just gone off. I can't believe how many notes I've taken already. I'm feeling in a good place. I just need to take a few measurements, or it just pulls it. Everything back on track. So if you're not setting an alarm, this is a free gift. Free coaching, if you will, on the podcast. Please get into that habit because it really helps you create boundaries in such a professional, kind, and calm way. It's not even a big deal. Okay, so let's get back to the maths. This offer that she, client number three was giving the$99 consult. It was not sustainable. There is no way that's sustainable. Absolutely gonna suck your soul at the end of time. And she's doing quite a few of them. I was surprised. So I was like, okay, well you've obviously got the inquiry, you've got the, you don't have a leads problem, you've got, um, the ability to sell the service. And I think what's happened is you've gotten confidence. Selling it because you're not asking for very much. This could be a half a day. As we say, some of these consults can really blow out by the time you do some documentation. So we created for her just a 4 95, 90 minute power session, whatever you wanna call it. I'm not gonna tell you what hers is'cause it will identify who she is as a designer, if you're aware of her. But we basically built it to be easy, a rinse and repeat documentation template, a soft pitch to upsell, like really giving her some of that sales strategy to understand. Stand how to guide someone from a 90 minute session into a larger project. She sold three consults in the first two weeks at the new price, so 4.95, so she jumped from 99 to four point 95. Nobody asked anything. Her old way would've meant that she could bank$297 for all of that work. Based on my way, the three in-home consults that she had meant that she had$1,485 or had five times her revenue with better boundaries. And she actually understood what she was offering more. So I think she'll actually close more of these at 4 95 when she articulates the value and we practice the sales script and she gets. To know a lot more about why you would need 90 minutes and why$99, you know, got 99 problems and a$99 service ain't one I, I'm not interested in that. That's not gonna be helpful. I don't think she had the volume data behind her to drive a reason to only have a 99. Like if she. As I said, we had a couple of these$99 sessions booked a month. You know, you might bring in under five, say you've got less than five, you're bringing in less than$500. That's not a volume strategy. Like if you said to me, I book eight of these, and five out of the eight turn into five figure or more. Full service jobs, then we talk strategy. Then I'm going, Hmm, interesting. But the interesting thing about such a low price that the market perception was that it is a one and done service, that it was quite cheap and that you should just come over, come for$99, tell us everything you know about design and a lot of like tire kickers, right? This is where people who are design enthusiasts in. Design enthusiasts, or they are, you know, they love adairs and home decor and they just wanna talk to you. They can afford$99 for you to go in and reassure their anxieties about their choices or let them know what's possible in their home. But this is your career. We can't be doing that. We can't be having chats. For$99. Anyway, I feel like I'm lecturing her all over again. We sorted it out, guys. It was all good. She is making more money and she is really clear about what that 90 minute session is about and how to upsell it, which is the best news. And I have checked in on her recently and she has reported that the resentment and the burnout and the like feeling that you're not valued because when you're not valuing yourself, your clients are also kind of going, oh no, no, that's fine. You were just here for the$99 deal. You know, it wasn't a good feeling. So she has reported that that has turned around a lot. So being able to book three consults, but knowing that you're sort of walking away with about$1,500 or five times what you were getting before is a much better feeling. And the last client that I'm gonna talk about, client number four, client number four is not uncommon. This is where I see people with a really strong. Aesthetic, super luxury, gorgeous branding, high caliber sourcing like the, the trade supplier that they're connecting with and showcasing are right up there. They're the jar Dans, you know, they're really getting involved in this. Luxury level up, but they're charging that 145 to$175 an hour and giving away so much time on back and forth. Communication with clients, sourcing site visits not properly. Charging for incrementals, like an onsite visit and actually just going, oh no, I'll pop around to see it, or I wanna do this. And not being really realistic about the sort of timing that we are that's involved in a project. So giving away a lot of stuff. Just because you like doing it doesn't mean you should not be paid for it. Like just because you really have something in mind, like a sideboard that you really, really wanna specify and you know what it looks like, but it's gonna take you a little bit longer because you haven't seen it already. You're going to have to. Really locate it and find it within your trusted suppliers. That isn't something