EP 487 | Systems Create Freedom for Design Professionals with Ellie Black

Is it that time again? It is. And welcome, you fabulous interior design professional. Welcome to Business of Design.

You know what's exhausting? So many things. Where do I begin? But in this case, I'm not thinking of clients.

I'm not thinking of contractors. I'm not even thinking of budgets, right? What's exhausting, truly exhausting, is reinventing the wheel every single time you start a new project. New onboarding, new rules, new boundaries, new communication routines, new pricing strategies, a new way of handling procurement, new way of handling revisions, new way of handling overwhelm, right?

At some point, so many of us kind of haphazardly build businesses that sort of work. And we depend almost entirely on adrenaline, right? Adrenaline and improvisation and fear and emotional stamina. At least that was true for me.

And for a while, that can be exciting. It kind of felt like we were like a rock and roll group on a tour bus and it was cool and it was fun and it was creative until it just wasn't. Until my staff quit because they were just exhausted and didn't want to keep up the grind, right? Until I woke up one day and I realized I built myself this incredibly sophisticated burnout machine.

It's just not possible to keep going this way. The opposite of that is the approach we're going to talk about on this episode today with landscape designer Ellie Black. Ellie's really cool. She is the owner of Garden with Ellie.

She's based in Arlington, Virginia. So she has that beautiful D.C. area to work in.

She talks about the fact that landscape design isn't just about beautiful outdoor spaces. It's also about understanding the people and the place and how they live. And that sounds very familiar if you're an interior design professional as well. In a previous career, Ellie led media operations at a boutique advertising agency.

So it's interesting that she has that as a background. but now she's pursuing landscape design full-time. We have actually a current, in our current BOD bootcamp group, we have another landscape designer. And in that bootcamp, we're focusing on project initiation, which is steps one and two.

It's amazing how well the systems and strategies we have at Business and Design apply to really any service provider. In any case, Ellie talks openly about the moment she realized She was trying to figure everything out for herself. You know, she was trying to create process and how it was tedious, it was exhausting, and it was going to take her many, many years to get where she needed to go. For so many, again, this is true for me, we will resist systems and protocols and boundaries and rules because it feels like those things might impede creativity.

but mind-blowing the opposite is true. When I stopped wasting my time reinventing workflows that were ever more tedious and rewriting the same emails and renegotiating the same, you know, situations with different clients and having to emotionally recover from making some new mistake that I hadn't anticipated and I got systems and strategies and protocols and boundaries in place, there was finally room for the big ideas again, for big creativity. The creativity was never the problem, finding time for it was, and the chaos.

That is really a huge problem. Ellie's an incredible person. She's one of those people who's like an immediate implementer. You know, the type who she showed up to the BOD financial bootcamp.

That was a six-week bootcamp that we ran a couple of times a year. And she decided before she even took the first day of learning that she was going to implement everything immediately, no matter what. She was not going to waste any time thinking about, well, what if it doesn't work or should I tweak it? She was just going to do it the way it was taught.

And her results had been absolutely incredible. and she is now a real go-getter in her business and you can be one too. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, if you are feeling like you're more reactive than you wanna be, overextended, or like your business is just consuming the very passion that made you start it in the first place, then the conversation we're gonna have today with Ellie is really gonna hit home. As usual, though, the teaching at Business of Design is never done just one way.

Sometimes people learn with videos, which you can do on our website. Sometimes people begin to learn from the podcast. You can't learn everything on the podcast, that's for sure. And Ellie has taken everything she's learned at Business of Design, and she also has a priority matrix that she uses to separate what is urgent from what really should be delegated to somebody else.

And I was so compelled by this, I invited Ellie to teach this at an upcoming BOD Live. And BOD Live, if you don't know, is for anyone. If you're taking business training with Business of Design, you have access to once a month coaching with me. And occasionally we have a guest speaker where we teach something like a priority matrix, which I'm really looking forward to.

Really good episode, quick announcements from Cheryl Horn, and we'll get right into it. And we are so glad you're here. Thanks, Kimberly. Well, between Kimberly and Ellie, I think you guys are going to get a really good picture of what we do here at Business of Design and the programs that are available to you.

