You’re allowed to be more expensive

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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. On this week's episode, I wanted to have a conversation around how we're allowed to be more expensive. Now, I think so many of us hold ourselves back because we think, oh, I don't know what, do we need a license, a a card? A proof. A permission. Some sort of encouragement or even just. We need the spark of that idea to be like, oh, wait a second. I haven't increased my prices for ages, and I am exponentially a better designer, a better businesswoman. Just everything about me has evolved and improved since January. Now, I'm not much of a believer that you need a calendar year or a tax year or whatnot to put up your prices. However, here we are, it's November and it's a pretty good time. If you were someone that's like, oh, I didn't. Really think about the fact that I'm allowed to. Be more expensive now and I'm allowed to make these decisions in my business. So now could be a really good time. There's a lot of whisper and talk about Black Friday. I don't see any point. I just think it cheapens the industry. I think discounts like that are not needed with what we do. Service providers, you do not see other trades discounting for Black Friday. And yet I see it quite often in specifically I guess in the first two, one. Two, three years of business. I think discounts and marketing activity is good. In a business sense for you to try if you've never tried it. But I think that there are really much better ways to do it. And I've spoken about this on a podcast, maybe last Black Friday or the but Friday before. But my favorite thing to do is to look at what everyone else does, benchmark other industries. Look at what amazing things there were, which things you'd really like to try in your own branding. And then think about something like a. Birthday sale. And when I say that, it's not because I think we should discount or be on sale. I don't, but I think if you're gonna try it, try it when you're not a little fish in a huge pond, competing against huge marketing activations with lots of brand money and investment you've got these big campaigns and they've thrown tens of thousands of advertising spend on it. And you are also trying to say that I'm on sale during the biggest sale period. That's just not the best idea. I actually think. If you can do a birthday one, it's only gonna be your birthday. You might compete with one or two other things. Of course, assuming your birthday is not Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but I think you get the picture there, I think it is good to try it. The return on investment is not what you think. And Instagram competition, it is so hard. I recently gave away a 45 minute mentor session and Penelope the proposal generation system that is worth$497 plus GST, and she is a full. It's like a staff member that you save$50,000'cause you don't have someone in your office pulling proposals together. And I think there might have been like. I don't know, 30, 50 likes maybe, and some tags, but with an audience of sort of, I don't even know how many, with thousands of people in the audience on Instagram and people who followed you. And there was about 500 people on the wait list for Penelope, so at least all of them could have thrown their hat and ring. So I just don't think Instagram gives you what you think. You don't get the reach and you don't get seen. I wasn't putting paid advertising behind that because I was. Already giving away something. I kind of just did a bit of a test because I say this stuff all the time, but what if I'm wrong? You know, I always like to play devil's advocate. I like to, I will test silly things on my page. I will release things at weird times. I'll release three things in one day to see what happens. I am, I think my son gets the, his love of science and stuff from me too. I just love to read the data and analyze what's happened. I get quite curious about that stuff. So. Anyway, needless to say, I think sales and discounts and things don't really give you what you need. However, if we're talking about permission to change pricing on the weekend, we were driving up to the pub in Macedon. A friend of ours who's a clarinet player, was playing a jazz. Set in the courtyard. It was beautiful sunshine. The kids were running around and on the way, I pointed out a project of mine in Masson and I was like, oh, that's right in the middle. I must pop in and see. The trades are on site. I really can't wait to see what the kitchen looks like and how we've flipped the space. Anyway, I was telling my husband, he's like, oh yeah. And he said to me, what did you charge for that? And I told him and he burst out laughing. And he said, do you remember, I distinctly remember us having dinner and like. Really pulling apart and analyzing if you could charge$75 for your e-sign, like that's something someone would pay. And we laughed about it, obviously, but I also went, see, that's why I do what I do, because there's not enough of this stuff spoken about. I understand that when you go to design school to learn to be a designer, they are teaching you the principles of being a designer and not necessarily a business owner because a lot of their students go on to work for other people and the pricing is already set. You know, the business and marketing side is not necessarily the core of what you learn. They brush up against it. But then we're supposed to just price based on instinct. And now I'd never used an interior designer before and, and I have worked really hard. It took me the first three years of my business to separate my money stories from my client's money stories. I have done so much work. I cannot tell you. I have done finance courses. I have a business money coach. I have just done a lot of work in that space because otherwise I just love what I do so much that I'd be like, oh, you know what? I'll show up. I'll help you. I wanna