that you should take a penalty hit for or just say, oh, I feel a bit awkward about charging for that'cause I was a bit slower finding the result. Absolutely not. So what do we do to match her pricing with her luxury aesthetic? Because when there's that disconnect, just like I said before, people are automatically distrusting because they're like, oh, hang on a second. I'm seeing what's on your Instagram, or I'm seeing your portfolio, or this beautiful gallery, or this. High end website, and you are saying that it only costs. This money for you to come over. The first thing I did with client four is audit. A week of her time was completely wild results. Unpaid hours, absolutely everywhere. And I think that we often, we are all a bit guilty of making assumptions like it doesn't take that long, but when we. Time track and we actually look into it. You're like, Ooh, awkward. I didn't think it was that much, but apparently I do take a long time. Like I think I do it this quickly, but actually it's this now time tracking is boring. I'm gonna put that live on the podcast, unsubscribe. Uh, not for me, but it's so, so, so important. So I am very relaxed with this when it comes to coaching because I do not believe in just shoving a round peg in a square hole constantly and hoping for the best outcomes. What I would say though is that I think you should. Time track a single project at least once a quarter, if not bi-annually, so at a bare minimum once every six months. So one project in the first half of the year and one project in the second half of the year just to keep eyes across how long things actually take you. Because I think we make wild guesstimations and it's not correct. And therefore we leave a lot of money on the table because we are not charging or we're just doing unpaid hours everywhere. So for client number four, a flat fee or a value model with a clear scope was a way better fit for her. So me just saying like, stop panicking about whether it's gonna take X amount of time to. Select a fabric for this, or X amount of time to find this, and let's list out everything in a scope document. So that flat fee or value model with a clear scope worked better for her and for the clients. So I sort of talked to her about listing out everything on the. Scope of work document that I have. I also have a pricing calculator, a simple pricing calculator that goes with that for people inside of my courses where you can start to model the pricing up and down and see what happens. So that can be really helpful if you feel a bit lost when you are setting your pricing as a designer, I talked to her about what we would include. We modeled the pricing up and down until we were happy. I also stripped out some of those inclusions that she had put inside of that scope of work and created an add-on menu for her. These are for extras. Things like revisions, drawings, extra rooms, um, you know, joinery. It helped keep her main service offering from blowing out scope wise and also price wise. So we could keep something clean and repeatable and then have this add-on menu to be like, yep, no problems. If you also want the joinery. Done, it's X or like I'll just charge for that separately, or we will just price that as its own Additional add-on to to the value-based model. I worked with her to design a stronger proposal as well, a fee proposal where we could explain the scope of work and the final number in a really beautiful document that mirrored her aesthetic. So she. Already had a gorgeous brand, as I said, so it was about like, can you apply that gorgeous brand to this? And this is much clearer. I think in the case of client four, this client, she also had like 32 pages of service agreement built into her proposal and it was just very overwhelming for the client to say yes. So we stripped that out. That became the service agreement. We, we did a whole bunch of stuff to restructure. I know she's very happy with the process now I know she's not charging$145 an hour and giving away a. Bunch of time for free and the result has eventuated in her monthly profit jumping 40% in two months. So I've been working with her, been tracking those numbers. We've got fewer clients, less like overwhelmed or less feeling of like, oh my God, oh my God, everybody needs me all of the time and I just don't know where I'm gonna find time for it all. We're using more ai. Based tools and she's just getting smarter. I know that sounds really trite to be like work smarter, not harder, but it's so true. If there are things available to you, like automations, ais on its way, like all sorts of stuff, gpt, all the things that I have. If there's things there waiting for you that you could implement into your business and do less and charge more, do that. Alright, so let's wrap up what I think. Under pricing is really costing you because it is not just what's left on the table. Think you know, obviously that's the first one. That's the financial loss. Like that's just the obvious thing. Just$25 an hour undercharging or charging less than what you should be, will add up to two to 4,000. Dollars left on the table every single month for an interior designer. Now let's multiply that by 12 months and you are down, or you have left on the table an entire European holiday. Like I know how many people at this