So please head to businessofdesign.com, click on programs to learn more. And by all means, reach out to me, Cheryl at businessofdesign.com at any time.

If you've got any questions, we would love to see you inside one of our programs. Thanks so much. Elle, I'm so happy to see you. I'm so happy to see you.

This feels like surreal, kind of. How so? When I first started my business, my mentor and really good friend Emily introduced me to the business of design. And it was just kind of like a dream to be on the podcast.

And now I'm here. So it feels just like kind of like a dream come true a little bit. Oh my God. Who's Emily?

What's Emily's last name? Emily English. She's an amazing landscape architect in the Northern Virginia area. And she's taught me so much and continues to be just an awesome, just like teacher to me and friend to me.

And I love her so much. Well, amazing to find that person in your life, right? I feel like I was so proud. Is that the right word?

Or so convinced that I had to know everything. I'm not sure I would have recognized a mentor if they tapped me on the shoulder and said, follow me. So good for you. That's incredible.

Yeah. I feel really lucky. We met and it was immediately like, are we best friends now? I love it.

Yeah. So I'm a crazy person today. I just took the red eye from Los Angeles to Toronto. Oh my goodness.

I'm explaining all this because I look like a crazy person right now. I'm wearing a sweatshirt. This is California because I was so cold at the airport that I am a loser at LAX scanning for sweatshirts to wear on the plane because I was freezing to death. And I'm at my mother-in-law's house.

I am in my husband's bedroom from when he was a little boy. Oh my God. It's like a little twin bed. That's his back.

Oh my God. His little twin bed, his little everything because we weren't going to make it to my office in time to do the recording. And I'm like, I can't miss this recording. It's like, well, stop at mom's.

I'm like, I haven't slept. Anyway, so my mother-in-law is downstairs wondering why I ran in the door, ran straight upstairs and hardly spoke to her. Well, I'm so happy to be here and glad you're able to make it happen. I wouldn have missed it for anything You just one of those people who lights up a room You know the first time I saw you on camera we never met in person but the first time I saw you on camera there just such beautiful energy about you And it doesn't surprise me that your business is growing.

So no pun intended because you're in the landscaping business. So landscaping designers and interior designers, interior decorators, stagers, how does that all intersect? Why does it work similarly? Yeah.

So I think what really like is the central part is it's truly just about making a home space feel like it is unique to an individual, whether that's the interior or the exterior portion of the home. And so, I mean, I work with so many amazing interior designers that build these amazing, beautiful spaces inside for their clients. And it's all about just kind of like translating that. So the exterior of their home also feels like it's like an extension of that space as well.

It's also really fun because we work with very different materials, but what we kind of achieve with it is really just about creating this like feeling and connection to the world around us, I think, in design and translate it into something that's tangible for people that don't have that necessarily in their wheelhouse. That's beautifully put. And when you're working with an interior designer, do they bring you on their team or is it more like, hey, Ellie, here's the yard. Here's the land.

Yeah. Mostly I've worked kind of in the latter sense where they've done kind of an interior renovation or just a whole home renovation. And then after the renovation is kind of complete, typically the outside of the house will kind of look a little rough. There's always some like overturned soil and things like that, especially if you're looking at putting on an addition.

So typically that's kind of when I get tapped to brought into the process. it's kind of like as that kind of rounds out I would love to be included earlier in the process because I do think it's an important part of the whole home to consider but I also understand that like the focus can be very much so on building the interior space and then it's kind of like you know well now that we have this beautiful interior space when you look outside it's like well Wyatt this feels devastating I need something to do with it.

Yeah and is there any sense because this has surprised me. Any sense of the amount of money a landscaping project will take versus the amount of money a renovation or a decorating project will take? Do you get any sense of that? Yeah.

I would say like a full-fledged landscape design. It can really range depending on the scale of the house and the scale of the property and ultimately like what they aim to do. But I do finds that like what we're doing outside is typically only a fraction of what an overall renovation might cost unless you're looking at like really high-end features or installing something like pool or any of those sort of like I would say large-scale permanent features in the exterior or like a pool house sometimes those structures will fall under our purview and things like that.