do that and I want to people please, but I also wanna be profitable and I teach the same thing, so I can't be on one hand teaching you to raise your price. And on the other hand, being like. It's fine. Do you just buy lunch and I'll bring everything with me? Like I can't do that. You've gotta walk that path ahead of people and show them what's possible, and then of course they're gonna know that you're the right person to get that result out of them. So I've done lots of that, today's episode is we're here to remind you that you are not the same designer that you were when you quoted your first client or when you questioned$75. You've solved way more problems, you've managed more moving parts than we can even imagine. Your taste is matured, your aesthetic has tightened, and you know, I'm sure it's a lot different now than it was on day one. Your decision making is sharper. Your eye is faster. Your tech, you know the way you use tech, the way you show up, the things that you put, personal development and time into listening to this podcast while you're going for a walk. That is your time. This is unbillable time that you are learning and leveling up so that you can support your clients. Your confidence in sourcing, project communication, client dynamics, all of that has shifted from that first day to where you are today. And for many of you, your pricing kind of hasn't. Or it gets a slight review annually and you bump it up like a round number and it goes from 1 75 to 180 5. There's no rhyme or reason for that. You have not done analysis of the market. You have not. Really thought about what, you know, what educational fund do I wanna have for next year? Like maybe I wanna do the framework express. It's 2 9 9 7 plus DST and I'm gonna run it like six times next year. So if that's something you wanna do, how do you build in a$3,000 buffer into your pricing that can make sure that you can support yourself in personal development? I wanted to remind you that you're allowed to be more expensive. You don't need a rebrand, you don't need a new photo shoot. You don't need a new website or a shiny new offer to change your pricing. Nothing needs to be strategically communicated to clients if you don't want to. These are some nice to have things, but they're not prerequisites for adjusting your pricing. You can literally do that between clients. You can take a discovery call today and try a price on, and then you can take one tomorrow and try a different price on. You can push the market till it bends and says, that's out of our price point. You go, well, okay. I think maybe I was playing around. You can do that. This is your business, your rules. And I am sharing it now.'cause many of you're telling me that it's getting quiet and you're getting nervous. I'm like, no, this is when you have time to raise your pricing. This is when you have time to get it right to do the research. This is when you work on your business. There's a reason that I had two private coaching clients book today to do two month containers in February and March because they know I'm away is because they just know that this is a time where focusing on the business is gonna get a massive result next year. There's also a bit of momentum that you can create and there's a bit of leverage. So if you haven't raised your pricing in a while, perhaps you've got everyone's email addresses. You can send an email out. You do not have to communicate it, but you can say, my rates are increasing on the 10th of January. I'm very happy to lock in anyone who has a upcoming project before that date at current pricing. If you place your deposit before the 10th of January. There's no drama, no apologies, no confusion, no big launch email sequence. It's just sending out an email and saying it's probably not relevant to you anyway. But just so everyone is aware, on the 10th of January, the price increase is effective and anyone who books before that will stay at the existing price point, it could pull a little bit of revenue in this side of Christmas, which is always a welcome bonus. It also communicates a few things to your audience. It signals that you're in demand. It gives your clients a clear reason to commit now and not later. And yeah, it brings those deposits in while things are naturally quiet so that then you can calculate cash flow you hit the ground running in the feels good to have a project. A message like that is so much more powerful than Black Friday discounting. This is what leadership looks like. This is what CEO behavior looks like. It's being able to sit there and go, okay, big picture planning for next year. What is the profit that I'm making per project? How am I even calculating? Like, do you know these numbers? Because. It's not uncommon for me to start asking questions, picking back layers of the onion in coaching and people just stare at me blankly and I'm so fine with it. There's no shame, no matter what system mess or nest of pain you've got in the back end of your business, I'm absolutely there to just take a look at restructure and get. On the straight and narrow, but so many times when I talk about it, the financial side and the numbers side, they just do not know them. And I have never, ever, ever sat in a room with the CEO and questioned a single line of the profit and loss that they were not completely across. They absolutely know these numbers. They do not hide from the numbers, and I think that we need to step up a little bit like that. And so if that sentence kind of intimidates you or frightens you, what you just heard me say, maybe you could put a goal for yourself for the new year is just in Q1. I'm not gonna shy away from the numbers and I am going to say I can do hard things. This is not maths, this is not, we are just ingrained. From primary school or from when we're little to think, oh, I can't do this. This is hard. I don't know it. You just don't know it yet. It's not that hard. You just need someone to say, Hey, here's a calculator I've