EOFY - tips for interior designers

Most interior designers hit 30 June without ever looking down. This episode covers the end of financial year financial habits solo interior design studio owners actually need — from reading your P&L without panic, to auditing subscriptions, pre-purchasing annual software, and having a planning meeting that changes the next 12 months. Practical, no-accountant-jargon, built for Australian designers running their studio like a business.

→ Get 90% off Xero for 6 months (affiliate link): https://referrals.xero.com/2aphqv8q0y59
→ Join the Studio Build waitlist (July 7 cohort): https://rhiannonlee.myflodesk.com/studiobuild

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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Why interior designers don't know their own numbers
3:45 What is a P&L and why you should be reading it monthly
8:20 How to use your education budget before 30 June
12:10 Should you audit your ad spend at end of financial year?
15:30 Are your studio systems good enough to hand over?
19:00 How to pre-purchase annual subscriptions and save 15–30%
22:40 What studio equipment can you claim this financial year?
26:15 How to set a revenue target and work backwards from it
30:00 Why you should know your numbers before you talk to your accountant
34:20 How to celebrate end of financial year as a small business owner

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RESOURCES MENTIONED
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→ Xero cloud accounting (90% off for 6 months): https://referrals.xero.com/2aphqv8q0y59
→ Studio Build — 6-week AI implementation intensive: https://www.rhiannonlee.com.au/studio-build
→ Studio CEO — 12-week business coaching program: https://www.rhiannonlee.com.au/studio-ceo
→ Studio Learn — free resources for interior designers: https://www.rhiannonlee.com.au/studio-learn
→ Instagram: @the_rhiannonlee

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ABOUT RHIANNON LEE
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AI strategist for Australian interior designers. Former Oleander & Finch. Creator of the Studio Suite — Studio Learn, Studio Build, and Studio CEO — operational AI implementation for design businesses, not productivity theatre.

→ Instagram: @the_rhiannonlee
→ Website: https://www.rhiannonlee.com.au

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Transcript

0:30

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 can expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success I'm gonna start today's episode with an audio testimonial. I used to share them all the time on the podcast. And then I felt a little bit odd about going out to people all the time and saying, "Oh, it was lovely to help you learn AI and do all these things and fix up your business. Do you mind sending me an audio message?" I felt a bit creepy, like they think I just sit around listening to nice things about myself. So I've taken a little break, but I would like to get back into it 'cause I am working with a lot of people at the moment. And so today's audio testimonial comes from Taylor. I've been working with Taylor to completely restructure the systems, processes, and to level up her AI literacy. At this point, her and Claude are such good friends, I'm expecting her to show me that she's coded something soon. So I look forward to that, Taylor. But for now, you can hear a little bit from her, and then I'll jump into the episode around end of financial year hey, it's actually so funny. Whenever I do something in Claude and then, like, update something in Notion, I always feel the need to, like, just contact you to be like, "Hey, this is what I achieved today, and I'm so proud of myself." Um, it's like you're my mum and I need to, like, get that, like, pat on the back. But, um, I've just, like, finally had the time and the head space to sit down and map through, um, what I want my, my project template to look like in Notion, and how it's like, the information I need and then copy and paste it to Style Source Book. Um, you know, it's gonna project track everything. It's gonna have all the information in there. It's got each stage templated in there, so I can just go through my little tick box list. It is just so nice to be able to put all of this down, take it all out of my brain, and have it as a really clear system. And, you know, I can't thank you enough to get me that I have now gotten to this point. So thank you Today I wanna talk about end of financial year financial habits for solo service providers or interior designers. And I know it does not sound sexy at all. However, it's so important, and it's the number one most missed opportunity personally and professionally underdeveloped area for all designers that I coach. Every time I ask anyone on a group call their numbers on the spot, they would not know them, and that's just a thing. It's just a thing. I have sat in boardrooms in my previous corporate career, and there is no way I could turn to the CFO, the CEO, the COO, the CMO, or any of them and ask them anything to do with our P&L and them not know the answer. It is literally their job to know the answer. And so I think there's just a missing gap in financial literacy in creative industries in general. And so I wanna bring you some of my tips at end of financial year Am I an accountant? No. Is this financial advice? Of course not. And you'll notice today it's audio only, so this is coming to you as your listening podcast, but I did not have a YouTube clip to