It really just depends on the scope of work. But a lot of times, like I have clients that will spend a million plus on a home renovation and then, you know, they might do landscaping to surround it, but that landscaping might only be like, you know, anywhere between $150,000 to like $350,000. It really just depends. So the scope can be very different just depending on what you're looking at if it's hard and soft scapings or, you know, other features as well.

Well, and it sounds to me, you can tell a difference when somebody spent a million dollars, let's say on an addition or something, and then they spent a hundred thousand on landscaping, you can kind of tell that's what they did. Yes. So I'm actually working on a project right now, and I have not brought the landscaper in yet. I'm doing the presentation on Wednesday.

So as soon as the presentation is over, as soon as the client says, this is the job, this is the scale we're going to do, we have plan A, we have plan B, we have plan C kind of in our back pocket. As soon as that's done, the next thing I'll do is say, would you like us to get started with landscaping now? You know, you know what the house is going to cost? How far do we go with landscaping?

And then I'll bring that person in. But it's been interesting to me that the amount you can spend on landscaping, I think, can vary so widely, but you can tell a difference. It's just like with decorating or with design. If somebody spends a teeny bit of money, you know they spend a teeny bit of money.

And somebody who goes all in, you know they went all in. So you don't really want that disharmony. Anyway, it's interesting. It's an interesting thing.

Talk to us about process. In what way is the process you go through similar to how a designer interiors person might go through? Well, I use the business design like 15 step process. So my process probably is almost identical to yours with only a couple of minor variations.

So we start off, you know, within a consultation, two hours on site, kind of develop that scope of work, really refine sort of the look, feel of what they're hoping for. gather any like I would say like critical items we might discuss a couple like planting concepts or like patio layouts etc and then from there we work on the retainer basis that the 15 steps kind of works with and then we develop the full scope of work so we typically start that off with immediately ordering a topographic survey if it doesn't exist because that's really essential for level information of the site to ensure we're making sure we're retaining grades for drainage et cetera those things are really important when you get down to like the permit side of things but getting that squared away because it takes like a month um to get one of those so you have to i would say in especially where we are in the country in creamer i would say it's more like three months for us to get that all organized but i wonder you do you have big snow and big mud and big all of that okay no our summer like our seasons are we have winter that lasts two months and is mostly just rain.

And then we have a spring, which is a challenge between winter and summer. We don't actually have spring. It's just kind of like an 80 degree day, a 30 degree day, an 80 degree day, a 30 degree day. And then summertime is basically, we have like early summer and then late summer here.

So we have like, you know, May and June are really like that early summer. And then July, August, September are late summer. So summer's quite a large chunk of, you know, season here. And then fall is pretty warm.

The leaves don't typically fall until like November here. So we have quite a lot of time to enjoy the outdoors and like have a really lovely time outside when the sun is shining. As far as I'm concerned, you just didn't add for moving to Virginia. That sounds pretty good.

We hide from winter by going to California for part of the year, but that sounds pretty nice. So it takes a couple of months or a month to get that survey and get prepared. You can't really skimp on that. It's quite expensive.

We are to the tune of like $10,000, $12,000 sometimes. So it's another expense for the client. So I guess I'm thinking of everybody listening. Obviously, if you live anywhere near Ellie Black, you're going to use Ellie Black as your landscape designer.

What's the name of your firm? Garden with Ellie. Gardenwood Alley yeah so if you're anywhere in there do you do you go into DC or any of that or yeah we do Northern Virginia and DC we only do select areas of DC just depends on the project size because nice we have a big BOD component oh cool so if you're all listening LA Black is the woman you want to work with. So I'm thinking that strategically, it might be smart to bring the landscaper in after the presentation, just so the client knows what the cost of the house is going to be first.