already done, and here's what the calculator's calculating so that you understand how to understand your profitability, for example. And when it comes to evolving your pricing, your business evolves, so does your pricing. You do not need permission from me. You do not need to justify it to your clients, to anybody else. You do not need to have all the perfect words, as I say, or a formal communication. If you don't wanna do the pull in revenue thing for January 10, you. Simply decide on the 1st of January, every new inquiry that comes in, these are my rates that I quote to them. I'm never gonna tell them what they used to be. Actually, I do get this question a lot in coaching, which is like, oh, but I'm worried that someone will recommend me or refer me, and I charge them$150 an hour, and now I'm 220. Won't they ask questions? Won't that be a problem? And to that, I always laugh because I, even that conversation that Aidan and I had about my$75 e-sign, those people still recommend me to people. So I still have clients that come through and you better believe that their invoice is not$75. And the conversation that they've, with the person that referred them is.Never about the bottom number on the invoice and always about the way I made them feel, the way I transformed the home. The result that I gave them. That is the service that we're delivering and that is what we're selling. And we're always, a little bit in our heads about, oh, but you know, she might say it was only$75 and then I've gone and charged them two and a half thousand dollars for the same thing. How will I justify it? Well, you won't,'cause you don't need to.'cause they're two very, no two rooms are alike. No two quotes are the same. And they are just not comparing in the background. An interior designer is a status symbol thing, so they're like, oh, Jane recommended this person to me, and now I'm using them and oh, we're getting Jane's designer into our place as well. They're just talking like that. They're not actually going, Jane paid 75 and I'm paying two and a half grand and let's, grab a pitchfork and go round to that designer's house. That's just so not happening in the background. I feel like most of you listening to this today will have outgrown your pricing this year, and I think that you know that already. So this is just a little reminder that all we're actually doing is aligning the numbers with the reality of who you are versus who you were When you set those numbers in the first place, set yourself a little challenge. Say the number that you're thinking. Speak it clearly out loud, and then let's do it. Let's not look back. We're allowed to be more expensive now. That's the title of this podcast episode. You are allowed to be more expensive now. I wanna remind you as well that pricing is not about your personality. It's not a reflection of how good of a designer you are or how nice you are. It is purely a reflection of skill, demand, capacity. It's like a little equation that we do, depending on the strategy, it could be to bring in volume leads and then our conversion rate needs to be played with. But for most of us, we're actually, and I had this conversation today with someone who was booking some private coaching, and I said to her, we're only possibly two yeses away from your financial goal next year, because if you're doing really large projects, bang, we only need to get two people to say yes. And for many of us in the design industry, we are really only four yeses away from that financial goal or whatnot.'cause we are doing large jobs and the quotes, the proposals that are going out are five figure proposals and we just need to convert a certain percentage of them. The longer that we hold our pricing low and the longer, you know, if we have a fixed fee and it's two and a half thousand, then it means that when we've got a quote that's 32 and half thousand, it looks so foreign and scary to us that we doubt it, and we have, again, these money stories. And maybe you haven't done the work about those stories, and so you're gonna hesitate. And you're gonna look at 32,000 and go, oh my gosh, that looks like such a big number. I'm gonna knock it down to 27'cause I feel more comfortable with that. Who's paying the other$5,000 worth of your value? You've just lost$5,000. I just, I cannot, with that approach, and it's so common and it's so fine if that's what you're doing, but please. Address your money stories, get some help, get some coaching. That$5,000 that you just wiped off someone's invoice could have paid for you to have a full month, one-on-one with me, or to work in a group coaching capacity next year and have Plenty of change left over to, take other courses, invest in AI and, and tools that we go through. Insane. I'm gonna leave it there, I'm gonna leave you with this thought. Pricing is a living document. It's a dynamic evolution. Is something that is not just reviewed once a year on a certain date. It can be fluid it changes, it should change because you change. If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend, an interior designer, or any service-based business really, that could use a reminder that it's probably time to back yourself and lift your pricing, and it may not have been looked at in a while. While we are talking about pricing, I did create an industry trend report midyear, and it is full of juicy things about what's happening in the interior design industry. What pricing benchmarks look like in different states of Australia. It's a very interesting read if you've never had a look at it before and it's absolutely free. I'm gonna go and pop a link in the show notes for you so that you can grab that. Otherwise, if you go to my dms on Instagram at erco and underscore fich, if you go straight to my DM to just write the word pricing, it'll just pop up as an automation and you will get a look at that. Okay, that's it from me today. I will chat to you guys next week. 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.