Ep. 127 The 5 Things That Actually Grow an Interior Design Business | The Design Business Diagnostic

Speaker A: M welcome to Success by Design where I give you the real talk and a big reality check about you needing to stop treating your business like a hobby. Let's turn it into a profit generating machine. All while doing it in a way that works for your life. I'm Katie Decker Erickson and I am taking what I learned by building a multi million dollar coast to coast design business and sharing it with you right here. If you are wanting to generate more profit and not be burnt out and possibly even have a dream design business, you are in the right place. If you're trying to grow your interior design business, there's a very good chance you're working on the wrong thing. You're trying to get more clients, you're trying to post more, you're trying to hire and get organized and probably raise your prices. And of course you're trying to build your systems and you're trying to somehow get everything under control. And I absolutely get it. Because those are the things you can see, those are the things that make noise. That's what you hear on the Instagram pages, right? But after years of running my own design firm and coaching other interior designers, I have become incredibly clear about something. Most of the things designers are trying to fix are surface level problems. And surface level fixes don't actually create lasting growth. So today I want to give you the no BS version of what actually grows an interior design business. Not what sounds good on Instagram, um, not what makes a great lead magnet, not the latest tactic that you're hearing from some coach who puts out a 10 second reel on Insta. Uh, now one more thing to add to your list. I actually want to tell you the five areas I seen making the biggest difference in whether a design business becomes profitable, sustainable and scalable. And I'm also going to tell you why I'm redirecting my entire coaching practice around them. Because I've changed the way I think about coaching and I've changed it because I've seen what actually gets designers results. I used to do more one off coaching. This is why I am changing the way I coach. A uh, designer would come to me with a problem, we'd work through it. Maybe it was pricing, maybe it was a difficult contractor or personnel issue. Maybe she needed help thinking through her offers or was stuck on marketing or didn't really know whether to hire or who to hire. And don't get me wrong, those conversations could absolutely be valuable. But over time I started seeing the limitation because we would solve the things she came in asking About. And then there was another issue sitting immediately behind it. Or worse, the thing she thought we needed to fix wasn't actually the thing creating the problem. I'd hear the designers say, I need more clients. But when we dug in, the problem wasn't lead generation. The problem was that our offers weren't profitable. Or she would say, I need to hire. But she didn't have the systems, the financial capacity or leadership structure to actually support bringing another person into the organization. Another one. I would hear, my marketing isn't working. But she couldn't clearly articulated what she wanted to sell, who it was for, whether she was consistently posting, and who her ideal client actually was. Another one of my favorites. I need to raise my prices. Coaches all over are recommending it on Instagram. See, the real issue was that the business was leaking money through inefficiency. And that is when I started realizing a one off answer can fix a moment. It doesn't necessarily fix your business. And I don't want my coaching to be about giving you a good answer for today's fire. Instead, I want to help you build a company that has fewer fires in the first place. That is why I'm changing the way I work. Because the designers who actually get results are, are not the ones chasing isolated fixes. They're the ones willing to look at the business as a whole. Okay, here's what I see. Not working. There is so much business advice aimed at entrepreneurs right now, and a lot of it sounds really compelling. Post every day, build a funnel, raise your rates, hire before you're ready, and, uh, delegate everything, automate everything, launch a passive offer, build your personal brand, send more emails, create more content. Okay, I'm exhausted. I don't know about you, and none of these things are inherently wrong. But here's the problem. A tactic only works when the business underneath it is ready for it. If your margins are terrible, more sales doesn't necessarily solve your problem. And if your offer is unclear, more marketing just puts more eyeballs on something people don't understand. If your team isn't structured correctly, hiring another person gives you another person inside an already broken structure. And if you're still making every decision, delegation isn't going to work because nobody actually has authority in your organization. And even if you think that they do, they don't know it. This is why I have become much less interested in asking, what tactic should we try? Instead, I want to ask what is actually happening inside of your business? Because that question changes everything. I want to talk about the five things that actually matter. And this is where I have landed. Because when I look at interior design businesses, there are five areas I want to intimately understand. It's your finances, your marketing, your human capital, your CEO leadership, and your products and offerings. Those are the five. And no, I'm not saying those are the only five things that exist inside a business. I am saying, though, that those are the five I repeatedly see determining whether everything else works, because they are all connected. You cannot build a great team if the financial model cannot support one. You cannot market effectively if your offerings are confusing. You cannot create capacity if you refuse to lead or just don't know how. And you cannot make strong decisions if you don't understand your numbers. And most importantly, you cannot scale something you haven't clearly defined. And that is why I believe you need all five. Not all five perfect, but all five functioning. They're not perfect in my firm, but they are functioning, and that has allowed us to grow. All right, number one, I want to dig in. Let's talk about your finances. And here's what designers, I hear you. This is what you say you need more revenue. But here's what I often see you actually need. You need better financial understanding, because