Cashflow tips for creatives

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Transcript

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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. Just before we get stuck into today's episode, I have a beautiful testimonial to share with you that I received yesterday. I've been working with this business solidly one-on-one and we have managed to rip apart and restructure their entire tech flow, their workflows, their processes, all their standard procedures for the entire team. We were able to set up standardizations and templates. We just did so much and we. Moved everything over. New CRMs, new deliverable system, new formulas and ways of delivering things. The whole thing has changed and I'm absolutely thrilled that they've enjoyed it so much. I worked with them the last two weeks, and will continue to work with them for three or four days per quarter for the next 12 months. So I cannot wait to see where this business is this time next year, given the amount of change we've made. Hey, Rhiannon, I just wanted to say a huge thank you for all the help and training that you've given us over the last two weeks. This program has honestly been the best thing we could have done for our business. Being an established company, we already had our processes in place, but we knew that they were outdated and that there are new and more modern ways to do things. So we actually had listened to one of your talks one day, and then as soon as we heard what you had to say. We just knew you were the right person for our business in order to help us tighten up and polish up our processes. Having worked with you closely now for the last two weeks, what I can say is you've taught me so, so much about how we tighten up our processes and how we can be working more efficiently. I feel like you've given us a really clear direction of where we need to go and what tools. To use to do it.. I can see the, how the programs you've taught me are gonna be life changing for us, and you have just helped us streamline everything, which I really appreciate. You are also just so lovely to work with. You're bubbly, you're sweet, and you can honestly see that by working with you, you can see how much you want other businesses to thrive, which is really, really nice. So I just wanted to end off by saying we appreciate what you have done for us so, so, so much and we think you are amazing and we honestly just can't thank you enough. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have a few studio updates. So I hope that some of you have purchased your tickets to Decor and Design, where you can see me talking about AI and what specifically is ahead for us in the realm of productivity and how AI supports our creativity. I'm really, really excited to firstly have been invited to speak on the topic of AI to the interior design community. That's super exciting and secondly. To spend some time at day decor and design. It's always a fun time. I will be catching up with some of my students and cruising around, uh, checking out all of the stalls. I'm staying in the city for a couple of nights and I cannot wait. The second thing is less exciting. More emotional, and that is that I made a major announcement in the allandra event ecosystem this week. I. Retiring the framework for emerging designers. This has been on the cards for at least six months for me. I've been heavily considering what I would like to do with the course. I have evolved. The course has evolved. The course works. We know that if you've been a past or present framework, you know what absolutely gets the job done. But for me, I've been working on strategy with established designers more than emerging designers for the last 12 months, and there's something about that that really puts a fire in my belly. I love coming into an established design studio and being able to identify operational leaks, completely change the way they approach things, come up with marketing that they hadn't. Thought of before. Map it all out on Trello. I've got a really cool system. I'm loving what I can do to a business in two weeks and it's really where my own foundations lie. When I think of working at STA, being a national trainer, going in and sorting out lots of issues, so around. Product and marketing obviously was where I finished in my career, but for a really long time I was a national trainer and I definitely worked in terms of leadership and management and business strategy, business planning days, big, big business planning days and KPIs and things, and I just. Feel like that's the place that I'm supposed to be. I've spent a couple of years with the emerging designers and I've loved every minute of it, and every, every single one of these beautiful, brave designers that I've been able to meet and support, and I've seen all the way through the first year of their business, but these same designers. There are over 300 of you that I have worked with in the original framework are ready for me to help them at their next level. So many of them are hitting their third year of business now or fourth year even, and it's time for them to come back to me in a different capacity. What does that mean for you if you've been thinking about possibly doing the framework for emerging designers? I have committed to one more 12 month support. Journey with this very last