time of year, specifically in Melbourne, it's starting to get really cold, really rainy, and I'm starting to see Instagram ramping up. My friends are in the Greek island. My friends are in Europe. They do it to me every year, and that's so available to you just with that$25 increase. That is something that you could, if you really wanna justify it, you really wanna work towards a goal. Open up a bank account right now called European Holiday 2026. Raise the price and pack it over into that European holiday account and set a goal. Do a thing, show yourself. Show up for yourself. Show yourself what growth looks like. Another thing that you can do when you, uh. Not at a financial loss is reinvest in your business. You can say yes to more things,$25 an hour extra, and you can join the framework express with me without thinking. You can come on a retreat. You can fly interstate for a design trade fair, stay at a hotel for a couple of night. You don't have to think about these things. You don't have to stress for these things. They're all covered in profitability and pricing correctly. It can also really cost you a time drain. We know that low rates. Generally more clients, more of the wrong kind of clients. Like I don't wanna be super rude, you know,$99 consults are going to attract$99 clients. Yeah. So let's really think about if that's the strategy we want, as well as when you don't charge match, you have to work with so many more clients. And this is something I speak with. 100% from experience because I am an designer and e-sign in its nature is much more affordable than in-person or full service design. It is a different kind of design offering, meaning that I could work with 800 clients to earn the same amount of money that somebody else can work on three to five big projects over a two year period like. Think about that. Think about the additional administration, think about the additional stress. Think about that, that stretch in my mind when I've got a teenager's bedroom that's minimalist. But I'm also designing a color pop, fun reception area for play-based therapist. And I'm also, you know, I, I would often have between five and eight projects on the go at any given time. This is a lot of stress, so please. I urge you to rethink your rates. If you think that keeping it low is going to mean that it's more accessible or affordable to more people, just remembering that actually just adds more people and then you get stuck doing volume work when you should be really deeply. Invested in your creativity and where you make the biggest impact. Okay, now I'm gonna get serious about what it's really costing you.'cause this one actually makes me feel a bit emotional because I work with so many people who are doing this, and that's around brand erosion so that your pricing tells the market how to treat you. I think I need to say that again. Your pricing tells the market how to treat you. If you charge like a newbie, if you charge like you're not sure what you're doing, if you charge like it's a hobby or you just show up for fun, people are going to expect mediocracy from you. And I know that you wanna be exceptional. I know you wanna be that designer who says, I have passion, I have confidence. I give amazing outcomes. I am committed. I'm obsessed. Obsessed with your project. I'm trying to find all of the selections and finishes that are going to have the most incredible outcomes for you. So why are we like, that's fine as long as you just buy me a bottle of wine. Like what? What? Anyway, brand erosion does make me very frustrated. So I'm not gonna get into it much, but I'd like you to really think about that. If you recognize yourself in that or you think that could be a problem for you, rewind that little bit. Go back 10 seconds, 20 seconds and listen again. Your pricing tells the market how to treat you. So show up the way you want to be perceived. And then lastly, it's also costing you like massive resentment. I did mention this earlier, but when you're undercharging, it's completely corrosive to your confidence to, it just tips away at everything you like about running a business. You end up starting to be like this. I'm getting rid of my, you know, I'm too stressed. I'm not enjoying it. Your willingness to show up. With energy, with passion, with bravery, excited, all of that absolutely dies over time. So if you've spent 10 outta 12 years charging the same amount and it's heavily under what you're worth, you're gonna be in a pretty bad place by the time you arrive to me. Let's do some rapid fire excuses because I jotted some of these down and these are actual responses like clients, client one, client two, whatever you wanna call them, doesn't matter. I'm not gonna identify who they are, but this is actual things that clients have said to me and exactly what I've said back. So in terms of justifying why they're still undercharging, I'll lose clients. Yeah, maybe. But you'll keep the right ones. So I don't really care about a lost client. That's called a conversion rate. Some people are supposed to go away. Some people are not for you. And imagine that you can work with so many less people, but all the right people and still make the same or more money. No brainer to me. I'm not ready yet. Okay. What are you waiting for? Permission slip. Who told you