The secret life of a Property Stylist with Angie, of Meraki Property Styling

Meet Angie HERE 

Meet Penelope HERE

In this episode of 'Designing Success from Study to Studio,' host Rhiannon Lee, founder of Oleander and Finch Design Studio, delves into the world of property styling with guest Angie, a thriving property stylist and interior designer from Meraki Property Styling and Interior Design in Melbourne. Angie shares her journey from starting with basic stock to now styling high-end homes, emphasizing the importance of pricing, quoting systems, cash flow, and industry networking. The conversation covers the challenges of competitive pricing, the role of technology and AI in the industry, and the dynamic nature of property staging. Listeners also gain insights into the practical steps and mindset shifts required for success in property styling, highlighting the importance of relationship-building with real estate agents, efficient quoting processes, and adapting to industry trends. Rhiannon and Angie’s candid discussion provides valuable lessons for both emerging and seasoned designers looking to navigate the complexities of the property styling industry.

00:00 Introduction to Designing Success

00:54 Meet Angie: From IKEA to High-End Homes

01:48 A Funny Story: How Angie and I Met

04:32 The Reality of Property Styling

05:09 The Fast-Paced World of Property Styling

10:46 Challenges and Strategies in Property Styling

19:24 The Impact of AI and Technology in Property Styling

20:23 Time-Saving Tools and Business Growth

37:01 Navigating AI in the Industry

37:34 The Human Touch in Interior Design

39:49 Marketing Strategies for Property Stylists

41:12 Building Relationships with Real Estate Agents

43:04 Challenges and Realities of Property Staging

46:23 The Importance of Professionalism and Quality

54:45 Running a Business: Expectations vs. Reality

57:20 Continuous Learning and Adaptation

01:05:24 Wrapping Up and Future Plans

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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 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. Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Angie, someone who has been through two of my group programs, framework Original and Framework Collective, someone I've coached privately for a few years, and who I now count as a really good friend. Angie runs a thriving property styling business and interior design business in Melbourne and has built it from the ground up. In this episode, we are getting into the real, behind the scenes of running a staging business. How she went from IKEA and Freedom Stock to high-end homes. Why pricing, quoting systems and cash flow can make or break a styling business. The closed door culture of staging and how she learned to break into it. Balancing speed and creativity with client expectations and what it takes. To stay profitable in a feast or famine market. This is a completely candid conversation about the reality of property styling, the differences between staging and interior design, and how technology and AI are starting to play a role in the industry. Before we get into today's chat, I wanted to share. Kind of a funny story with you. So when I was sitting in my bedroom in Diamond Creek in 2020 and I'd been fired from my job like most of the world due to the pandemic, and I started to think, okay, I'm just gonna give it a go. See if I can, I'll just throw everything into it. And I. It'll be whatever it will be. And I was starting to market Oleander and Finch and do things. Angie called me up and she, I had a discovery call with her. She had a really tricky space, and she was hoping that I might help her virtually, like just brainstorm through it, right? Like even though she was a stylist and I was an E designer, and anyway, I guess she just wanted that second opinion for someone. No one could come over because it was COVID and just getting on the call. Now, she didn't tell me that she was in the industry. She just sort of said, I have this living room, I have this weird shape. I dunno what to do with it, blah, blah, blah. Can we do a consult? And I was like, yeah. So I sent her a quote, did all the things, but then I got onto Instagram and I found her and I was like, oh my God. I think she mystery shopped me. Or like, I thought she was just setting me up to steal my documentation. I didn't know what I thought I was quite new, so probably a bit. Paranoid and hesitant and thinking, oh my God, why do you want my help? You have these beautiful properties that you're styling these million dollar properties. Why would you need me? And we have since laughed about that story so often because I thought she was trying to, I. I don't know. You get inside my business and, and follow my processes and kind of understand how I do things to reverse engineer that in her business and she just legit needed someone to help her. And I just find that a really good reminder. I wanted to share that story publicly because. We have, we are the best of friends. You know, I'm catching up with Angie for a wine. Next week we'll go out in the city and we'll, gossip and catch up and be friends. And then in a paid capacity, when we're coaching together, we're locked in, we're business development and you know, we get it done and, and we work together so well and. That story originated from the fact that we would have actually complimented each other's skills really well to work out that tricky spot. But she ghosted me. She didn't go ahead. I can't remember what happened. I may have even replied to her and said, I don't, I don't work with designers. Because at that time I was getting a lot of inquiry from other designers and I was very like, weird about it because I was new and I didn't know what was a scam and what was going on. I thought that was a funny one to share. Not everything is, as it seems, and we don't need to be paranoid and most people actually come from a place of genuine needs or, or like authentic re. Or have authentic reasons why they want to reach out to you. So, uh, I hope that's made you giggle as well. And you can see it's been, what, five years we've been friends now and that relationship just gets stronger and stronger every year. And I thought it would be great to sit down and talk to Angie because she just is. Such a wealth of knowledge about property styling and staging. And she is the most generous person I know when it comes to not gatekeeping. She's definitely someone that you could go into her dms and say, Hey can you gimme some guidance on this? Or, I'm having trouble with that. Have you heard of this? Have you heard of that? And she'll always just give up every tool or tactic or thing that she has in her armory if it will also help you. And that is a quality we don't. See very often in the industry. So I'll leave you with that, and I hope you enjoy my conversation with Angie from Meraki Property Styling and Interior Design. I have always been like a little bit curious. What drew you to choosing property styling in the beginning you get so many options. What was it that made you go, yep. I think I'm gonna do staging. It's the fast pace lifestyle. Like, it's very, I love that you can be in the warehouse one day and selecting furniture and all the bits and bobs to go with it and installing it the next day. To see it come to life so quickly, but as interiors is completely opposite, it's a very drawn out process and still rewarding when you see it. But it's, I think it's also too, with staging, it's. It's almost like playing dolls, isn't it? Because you're just, you're selecting furniture and something that's super funky in artwork or something that's, you know, you're breaking the rules and you can do it because it only stays there for six weeks. Yeah. Can have a lot more fun with it. So both of, yeah, both of those points. I never really thought about that, but it's so true. Like you get your almost instant gratification and it's about the fire and like you're moving at such a fast pace. Whereas we have a client and it's like, trust me, you'll see the vision in two and a half years when someone actually tiles it. Like, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Even, and even just furniture selections in the interior side, that can take up to three months before they start to see how it all comes together. And yeah, obviously when you're working with somebody's taste as well, it has to be a lot more vanilla. Sometimes, not all the time, depending on your client, but yeah, it's you working towards, it's not necessarily designs that you really love. It's you, you're working towards your client's love. So. Yeah, with staging it's fun. You can just do whatever you think's Cool that day. And do you think there's limitations though in staging around buyer behaviors and like opinions of resale, like probably too polarizing with certain colors and people have an expectation when they go in? Or do you find the opposite that if you are a little bit punchy with your interiors it gets noticed more? Honestly it depends on the suburb. Yeah. Uh, the inner city suburbs definitely plays into the punchier the better.'cause it draws people in online you know, and those agents and this, uh, looking for that kind of styling, whether it's, if you're out more in the burs, either which way of Melbourne or really anywhere you do have to play it. You appeal to the broader market. The amount of times that comes out of our mouth. It is because it's a psychological game I guess as well. You know, you've, you've got purples and pinks throughout the master bedroom, but only dad's going through to view the property. He's not going to fall in love with the room as much as the wife may have and wouldn't pull her back into the second open. So those conversations do happen a lot where, you know, if we go, if we color drench too much, the agent can pull us back a little bit. But it, yeah, it really depends on the area that you're in. And when you talk about those inner