cohort. This is the last time you can sign up for the framework and get all of the resources, all of the templates, the whole resource library you would be getting me for 11 months. Every single week we'll be in a Zoom call. So I've got 12 months access to our Slack community, our chat and channel. The 40 video lessons and everything like that are a lifetime access, so they're not getting taken away. July, 2025, is the last time you can sign up to have. Lifetime access to all of the templates, resources, chelators, all of the things I've created in the last three years of running the framework as well as support from me. So I'll be here until June 30th, 2026, supporting this last cohort of original frameworks. And you know what? It's a really beautiful group right now. There's about 16 in there and we're expecting there will be quite a few people that obviously want to join up. And be part of that. So on an average Zoom call, we would usually have between four and eight people dial in live. A lot of the girls watch replays depending on, you know, they might watch three replays a month and join one call. It's very flexible, but you're not stuck in a Zoom call of 50 people and they get a lot of one-on-one support. I know their businesses, I dial in every week and we workshop what's going on. So if you want. A year of that kind of support at 1 99 per month plus GST. So it's quite affordable. It's split out, it's 12 payments. And for those asking, you absolutely will get access to 15 AI assistance that will help you with everything from setting up your services, pricing them correctly, daily emails replies, productivity audits, Pinterest, Google my business, SE strategy, blogs, I could go on. There are 15 people it's just incredible to me how simple it can be given with. Had to do it the really hard way before AI existed. Come and find out what you need to do because if you have not put your name down by the 80th of July. It's in retirement. I'm never bringing it back again. I feel so emotional about that and so sad, but also simultaneously so proud and so happy, and I coach designers to evolve in their business. I coach them to assess what return on investment looks like. What sort of things that perhaps is taking too much one-on-one time, that sort of stuff. So I thought about this as I say, for a good solid six months and then the time is now, it feels right. And I'm excited to do this last 12 months with a beautiful group and if it's something that you would like, please come and see me over on Instagram at Oleander and under Finch and we can have a chat about whether it's suitable for you because if you wait, I gonna lose. Nobody gets in from the 1st of August. I feel like it's Willy Wonkers factory. I'm closing the Doors and only me and the Oompa Lumpers will be there from the 1st of August. So today's episode is a little bit different. This week. It's a listener question. I was sent this question via DM on Instagram, and I have sought permission from the person who sent it to me to actually read it out on the podcast and answer it live because I think it's something that I. Plays on the mind of many, many, many designers. So let's get into the question. I have a quick question about cashflow. Do you have any resources, podcasts, charts, or the like about how to map out the gear? With client restraints, I'm finding I can really only work six months of the year with my young family clientele. They don't want anything in December to January. They're too poor back to school in February. Every school holidays are a blackout, and then winter is full of disruptions and delays with sicknesses, et cetera. It's very real and I'd love to hear how other designers are grappling with this if they are. Firstly, thank you for the question. Secondly, they absolutely are. Cashflow is something I'm discussing constantly and depending on your business model, it can look different for everybody depending on your ideal client or you know, whether you do these big full service, if there's delays, all of that sort of stuff. But for you, knowing that you are obviously your ideal client is very family focused and struggles with all the things that we do when we have young children and budgets and sicknesses and blackout periods. So this is very valid. This ultimately gives you. Six months of a year. So first and foremost, I would be reverse engineering over a 12 month period. How much money do I need to make in my active months to subsidize my non-active months? So if I only have six months a year and I'm going to not use that six figure, I'm not gonna use that lazy calculation of six figures in six months because I don't think that's the right approach for everybody. And this podcast is called Designing Success. I don't want you to feel pressure to feel that. Even in six months, you have to make six figures for your family and for your clientele and availability. You might actually be looking at, you know, I just wanna be registered for GST, taking home 70 5K, for example, or I just wanna be able to replace my previous income, at this point of my career. And my previous income was 56. Thousand dollars, like, I don't know, I'm making all of this up, but I want you to map out what that number is and then look at like, okay, well we need to track towards that number. So I do have a calculator that I have inside of the framework where you can track