put up this week because my webcam has broken on my computer. More on that a little bit later on that pressing news that's so exciting. It is the end of the financial year, and I don't know a single designer who isn't feeling feels about that right now. Either the year went really fast or faster than expected, or it was slower than you wanted. At the beginning of the year, I was speaking to designers and it was dead, and then it picked up for them, which is great. Some of them secured some bigger projects, which it's always nice to get a good five-figure project or six-figure project and get stuck in and know that you've got something with a bit of security and longevity on the books. But as service providers, 12 weeks is about all we can project cash flow-wise to know for sure this is happening, and the rest is up to our marketing, and our sales ability, and how we close the sale, and how we actively acquire that client, and what goes on. The thing I think that is the most common reaction when I ask people about their year, and yes, I'm hearing a lot about Trump and the economy and the war and the cost of living and the cost of petrol and all of the things, and they are very valid. But they are also not always the money story of our luxury clients as an interior designer. People who want interior design may not be going through those same things. So do not let the media fearmonger you into thinking all of your clients can't afford you. I am working with designers who simply do not have the capacity for the amount of yeses that they're getting, and I'm also working with designers who are working in lower socioeconomic areas and really struggling to get people across the line. There isn't one money story for every business, and I think that often what happens when I ask the question around revenue is that designers don't actually... or they're not actually sure what happened to their revenue, and they're hoping that the accountant is gonna make that make sense, which is so dangerous. It's a very dangerous place to live in because that is essentially where we're letting business happen to us, being the victim of business instead of feeling like we're at the helm and actually guiding the business to profitability and to success. Today's episode is specifically for you if you've been running your studio this year without really looking at the numbers. You check in, you do your reconciliations, or you go in 'cause you need to do something inside of a cloud accounting software. There are people listening to this podcast right now who don't have a cloud accounting software, and in the world of AI Can I just lightly explain the difference? One is that you've got an Excel spreadsheet that you've gotta remember everything that you're tracking, even perhaps procurement or purchases for your clients, and everything is a line on that Excel spreadsheet. It lives in one place. It's a hot mess express. It's guaranteed to make you cry at tax time. I have shed tears the first two years of my business trying to work out what was going on. I wasn't registered for GST, but I... Oh gosh, it was horrible with th- that Excel spreadsheet. And now that we're inside of the likes of Xero and QuickBooks, where things are auto reconciling, where receipts are generating, oh my gosh, I can't even tell you. If you saw the reporting that was available to you, you wouldn't be afraid of looking at reporting. If you saw the way that AI can pull live artifacts and databases and really show you your money picture, you would run towards cloud accounting. I've put a link in the show notes. It is an affiliate link, but it will get you 90% off Xero as a cloud accounting software for the first six months. So if you do wanna check it out, you can go and have a look at that. Today's episode is for you if you've been looking at the numbers without really reading them, not really looking at them, getting cloud accounting software like Xero will help. It will show you the numbers on the dashboard, and you can start to get better financial habits, as well as I'm going to be talking about some improvements in financial habits and how to protect profit and help you make educated decisions. My first top tip is to get comfortable with your P&L. This first one is non-negotiable, might sound harsh, but honestly, if you are not sure even what a P&L is, it stands for profit and loss, and the biggest win that you could have in your business is understanding where money's going and what's happening, and this report will show you, and not just at tax time. Or when your accountant flags something with you or sends something to you, you can quickly scroll down to the bottom number and feel okay or slightly sick. If you don't know what you're looking at, you're like, "Oh, I don't really know." But the P&L's a really great opportunity to unpack every single item line. It's the most honest document in your business. It doesn't have any feelings, it doesn't care that you were busy or you didn't do any marketing, or you went snowboarding for a few months in Canada, and you're like, "Ah." It doesn't care. It just shows you what came in, what went out, and what's left. And if you're not fluent in it, you're essentially running your studio in the dark. So the P&L is a really good one. Sometimes you'll see it and go, "Wow, I actually didn't realize my wage costs were so high," or "Oh my goodness, we're paying X amount for cleaning. What are we doing?" And You can go in and look more granularly into the actual data and details. So