more revenue doesn't automatically create a healthier company. I have seen businesses with impressive revenue that are completely stressed out financially. And I've seen smaller firms with far more control because they understand margin, cash flow, overhead, labor, and what they can actually afford. The mistake is thinking, gosh, if I can just sell more, everything's going to get better. Well, I'm going to be honest with you. Sometimes selling more creates more chaos. Sometimes it exposes every weakness already in the business, and sometimes it actually can cost you money. What works is understanding the financial model. Underneath that revenue, can the business support your payroll? Are you pricing for the way you actually deliver? Are your projects profitable? And where does all the money go? Can you make a decision from data instead of fear or hope? That is what we're going to dig into. Because financial clarity doesn't just make you better with money, it makes you a better CEO. All right, number two, let's dive into marketing. Oh, it's so sexy. And everybody has a line for it. If you can't tell by my tone, I'm entirely over that. Because here's what designers think marketing is. It's posting Instagram, maybe some networking would love to get published. Or sending an email when things get slow. That's the designers who even have a distribution list. What actually works. I'm not going to lie. It's consistency and clarity. Your marketing has to continually communicate who you help, what you do, why you're different, and why someone should trust you. And it has to happen before you're desperate for work. That's the part I see most designers getting wrong. Marketing becomes reactive. You book one call with me to try to solve it. And that's why I'm not doing one off calls except for to pre existing clients anymore. Because we have to have a much larger conversation. See, things get busy, so you stop marketing, things slow down, so you kind of panic, and then all of a sudden we do want to start marketing. Think back to when you first learned how to drive. Remember all of the too fast, too slow, slam on the brakes, go, go, go. For those of us that are old enough to remember the days of clutch, you can especially relate to this. Your marketing plan shouldn't feel like learning to drive a vehicle in clutch. Then something comes in. So yet you stop again. And that creates completely unpredictable business. And what you really want is a pipeline. You want demand. I see you. You want enough visibility and consistency that you're not making every sales decision from scarcity. Because when marketing actually works, guess what you get? You get a choice. You don't have to say yes to every job. You don't have to discount your offerings and go, gosh, does that number feel high. You don't have to convince the wrong client they should work with you, and you can actually decide what kind of business you want to build. All right, let's talk about number three, human capital. The third area is this. And this one comes up constantly. Because here's what I hear you saying after years of coaching you I need another person. What you actually typically need is a better structure for the people you already have. And this is a huge distinction. Because when things get overwhelming, hiring starts feeling like the obvious solution. But I'll be honest with you. Hiring is not going to give you clarity. It's not going to give you systems, it's not going to make you, as the CEO, a better delegator, and it does not automatically create capacity for you. You've heard me say it before. If the business is disorganized before the hire, it's going to be a larger version of disorganized after. You add another human to the mix. See, because now you're already, now you're paying someone to be disorganized with you. Isn't that a fun party? The designers who build strong teams do something different instead. They're thinking about roles, responsibilities, expectations, decision Making training, capacity, accountability. And you stop asking, who can help me? And you start asking, what does this business actually need? Someone to own in it? See, that is a, uh, much better hiring question. The fourth area I'm diving into A CEO leadership. Here's what designers think this means. It means we're available, involved, we know everything, we help everybody. We're fixing problems quickly. I'm going to tell you right now, folks, that's not leadership. Here's what actually works. It's creating a company that does not require you to touch every single thing. Now, I get it. This is a hard transition because, especially in design, your tastes, your standards, your relationships, and your instincts helped create the company that you have today. And it's not shabby. So you continue to perpetuate this belief, and you become deeply involved in everything. But at some point, the thing that made the business successful becomes the very thing that prevents it from growing. And that's you. You're becoming the bottleneck. Everything waits for you. Every decision, approval, answer. And then you say, gosh, I just can't get out of the weeds. Katie, help. And I see you. Of course you can't. You build the company so all the weeds all lead back to you. See, CEO leadership is learning to operate differently. It's moving from doing to directing, and from answering questions to creating better decision makers, from watching every detail to actually building standards, and from reacting to thinking ahead. That shift is one of the biggest differences I see between a designer who owns a job and and a designer who owns a company. Finally, I want to talk to you about your products and offerings, because here's what we also tend to think as designers. More things to sell means more opportunity. Oh, uh, I couldn't disagree more. Sometimes more things to sell just means more confusion. And if you have five different ways to work with you. Three fee structures, two different project types, random consulting, random procurement, and a custom exception for every client. You have not created an opportunity. You have created operational chaos, not only for you, but anyone else who is on your team. And quite frankly, it's just not fair. You need to be profitable. You need to be easy to explain. Your offerings have to make sense. They need to be easy to market, and they need to be deliverable by the business you actually have. By the same token, they also need boundaries, and they need support. Or they need to support where you are trying to actually move the business to. This is one of the most overlooked