your revenue and you can sort of look at the different months Affect the targets as well. So knowing if it's January, you can lower that target as long as you really lift it up in say, August, and you know that that's a busy period for you. I think we need to be quite realistic as well about the expectations that many designers have of just how many yeses or how many clients you're onboarding at any given time. So I feel as though. This can go in ebb and flows a little bit. So sometimes people will say to me, it's so quiet, I don't have any work. I'm panicked. It's not going very well, and my advice is always you are two deposits away for being booked out for the rest of the year, like two major full service design clients, or one huge property, or you're only just a, a yes or two away from feeling the complete. Opposite to how you're feeling when you're feeling frustrated or you're feeling like there's no work around that sort of stuff. So always keep that in the back of your mind. Sometimes I have times where it's like the business account looks like it's just shrinking in revenue and nothing is looking that great. And then I have one week where I have four people say yes to private coaching, for example, and we're topped right back up to the top. Creative industries are like that, but please try to keep that in mind when it's feeling like there's nothing much around you are just one yes away from having. A huge cash injection. Okay, so let's look at the reality of what our listener is asking. So in reality, she's saying December, January, absolute radio silence from the clients. February, we've just paid for school Uni. February, we've just paid for uniforms, you know, school fees, the likes signed up for all the sporting events. Pockets are pretty empty. April, July, September, school holidays. So we're not sort of. Got the kids around, we're not doing much. We're probably not putting much money into starting new things also. And then of course, winter, sick kids, sick builders, sick projects, like everything sort of, you know, we're experiencing here. You can hear it in my voice. It's just something just goes through at wintertime, which is not great. And, but as a business owner, this is giving us total emotional whiplash. It's like, oh my God, you feeling really anxious? Where is the next lot of. Cash coming from what's sort of happening. So it can make it really hard to plan, hard to scale, hard to relax. It can be really, really stressful. So first I just wanna validate that your feelings are correct and lots of people go through this. So let's have a little look at what, where the opportunities are. So December, January, if, and I know this to be true of this particular business owner, but if you are a business owner who also has children, I would operate during school terms only. So I do that in my business. I don't coach on school holidays. I don't have framework calls on school holidays. Sometimes I don't even bring the podcast out like we do the winter, uh, sorry, the summer series over the summer school holidays because my life needs to work around my children and I have school-aged children, so you also deserve a holiday. So in terms of cash flow, I would be planning. To, you know, sleep when the baby sleeps, go on holidays, when the clients go on holidays because you're not needed on site anyway. There are a few strategies that you can employ that will help you to shift that business model to support these things, though. So sometimes I talk about throughout the year as a local area marketing initiative, that you can do gift cards, for example, in a school raffle or the local football club or. Netball club or sporting facility, and they are redeemable. Say for a one-time consult, make sure that those consults are only redeemable in the months where you probably don't have work. So what I'm thinking of there is you can give the local community, over the course of the year for$500 consultations, but they can only have their one-off consultation in January, February. Like July school holidays, September school holidays, that sort of thing. It kind of works for them anyway.'cause this is something that you're doing for free and they're around the school community. They might have school age kids, so that might be a time where they are more available to you anyway. So just making sure that if you're gonna do any local area marketing like that, they can't redeem it in your busy months when you need to make hay while the sun shines. Right? Like I don't wanna be doing any free consultations during the six months of a year where I should be banking money. If I were this client, I would. Also think about running a annual or biannual. So twice a year or once a year. Start with once a year.'cause you've never done it before. A once a year design day. And I would hire, like I've coached a client to do this recently, and we got her to book a table at a cafe. At the Homemaker Center and she sold full day sessions. She sold four sessions and the people knew that they would be in a small group, there would be a group of five, including the professional designer, and they would all do a a floor plan review together. They would look at selections together. They would go from the cafe at the homemaker center over to ENS, look at appliances they were looking at. They went into freedom and provincial and some other places