you're not ready? What part? Why are you not ready to raise your prices? I'm really gonna challenge you on that one because they, you're never ready. They can't afford it. This is not your job to decide if you do a Vox pop on the street, which I do intend to do. As I've mentioned quite a few times, you will be incredibly surprised about what people will pay, what they can afford. And I often say this to my friends who are like, oh, you must have the most beautiful home. And I said, no, sadly, I don't have the same budget as my clients. I get to shop for my clients to have beautiful homes because they have better budgets. Than me. But you know, I'm still keeping it real over here in the massive ranges. We, I do not do that, but that's why I can't project my money stories onto my clients because they're not the same how I wish they were. But I'm not getting a jata and couch anytime soon, but I absolutely here to source one for you. All right. This one I get a lot. So this is like, but nothing's changed. Like I can't charge more money. I'm not doing anything different. Yes, it has. You have changed, your mindset has changed. How you show up has changed. If you're working with me, we've completely. Revolutionized the systems, the frameworks, the delivery methods. You've got the templates. You've got AI behind you. So much has changed. You will have the most transformative 12 weeks of your life, and I promise you have changed every single day. You are a day more experienced. Every single day. You've seen a day's more worth of interior design. Precedents and projects, and you've explored something, you've checked Pinterest, you've read a magazine. You are learning every single day, something you know right now when you listen to this podcast you did not know yesterday, and that means that yes, it has, something has changed. You can absolutely increase your prices because when you set those prices, whenever that was imagining, six months, 12 months, 24 months ago, you are not the same person as that. And you don't need an excuse. You don't need to prove or justify to. Anybody what has changed in order to reflect the new pricing? And this last one is probably the only one I'll let you get away with. And that is, I dunno how to say it, like feel awkward. I don't wanna like tell people do I? And, and also the communication thing is like, do I need to send an email out? Do I need to let people know? If you dunno how to say it, that just means we need to work on sales scripts. And talk means you lift up your sales skills, not lower your rates. So if I don't know how to say it, I would look at all sorts of things, but when people come to me and say, oh, should I communicate out to everybody about my price change and like effective 1st of July, I'm gonna be more expensive. I'm gonna cost this much an hour. La, la, la. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, no, no. I don't get emails like that from big brands very often. And in fact, the only time that I accept that as a strategy is if you want to pull in clients and payments till the end of, you know, for example, if I said buy or the AI custom assistance at 99 US dollars. Until the end of the financial year because they're going up to 200, for example. That's not true. Please. They're always just 99 us. You can have anyone in your army, but that would be a volume strategy and a method that I would employ just to be like, quick, let's pull in as many people this side. Of the 1st of July, and then I'll do another launch campaign in the first quarter of the financial year to talk about the new pricing. So that can, I will accept that and we can work on that together, but I just dunno how to say it. That's easy. Easy, easy. We just work on different ways. To present the new pricing. Okay, so let's wrap it up because I have the design show this week. If you're listening to this on Thursday, I will be in the city at the design show. I'll be roaming around. You might see me in real life if you're in Melbourne. Um, if you would like to join a panel discussion that I am hosting tomorrow or Friday afternoon. I will be joined by some incredible international designers, and we'll be talking about human-centered design, and we will be having a huge discussion around inclusive by design, how human-centered design can transform shared spaces. These are some of the top designers in the world. I'm so excited to be able to listen to them and learn from them. So please do join us and then if you're around on the Saturday at one o'clock in the afternoon, I'm running a. Free AI workshop at the design show. So you can come along, I'll talk to you about custom gpt, uh, we'll talk to you about photorealistic renders. Yeah, I've got a lot to share, so I'm very excited about that. But that means I need to wrap up the podcast so I can edit it and get it out to you in plenty of time. So let's review what we're gonna do in order to, I guess, audit our pricing. Is that what I wanna say? It's just more to really think about some of the considerations that you need to have. So the first is to audit your hours. If you don't. Hand on heart actually know how long things take you. You only have assumptions then you have no idea how much you could really be earning per project. And that's not because I'm standing behind. Hourly fee