if you've been avoiding the P&L because it just sounds weird or scary, or you don't really know it, it just feels overwhelming, just start small. Get your accountant or bookkeeper to walk you through it once, like whether that's a recorded Zoom call so you can watch two or three times, but get them to go end to end and explain each category in plain English. Once you know what those categories are, you can do this yourself, and you should be doing it at least every month for five minutes, just opening the P&L, having a look. I look at it all of the time. It's not about being a forensic accountant. You just have to stay literate. You just have to stay in a place where you're like, "Oh, yep, I absolutely know what my wage costs are, and they make sense. They make sense to my bottom line. That's fine. They're not affecting and they're not hurting anyone." But you're aware. You don't wait till the end of the year to find out. The next one I wanna talk about is I specifically do have an education budget. I love to do courses and be able to go on retreats and do all sorts of professional development. But if you've allocated an education budget or you're thinking of doing one of those things and you haven't used it, now is definitely the time, okay? So don't just spend it on anything to spend it. Don't spend it on another course that you're not gonna do or another program Or one of those memberships that you join, but then the WhatsApp's really o- overwhelming and everyone's having conversations, and you just haven't even had a chance to open Slack. Don't do those ones. Don't add more pressure. But if there's a workshop or a coaching offer, like if you've always thought, "Oh, I want one-on-one coaching," or something that directly supports your revenue next year, this is the time to do it, because you can put it on your expenses for this year. The key phrase there was directly supports your revenue, not something where you're just like, "She seems like an awesome chick. I've always wanted, I wanna do her breathwork course." And I just hate that you might think that I'm saying buy another thing that will stay half finished, or that you'll feel guilty about, or that you'll be like, "Oh my gosh, and then I didn't do it." I want something that will either make you better at the service you deliver, help you charge more for it, or free up time so you can deliver more of it. Tidy up, clean up, or get better at specific design niche, or better at a specific design tool, or something that allows you to feel like you've gotten really efficient and you can still charge more for that. Those are the three tests in my mind. Will it make you better, higher, or faster? If it doesn't hit one of those, that's not what I'm talking about. It's not an investment, it's just another collected course that you're never gonna finish I'll only briefly talk to this next one because it doesn't relate to all of you, but if you are spending money on ads, please tidy up your ad spend. If you've been running any paid ads this year, even just boosted posts, this month, June, is really the time to go back into the Meta Ad suite and look at what the ads actually did. Audit the return on investment. The worst thing you can do with ads is set and forget. Again, with the feelings and emotions, they don't care. They're just gonna charge. Zuckerberg just gonna Zuckerberg. And I wanna see the actual numbers. Did those dollars result in inquiries, and did the inquiries convert? What was your cost per lead, even roughly? A lot of you will not be up to this, so I will talk to it just very quickly. If you have ad spend, it's time to audit. It's-- End of financial year is a really natural good cutoff point to be like, "Ugh, I'm gonna stop the ads that didn't perform," redirect that budget, and if you're gonna run paid traffic next year, just get really clear on asking what you want it to do before you spend money, especially boosting posts. Please do not just click Boost Post 'cause you want it to perform well. You'd be better off getting on the phone and calling every friend that you have and saying, "I'm gonna post this at exactly six:01 PM tonight. Please go and like it, 'cause once you engage heavily with it in the first five minutes of it being live, it's gonna tell the algorithm to push it." I would rather do that. Are you underdeveloped in your systems or processes? So this is a question that I ask myself a lot, and the answer is almost always yes. We all have a lot to learn, and the question is worth sitting with this month, because if you had to hand your studio to someone else on Monday next week, could they run it? Not perfectly, like exactly like you do, just could they actually function? Because most designers I'm chatting with, the answer is no or not really or but they'd need me on the phone consistently. I'd be-- I'd need to be texting them answers. So you have a systems problem, and I'm definitely not throwing shade. We've all been there. I'm just thinking, I guess because I've just run Studio Build, I'm in the middle. I just ran week five today, and it's a six-week program. I have seen such incredible transformations in the organization of the backend. I have someone in there who has been in the design industry for thirty years, who went into Studio Build and got a CRM working for the first time with live pipeline of where they're at, documented all of their procedures for the very first time is looking at having an automated content calendar and a content system. There's just so much