and really broke down the visual merchandising and looked at how certain styling worked and you know, the rule of threes and why we layer the bed like this and how you can achieve this look and how you can do this. There was a tile store, so near the Homemaker Center, so they just walked over there. They selected bathroom tiles. They did so much. It was like a custom day. I think it was something like. 9:30 AM So after the kids were dropped at school straight over to the homemaker at the cafe there, it was 9:30 AM and even like three 30 I think, I think it was like in school hours. And she charged 1250 plus GST per person. She had to sell four spaces. She gave herself five or six months to sell those spaces. So she was no pressure. She wasn't constantly marketing it. She was just saying, Hey, we're running this like intimate group. It's gonna be really great. We're gonna bounce off each other. I'm gonna be there. And so she had them set up on Style Source book. She was making mood boards with them. She was making flat lays with them. It was a whole custom day with the designer, but there was four of them and one of her, and she told me later that. You know that put, that added an extra 5K revenue for her for that month. That was a quiet time. So what she did is she booked people onto it. Like I got her to them on, they could sign up with the form and then their invoice was sent seven days prior to the event. They paid a deposit, obviously, to get the spot, but then the final balance, I think the deposit was two 50 and then the final thousand dollars went out seven days before. So immediately gave her a$4,000 injection. Prior to that, she didn't lunch, she didn't do anything like that. They bought their own at she. Came back to me and she sent me an email, and I'm paraphrasing here'cause I'm not reading that out, but it was along the lines of like, oh, that was one of the best days I've ever had in my business. Like, I was really buzzing. I felt like I was the, you know, I was quite dressed up. I was the professional. I was overseeing them while they made mood boards and making suggestions like the teacher. And then we had all the tiles out that we all talked about the. Floor plans and the different possibilities and what we could do, and the clients loved it. She got really good testimonials and they also talked about it. You know, clients love being in those like DIY Reno groups on Facebook that we all hate that my eyes are rolling into the back of my head just thinking about, but they really do. Thrive off other people's opinions and multiple people's opinions. So even though the designer was leading it, what I think they really enjoyed about it is that community aspect where someone, and they were making friends who were going through the same thing. So then they were like, you know, after the fact there was no follow up stuff with the designer. They're not, it's not a designer forever, it's just for those six hours or whatnot. So they connected together and now they're in each other's inboxes, like overthinking the tile selections. I wrote a substack that included the case study of that particular designer this week. So this is timely that this question came through in my dms, but I will link it in the show notes because it has four different ways you can inject$5,000 into your business as an interior designer. Something that it's always good to have something that you can. It's always good to have something that you feel that you can turn the tap on, turn the tap off if you need a revenue boost. And so those strategies might also help this designer who reached out to me. If you can implement all four of them, um, in, in four of the six months that you're not making revenue, you could at least kind of count for an extra 5K. I often talk about. Subscription and reoccurring revenue. And I'm not gonna lie, it took me, I wanted to have a subscription model in my business, my design business for the whole time, since the first year. I was like, how do I get, I want revenue that I can count on. I've got really young kids. I'm very stressed about not knowing where money's coming from, and I just found it really hard to think of like, who will pay me on an ongoing basis in a subscription model? What could I possibly offer them that I could. Pace out over 12 months. So obviously the solution for me was the framework. The first time in 2022, when I launched that, um, payment plan was immediately a thing because I wanted to be able to space it out and feel like, okay, like if I have 30 students and they're paying monthly, that's 30 times. This amount, you know, 1 99, um, that I can count on for the next year. So I know that at a base rate, even in the quiet months, I'm getting this amount of money. So not everyone has a course in them. Not everyone can market a course like that. That's really hectic. Courses aren't what they used to be like. There's so many reasons why. I'm not saying to you write a course, but digital products, there are some things that you could do. So thinking that you're in a family. Client. Client as you sort of alluded to the fact that they obviously have kids or is there a way that you can record a four part or two part or three part private audio podcast on, and I know specifically this designer has a background in like inclusivity designing with like neurodiversity in mind or like clinical