Featured on The Episode

INTERIOR DESIGNER’S GUIDE TO CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THE EPISODE:

WHAT I AM DOING BEHIND THE SCENES TO MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF MY GOALS

TAKING A LOOK AT OUR CLIENT FACING MATERIAL AND HOW WE CAN IMPROVE IT

WAYS YOU CAN PROMOTE AND MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

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If you missed Ep 134, be sure to go back and listen to that episode BEFORE listening to this episode. I talked about practicing what I preach and why I said no to two recent projects that were offered my way.

I promised I would follow up with what happened to these two potential jobs, and I never heard back from either one of them after sending a very professional and polite email letting them know I couldn’t take on the jobs. 

If this were a couple of years ago, I would have been sweating bullets! 

Checking my email, checking spam, “Did they email me back? Oh my God, they haven’t emailed me back. What does this mean? What do they think of me?” I would have gone back and read the email and second-guessed my wording, or, “God, maybe I should have just said yes.” And stopped the insanity that was going through my head over the fact that they didn’t respond to me saying, “No, thank you, and goodbye.”

This time, I didn’t expect a response. There was an instance of yes, I probably hurt their feelings, but then it went away. Because frankly, I served them well by cutting it off now.

This is my business after all, not my hobby and we are professional interior designers who are trying to sustain and build our businesses. Like I said before, taking on the wrong projects will not build your business. I treaded water doing this for a very long time not understanding why my business wasn’t growing the way I had intended it to.

That’s when I started to work on my business not just in my business.

I had to take a look at how I could continue to do all the things I loved without giving any of them up. So I hired someone to help me figure this out. I wanted to continue with my renovation management, my podcast, as well my course and mentoring. That is what ultimately led me to saying no to two prospective clients who no longer fit my business model. Because what I need in order ot have the bandwidth and time to focus on the other two aspects of my business are fewer projects that are larger in scope that run longer. There is just more down time in those projects than the one-off projects I was doing pre-covid. And so I will be saying no to more projects.
  
I am laser-focused and I want you to get laser focused on what you want in your business.

SAYING NO TO THOSE TWO PROJECTS LEFT ME BANDWIDTH FOR THE PROJECT I AM WORKING ON BEHIND THE SCENES AND THAT IS REBUILDING AND REBRANDING MY ENTIRE BUSINESS.

Whether you are taking something on to the scale that I have, or it’s just you haven’t taken a good look at your business in a while because you’ve been crazy trying to keep your business afloat. It’s very important for you to take that step back.

Take an afternoon and look through everything you have client-facing. What does that look like from your perspective? And then put the hat on of a homeowner or prospective client – what are they seeing?

Take time this week and through your website. Ask a friend what they see and what they don’t see. Ask where they think you could improve.

I’m not saying you have to start from scratch, but there are ways you can improve your own client-facing material that will improve the chances of a prospective client wanting your services.

You need to make sure that what services you provide, you’re actually sharing them on a website.

There are a lot of different ways of showcasing this skill set beyond just putting copy in under your services tab. So get creative!

And then promote it.

Talking about what I do is something I also had to really work on as I was rebuilding the website. Because my web designer kept saying how amazing what I had done was, and I was like, yeah, I did that. I am not one to brag, it’s just not who I am, but it has held me back in my career.

Please share your success! Appropriately, but please share it! No one else is going to be sharing it for you.

So if you are out there hustling and introducing yourself to industry partners that we’re always talking about, and they go back and look at your website, you want it to reflect what you just told them.