areas in the design businesses I coach because everybody assumes I offer interior design. Well, that's not enough. What do you sell? Who is it for? How do you deliver it? What does it actually cost you? And what is the return on the client's investment? What is your return on that? And does it fit the company you say you want to build? See that right there, that's the real conversation. This is the reason why I am organizing my coaching around all five of these arenas. Because you cannot really separate them. A weak offer creates weak marketing, weak marketing creates inconsistent revenue. Inconsistent revenue makes hiring anyone beyond scary. And poor hiring creates more work for you. Then you stay trapped in the delivery. And because you're trapped in delivery, you're not spending time looking at the financial strategy or growth. Do you see how this really becomes a self fulfilling prophecy or a really horrible loop? This is what I keep seeing. And that is why I don't want to coach one little piece in isolation anymore. Because I can help you fix your marketing, but if the offer underneath it doesn't work, we haven't fixed the business. See, I can help you hire, but if you're not leading, we haven't fixed the business. I can help you raise your prices. But if you don't understand the financial model, say it together. We still haven't fixed your business. And this is why each of, uh, these five areas matter. It's not because I want you managing five more things. It's because I want you to understand how the machine that is your business actually works and get it working better. Here's what I have seen. Get results, look at the whole business, identify the real constraints. Working on the root cause instead of the symptom, and staying with the work long enough to actually change behavior and systems. Then we go back and we measure whether the business is actually getting stronger. That's very different from let's have one call and solve something. And sometimes one call is helpful. But I'm not gonna lie. The businesses I'm working with that are in the six figures, wanting to move into seven or higher. 7. That transformation generally doesn't happen because you had one brilliant conversation. It happens because you see the business differently and then you start running it differently. I want to go deeper with you. I want to work on things underneath the visible problems. I want to help designers understand why something isn't working, what needs to change, and how those pieces interact. I don't want to hand you just another Instagram tactic. I want to help you become much better at actually running your company. So welcome to the no bullshit formula. Here it is. Know your numbers. Build predictable demand. Put the right people in the right structure and learn how to lead like a ce sell things the right way. That is the work. It's not sexy, it's not instant and it's not going to fit into a seven second reel. But I'm going to tell you right now, it works. And more importantly, it creates the kind of business most designers tell me that they actually want and they're tired of one off calls. See a profitable business, a business with options, A ah, business that doesn't rely entirely on you. A business with strong clients and a team that can move. A business where you understand what's happening financially and a business that feels intentional instead of accidental, that becomes the outcome. So this episode is really the beginning of a new series for us here at uh, Success by Design. It's a, uh, beginning of the next chapter. Over the next five episodes, I'm going to take each one of these areas and go so much deeper. We're going to deep dive your finances, marketing, human capital, CEO leadership, and your product and offerings. And we're not going to talk about what they are. We're going to talk about what you think is working versus what is actually working. What are designers getting wrong and how you know when that area is becoming a problem, what happens in your company when you actually ignore it, and what becomes possible when you get it right. Because by the end of the series, I want you to be able to look at your own company differently. I want you to understand the five areas. I want you to see how they interact just like a beautifully woven blanket. And I want you to have a much better sense of where your business actually needs attention. Because the answer is probably not more random tactics. It's probably not another piece of software or don't do so much. It may actually be getting much clearer about what actually matters. So make sure you're subscribed because we're going through all five areas. And as you listen to each episode, I want you to ask yourself, is this actually working in my business? Not do I know this? See, those are two completely different things. And if you're already hearing this and thinking, I know I'm working hard, I know the business has potential, but I cannot figure out why it still feels harder than it should. This is exactly the kind of work I'm redirecting success by design toward. We look at the business, we diagnose the constraint, we figure out what actually needs attention, and then we do the work that creates the result. See, there's no random fixes, no fluff, no pretending. Every business has the same problem, just stronger Interior design business. Next week we're going to start with finances because almost every designer I know wants more money, but very few stop long enough to understand what their money is actually telling them. And that's why we're going there next. If this resonates with you and you're already like, gosh, I really need a diagnostic. I need to know what's going wrong in my business. I offer a complimentary diagnostic. Call over@fixmydesignbiz.com Again, that's Fix My Design Biz with a Z dot com. Hop over, book a, uh, 15 minute session with me and let's start figuring out the long term play to get your business where it needs to be in a real and different way. Because your business should be working for you, not you working for it. Until next time, take care. That's your real talk for today. If you found this helpful and you are ready to truly move the needle in your design business, head over to FixMyDesignBiz.com and let's get started. That's FixMyDesign Biz with a Z.com and if you want to stay connected, head over to my Instagram @SuccessBy Design underscore Coach Underscore podcast and give me a follow. Don't forget to mention you came from the podcast because I would love to meet you and I personally respond to every dm. Until next time, take care.