psychology. So maybe we could have a podcast that, um, goes through all of that and talks about quick wins that you can make in the home. I'm not sure, I don't wanna make extra work for them, but if you had a digital product that sat at like the$97 mark. And, even if you could just sell 10 of them a month, that's an extra thousand dollars, but it's a harder thousand dollars, isn't it, than something that's more of a big ticket item. So I don't think digital products and Low ticket items are right for everybody. It's not my style to coach people into doing lots and lots of work. And then nothing is ever evergreen or passive and you, you still have to market and you still have to bring a lot of energy and effort into the marketing of that product. But it is certainly an option in terms of if. Something hits it validated and hits the market, right? It can sell and sell and sell. With just you talking about it on the regular, I think it would be completely remiss of me not to talk about finances in a podcast that's specifically around. Cashflow challenges, and I think understanding your finances is really, really important. And knowing how to map annual revenue targets, which I spoke about at the top of the call, and then divide them across your productive months. And then save, save, save, and drip out things into your, into your quiet months. Okay? So if you can aim to earn your 12 month income in eight active months, for example, and make sure you always have. Three months worth of income sitting in a high interest savings account that's above and beyond perhaps like your rainy day account that's actually going to be owners drawings or wage, or it's going to help support you through those non-income months or non-active months. That's going to be a big help.'cause I think what happens is we're good while we're good and we're spending and we're doing and we're reinvesting and we're like feeling great and then it's quiet. Plus we don't have enough money for our. Or plus we don't have enough money to cover things, and that's where we have problems. So we need to be saving ahead to make sure that you are able to cope when there's no new invoices coming in. There are a few tools that can help. If you have a cloud accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks. You can have cashflow planners, you can build out notion templates. There's all sorts of things that you can do. There are lots of podcasts that are specific to business and money and finance and so on that I would suggest that you don't shy away from like, sort of think about, okay. I'm sure there's a lot of people who have specifically created podcast episodes around creative industries and cash flow because it's, it's across every creative that I work with, it's photographers. You know, they, everyone has these like dead months, non-active months in their business and it is a real challenge. This is weirdly specific, but it obviously is for this one person who asked me, and I'm wondering if we know that our client base is full of school moms, can we make. Parent friendly product. So offer a time sensitive service, like school hour strategy session. Like it'd be great if you could get it cut, you know, if they could use their school savings bonus or if NDIS could help you and you could give them some really great strategies to help with their child. Neuro devet child, like that is probably a possibility. I don't know yet. It'll be. The support workers and NDIS or whatever would have to agree, but you do actually do a service that would really help. So if they could have that service funded, you could possibly say, like I do, I blitz through a lot of NDIS support strategy sessions in the month. During school holidays and in the months, December, January, February. I don't know. I'm not really sure about that. I'm always the person who brings the ideas, but I don't do the execution. That's like me. I pin the things, my husband researchers, how to build them. So for you, I'm coming up with an idea, but you'd really have to get in contact and find out, like realistically, can people use their NDIS funding to use a designer to help assess the areas in their home that could be improved? I think probably. I'm not gonna say that on a podcast because I'm not entirely sure, but if we have, back to like a school hour strategy session, if you're talking specifically to school moms and you're sort of saying, you know, you're not, you're not booking me in for a whole house renovation. We're talking about a strategy session. If you can advertise it in the school newsletter, if you can talk about like. Are your kids going to school holiday program? Do you have a spare hour and a half? Like, this is what we could achieve, this is how much it costs. And specifically, if you have school aged children, you can do spec. Have to stop using when I'm saying school hour strategy session. I also don't wanna be saying specifically it's a lot of us, but you could also have a offer or a particular price point that's valid only. Through the la, la, la Primary school network. So if your kids go to la, la, la primary school, you access a school time or school hour strategy session from this price point. It's not a discount. Just set it up so that that's the price point, but just say that it's only available through that school and up it by an extra$150 for any other school or any other parent