city areas and targeting postcodes with high end properties, that's not something I imagine, or maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong, if you just design that life, just decide that from the get go. Do you just start off from being like, I only work in RAC and this suburb or is it something that's a bit of a slow bend? You've gotta do your time in the trenches working with I guess less high-end product working, like doing a slog in those outer suburbs. What was that experience for you? I think stages have both experiences. You can get lucky and go straight into high end if you've got contacts, but my experience was definitely starting out in the suburbs with owning my own stock, lower end stock. You know, I'd pick up pieces from Ikea or Fantastic Furniture Freedom when I first started out. And working up to the, it's also a cashflow thing too, you know, you can't go out and buy heaps of high-end furniture and have it sit there when you don't have any clients. It's gotta be something that builds up. And I think you get closer and closer in when you get visibility. You've gotta have something to show the clients as well when they're booking you or the agents. A lot of our relationships more with agents than it is necessarily clients. So having something to show them if you've, you've gotta have that behind you. So yeah, definitely my experience with starting out. Smaller, less high-end out in the suburbs with yeah, cheapest stock, that's for sure. Yeah. And work your way into, is there like a moment that you remember, like is there anything that you sort of went, oh, this year feels different, or this year feel grown up, or like, I've actually hit that market level that I was going for. Yeah. And it, and it's even interesting reflecting on that question. I don't even know if there was necessarily a point where I turned around and that said I want to be high-end. It was more, it's not that I want necessarily even now think I really wanna be in high-end homes. It's more the type of styling that I like, suits those homes more. And I guess it was probably about two years ago I pivoted in. I wanted to enjoy my work more and wanted to, get a little bit more excited for the day-to-day and selecting items. So I think. Yeah, moving more towards those areas. Let me do that because they're properties that I'm excited to style. Yeah. And with that, did you learn the skill of maybe saying no to the ones that didn't fit that kind of profile in terms of having to be a bit more selective,'cause you probably still get inquiry from those early. Absolutely, and I still do. Yeah, I still do. I think naturally the nos come from those areas because as your product gets higher end, obviously the price point's higher, so your rental fee for those pieces is higher. And I guess at the end of the day it's sometimes, you know, a client out in the suburbs will still pay the prices of hiring high end furniture, but. It doesn't make sense to the value of their home to hire a stylist for discharging a certain amount. So you naturally just with how much you charge weed out those clients. Yeah. Yeah. We've obviously we've worked together for a long time. I've had your assistance in helping build out an entire sort of area of the framework, the property hq, where people can get to know about that. But I imagine that when you go into it, there's a lot of secrecy and there's a lot of unknowns in terms of how do you know what to charge, how do you know what is like a switching out fee? Or if you've got, like, if someone wants to extend like all those rules and regulations that are specific to staging, where do you find that info? Honestly. I don't know how, even now, I don't know how you would really find out the standard. Obviously you can go in there and do it your way and charge what you wanna charge, but the standard when you're going up against others as well, without working for another property stylist. Another good hack in understanding how much to charge out, I guess, would be hiring furniture from a supplier. Like, for example, a, a Gas or a Pads or a Valiant, those types of businesses that hire furniture out. It gives you a good idea when you can see how much they charge to hire the furniture pieces for you to you for a styling job, how much you should be charging. But yeah, I, I honestly, there's no course I don't believe, um, it's more of a mental thing that I guess that you would find that information, which I had personally. I had a stylist that I worked for a couple of weeks. I just did an internship and that, that's where I learned, and it, everyone does things a little bit differently, you know, like. Some of us might charge a certain percentage for an extension rate and some might be a little bit higher. But I guess having a standard too, because the other thing, like I mentioned earlier is we do more so work for the real estate agent and they're used to a certain standard throughout the industry. So if you come in and wanna start charging a certain percentage for extension rates and everybody else they work with, you know, as we fluctuate a little bit, we're still quite similar. Um, so it's, you do need to have some sort of understanding of where the industry sees, so you just won't get booked. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of, conversation inside of the industry of people coming in new and just picking a number and you know, it undercutting all the other stuff. It's like, I hear this every year. Yeah. There's a big conversation that goes on where at certain times. Whether it's one person just gotten under another person's skin. But I often see like stories, I see lots of people being like, Hey guys, you can't do this. And I just feel like I 100% believe, you know, you're much better off to, if you see any of that behavior, you're much better off to reach out into the DM of that person who's been vocal and say, I get that, but I didn't know and I don't know, and I'm charging 2000 because I actually don't know if you can tell me what you, you know, I think there's a missing education piece where the people are getting absolutely, but they're not actually saying, Hey, you know, no harm no foul. It's not your fault you didn't know, but if you do this, you are teaching agents to low ball us all. And then they're like, well, I can get her in for$1,500 for a four bedroom stage. And it just, it just cascades, doesn't it like it's got so many flow on Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's really hard for our industry when you have new stylists come out and do that because the agents do hear that and they only need to hear it once. And it sticks with them and they'll continually go back to that price point that they've been quoted for. And they do think that if one stylist can do it for this, then why can't there might be a difference in quality of furniture, but there shouldn't be such a big difference. But I think also the industry's quite harsh on the newbies coming in and you know, they'll, they will under quote because they don't understand profitability when you haven't run it for a year. Yeah. Well, yeah, truly. And, and the damage of the furniture and just all of those things and what you need to actually be quoting for, I think they just don't understand that's where the, the pricing's coming from. And, and also that imposter syndrome of when you haven't ever gone out and done a styling job to go out and say, oh, yep, this is eight grand, as opposed to two, two grands a lot more comfortable to go out and quote at that rate. And it's also your backing too, with what you know, you've got sitting in your warehouse to put into a property. You know, if you're feeling a bit wobbly about that, if you're going out and buying the pieces as you're getting the jobs you might tend to under quate a little bit. But yeah, I, I do think that it is a little bit of a harsh industry like that. Everyone keeps the doors closed. Um, no one's kind of open to talking about it, talking about pricing, talking about how they got there. So yeah, it, it is really hard for the newbies, but I do, I do think just a internship, working for somebody for a couple of years, first seeing the mistakes they made. There's so many mistakes you can make so early on, and if they're costly in the staging industry. Hugely costly. It could be out of earning an income for two, three years if you under quote yourself. So, yeah, it's so interesting and, and I, I agree. I think we're very hard on it. It's like they're all just learning too. And just as you say, not people don't really come to me and talk about profitability till the third year of business, whether it's interior staging, whatever it is. They're just trying to get the lay of the land. But I feel like they just get shot on site in this industry. If they come out to get a feeler for things, it's like you're doing it wrong. You are like damaging everyone. You get kind of attacked and it's, you know, I'm glad that there will be people listening that can hear that there is empathy for it, but it's also really important that you reach out and get educated as quickly as possible in terms of, you know, whether that is two weeks with an experience. Stylist for free and being like, can I come out? Can I, you know, it's in exchange for the questions that I'm gonna ask. They're gonna seem stupid, but they're really gonna help me and I'll be lifting, like stuff as well and, and helping style. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think there's like definitely been a movement towards, people are scared to ask for that at the moment, you know, or really the last couple of years, like, it's such a closed door industry and even often in the interior design world, it's, um, people think that we are going to be so closed lived and look, a lot of us are because we struggled so much to get to where we are, it's sometimes you don't wanna look back and pull the people up behind you, but just reaching out. Like there's I would not be standing here where I am now without doing the internships that I had. And I always will give thanks to the girls that helped me along the way. Yeah, like you said, if you, if you are giving something back to them, they're always happy to, you know, they might not necessarily give you all their documentation, but definitely give you tips and tricks of what to charge, what to say when you're going in to try and get an agent on. What areas to kind of look for, depending on what stock they're wanting to purchase. You know, all of those tips that experience. It could just even be a coffee. Yeah. Even just shadowing someone while they do their install, you're gonna learn 10 times more than you think, you know?'cause it's an, it's a learn on the job kind of industry, isn't it? It's not like, absolutely. Of course. So you might as well just do two week, you weren't working anyway, you weren't doing any paid work. So go and shadow someone for two weeks and learn everything about Yeah. How they, hand over what is their process, what is the quoting process I think you would learn so much. That's, I, that'd be so much. Even just being on site whilst we are quoting, just seeing how we speak to the clientele. A lot of our clientele are in stress mode. They're either selling to downsize, they're going through a divorce, they're selling their parents' place after they've passed. Like it can be a lot of emotion there. So even just shadowing on quotes, seeing how we speak, how we sell the service as well. And you know what? You would do in a styling situation in tricky properties, things like that. You'd learn so much just from shadowing for a couple of weeks. Yeah. And like I said just before, you're probably not doing anything anyway. You know, I almost think it would be how beneficial this is a utopia like ridiculous thing.'cause this will never happen in our lifetime or in this world. But like, how cool if we would all just like jump and you do have to do two weeks of work experience per year at another like com, like another equal peer kind of. Um, and I think that would be amazing. How good would it be? Like if you came and worked in my studio for two weeks and I connect with you for two weeks, that there's so much that this industry can share? Yes. And it's just a question and it'd be like, you know, I'll give you the staff time for two weeks and then you come to my business. But I just think we have so much collectively we'll all benefit from getting better at, but instead everybody's just like, Nope, I'm shoving this round, round peg in a square halt for as long as it takes. Yes, absolutely. No, I do agree with that. I think we would all be, and just, even if it's not the exact industry, like there's so much I've learned from yourself just from. Chatting to you about, you know, you'd be telling me about your podcast episodes or things like that, and there's little things that I pick up like, oh, that program might be interesting for X, Y, or Z, or, you know, there's so much you can learn from each other that it is, there definitely needs to be a movement within both the interior design and property staging industry, opening up a little, supporting each other, more, chatting with each other more, you know, if there's a better way somebody's doing it, or a, a way that somebody's hacked to save some time, share it with each other. It's, yeah, become very closely knit. It's interesting from my perspective, I find it so interesting with the AI stuff. Like I'm just here to not gatekeeper, to share that and to be like, oh my God, you can do this thing and say this thing and you get this result and then you still get people side eyeing like, well, what's in it for you? Like, why are you telling us that? Like, you, they feel like you. Yeah, getting them like such a strange thing to be like, there's nothing in it for me. Like, don't do. It's, I know, and, and this same energy is not in other fields, it's so funny, like if you think of a plumber, an electrician, they're not gonna say, oh no, I'm not gonna show you how to install this hot water unit because you're gonna rip me off. Like they're just, it's funny, we're all like this. But yeah, I don't know if it's because it's a female led industry. I'm not gonna get into that conversation, but it is very funny to me sometimes. Yeah, because I see, I see all sorts of things, or I'll say like, comment this word for my free prompts or whatever, and then people are like. Hesitant as though if they do gimme their email address, I'm gonna sign them up for something or sell them something. I guess we just get a bit trained like that online. Yeah. It's quite funny. Yeah. Quick pause while we're about to talk systems and time saving. If you're an interior designer listening to this and you're still writing proposals from scratch, you need to meet Penelope. My proposal generator built specifically for designers. When we opened the wait list, nearly 15% of the people on it converted went ahead and bought Penelope on the day that it launched. Since then, my inbox has been flooded with messages like, oh my God, I just finished watching the videos. I'm losing my mind. Or I've finally just seen what Penelope can do. I'm never going back to the old school ways. I've had people who have uploaded their transcripts on the drive home, and then when they've gotten home, they're like, oh my God, that scope of work is way more detailed than I had ever sent in my business before. Penelope takes what used to be hours of fiddly admin and turns it into a beautiful, seamless client ready proposal in minutes. If you've ever been thinking about streamlining your proposals and how much they suck to pull together when you might get ghosted, like the idea that we're spending three to four hours, some of us on perfecting proposals that we don't know will go ahead yet is crazy to me. Now is the time to check her out. You can find the link in the show notes. So has there been any decision or habit that's really helped your business move forward? Like is there anything that you've implemented that you think, oh God, without this, I'd still be back there? Oh, um, gosh, there'd be so many moments. Having a really strong documentation for quoting. I went from taking, I was handwriting them all out. And I would spend, you know, 30 to 30 minutes to an hour after I'd gone out and seen a client to type their quota and getting some documentation behind me using different programs or what have you, whatever works for everybody. But they take me three minutes now. That was a big pivot. Just with scheduling throughout the day. That saved me heaps of time. The other thing was definitely which you helped me with yourself, having some AI tools to help me with responding to emails. That saved a huge chunk of time. I think. I guess a lot of the pivots that have pushed me forward are time saving things. I think as a stager, you know, you're out on the road, you get pulled in a million directions, you don't really ever know what tomorrow looks like. So anything that can save you time the first one that you said, getting your quoting systemized. So it's like a three minute thing means you have the confidence to say yes if an agent calls you and says, can you come out this afternoon? Because you're not trying to calculate where will I get 35 minutes to follow up the propo? You know, like to actually Exactly. Do the quote. There's so much more times. As long as you can kind of physically get there, you can say yes. Yeah. You don't actually have to think, oh, can we make it Thursday? Because you're trying to think of how many, like feasibly how many you'll actually be able to get back. Yeah, absolutely. And it just, it completely pulled away that overwhelmed feeling of, I've gone to see six properties today, now I've gotta sit on my computer till midnight. You know, I've, I changed the business structure that I'd get into the car from seeing that client do the quote in the car three minutes, then turn the engine on. So it was done in that overwhelmed feeling of I've gotta get back to them and I've gotta get back to them and massive completely. That's massive shift. Massive. That was a huge shift for me. Yeah. And in the same idea, like on the flip side, what's something do you think maybe hindered your growth or slowed you down? Whether you were aware of it or not at the time, is there anything in your business that you were like, well, once again, there'd be so many, but I probably,'cause this is one that's come up recently, but definitely waiting too long to hire. Huge because, you know, and I guess it's around a lot of limiting beliefs of, oh, but the staging industry's so up or down and it's, which it is, but you know, now how am I gonna find somebody that will ride the waves with me? And all of those things that we tell ourselves. But that definitely threw me back. If I'd hired earlier, I could have built a lot quicker. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's really nice to hear and quite self-aware to be, because we do hold ourselves back and hold the responsibility of hiring someone is a big deal. You can't shove it back in Pandora's box once it's out. You can't hire and fire. Like, that's not the intention. So it's kind of like a commitment thing as well, just actually feeling that feeling of if I take you on, I feel responsible for your wage, for your income. Yeah. For the, the work being there. And that's something, yeah, it's a huge thing. I think we say it as if it's just a, you know, a, a task that can just get tick off the list. But it is a huge thing and when yeah, you put it into perspective that you are responsible for them. You're responsible for their work environment of the staff morale and everything within their day to day. It's, it is really big to hire somebody. And whether I was shying away from that for different reasons that I've never really worked out, but that definitely. Definitely held back my progress in both sides of my business. Yeah. It's also you know, it's something I think that we hesitate on and we hesitate on because we've been a solo entrepreneur for quite a while. It's also one of those big things like do I actually wanna be someone's boss? You know, do I want to split that energy and focus? But there comes a time, and I think specifically I've seen it in like your business and in other staging business, it's like it's not physically possible for you to be solo anymore. Like you can't Yeah, like some of the sprints I've seen what we've worked together for a couple of years and some of the times that I've seen you working, I'm like, yeah, pretty sure. 60 hours ain't it? Like I'm not in the hustle group, but like, I don't think humans need to work or should work 60 hour weeks. Like I think that is not sustainable. It's a no burnout and that, and you have to show up in that level. If you are solo in a growing and scaling business, like if you don't get help, there's no one nowhere to go. There is nowhere to go. Yeah, exactly. And it is hard, uh, I guess it's hard with the staging industry'cause you're always just kind of looking forward to the next week and thinking, oh no, I can get through that one and I can get, and things don't really book in till a week and a half, two weeks out. So you never really know how busy you're gonna be. It's a funny industry to hire for, but it's, definitely been a big relief having some help. Yeah. And it's really interesting, you know, we talk about loving that fast pace and loving all of that stuff. Do you find it's a shock when you have it's no secret September's madness and spring market and whatnot, and, and then June, July, or even May and June, you find that there's a lot of stylists that are in this like famine in their feast of famine. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We all call each other going, oh, what is, what do we do? Like, and it's same every year and it's same every year. And we always. At least once a year, all of us have our go at having a little panic. And I think it's because you have such close relationships with your agents. You know, you speak to them in spring, sometimes every day. There's always something coming up or something that we need to discuss. And then you'll go through the winter patch and they're all in Europe on yachts in Greece. Yeah. And, um, you don't hear from them for a month. And it is odd to have that silence after such a hustle period. Yeah. It's a strange, it's a strange, um, business to run, that's for sure. Do you feel like you've found better mechanisms or ways to work with cash flow and actually understand, you know, make hay while the rain shine? No. Make hay while the sun shines in September and feed it back out to that quiet months to keep yourself calm. Yeah, absolutely. And that took a few years. Absolutely took a few years. And going back to your first question, that's where those newbies come in and they might start in September and think, oh yeah, this is amazing. But then, if they've got themselves a warehouse and come winter and they haven't done that full year through where to get, that's where they can find themselves in strife, friendly charging such low amounts. And yeah, so I've definitely had to do it a fair few times around. And it, and it's interesting, even as the business grows each year, I still need to evaluate it each year. Like the scheduling of how much we're putting away each month and what we're leaving in the business and, you know, purchasing stock, whether that needs to be pulled back at certain points, things like that. Yeah, it's hard. It's a, it's a really hard industry as well to follow the numbers on, I guess, because, you know, with the interior side of things, you would schedule out how much work you can take on for the month and fill out your schedule. And know that you're booked up, but ours isn't like that. And it's hard working out where the money's coming from, where the money's going as well with transport and buying stock. So yeah, it is a, it is hard, but definitely each year that goes on, you just get more experienced at working it out. It's a lot more of a logistics game, isn't it? It's like understanding, not just the physical logistics of having a, a company that can pick up and drop off and install and, but you're spinning these plates and they're all going at once, you've got nine properties out there, you've got not enough to pack another two, and this person has promised to come back. But then the last minute they've asked for an extension, but I was counting on that whole house to plug it into the next job and, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's really hard like that. And even, you know, you, I've got. Would hate to know how many auctions this weekend and you think you plan for next week to think, yep, we're gonna grab all of them, all our stock will come back. But it's also, there's years where the market's really flat, so you need so much more stock where like the COVID years we were, we were installing and getting calls three days later that the property sold. Yeah. So in terms of stock rotation, we could have had half the stock that we would need now to do the same amount of properties. So yeah, it is, it is really hard to work out. It's crazy. I think I spoke to you about this ages ago, but I'm wondering like at what point it will start to become a thing to do. Virtual staging and AI staging and yeah, that, I think that that's a threat because I think the way you feel in a home is why you buy a home. So I think that open homes will always outweigh anything to do with like, real estate photography and just whacking up something that has like stock, like AI type images in it. Yeah, yeah. But is that something you side eye and think about and look at, like advancements? Yeah. Oh, it definitely comes up because there's, it's, it is happening. It's definitely happening. It's funny, it kind of either happens the out the outskirts a little bit more where they might not be so close to staging companies or the property value isn't worth paying for the staging. But it's definitely also happening in new build apartments. A lot of that stuff's happening like, back three, four years ago. We would style if, if there was an apartment building go up of 20 bit of 20 apartments, we would style one and they would shoot it for the campaigns and then put the same photo on as they sold each of the units off. And the agent would go through and show them the styled one. But now they're just doing all of that digital digitally. Mm. So, and I wonder,'cause that's a different ideal client, isn't it? Like if they're buying from a overseas, if they're not walking the space anyway, like I know that there's an emotional story to tell of a space. Maybe, you know, when it is that family home out in the burbs and you're thinking, oh that could be atticus's room and this one would be this. Yes. You know, you get attached and you really wanna put an offer in. Mm. But it's probably less so when you're actually looking at the finishes and fixtures and it's brand new, no one's ever lived in it, you're gonna bring your own stuff. You don't get to keep that stuff anyway. Yeah. Sometimes like sometimes I think people like almost benefit from looking beyond staging.'cause they're not. They're actually not looking at the house when they're falling in love with the furniture that you're gonna collect. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And some, in some circumstances, it's like you could have paid more attention to the tapware if you hate broth. Or like, you maybe weren't looking at it'cause you were too busy sitting in the, chair from Emma and Cohen being like, this is beautiful fabric. And it's like, that doesn't matter. You weren't buying that. Yeah. Yeah. You were never getting the jet. Yeah. But yeah, and I guess the other thing is too buyer's expectations, which going back to the suburb thing again too, like the inner city buyer and not all of it, you know, if we're talking say Turac and Q, that type of buyer expects the property to be styled so they can envision themselves in it. Whereas if you're out in the suburbs, you know, maybe that buyer is a little bit more lenient in that they Oh, has no, yeah. All that they might not, um, you know, expect it. So there's that expectation that also comes with. Properties as well. So I think, yeah, I definitely, I definitely think it's gonna keep making a mark all of the AI stuff. How far it goes. I don't know. I think it's a little bit scary when it comes to property because it can, they can so easily make a property look so much nicer online now. And it doesn't look like that in person at all. You know, like I see it all the time. I look up the photos of properties Oh, and they dial up the grass. It's like, that was, I was there two days ago. It's frog green and all white. Yes. That happened to me last week. I said to my client, oh wow, did you get the turf done? And she said, oh no. And it looked perfect like it was off an ad. Oh. So yeah. That, that, well that's been happening for years that yeah, we've photoshopped bits and bobs, but they're getting a lot better with it now. You know, the paint colors are looking a lot wider and fresher and what have you. So, yeah. I that serves the market though, like,'cause I feel like that sets off for the home. From the homeowners and for the sale, it sets you off on the wrong fault.'cause you actually get there and it's like scruffy around the lights, which is, and feels dirty. And you notice it because it's been so pristine in the images that you've been stalking. Like, let's be honest, if you're gonna go to my house, you are looking at that house like every 15 minutes. Like where would I put this? And you've like planned out your, like next 10 years in the property. And then you get there and it's, you know, it's like a hotel room that you've seen the images online, but you get there and it's like dirty and the bathroom's not clean and like it puts you right off. It almost like is a harder sell. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree with that. You've set, they've set themselves up for more disappointment from the buyer. Whereas they may have been able to look past it initially, but they Yeah, it's set the tone, hasn't it? Well just kind of showcases it like it actually makes it noticeable. Whereas before I'd be like, yeah, well it's a house that's been lived in, like it's gonna have fingerprints around the light globes and like it hasn't been wiped, no harm, no foul. I'll grab a wet wipe while I'm here and get it done. Like I won't really think about it so much'cause you know you are gonna do like an end of lease clean or have a big clean before you get in there. But I think when you, yeah, when you are so focused on the imagery, maybe the angles and things make the rooms, there can be lots of negatives in a row and that's never a good sales point when you're like, they took the photo from outside or like, it's actually a lot in here and you're just compounding the disappointment. Yeah. Which, well, that happens a lot with the digital staging too, because they can put in an eight seater dining table. So you are looking at it online and thinking, oh, wow, it's only like three bedroom. It's a dog furniture. Yeah. And yeah, you get there and think, oh, I can fit a four seater, because they're so good at manipulating the size of what the, the dining chairs would actually be Yeah. Like a human couldn't sit in the chair, but it's like, it can fit in the room for the image, but you couldn't like Yeah. Replicate that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that there'll be cool advancements in technology. Like I can imagine Saturday morning going to an auction, walking through and say, you've staged it and you can just like. Not like Google Lens or QR code, but you can just like grab the chair and buy the chair, you know, or grab the thing. Like I feel like yeah, we, that's actually, yeah, started to happen a little bit. Like it's definitely happened within my business. We have QR codes within all the properties so that they can buy the furniture that's there and look not all of it, some pieces go in and out of um, stock, but if we've used a Globe West Armchair as an example, and it's still in stock, they can send a photo through the QR code and we can order it for them so that that has already actually started to happen in the last year or so. And also there, virtual augmentation or whatever it's called, like if you've got a piece that you wanna see if it looks good in your house, like I love all that technology that's coming into just generally like furniture brands and other things. Sometimes, you know, you can put the rug in the room and have a look and you can put the thing in the thing. Yeah. I think something about that, that will, in. Integrate with staging soon in terms of, or maybe even to the design process for us, like if you've got your, you can pick and pack your warehouse into the 3D spaces to sort of, if you wanna check subin. Yeah. Spatial awareness and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Absolute. Yeah. I of feel like that's, we're getting towards that as we see like how quickly this tech is moving. I know every time I talk to you, I'm like, I've made a new imaginary friend, like I've got a new thing and it's like crazy and I kind of feel like that's somewhere that we'll get to quite soon yeah. No, I agree. Who am I to say it's exciting though? I was completely convinced by this stage. We would definitely be in Space Highways. I would have rosy, like, we'll get up, like the Jetsons would go through the shower conveyor. Like, I'm so ripped off. I, I think that's probably why I love AI so much is because I'm like, you promised me this in 1986 and I have been waiting all my robot robot world and you know, make clean out my robot robot back is called Rosie. And she's like, she's cool, but she can only vacuum a mob. Like, I was like, can only vacuum, get breakfast outta the cupboard. What is I, I want a car that drives itself. Imagine how much time we would save. Well, there has to, there's a lot of talk about that being, manually driven cars being obsolete in the next 15, 20 years. Yeah. I'll believe it when I see it. Still. No space highways. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. But yeah, I think there's a, a lot to cover for the industry. Definitely with ai. Yeah. For all for, I think for all of us and I, I think for us it is about having it as a support tool and getting to know it before the clients do. Like I think absolutely it doesn't matter, the clients don't have our brain. They can't ask the right questions. They will never get as good of an outcome as you will. So you might as well know how they're using it and do the same, but you'll get a better outcome'cause you've got years of experience behind you and like you're using your brain in a creative way. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's even as well, it was like people have gotten so nervous about it in or in the interior world and a lot of other careers as well, but not forgetting that people love that human touch. That going in and doing a consult in person and explaining to them what you mean and showing them how you could use one of their VAEs from their nana or what have you on their dining table and AI can't do any of that stuff and that's still so valuable. And. Yeah, I think I, I definitely think, well, more so in the interiors world, I think the staging industry hasn't quite got the fright yet from ai, but I'm sure it's coming when they listen to this podcast and they're like, excuse me, what did you just say? Virtual styling and staging. What you talking about? I think you're all too busy actually doing the work to have noticed AI is here. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's that too. I think it's letting it worry you or not, or just choosing to not let it worry you. And also, like you said, leaning in and learning it before your clients do, like getting some coaching with yourself. Um, you know, getting, getting used to ai, starting to do a little weekend of course, or do a little masterclass or what have you. Like anything you can do to make yourself feel a little bit more comfortable with it. And speaking from somebody that you know, how much I suck it, you should have seen how long it took us to get onto this recording. With anything that's digital or anything like that. But just being patient with yourself and being like, I can only learn a little bit by little bit, knowing that your capacity is small on it or that it overwhelms you, but just chip away at it and keep doing little bits and pieces because they're the pieces in my business that definitely have helped the most. Things like getting your emails sorted and things. Yeah, I think that's good advice. It's like, don't try to learn ev every day, get updates and it's so overwhelming knowing what's ahead and what's coming and stuff. It's like, yeah, but just focus on, I actually have saved, 40 minutes today on this one task and this and this, and like celebrate those little wins to be like, look, if you can offload 40 minutes that's good enough for me. I'm happy. Yeah, yeah. And you learn so much, so quickly too. That's one thing. I feel like I needed to set aside a whole day to work something out with ai, but really it's so quick and you can ask it to teach you. Yeah. And if you don't understand it, you're like, actually pretend I'm threes. Do it again. Let's just try again on that one. But yeah. I wanna talk to you about marketing because digital and local area marketing for the type of business that you have is wildly different to interior designers. Like, you know, I always get so many questions about marketing and so many things, but you are, you know, you've said it before, you're not really marketing direct to the homeowner. You're marketing to your real estate agents, mostly in the property style side of your business anyway. Yeah. What are the biggest challenge? Like, what have you found and seen over the last, how long have you been in business now? Seven years. Yeah, about that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So lots of things have changed, the algorithm's gone bonkers, but like, what do you find works? What do you find doesn't work? What, how do you have to shift and think differently to how I would market, for example, friends here? It's, yeah. So well staging for completely different game, I guess I, I use, well I only use Instagram, but say you were using Instagram, Pinterest, whatever handle that you are using it's actually used more as a portfolio for clients that have already had a quote from you to have a look at. So the marketing behind that is really different. It doesn't need to be as pushy. It needs to be more informative, it needs to be more showcasing your work and to explain that more. So your marketing would always be more towards an agent because you want, one relationship with an agent can be a quarter of your work. Or an agency could be, you could only work for one agency and have a thriving business. So going out and getting an agent. Is really your marketing and a lot of that marketing's in person and it's not, it's making relationships. It's going out and actually meeting them in the office. It's, you know, you and I have spoken about before some marketing strategies and it was going and getting coffee and taking it to a Monday morning meeting at the agent's office. That's the kind of marketing that you do in staging. And then the agent actually pushes you through into the jobs. And then when the clients met you, then they'll go back and look at your Instagram or your Pinterest or what have you. So it is seen more as a portfolio engineered, isn't it? It's like you don't really need it until they're ready to pay the deposit. They double check. You're not a scam. Yeah, exactly. And look, don't get me wrong, like there's definitely times where. I have gotten clientele directly off my