Seriously Happy Biz Tips
My best advice for growing your interior design business
13 Questions to Ask Before You Work With A New Contractor or Sub
Building a trusted list of contractors, vendors, and other resources is an essential part of establishing your interior design business. The challenge is vetting folks to figure out if you want to work with them before trying them out on a new project. No one likes experimenting on their clients. 😬 Your first project with…
Divorce ended my marriage but launched a remarkable career
My design career started with a divorce. Maybe yours did, too? Once upon a time, I lived in a cute townhome in Seattle with my (now ex) hubby. Newly married, we blissfully picked out paint colors and made the most of our hand-me-down furniture. A few years later, cue the plot twist – our marriage…
Yes, you need professional interior design photography, and here’s a way to save money!
If you’re an interior designer you know how expensive it can be to get good professional interior design photography. Depending on what you charge and the size of the project, the photography can cost as much as, or even more than, the profits from your project. 😳 What if there were a way to save…
How to protect your clients from decision fatigue
Decision fatigue doesn’t just affect your clients during that meeting where you asked them to make too many decisions. It also affects the success of all your following meetings, and hits your bottom line by making your projects less profitable. 😳 When your clients feel overwhelmed, even if they make choices, they are likely to…
10 Big Presentation Mistakes Designers Make
Over my years of coaching and training interior designers I’ve noticed the same 10 Big Presentation Mistakes being made over and over again. Since I want you to succeed, so let’s look at what those ten mistakes are, and what you should do instead! 10 Big Design-Presentation Mistakes(that make decision-making harder for clients) So, what…
Are you overwhelming your clients?
As if design wasn’t overwhelming enough – did you know that there is something that a lot of designers do that creates more overwhelm for their clients? Of course, they don’t do it on purpose. It’s just that design school taught them how to design, not how to successfully communicate their designs to a client.…
Are you doing initial interior design consults all wrong?
No judgment. I used to do them wrong too. 😬 I would get on a discovery call or go to an initial consult, ask a few basic questions, get a pretty good sense of the project scope, toss out a few smart design ideas, write a thoughtful design agreement, and then… not get the project.…
How to Say “No” To An Interior Design Client
One of the keys to having a design practice full of ideal clients is learning to say “no.” I don’t just mean during the initial consult when you feel like the client might not be a good fit (I cover that in this blog post) but also when they *are* your client. Over the last…
Five Reasons To Say “No” To A Potential Client
If I’ve learned one thing from running my interior design firm for the past 14 years it’s that I *always* regret it when I don’t listen to that little voice that says “don’t take this project.” Ugh! 😩 If you’ve ignored that voice, then you know what I’m talking about! It doesn’t necessarily mean that…
The #1 most important email to send after a design meeting
Our communication style plays a huge role in creating “good” or “bad” clients. If we don’t set them up for success and tell them *how* to be our very best clients, then how can we expect them to live up to those expectations? Specifically, the way we communicate right after a meeting is KEY to…
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