cool stuff in there. I just love hearing wins like that. But that same person said to me, and this is a direct quote from her today, she said, "I consult for another business that has a weekly AI meeting, and what I've learned here in Studio Build, I keep going in and sharing it, and I'm the most tech-savvy person in that room now, and I am one of the oldest. The younger ones keep looking at me going, 'How does she know that stuff?'" So that made me laugh so much, and if you wanna keep your family and friends guessing how you got so AI literate and organized, end of financial year is a really good time to think about, do you wanna join Studio Build? I'm going to actually be offering a really big end of financial year bonus to the wait list only, because I never do sales or discounting, and it's something really cool for that wait list for the July 7th cohort only. If you're interested in any way, there's no risk to being on a wait list. It just means you get to see the offer, and if you were gonna do it anyway, you'll wanna be taking the offer. I'll pop the link in the show notes, and you can join the wait list, and I will share it Probably when I get back from The Design Show in Sydney, I'm speaking on stage. I'm on a panel on the Thursday in the afternoon, and then you'll find me on the Saturday in the afternoon doing a keynote called Beyond the Render: How Workflows Are Changing with AI. And I sent it to a friend who is in the design industry yesterday, and I just asked her if she would give me some feedback, and she's "Oh my God, I can't believe you put that much free value into that seminar. That should cost 20 times more than zero." It should be 20 zeros. I can do the math. I'm here talking finances after all. No, but she was really complimentary about it, so I'm very excited to share it because if she felt like she learnt that much in a 30-minute seminar, I can't wait for anyone who's there on the day to come down and see it. So I'll be on stage on the Saturday afternoon from 3:15 to 3:45 in The Design Show area. End of financial year is also a really good time to book a business planning weekend. Now, a lot of people will say, "Oh, don't I just need a day?" Or, "What do you do?" In my former life, we had business planning, like quarterly three-day planning conferences and, oh my gosh, we just did so much of this stuff and I really highly value it, I highly rate it, and I highly prioritize it. So what I do that I can also highly recommend is I book a hotel. Okay? So I check in at 2:00 in the afternoon, I check out at 10:00 AM the next day, I will go for a swim in the pool at the hotel. I will work work, deep work, no kids, no focus. I'll put on like lo-fi music. I'm sitting in my hotel, often in my robe and my wet hair after going for a swim, and I'm smashing out marketing content. I'm looking at all the financials. I'm assessing the offers. I'm making... you've got Claude and Chat GPT to help you with this stuff if you know how to use it. It's incredible how much you can smash out. So I'll generally work from like after check-in, like I'll get there, go for a swim, do whatever. I'll start work around 3:00, work till 8:00 generally, go out for dinner, come back, have Netflix, have a bath, enjoy my hotel room, chill out. Then I get up early the next morning. This is just the way that I like to do it. I'm generally up by about 5:30 in the morning and I smash out from 5:30 till 10:00, ask for a late checkout. You've done a lot of business planning by then, and I've had a night away for me. So I cannot recommend it enough, and it's about you, a nice hotel room, your laptop, and a huge block of uninterrupted time to actually look at your studio like a business owner. Where does your time go? Where does your money go? Where are all the gaps? What do you wanna do next year? What do you wanna do this year? What do we wanna do next quarter? What are the priorities? I swear this is how we get visionary behaviors and we act more like a CEO. I would put this in the calendar right now. You have my permission. I know you all just went, "I can't go to a hotel room for business." Why not? It's tax deductible. Pay for it through your business. It is a business meeting, effectively a business planning meeting. You have to consult your own accountants obviously about what you can and can't claim, but I'm thinking if all you're doing there is business or, you can maybe extend a day around another business event that you claim on your tax. I won't get into what is and isn't claimable, but I do think it's something that you should prioritize. So you can book it now by June 30 so that you can look at claiming it in this tax year, and then you could travel in October and November or whatever so that you're pre-planning before the end of the year Just helps avoid reactive mode. This is, again, another tip where business doesn't happen to us. We actually are preempting and planning what we wanna do. The next little tip I have is to pre-purchase annual subscriptions this month. Okay? So June is genuinely one of the best times of year to lock in your software and subscription costs. In June, it's when a lot of SaaS or Software as a System companies Run their best promotions off the back of US Independence Day sales or mid-year pushes. Or even end of financial year sale here in Australia, they will say, "Sign up to Canva annually before the end of the financial year and get it X amount." So make a list right now after this episode, don't go anywhere, but of every subscription that