Instagram, but it is rare. And the reason why it's rare is'cause an agent will go through and say, I want you to, they prefer to work with people that they know will regularly work with. So when the agent's coming through, they'll recommend a stylist that comes along with them. So generally speaking, unless you really love a stylist on Instagram that you follow, that happens to be within the same suburb that you live in. Um, yeah, generally you would always just go with the agent's recommendations. So in terms of marketing, I guess it's more like get more brand awareness, I guess. And portfolio work. So just showing what you do. And it's interesting that you say that. I think not all people realize just how. Not how few, but what having, a couple of agents that are fiercely loyal that give you all of their listings can actually mean, I think when people think about it, they think you're gonna need to have the whole of these, you know, this berry plant, this ray white, this, and all of them working with you. Mm-hmm. And you are the preferred stylist, but that's like literally you would die. You can't do that. You would die. Yeah. You would die. I think if you're a solo operator, three a week is huge. Three installs a week. And to do that, you really only need, say five, six agents. That's not that many relationships to just go out and get Mm. You know, I'm saying it like it's easy done, but if there's always opportunity there to, if you go and meet an agent, they already work with a different stylist. They've got your number as their backup. It's the way that the industry works. You know, stylist might go out of business or what have you, but they. They, they're very time poor as well too. So once they've got a relationship with you, that's pretty much, unless there's an issue, they'll stay with you. Yeah. It's not a, it's not a whole heap of work, and even to have a big business where you're doing at least one a day, even two a day, that's, it's still not that many connections to have to make those sales. I do really love that perspective. I'm forever just reminding people, if you do full service design, you could be two yeses away from your yearly financial goals. Yes. Yeah. You're actually looking for one or two yeses. If you're doing 50,000 or above, like design fees or you're do, you're doing these big jobs, you know, and depending on what your targets are, and you plug in a couple of little things along the way. I think people get in their own head about. I know speaking with emerging designers in all the courses, in all the gears that I've trained, so hundreds and hundreds of emerging designers, and they have this perception that they'll do like four discovery calls a day. Yeah, yeah. Where are you gonna get that level of like, sorry, I've never seen that in my life. I think I did a, a reel about it years ago, but basically being like, you need to remember that for a month is pretty standard, like for like, even for busy designers because you only, you can only trade your time of money with one time. Like your calendar. Yeah. Once it's in there, it's in there. You can't take another Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I guess the same for the styling industry. You can't, can't physically be in that many places at once. And honestly, it is like the relationship building with agents, they're quite close. Like they'll call, and it's a, it's quite a demanding industry, so you need to, your availability. If an agent calls today and they want you to see a client the next day or the day after that, you need to. Be able to have time. And that's where, you know, you'll grow too quickly if you go too hard. And that's where it, you'll run into an issue because if your stock's not growing as quick as your jobs are growing, um, your staff isn't, isn't growing as quick. Yeah. There's, um, so no, you definitely don't need a lot to start. You really can start off with one or two agents and we run quite a successful business. I think it's really nice, I think for other people to hear that. I think you we've kind of alluded to it all through this interview, but we run our own race and so you've only got yourself to benchmark. And so you sort of think, oh, well I could go harder or I could work more, or I could do this. And it's like, but why? Like, would you also be so fine with what you've got and then, and delivering up the quality that you've promised to deliver, like having the right stock, not doing a Kmart run to buy. Stake that you're like, yeah. Oh, just how quickly shove this in. I think that you do such a disservice to the homeowner. You've promised a particular level or you've shown photos when you've had low, you know, you've got photos taken and it's been, you've got your best stuff out. Yeah. But you take more and more and more and you just go to a des on the way to the job and you're cutting off tags on cushions and I think you can like actually deliver and almost embarrassing for what the level it damages the relationship, the agent. It's not good for the homeowner. Yeah, absolutely. And like what you just said about damaging the relationship with the agent, that's what you've always gotta be so careful of and going back on, it's a double-edged edge sword. Sword with, you know, yes, you only need a certain amount of agents to be quite successful, but if you lose an agent because you're doing things like that where you're running in and checking in Kmart, bits and bobs, when you're claiming that you're high end, that can lose the agent just as quick as you gain them or putting damage stock in. And that could be, you know, a quarter of your revenue for the year. Just that one agent. So it is, and they talk like they might not have time to talk to you, but my gosh, do they talk to each other like that? You'll, yeah. If they've been burned and looked and been embarrassed in front of their homeowner or like something's happened that's not up to standard, they will absolutely name and shame across the like, and you might lose two of them. Yeah. You know, because they've started talking and you just dunno why. But you're not getting the calls anymore from the second one. Yeah. That had nothing to do with what happened with the first one. Like, it's always my biggest fear for clients property stylists that I coach. I'm always just like, okay, let's just think about this though. Is that gonna damage their ego? Are we, you know, we are, we're almost carrying a glass ball, which is the agent's ego. Exactly. And it's like Exactly. I wouldn't challenge them. I would just like. Hold it with two hands please. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I guess, yeah, like as your experience goes as well, knowing there's definitely agents that have more respect for stylists than others. And picking and choosing who you do wanna work with too. It's the same as interior work, I guess. You know, when you're interviewing a client, you can quickly tell if they're going to be your type of client or not, but will you take anything like, you know, that temptation in the early days to be like, okay, well whatever interior job I get what I get and I don't get upset and I just do it. Yeah. Even if that's not my style or we need the money, I've got time to do it. How do you go when it comes to an agent, like hello to any real estate agent, friends that are listening, trying to be offensive, but like you've got, for example, just someone who's an absolute wanker and you're like, I don't wanna work with this person, but it's the homeowner that you're actually servicing. Yeah. And sometimes, like, do you just buy your lip and work with that relationship knowing that, like ultimately or are you way too involved with them to put up with it? You're pretty involved with them with? Oh look sometimes not. If the clients come directly to you and it wasn't a referral from the agent, you can kind of get away with speaking just directly to the client a little bit more. Um, and every agent works differently too. So you've got an an agent that you really struggle to work with, but they kind of pass you the phone number and you deal with the rest. You could absolutely manage that relationship and continue on. But if you have an agent that, you know, you're going into quarry and they're saying in front of the client, oh, we've got a three grand budget. You have to style the whole house for that, and we want fresh foliage and hung on every wall, and you're standing there thinking, well, we're all just basing each other's time. You know, sometimes they'll call pushing you to do free extensions, things like that. If you constantly have that with an agent, I think that's showing that they don't respect your business, and that's where I would walk. Mm-hmm. It's a such an interesting thing to me, and we've had many off the record conversations about this, but it blows my mind how like the value piece in the end is commission in their pocket. It's like what they get above. Reserve or whatever and all this, like how a house can sell. When the story of the house has been told properly and it's been staged properly. That is a huge chunk of bonus money to Yeah. And yet it's not, it, I still see get, not you specifically, but I still see stylists that I work with get low ball all the time. Just as you said right in front of the clients being like, it's a four bedroom house, the budget is two and a half to three no more, and it has to look like this and this. And it's like, yeah, but I'm gonna make you an extra 40 K above reserve easily. Yeah. Like that. It's like such a strange thing. The math ain't math for me. The math I know. And it's always been that way. And I think it's also because a stylist is one of the last people to come through. So the agent will come through, they'll make sure they've got the listing, they'll, you know, you have to have a copywriter. You have to have a photographer. If you're on an acreage property, you have to have a video. Obviously have to pay the auctioneer. If it's an auction, you have to pay the agent fees. There's no getting out of all of those fees. Then right after they've discussed how expensive all of that is, they bring us through. And that's why sometimes it can feel like a pinch with the property stylist because we're saying, okay, also you need to pay us 4, 5, 10 grand to sell this property. And that's why sometimes, all eyes are on us. Price point wise. I think it's just standing firm. If agents, one bit of advice I would say is agents, remember you do them a favor one time and they will remember it for eternity. If you, it might as well be in your service agreement, like it may as well be. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, if you do any type of deal, they'll continue to ask for it. So I would just keep that in mind. And you know, some agents, not so much like you, you'll know anyway from your gut feeling of that agent, whether they're gonna continually take you for a ride and at the end of the day, it's just them looking good. They'll get off the phone to you and they've pushed you down a thousand dollars on your installation fee and they'll call the client and say, oh, I got you a thousand dollars off. So the client's happier with the agent, you know? Yeah. It's just making them look good to the client, which. But that doesn't serve you or your business at all? How? How good. I feel like they should have to pre-buy. Like would they take the listing? They buy the staging, they pick the property sellers and they include it in the marketing budget. Like they include the photography, they include the other stuff. They call it 30 2K in marketing. So why can't they just call it 38 K or 39 k and it comes styled? Yeah. Like just save everyone, pick your favorite stylist and build the pricing into the marketing.'cause you're doing all that stuff that you just explained is sold as a marketing. Unavoidable. Have to have, yeah. It blows my mind that the styling of a property is optional because. They should obviously wanna get as much as possible above reserve. Like wouldn't that be amazing for the industry if that's how it went? Every house, if that's how it went? Yeah, absolutely. No, that would definitely be an easier way of doing it too. And the homeowner's benefit, like it's not like you're trying to do anyone out of anything. They would be getting more money for the sale every time. It's very disappointing and it must be so much so for you when you go through and do quotes and you mentioned before, people are, they say moving houses more stressful than the loss of a spouse or death of a spouse. Like, it's like the most stressful thing that you do. So you get them in that really stressful pocket and you ask them to make another financial decision and a large investment and you can't show them yet the other side. Yeah. But when they say no, and they list the property with black leather sofas that the dog has torn apart and like they've, they've listed it not with its best foot forward. It's so upsetting to me to see, like, you see the result and you're like, oh. Yeah, you've settled for just under re, you know, you've gone and you've given it this, but you almost know without a doubt, you could have got a hundred K over if you'd had it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the time too, like when it's a slower market, sometimes it's always spoken about that a staging a property, we will make you more money on the other end. But sometimes in a really low market we might make you a little bit more money, you know, a little bit more than our fee. But in a market where properties aren't selling and yours is at least sold, has at least sold. I think it's that as well, that, you know, in, we just went through a patch kind of a year ago that it was super quiet in the market. Things were staying online for a long time, and the ones that were staging were still selling at auction, or were still selling privately. I think even just having that,'cause I think there's a lot of the agents are so used to selling it as you know, you'll get, you see, they don't even like too much to say that you'll get extra because then it's putting pressure on them. Um, and they don't love it when we say it either. Yeah. To be honest, I've had that feedback before.'Cause they don't want any pre, they don't want any additional pressure. They don't want the pressure of, if I stage this, then will that a hundred percent guarantee that you are gonna sell it because they can't guarantee that. But yeah. And the homeowner I'm sure gets quite, quite a lot of questions when it's been sitting on market for 90 days or longer and they've got no bites and no like Yeah. Yeah. And it becomes a pressure cooker because we're hitting them up for extension rates because their furniture just still sitting out there and then, you know, they're contacting the agent saying, what do we do? And that agent's calling us saying, can you just do it for free? You know, it's a, it's hard conversations to consistently have and it sounds like a hard situation, but there isn't that much to property staging in terms of, um, service agreements and different con, it's the same conversation over and over. Once you get confident, it's. I could just have my voice recorded and play it. Yeah. I just go through the spiel over and over and just let them know. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. What do you think, and I'm just gonna wrap us up shortly, but what do you think is the most surprising thing about running your own business that maybe you didn't anticipate? I feel like it's, and I'm speak for myself and the people that I talk to, but it's shocking to me how different the lived experience is to what I probably thought I was doing when I created an A BN and was like, cool, I'll just go out and do this and I'm just gonna do this. And where I am now and where I started and all the like bumps into the wall and the way in between, it's so wildly different to what I thought. So how's that experience been for you? I think on the staging side that I thought it would be a lot more glamorous and a lot more fun. I think seeing, and I'm not a numbers girl, I'm not a backend bookwork kind of person, and I think learning a lot of that stuff and working. On the business and towards the growth of the business and seeing all that stuff. I'm shocked at the different job roles that I hold within my business. I can't believe that I can do all the bookkeeping that I can do or do my own best statement. Like I just, there'd never any million years when I started my business thought that I would be able to wear all the hats, I guess. But yeah, it's definitely, I think it's definitely that. I think it would be that the versatility in my day, like just jumping from doing invoicing to jumping out, going on site and meeting an agent to emotionally supporting somebody on site that's, selling their property because they're going through something hard or what have you. So it's, yeah the versatility of the day and being able to continually grow as a person as well, whilst my business goes. And I've loved witnessing that. I really like that. You know, and it, it's definitely not that you're in a people pleasing mode or a yes, a yes guy sort of energy, but I feel like you always say yes to anything that can benefit the growth of your business. Like I feel like I never see hesitation, whether it's private coaching, whether it's a, a workshop, a retreat, a like if there's a underdeveloped skill, if there's a thing, like I always see you being like, well this is almost like why you have this cashflow, why you have this stuff on the side. It's to plug those areas and shine a light on them instead of just go, I'm not really good at that. And like, look the other way. I often see you sort of go, how do I get good at that? Like, who's the person who can show me how to be good at that?'cause it's my area, but I wanna look at it head on and just go, you know what, it can't stay like this'cause we won't grow. So I, I hate the computers, but show what to do. But show me, I'll cry the whole time on Voxer, but please show me. Yeah, no, definitely I do agree with that. I think I'm good at being able to, in small doses, I'm not be able to start working towards things that I definitely don't feel comfortable doing. Mm. Because who, who feels comfortable running a business when they start? I think when you're starting out, like going and standing in front of 20 real estate agents and telling them to work with you. Like, don't get me wrong, I did at least 10, 15 flops and didn't get one agent call me. And they probably laughed as I walked out. Like they were horrible. And then, you know, the first year that I did my own best, I definitely got it very wrong. But yeah, I think it's just being able to like push through and wanting to. To learn and wanting to understand all sides of your business. Like it's so easy to just hire a bookkeeper or like you said, with the computer stuff or AI stuff. I could have just hired someone to do that for me, but knowing it myself to even know what I want for the business and give direction on that as well is really important. Yeah. It's also you make that observation about the new people, but I think there's a reason that they're sayings like, fake it till you make it, and like everyone that you are looking at right now who's out of your design graduates, like you've just finished or whatever. The ones that look like they're killing it are the ones who are like, I don't know, I don't wanna say like raw dogging it, but they're freaking out, but they're getting it done. Like they're just Yeah, exactly. They're not killing it. They're just brave enough to stand up and be like, I am just going to, I want this enough. I want this enough to do this thing, like to make a dick of myself on social media. I want it that bad. Like I always relate, people always say like, how did you get on camera? How do you do things? How, how do you show up and chat on your stories and things? And I think I can't afford to, and I don't want staff to have social media marketing manager, but if I did, she or he or they would have KPIs and they would need to report to me and I would want certain returns on that investment and I would need them to advocate for my business the way I would. But no one knows my business as much as I do and everything that I do. And so I just feel like if I still worked in corporate, my boss would come over to my desk and say, Rihanna, we've decided to do TikTok. Work it out. Yeah. Yeah. And I would not think twice about getting on there and being like, do whatever this bloody trend was and then because I was told to do it, but the return would be for my ex corporate bottom line instead of my own business. So in my mind I'm like, what other business would I point and dance for, if not my own children? Like, yeah. It's no sense to me that, you know, I can say no to one and not the other like, and because I know how I was as a employee, even though I was in senior leadership, they would ask us to do ridiculous things and yeah, we would have to do them whether we like you just have to try. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even if you don't know how to do it, you just have to learn. Yeah. Micro-learning is so important. And I think all, I see this a lot in the industry like, and, and a lot with the girls that come through and they do the framework and then they do the framework express and then they do private coaching. It's like they're lifelong learners. They're happy to take on the next iteration of whatever you're teaching if they've worked with you before.'cause it's just like. Like micro learning using AI to be, I dunno how to do, just like we said before, I'm not really sure. Treat me like I'm three and tell me the step by step instructions. Like I think, is it Marie Folio who says everything is Google? Go Google, find Outable Googleable, or something like that. Google. Google. Oh my gosh, now I can't. Thank you. Google. He does say Google. Google, Google. Anyway, she's built her whole multimillion dollar platform, you know, on these sorts of things. And it's because what she's explaining is the determination and tenacity of the type of person that succeeds in a solo entrepreneur role. And that is the finder outer look at all these words that I'm making, but it's making up. It's the person who's willing to say, I don't know, and that's okay. I can find out. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And being able to say that to your clients as well. I think humanizing it again, like it's so fine to not have everything so perfect. You know, to say on site, oh, I don't really know, which. Paint color, you should paint the wall, but I'm gonna send you an option later on once I've had to think about it. Yeah. You, if you don't know on the spot, like actually admitting to that can sometimes make them feel like they're a little bit closer to you, that you're not so above them, that they can't ask you a silly question or something like that sometimes can work in your favor so much. Absolutely. I was talking about this just today around being relatable and, and minimizing the. Intimidation factor with design. So I can see when I go to some people's houses, I can tell the difference between people who've followed me on Instagram and know that it's so funny and fine if they can't pronounce Ratan or boule or, and that like, maybe I will say the wrong thing.'cause I am a Melo Propp and anyone that listens to the podcast knows I just, listen to those last three sentences. I'm like a Google ball and I'm around. It's not, they're not words. And so it's okay if they don't know them as well. And I think showing that side of you and being okay to show up and sort of say you can be professional and fun. You can be professional and real. People make mistakes and say mispronounce words and say things. And I think for so long it's been this disconnect where it's like you employ an interior designer and they come in and they judge your things and they tell you how to do things better and they kind of, tell you what you should. Like style wise. And I think there is a little bit of a shift around the conversation being more like, how do you wanna feel in the space? What do you wanna, you know, what, what does it need to achieve? What is the traffic? Like, what is, we consider things a little bit differently. At least that's my idea. Definitely. I think the language has changed around it a lot and, you know, we're definitely getting online now and being a lot more casual. The whole blazers out the window now that everything had to be so, yeah. Perfect. All the documentation had to be so perfect and you know, everything was done in a certain way, like it's quite cookie cutter and now it's very, everybody leans into doing it in different ways. We all have different service offerings now. It's just a different, it's definitely relaxed a lot, I think. I have a, a private coaching client who is working with me and also working with someone who probably, I'd say, charges like four or five times. Like I know this person in and around and I have spoken to them and said. Be careful because we are so different in our approach. Like if you're with me, we are right in bareback. We're crazy cowboys. Like we're just going, we're getting it done. We're getting clients. We're just like clean up on the way. I have a particular methodology and it's very solution focused, but it's actionable. It's not about the planning, the perfection, the detail, the like I'm not a get your ducks in row, you know? It's always just like they, yeah, they're coming along. We're getting it done. Like you've worked with me. We always get there. Yeah. But we get it done. Like it's an act. Yeah. Like focused way of coaching. It's like that's Oh, absolutely. Like you'll be like, we should do this. So business. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. And you'd be like, okay, open it up now. Yeah. Half an hour later I message you back and I'm like, right, I've pulled, are you done? The entire thing and you just need to put your branding on it. And actually you need to go out and do it, but it's like done. And I just think it's interesting. Yeah. Because that is like the. I don't know. It's always like, yeah, I agree with you. Sometimes I think there can be so much chatter around a task, and if you just start doing it, it creates, it creates the motion to keep going. I agree with that and I love the way that you coach that. You'll like that. I think it's, it takes you overwhelm away from it as well over the task. You know, you, you might come to a coach because you wanna redo your branding or you need to look at your service agreements or what have you. And to have somebody just look at it and go, okay, let's just. Let's just tweak this now and let's just do this now. And all of a sudden the overwhelm is gone because you're already halfway there and it's only been half an hour. And it's not on the task list anymore. I hate handing over at the end of my two week coaching containers, like when I'm doing private coaching. I don't like, like on that last Friday when we always do that review and like go into it if there's outstanding things, I haven't done my job. Like I just really feel like, you know, there always will be some things that you'll continue to be you've gotta doing. Yeah. But like if you haven't even looked at certain things inside of our roadmap yet. So like, okay, well we are gonna need an extra day. And that's on me. Like I just wanted to get, I don't know. That must just be my Yeah. Virgo and like list kind of way. You know what, I'm like little, I need to tick things off. Yes. Well I just need to know that. There's nothing that you don't have the capability of doing, like it's been explained properly. It's all sitting there. And even though it might not happen till Q2, you don't need any more further clarification. Like you, you've got it handled and it's on your side, but it's like you Yeah. There's no overwhelm or questions about it. It's just sitting there waiting to go. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I'm gonna wrap us up there'cause you've probably got like, how many hours of work to go today there? Lots of things to do. Admin, lots of things. Is it an admin day today? No, I'm in the warehouse today. Well I'll wrap it up here lovely to chat. Thanks for sharing all of your insights. I feel like we're gonna have to do this annually'cause there's so much that goes on and yeah. And we'll have to, as we're coaching, we'll have to park certain discussions that we have to be like, that can be the next podcast. You can be podcast ambassador correspondent for the stages. I love it. Yes. Yeah, I'll share all the war, war stories, all of them. Yep. We need an expose. But it's hard when, you know, there's lowering professionalism and then there's this out and out spilling the team. Yes, absolutely. And they're different. Right. Beautiful. Alright, Andy, thank you. Chat to you again soon. Bye. Thanks so much. Bye. I hope you enjoyed listening to that as much as I loved recording it. It was so fun. Obviously we turned the recording off and then all the juicy stories come out. Hopefully I'll get Angie on again in the future and we can dive and we can dive into a bit more specifics and some other business challenges'cause we just have so much that we work on together. Next week is another solo episode from me. Thank you to everyone who listened and commented on last week's Do's and don'ts Instagram strategy. It was quite a popular episode and continues to be. So if you haven't had a look, go back to last week. When you get a second and just have a listen. I might do something similar in the near future where I can maybe break down Pinterest or LinkedIn. Just come and let me know what you'd like. But I will chat to you next Thursday on the pod. Okay, 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 designer. 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.