And then, of course, they have to be prepared to do the landscaping in a big, similar way as well But it starts the whole 15 steps over again for us as well Like we just begin with the landscaping consultation and we do the whole 15 steps And I not a landscape architect and I don't know what kind of planting, but I know the vibe. I know how to push for outdoor art and, you know, strategic features that I want in the garden and all that kind of stuff. Yes. I love a water feature.

It's like so wonderful, especially like in a suburban an environment it can really add that little bit of like white noise so you don't hear your neighbors like chattering next door things like that and there's so many like fun things you can really incorporate in an outdoorscape that go beyond just like your standard like patio and plants that I think just like when you work with landscape designer you can really like get into that stuff or even like creating really unique play spaces for kids is really cool I love that.

Did you start because you had this mentor? Did you sort of start with process or are you able to compare what your life was like before process and after process in some way? I can definitely compare. If you're just listening, you have to see a big smile on her face.

Yeah. I remember when I first started and I came from an operations background. So prior to working in landscape design. I worked in advertising operations.

So I managed large scale like advertising campaigns. And so I was familiar with process, but I definitely tried to apply a process that doesn't necessarily relate to design work to what I was doing. And while it worked, it wasn't the most successful thing. And then when I started the BOD 15, I remember just being like, oh my God, this is so me.

I'm doing all the things that Kimberly says not to do. um i literally like my notes are like filled with like notes to myself of like ellie you have done this like please avoid this in the future things be similar all this right yes creative personality or like just the people pleasing and the bending yourself into a pretzel and surrendering your boundaries because the client says that they want it and all the things we do that just keep us broken and small and unable to be strong and healthy and profitable with the game, right?

And especially like when I started out, I think I thought that I just had to kind of figure it out on my own. And I then was like, this is so silly. Like, why am I doing this to myself? Like, I really need to commit to like changing the way that I'm running my business because I'm going to like burn myself out.

And that was not the goal. This was supposed to be like my life forever now. And I love it. And so it's like it was sucking the like love that I had of design completely out of me.

And it's amazing how like since implementing the BOD 15 and like I literally just started. And as soon as I started, I started doing it with my next client. I had only finished like the first couple of steps, but I was like, I'm doing this. Like I need to change it because I love this and I can't stop loving it, you know.

And it's amazing how like having the process and structure has allowed me to like continue to love what I do, but also have these like guardrails and boundaries with clients and respond in a way that's very like, you know, firm and kind, but also just be like, that's our policy. And it's amazing how many people just respect that as soon as you say it. I like a magic potion. That's our policy.

Okay. It's like, all right, fine. That works for me. And it's like, yeah, amazing.

That's incredible. What I find really interesting is that I think, I mean, Ellie's quite young, I would say. It was so hard for me. I didn't have this attitude of, I have to be doing it wrong.

There must be a better way. I have to be doing it wrong. I had attitude if I just keep trying if I just keep acquiring myself if I just keep doing it the wrong way harder you know more of trying to do it the wrong way I will get there how did you know that that was never going to work like I don't know what took me so long I think what really helped me and like something that I do constantly with myself is I use this like priority matrix thing and I'll send you like the PDF of it because like I love it I have a copy here but I made another copy to share with people if they would like to use it but it's literally like a want versus need list and you you make a huge list of everything you have to do and the things that you really want to do and all this stuff that you're trying to do in your business and then you kind of group it in these like four categories of like yes it's a need and yes it's a want and those are your highest motivating tasks those are the stuff you can like tackle right away you're motivated to do them they're gonna have a large impact if it's both of those things if it's a need and a want then that's the top priority and then you have your your it's a a need but not necessarily a want and then that's those are kind of the like i would i call them like eat the frog tasks which i think is like from a book.

But those are ones that are just like, get done, get it out of the way early, give yourself like, I find it's really helpful to give myself a reward for starting them rather than for finishing them because it gets me to actually do them. But I think that's also, I have ADHD and that's like an ADHD thing is if you reward yourself for starting, you're actually more likely to finish than if you wait to reward yourself at the end. Just because your brain is like really triggered to like focus on dopamine.