you're currently paying monthly. A really quick, cheap way to do this is to take your bank statement, redact your information or fold it over, take a photo, upload it into Claude and just say, "Hey, can you make a list of my expenses, of my subscriptions?" You will find this information in your cloud accounting, so if you do have Xero or you have QuickBooks, they will your P&L will tell you what you're paying for and what your subscriptions are. And then I want you to ask yourself, "Which of these am I going to use for the next 12 months definitely?" Canva, you might be like, "Yep, I'm committed. I'm in. I definitely need SketchUp. I definitely need..." Just not the ones you're not sure, like ManyChat, which you've maybe tried. The ones that you're like, "I will not... you'll have to pry this out of my cold, dead hands. I need this to run my business", try to switch those over to annual billing and then you get to pocket the difference. Okay? So these companies, The average saving on annual versus monthly for most software tools is between 15 and 30%. So for a small studio, you're running five to eight subscriptions. That's real actual savings and it hits your book in this financial year which is also something you might need more expenses. Everyone's in their own position obviously, but if you're in a season where you would like to reduce your income or you'd like to have more expenses it could be worth considering for you. The next one I alluded to in the intro, studio equipment. Buy it now if you think you need it. So I'm actually upgrading all of my studio setup this week. I don't need to upgrade my recording equipment. My husband is a singer in a band and we've got really great microphones and great mixing and all that sort of stuff but I def- desperately need to replace my laptop and I'm thinking of getting a docking station and a large monitor and a whole system. I do so much coding on this teeny tiny little screen and my eyes are old and I'm done. I need like a bigger setup. My integrated camera is what's actually broken which is what keeps crashing Zoom for me and causing issues so I'll be looking at upgrading just everything I guess and going in and now is a perfect time for me to do that. It makes commercial sense for me to maximize those end of financial year sales wherever I can, put it through the business obviously and elevate my setup. That's essentially why this episode is audio only and there's no YouTube upload this week but do check out the YouTube channel 'cause as soon as I get it back up and running there's also quite a few little AI skills lab, five, 10, six minute upgrades that I've shared on my YouTube channel and only on my YouTube channel so if you go there you can learn to do some cool stuff with AI. So for this week when I don't upload the podcast onto YouTube please go over and give the channel some love anyway and learn something new about AI New equipment is definitely worth mentioning because if you've been putting off equipment that you need to run your business properly, end of financial year, th- there's a reason that they shout to get it done. And whether that's a new laptop, a monitor, a decent microphone if you're doing client video calls, an iPad for site visits, even silly things like the little lapel mics that everyone has. You might be eyeing them off and thinking, "I wouldn't mind one of those," or, "I need a tripod," or, "I wanna get more serious about some of my supporting roles inside of my studio." A good pair of headphones. Whatever it is, really good to just start thinking about what does qualify, what do I need, what do I not need? And also, quite frankly, running your business on equipment that's slowing you down is a complete false economy, isn't it? It feels like you're being frugal, but you're so not. You're just making the work harder, and you're using more billable time to blunder through Let's add five more quick-fire financial habits worth adding. Habit number one, set a revenue target for next year and work backwards from it. So not I'd like to earn more than this year." Not like an intention or a manifestation or a wish, an actual number. Then we wanna divide it by your average project fee and you'll know exactly how many clients that you need. If you don't know your average project fee, then that would be the first part of the homework, I believe, is like looking at all the projects you did this year and by how many clients, what is the average fee? And then I want you to calculate that so that you know exactly how many clients you need to meet or exceed your financial target next year. That number should be on a sticky note somewhere in your line of sight. In fact, that number should be, imagine that you have seven projects that you need at your average spend. You would have, in the old school way, where you would have like you can have seven individual lines and cross them off as you go, or create seven boxes and color them in each time you sell an average project at that rate. I just think you need to have something visual that tracks you and tells you like, "It's okay, you have actually sold two out of seven projects that you need and it's only February." You can start to feel better when you're thinking about things in that way Number two, do a quarterly subscription audit, not just at end of financial year. So you might have found something that has crept in, like we're all guilty of it, you just say yes to something. I've found some r- really ridiculous things before where I'm