that wants to take advantage of the school hours strategy session. I'm working with a lot of my private coaching clients on. Templated rinse and repeat systems through Project Studio where they are able to deliver the follow ups from these strategy sessions like fast. I'm talking 20 minutes fast, like once your template's all set up and I'm sort of teaching them like tricks and hints and how to set up like. Beautiful branded everything in one hub, and then you can just duplicate that and give it to the next client. But with their mood board and an automated one, click ff and e. It's just, it's such a no-brainer to me. And that means you can keep it affordable as well. Or you can say we're running a school holiday. Only strategy session and in the, if you book during this school holiday period, you can have it for 2 95, for example. I'm, I'm honestly just giving up numbers, but if this is something that you can do a one hour zoom call and 20 minutes of after work and have this beautiful thing and then hopefully lead to a, a larger project later in the year. So that's just quick turnaround at a price point that they can afford. Even in the school holidays, you might be able to get more people on board. So the other way that we can affect cash flow is affecting timelines. So things like wait lists are really good. So shifting the narrative, if the client wants to work with you in the good month, they need to get on your radar early. So book now for a march, start and receive a free pre-project. Prep kit or book now for a march start. You start marketing this in November, December, January, like the whole time book. Now we kick off in March and you get, I get my pre-construction selections, tips or some sort of lead magnet, I guess to add with it, something of value, things like mini guides, a 30 minute paint consult above and beyond access to your favorite. Trade suppliers or benefits just packaging up, so it's like, it's only available for that March, and so they can book early or get on the wait list and you don't kick off until that busier period. You can also do pop-up services, so winter warmers like a cozy living room refresh. One weekend only. I have three places or like. I do open days in the studio. Well, I used to do them a lot. I used to do free mentoring one day a quarter, and I take four people and I mentor them, and it's a really good marketing strategy. Like my return on investment for that particular thing is I would generally onboard at least half of those people into the framework because once they have worked with me in a free capacity, they're like, oh my gosh, yes, I want this every week for 12 months. Because as long as they dial into the call, I'm there to coach'em. I'll stay as long as they need, and I will go through whatever they need to work on. So it was a, you know, pretty easy sell. But I also liked being able to give back. It just aligns with my business values that if they weren't going into the framework, there were some people that legitimately couldn't afford to work with me, but really, really wanted to. And I'm still, I got a message from one of those beautiful designers only to. Two weeks ago, one week ago, and she said to me, I still go back and watch that replay when I'm feeling low or when I am looking for direction. And I have just gotten so many months of value out of it because I'm still learning. I'm still taking bits and pieces of what we discussed, and that's everything to me that really aligns with. Who I am as a coach and who I am as a designer. And so I don't really mind, but I think in this case, obviously it's paid capacity, but a winter warmup weekend, one weekend only, start talking about it early, start selling it early, and not even selling, just being like, there are three spots it is at. You know, it is all about how we refresh our home and we're looking specifically in the living room. It's gonna have quick wins, or even just do a three hour winter warmup, refresh, whatever you wanna call it. Um, one weekend only. But even a group call, if you've got four of you in there and it's a three hour session, that's how you can keep the pricing down.'cause it's one to many model. It means one of you to many of them, so many of them paying$200 each. You get five of them, you're gonna be sitting on a thousand dollars for that three hours. So it is just about thinking. Is there anything like that that you can do know, January Jumpstart, a new year, new space spatial planning sessions, or, yeah. I know January's, as you say, are harder and people are out and about, but maybe you are pre-construction, like maybe your. Selection meetings so that you're ready when the project kicks off. Midyear. Okay. This one's a no brainer. I feel like I still have to say it because it's so important. Market research, working on the business. Say if you have eight active months in a year and you've got those four that are not active, and you split them up into two at the top. You know, December, January, and one in July, one in September. So two during the year, those are like liquid gold. The opportunity to work and evolve on your business. Like that's the time where we explore automations and ai. That's the time. Like, um, I am so busy at this time of year with property stylist because they know spring market is gonna go nuts. So they just wanna. They, they all line up and they're like, I'll