is the best way. It's like you can't model anything package or hourly. If you have no idea how long something is taking you raise your consult rate. First, it's the lowest risk, highest reward, go for the low hanging fruit. If you are anything under 3 95 in this industry, let's just think, can we just get there? Can we just set an expectation that everybody is worth like that much amount of money to go over to someone's house? Share your skilled expertise, your skilled eye. Consider the project. Spring, you know, you've probably dumped on Pinterest, you've probably researched something. Let's charge correctly for those in-home consults and set minimum project fees. No more$300 projects. You know, I, I will come to your house for, well, I won't come for 300, but you know, we can maybe push it to 3 95. I'll come to your house for 3 95, but you can't have me involved in a project unless it's a five figure project. So I don't work on projects under a thousand. Obviously that sounds ridiculous if you're an emerging designer, but I. Don't think that's ridiculous as you approach a seventh year in design, and I'm talking specifically about the clients that I was speaking with. In all of these examples are established designers. They are not emerging designers. There is no reason for the pricing that they had consider adding an offer ladder. So the menu that I mentioned before, you know, either tiers that make sense to you or a low lower offer, but that always drives into an upsell into the the larger offer. Whenever we're dealing with our clients, it's always really important to think like, where are the other opportunities for you to up your minimum spend or work with me in other ways. You know, do I have a referral program? Is there something once I offboard you that will keep you engaged and maybe loop you back around in a paid capacity later in our lifetime? It doesn't have to be immediately. I should hope that they're not going for a new designer. Directly after you've completed the design. Last tip from me, practice saying your prize out loud. It's so hard to say you trip over your own words. When you're nervous, just say it until it's boring. Say it to anyone that asks, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm an interior designer. I charge 4 95 for a 90 minute consult at your house. And that's pretty much where I get started. And then, you know, I just look at what. Projects are going on, what people need from me, that's like a ridiculous thing to say to someone at the school gates. But hey, it is practice a practice in front of the mirror. Practice, practice in the car. You're gonna get these discovery calls all the time, and the worst thing that you can do is fumble over it. Apologize for it. Sound afraid of it yourself, you know, sort of going, um, yeah, I think I could do that. Uh, yeah, I'm free on Tuesday. Is it all right though? I, I do charge$395 just. Um, just because I like, ooh, this whole thing is making me itchy, even trying to sound like I'm nervous about it. Practice saying your price out loud until it's boring. Be really confident with this. It is one number. Own it. Learn it. Say it, say it to everyone. Ken, I'm just gonna wrap up there. You are not just undercharging, it's not about like what it says about the industry. And like people will dive into your dms and say, you know, you can't do that, or you can't do this. You do whatever you bloody like. You're designing your own success, but you are undervaluing your time, your expertise, the years it took to build your skill, the hours it takes to keep that skill alive and to learn new things. Oh my gosh. The AI stuff you guys are all loving. Like the AI skills lab and other things that takes financial investment, time investment. You don't have to upskill on an entirely different suite of technology just to continue to be an interior designer, so don't undersell that. I'd love for you to be able to ask yourself the question, what would change in your business? And you are live. If you raised your rates today, it's not about being greedy. It is not about just being like, oh, Han and say, why? I could just put it up 10%, so I'm just gonna do it. But you do have to push to that sweet spot. You're never gonna know that you've gone too high until somebody says no to you. And it's about running, profitable, sustainable, respected. Businesses that you are completely in love with. I absolutely love my business. I love coaching designers. I love helping people have these mic drop moments and grateful to be able to do that. But I can't do that if I don't fill my own cup first. Like I can't do that if I don't feel proud of my profit. I can't practice what I preach. If I also was like, I guess about$300 and I could completely restructure your business and give you all my AI assistance and show you all the systems, technology processes, all the things that you could do to make it. Feel really easy and simple. Nah, that wouldn't be fair to you and it wouldn't be fair to me. And yes, I would be resenting all these fancy businesses that I were running, that were streamlined and successful and profitable. And I'd be sitting over here eating soup for dinner. I'm gonna leave it there. Go check your pricing. I reckon it's probably time. 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.