So if you just go for the high dopamine reward at the beginning, you'll get through it. It's like, it's amazing. That is so cool. I have to remember that my son is super duper ADHD and his stepson is also.

So I have to share that with him. Yeah, it was game changing finding that out for myself and then being like, oh, okay, wow, my life is easier now by just giving myself the reward to start rather than waiting till I'm done. with a task I never wanted to do to reward myself. That feels like that would work for even something like exercise.

Yes. You know, showing up. Showing up. Showing up on the mat, just being there.

That's the win. Yes. I like that. It seems it's not as punitive, I think, as I can be to myself.

So, okay. Okay, so you want it and you need it, the highest priority. It may be a little easier to tackle than the you just need it but you don't want it category. Yes.

What would you do with the not need and not want? Not need and not want, those are your lowest priority and you better be delegating those tasks. Because you don't want to do them. You don't necessarily need to do them, but they're still on your list.

Oh. You don't need to be responsible for getting them done. Offload them. I don't know.

Send them to your assistant. Send them to a junior designer. Send them to a contractor that you work with. They might have to get done eventually.

There's not a strict timeline on them. So if it's not urgent and it's not something that's, you know, you don't really want to do it and it's not urgently needed, you might as well delegate it out. It's not worth having that sit on your plate and eventually eat up just like mental space for that. I'm thinking that anybody listening, if you're like me, this is blowing my mind and I want to know more about this and you're willing to share this matrix.

Yeah. Yeah, I made a little printout for everybody. I adore you. You know what?

Cheryl's going to be listening. She's going to be editing and she loves when I give her things to do like while talking on the podcast. Hi, Cheryl. We love you.

It would be so good if you came to a BOD live and shared how to do the matrix. Yeah I would love to It super fun And then I there little like step by steps on like what how I use it and what examples I like would recommend and for things just because there some other steps after once you get everything on the paper of like other things you can do to help kind of like make yourself feel a lot less overwhelmed when you tackling these like a lot of the time like large scale problems that you have Like for me it was like I was so overwhelmed of like I have I was working on too many client projects at once I was trying to get them all to proposal trying to price them all at the same time.

And at the same time, I was dealing with a really difficult client that was challenging my ability to handle just like client in and out like client management and billing. And I was like, I need to fix this. And so I was like, I'm doing the BOD 15. This is my this is my prescribed solution to this problem.

And I just took it piecemeal. I did like one or two modules like a day or so. And I would script everything out. I would practice just like as much as I could of things like I you give great examples in the in the training modules, but I would take it and I would make it my own or like reflect on conversations I had with clients and like rewrite them almost.

So it was like next time that happens, I don't have to have that like that stress or that insecurity that the conversation isn't going to go well because in my I've practiced it a little bit you know and it gets easier the more and more you do it for sure I think I was like shaking the first or second time I like did one of those difficult conversations and now I'm like this is fine I'm gonna just get through this it's it's whatever I can relate to that there are times my knees are knocking and I'm like I can't believe I'm having this conversation but I'm going through it.

Cheryl has said that many, many times because she talks to people as they're going through the modules. She has said many times that if you implement as you go, it's way better than binge watching everything and thinking you're going to implement later. The way you describe is exactly what she says. Leave the projects you currently have.

We'll fix some things on those projects. But the very next project you start, you start at the exact way because how the project starts is how the project ends. I have performed that experiment so many times that I know that that is true. What are your big ambitions then for your business?

What do you see as your future? I really want to grow Garden with Ellie. I think that I bring something kind of unique to the table. I think a lot of the landscape design firms, at least in Northern Virginia, they kind of do a very prescribed design plan and implementation.

And I find that I really enjoy working with clients to develop something that is truly unique, that is for their forever home, that grows with their family, that goes beyond just like, you know, plantings and a nice area to sit and have a fire. And it's about encouraging people to be outside and engage with the natural environment. I was really lucky. I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

And that environment and that ecosystem was constantly being talked about. And the way that we as humans like engage with the nature around us like was always part of my upbringing. And so I would really love to like have stand out as someone who just like is able to provide that and encourage people to really like enjoy their outdoor spaces is because I don't know. I mean, I grew up outside all the time and I would love to see more people spend more time outside.