see you in July. Like, or late June, or mid-June, basically mid-June, till our first week of August. They're like, I wanna work with you. I wanna work one-on-one. I wanna get it all done. Like what can we do? And so I have some of my property stylists who are signed up for July, 2026 already because they just want their two week. Spot. They just wanna work with me every single year and really make some huge changes and restructures and, and yeah, look through everything, like pick apart their business and rebuild it and get excited about it, and plan the marketing because in those busy months we know it. When you are working in the business and you're up to your eyeballs with work, it's so nice to not have to work. On systems and PDFs and things like, you know, knowing where everything is. I mentioned in my podcast a couple last week or the week before, you know, just getting my Google Drive all ready so that I can now connect my chat to PT to that Google Drive. And it's got transcripts of every coaching call I've ever done, so it knows exactly how I coach. So I'm gonna be able to make all these amazing things from that. But that had to be intentional. I probably couldn't have done that in Janu. Uh. What, November, December, January, or February. So those are my busiest months as a coach. And then I have my like little June, July burst of property stylists. So I know where my quiet times are as well. And just knowing that, like, okay, I open a notes thing in my phone at the beginning of the year and then those big things I wanna reframe. I wanna refilm some videos in the framework. I have done that about six months ago, and I just went through and refiled absolutely everything and you know, I wanna do this. It all goes into the notes section so that when it's quiet, I open up the notes and I'm like, right, I'm gonna knock at least two things off this list this week because I don't have a lot of client work going on, and it just makes me feel like I'm doing something, something that's going to have like positive results. Run. Okay. Now I know not everybody that I am speaking to today has cloud accounting software and has cashflow forecasts and so on. So I don't know for this particular designer, I don't know if they have all of that up and running at this point or where they're at, but I thought I would. Because I know there are emerging designers sitting here listening all the way up to people with, you know, 30 years experience. I thought I would just break it down in such a simple way. First step that we're gonna do is, and this is for cashflow forecasting and actually feeling like you have an idea, is we're gonna get a blank piece of paper and draw 12 squares. Okay? Simple. Right now we have a bird's eye view of the business year, so now we can see 12 squares. At 12 squares, 12 months, then you wanna color in your busy month. So just ask yourself, when are my ideal clients most likely to book and pay? Like when are they happy to part with money? So that's your green light. Color it in green. When do they disappear? School holidays, Christmas, winter Sicknesses. Color that in red, amber, orange, yellow, whatever you think amber is. When is it unpredictable? So when would I like not be able to make it? To definitive call red or green? Which sort of time of the year is unpredictable? I mean, obviously if you are more advanced and you wanna build notion pages and Trello pages and whatnot, go nuts. But paperwork's just fine. Right? If it ain't broke. Step three. And then I wanna set a realistic annual revenue goal. So let's say you wanna earn. Um,$120,000 this year, that's$10,000 a month if you're working every single month. So if every single one of those squares is green, you're good to go. That's your target. 10 grand a month, but you're not. Right. You've already said that. You've just told me you really only have six reliable months. So instead, we are gonna divide that one 20 by six months, and now you need to earn 20 K in those. Green months or six months that are on or active months. And then think about things like if that six months turned into eight months, you would only have to make from K in each of the eight months. So is there any opportunity for you to push a little harder in the marketing or like even just get claw back one active month, so call it seven months and sit it around like 1750 or whatever. Obviously, I, I know that one 20 might not be your goal. These are just example numbers, but you do the math based on your pattern and your success goals. And then I want you to plug in any known projects like and what gaps you've got. So fill in any jobs already booked, any usual. Any usual seasonal hits. So like I always get a couple of kitchens in October or like it's really busy for me for bathrooms at this time. Like if you've just got a bit of an idea and any reliable revenue streams, like if you have, if you contract B2B, if you have a digital product, like anything else that you think like of each month that I need to get for KI almost always make$800 in this revenue type stream. So making sure that you're mapping that out. So what we wanna, what we're actively planning to do is when you do make a lump of money in one of those good months, don't treat it like a bonus. Don't be like, okay, cool, we've just had a bumper. November. Let's spend it all on our holidays, December, January. And you