like, "Oh, wait, I'm paying 37.95 US dollars for some capsule wardrobe app that I thought I was just like looking at it," but I wasn't, I was paying for... I don't know. I it fell into the cart. And that wasn't a business one, that was a personal one, but things do creep in. So stock image sites, email platforms, you try something. Just set a reoccurring calendar reminder monthly to just open your cloud accounting and look at what's coming out and just identify anything that you might be like, "I actually didn't use that this month. We could unsubscribe for a month, and I could resubscribe when I need it." So cancel anything that you haven't used in the last six weeks. Okay, number three, separate your business tax from your operating cash. This one saves a lot of pain. It is just a really good financial habit. So every time money comes into your business, put your estimated tax portion into a separate account before you spend anything. So 15% is a good rule of thumb, then you've got a bit of a buffer on the like 10% GST. You put 15 to 30% depending on your situation. Super boring, super effective. It's one of the most important financial habits you can have as a solo operator, so you don't get caught at tax time like crying over a big tax bill. Number four, review your pricing quarterly, not just when you feel like it. Quarterly. Always quarterly. Put it in your calendar right now for August and November. Look at what you charged this year versus what your time actually costs. Are you tracking that? Do you know what the market is doing? Maybe you wanna have a quarter where you're like, "Do you know what? I'm going to pitch for a few lower priced jobs just for quantity. Maybe I'm feeling like it's harder to close those larger ones right now." You can... This is your business, your ways. You can do whatever you want. If you wanna come out with a $27 e-book on white paint, go nuts. But don't forget, it's never evergreen, and you're gonna have to work your butt off with the same amount of marketing selling a $27 e-book as you will selling a $27,000 project that you would love to do. So I know where I'd rather put my energy and time. A lot of designers, most designers really, that I speak to raise their prices quite reactively, like when they're burnt out or desperate or they're thinking, "I'm gonna up my prices 'cause I'm going to contract out some of my SketchUp stuff," or, "I need to raise my prices 'cause I need a VA." That kind of feeling, that an- anxious feeling. The better version of this is proactive, planned, and not emotionally charged whatsoever. So consider that if we're looking at this monthly, if we're looking at it quarterly, whenever you wanna do it, just more than once a year and not reactively, really think about, okay what if I put a plan into play where I upped my value pricing by $150 and I'm going to do that for the next three months, and then I'm going to add on an additional 85 if it's a good fit. So just having a bit of a plan or timeline for changing your pricing. I'd also really, while we're talking about pricing I would consider a minimum engagement fee for projects. If Naomi Campbell can famously say she doesn't get out of bed for less than $10,000, if you can put a qualifying number, like $5,000 minimum engagement fee, you can weed out some potential clients that are essentially not a good fit. They're gonna get you over to their house. That's not to say that they can't do a in-home consultation and have 90 minutes of your time. Of course they can. They can pay $595 in-home consult fee. I'll come over, 90 minutes, one and done. Thank you, ma'am. No follow-ups. That is so fine. But if I come over for 595 and you want me to write and pitch a proposal for a job that's worth $1,200, maybe that isn't a good fit for my type of design. Every business is different. That's up to you, but I would suggest once you start using the language of "I have a minimum engagement fee of $5,000," like you're setting an expectation of what is gonna be on that proposal, and the clients are more comfortable with your value pricing number in general Okay, number five is the most important and my favorite. Please know your numbers before you talk to your accountant. Your accountant is not there to tell you how your business is going. That's your job. They're there to do the compliance work. So if you go into that meeting not knowing your rough revenue, your major expense categories, what you want to achieve next year, you're just paying them to do work that you could have done, and you're losing the most valuable part of that conversation and connection with your accountant. In fact, I meet with mine mid-financial year, so usually around February, when things are nothing to do with tax time and all about profitability and growth, and I go in and we have a bit of a planning meeting. What's looking good? What's looking healthy? What's not looking healthy? What am I concerned about? What can you show me that I can't see? I'm willing to pay for that, and I go in prepared. It's a forty-five-minute meeting that actually changes how my year develops, and I can pick up things halfway through and go, "Oh, yeah, you're right. Actually, that's not a profitable service. I'm gonna retire it." Or, "I am doing way too many of those and not enough of that. I need to focus my marketing this way." You might not be able to see, but they can see. So if you need help, pay for it. Get your accountant to do a Zero crash course, where you pay and go in and they show you how to use the