It's incredible how many similarities just listening to you talk because I know we've said so many times, we're not selling kitchens. We're selling Friday night bake-off with the kids. We're selling like brunch with the whole family. or selling a bachelorette weekend with your best friends.

And there's enough bedrooms and bathrooms that everybody can spend the night. And you're selling outdoor lifestyle. You're selling the expansion of the home. You're selling an addition to the house, which is these outside zones.

And if you're lucky enough to live somewhere where you can be outside all year long, it's even better. Exactly. I would say if you're listening and you're in the interior design realm, decorating, design, staging, any of that kind of stuff, architecture, and you haven't yet added a professional landscaper to your team, you are missing out on something that will really complete your project. we often hear designers say well it's the styling that completes the project it's the artwork but it's true what you said if you do not handle the landscaping then you have left your clients in kind of a mess and it's so easy to add a smart professional so again anybody near ellie in the dc area in virginia just work with her and if not find somebody find somebody amazing who has process.

I just adore having you in my life. Thank you so much. And I'm sincere. Let's get you to a BOD live and teach that matrix.

I'm going to run some stuff through it. I mean, I got a couple of things not business related that I think I can. It works for everything, by the way, Kimberly, you can do this with personal life to do. You can't mix it though, right?

Like you wouldn't. No, I would separate them. I would create one for work and one for whatever, but it's. I always prioritize work.

I have a bad habit of prioritizing work. And so that's a bad idea. Ellie, we love to end every episode with design intervention. Just a great piece of advice you want to leave everybody with.

Yeah. So I heard this from just a teacher that I had recently, and it really stuck with me. And so I thought I would share it. And it doesn't, I think it'll relate really well, which is, so as designers or creators, we have kind of this ability to think of infinite possibilities on how to do something.

But sticking to a process or a system that really works avoids all the chaos, which means that you can use that amazing superpower that you have as a creative to do the fun stuff rather than wasting it on trying to reinvent the wheel every single time. That is so true. I thought systems and boundaries and protocols would limit my creativity and it's exactly the opposite. Neatly ties up all the eat the frog tasks that's not that crazy about and leaves a huge amount of time for creativity and expansion of the big idea so you can sell the fabulous to your clients, which they want.

They really do. Thank you so, so much. You also participated in bootcamp. How did that go?

What changes have you made? I love it because you're obviously a person who implements when you get good information you run with it have you what changes have you made since boot camp quite a lot I like really took kind of the similar approach where like each week kind of we'd get the like kind of homework and I'd do my best to like figure out how that was going to like integrate immediately into the systems that I was kind of currently working on one of the biggest things was that massive forecasting tool that we got to work on and I've been using that.

And I like, it's like my holy grail of like, I'm feeling a little anxious about like how something's going to fit into our budget. I just like open it. I like, we'll test out how that might like affect something like a few quarters down or anything like that. And I feel calmer.

I feel a lot more in control of my like finances for the business. It's also helped me like delegate a lot more because I realized I could actually like hire staff to do things. And I wasn't willing to like, I think, make that investment before, but really having a lot more clarity on my financials for my business really allowed me to make those decisions easier. Yeah, because you can either afford it or you can't.

It's a binary question. Yes or no. And if it's yes, not only can I afford it, but I can actually use it as another arm of profitability. And then that's a yes, yes.

Exactly. That's a want and a need in the matrix of Ellie Black. Yeah, I think that was really huge. And then the other thing that I think really came out of it was raising my rates again, which I had done maybe about a year ago, but doing it again felt really like the right time for it.

And especially adding someone to work underneath me as a junior, it made more sense to also increase my rate. So yeah. So excited for you. Really just continued, continued meteoric success.

I'll see you at BOD Live when you teach us tricks. And it's awesome to see you. Thank you so, so much. Of course.

Thank you so much, Kimberly, for having me on. It's literally a dream come true. So thank you. Well, mark your calendar.

Please come back. We'd love to be back for sure.