sort of like, like say you've just said, we've just had a bump in November. Awesome. Let's buy all new monitors for the office. Let's do this, let's do that. Let's take a course, et cetera. Because how are you gonna pay yourself in December and January? So it's important to. Leak out that money and. Drip feed those non-active months. So if you can save it in a high interest account and you're making a little bit of money on it, and you can write even in those squares as well, like what is my base minimum that I can live on in the quiet months? Like I'd be happy as long as I can pay myself a wage, like on those months I need, including covering. My subscriptions and like, you know, whether or not you have a lean business or um, a not so lean business. Say you are like, I need 5K in the non-active months. It's about putting it to the side in an account. So if you have a really big bump a month, 5K immediately, and we might not be talking 5K, we might be talking 1200, like, I don't know, it goes over into a. Third high interest saving account called, um, even just call it cashflow and just know I'm protecting myself and making sure that I've got something in there. And then obviously, I think I said this earlier, but you know, make hay while the rain shines the no, start that again. Make hay while the sun shines. And make sure the second that people are actively giving you yeses and deposits are coming in just. Pack that month with yeses, even if it's just like, yep, let's buy gift vouchers. Buy them now, then give them to your friends at Christmas when you're over it. You know, start doing your gift voucher campaign in September. Do a massive deal. Buy one, you know, buy one gift voucher and receive an extra$80 worth of value, or receive one of those. Pre-consultation check, like add value to it, find a way to add value to it, and sell a bunch of gift vouchers. Gift vouchers are incredible. I have always had really good success with them in my business previously, but also ultimately, I think it's like 30% of gift vouchers actually are ever redeemed. So they're really good. You know, obviously you'll always honor them and that's all great. It's not your intention to, um, be calculating in any way, but it's money that you may not have to swap for time. So it's a really good idea to have a strong. Especially if that is your clientele. You know, they should be buying their mother-in-law like a gift voucher with you. They should be buying their BFFA school strategy session for her 40th. They get in there and make sure that they understand what's available and a couple of them can put in together. I also have done registries before. I know. I just tried everything in my early career. I was like, oh, you know, you're getting married, great. You're building a new house. I put this on the bridal registry, work with the designer, stuff like that. It's fun to try. Absolutely. Like, yeah. You can give out a specific URL and multiple people can put money in and you track who from and, and then the bride and groom can log in to that portal and see what's being gifted and yeah, work with you and spend it accordingly. So the trick isn't to earn more, it's not to. Like get in our own heads and stress when nothing's coming in. It's really about understanding when we earn, how do we plan for a seasonal business? Because some businesses are seasonal and once you know your rhythm, you can work with it. So once you've got those squares colored in and you know, this is normal for me, this is something I experience the last two years. I just need to make sure there's some money I can draw from that I'm feeling okay. I'm working really hard on making improvements in my business. I'm taking a holiday when they take a holiday sleep when the baby sleeps going away. Um, and I'm feeling confident and secure in the fact that this is normal. This is not a reflection on me, and this is not going to mean that I have to throw in my business and do something else because there is going to be a heavy, like successful time of incoming deposits and income later in one of those active months. That's it for me. I hope that's been helpful no matter where you're at in your design business. Just a little reminder, you have until the end of July to join us for this last ever 12 months inside of the framework. After that, it is retired. This is not one of those dodgy rug shops that are closing down every time you walk past it for 25 years. Like this is it. I am retiring the course I have. Yeah, it has been super emotional for me, but I'm feeling really like it's. The right thing to do. I'm looking forward to the established designers and private coaching and making a bit of space for those guys as well in the future, and I'm loving what's gonna happen for this cohort. Being such a tight group and being the last group and there's no new people coming in, they're all gonna be at the same sort of level. That's gonna be really fun and a little bit different.'cause it's never really run like that. If it's something you're interested in, please come and see me, DM me, check out the show notes. I'll put a direct link to read all about it. I will also put the substack in there if you wanna read about adding an extra 5K to your business this month, and I will be back to chat to you next Thursday. All right, bye for now. 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.