dashboard and what all the things mean until you know what you're doing. Get them to show you the P&L one time. This is not they get paid regardless of whether you do complicated stuff or simple stuff. They want you to have financial literacy. It makes their job better when you come in and say, "Oh my gosh, it's lovely to see you. Since the last meeting, X has happened, Y has happened. I'm concerned about this. I flag this for your attention. Should I be doing anything about..." They love that. They wanna talk numbers End of financial year is a line in the sand. We all get a clean slate 1 July, which I personally love. I really like celebrating the end of the financial year, looking at what did my business do this year? How have we grown? How have I grown? How have we evolved? I think that I'm more emotional on like new-- end of financial year eve than New Year's Eve. I'm not one for New Year's, I don't particularly rate it. I don't usually do anything. But end of financial year, I feel like such a sense of achievement because I work so hard in a business I love so much, and I'm able to... I can see all these really amazing numbers. How many women did I help in business this year? How many interior designers are AI literate because they were in these courses or because I was able to help them clean up the back end? Oh, I wish all-- I could connect my Xero into everybody else's and see the transformation. Some of those calls that we've had this year, I do get emotional at the end because I'm like, oh my God, some of those studio CEO girls, we tripled their pricing. And I know that on the end of this financial year, because for the last nine months, they've been charging three times more than they were when they got into the course and had that introduction call, they're gonna have a really happy end of financial year eve. I don't know what it's called, I'm just making it up. The 30th of June is time to party. You should be excited, be proud. Whatever that number is, you earned it. You worked for it. It is representative of everything that you've done this year, and it's worth celebrating. This tip isn't on there, but definitely my family does go out for dinner at end of financial year because I work really hard, and my husband has a business as well, and small business in Australia is really hard. And so we go out no matter what that number looks like, and we just, toast to ourselves. We don't get to do that very often. We don't have corporate sponsorship or people taking us out like I did when I worked in corporate. I very much miss all of those corporate gifts and things that would go on. So we make it work for ourselves. So we make sure that you take stock of end of financial year. Do look at your numbers, do celebrate them. If they're nothing to celebrate, make the changes. Change your habits first and come to July 1st with a totally different commitment to understanding your finances. Most people cross that end of financial year line in the sand without looking down. They just keep on doing what they've been doing. And I don't mean to say that you have to adopt all of these financial changes at once. Maybe just pick two. Write them in your calendar, but-- or get someone to hold you accountable. If you go through to Xero and you get that ninety percent off link from the show notes today, fantastic. If you need anything, come and talk to me in my DMs @the_rhiannonlee on Instagram. Obviously I'm not gonna give you any financial, official financial advice. What would I know? But if you wanna sound any of this stuff out or you're like, "I'm interested in that but I didn't quite understand," then come and chat to me. But please do look at your P&L. That's the one thing, as I said, that's non-negotiable. After this call, stop this, open up whatever software you're using, Xero, QuickBooks, whatever, MYOB, Open the P&L, open it up one layer deeper and actually have a look at some things that you will understand, like expenses, subscriptions, income net income, gross income. You know a lot of this stuff. You just sometimes need people to remind you, "Oh, yeah, that's what that is." So have a look around, see what you can find. I'll be back the week after next with video back on YouTube and the new setup will be live. I will be at The Design Show next week, and unless I decide to do a sneaky run around interviewing people while I'm at The Design Show, the podcast will probably be pausing for the week, just so that I am not editing podcasts. As a self-editing podcast host, I would like to take that time to focus on the rooms that I'll be speaking in at The Design Show, and I hope that you will be in them and I hope that you will join me. I am doing a big lunch on the Friday. Absolutely anybody design or designer adjacent, anybody listening to this podcast is welcome. I just ask that you do message me over on Instagram so that I can add you to the RSVP for the restaurant's sake. But these women, many of them don't know each other. We do it every single year. We get together and there's usually a very large table of very like-minded, very welcoming and safe women who just wanna talk all things design, and you would be more than welcome with a seat at the table. Until then, 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 found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me, and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers just like you. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow @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.'