Thanks for listening to this episode of "Designing Success: From Study to Studio"! Connect with me on social media for more business tips, and a real look behind the scenes of my own practicing design business.
For more FREE resources, templates, guides and information, visit the Designer Resource Hub on my website ; https://oleanderandfinch.com/
Ready to take your interior design business to the next level? Check out my online course, "The Framework," designed to provide you with everything they don’t teach you in design school and to give you high touch mentorship essential to having a successful new business in the industry. Check it out now and start designing YOUR own success (waitlist now open) https://oleanderandfinch.com/first-year-framework/
Remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue providing valuable content to aspiring interior designers. Stay tuned for more episodes filled with actionable insights and inspiring conversations.
Thanks for listening to this episode of "Designing Success: From Study to Studio"! Connect with me on social media for more business tips, and a real look behind the scenes of my own practicing design business.
For more FREE resources, templates, guides and information, visit the Designer Resource Hub on my website ; https://oleanderandfinch.com/
Ready to take your interior design business to the next level? Check out my online course, "The Framework," designed to provide you with everything they don’t teach you in design school and to give you high touch mentorship essential to having a successful new business in the industry. Check it out now and start designing YOUR own success (waitlist now open) https://oleanderandfinch.com/first-year-framework/
Remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue providing valuable content to aspiring interior designers. Stay tuned for more episodes filled with actionable insights and inspiring conversations.
Thank you for yo...
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, took time to write down the step by step framework. So now 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. On today's episode of Designing Success, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a shift that I saw recently during a coaching call where we started discussing initial consultations and the fee cost of those consultations and just how much those can block your week. So you have a couple of discovery calls, and you're able to get two or three initial consultations into the diary each week, what you will find is your week fills up really fast with a scope of work needing to be pulled together, then a proposal or a fee document the document, the design deck, whatever it is that you send out to people to let them know how you would approach that job and what it would cost to continue. Now there is a little shift that I saw happen in that call when I broke it down and spoke about it. That. It was just a moment. It was like a flat mic drop moment. It's one of the things that I absolutely love about coaching. And it was with somebody who's been running her own design business for four or five years. She is in the framework. And we were talking about, some of these, there's so much aftercare and so much work that goes into what you do after you've been in that initial in home consultation. And then they never go ahead or they ghost you or on the discovery call, they say, yeah, come over, we'll do the consultation, but that's probably all that we're going to need. Now I have a different view when it comes to when I'm on a discovery call and someone says to me, Oh, I don't know. We might just need the in home or we might need a larger piece of work done. We'll chat about it when we get here or whatnot. I have different price points for those things. So when I'm doing an initial consultation and certainly inside of the discovery call, I need to work out from the. client, am I coming to your house for a one and done consultation? Or am I coming to your house to gather information to win the work? Now I'm using that terminology clearly because it is something that's great. When you get your head around those two things, you charge differently for them. So if I'm doing a one and done consultation. My followup documents won't include a big scope of work and fee proposal and calculating approximate hours that would take me and, sweating all of that. No, sirree. My one and done might include a visual representation of what we discussed in the home for you to keep as as a deliverable or a document in conjunction with the fee that you paid for me to come to your house. So for example, a one and done consultation at your home is no longer an initial consultation. It's me coming over and saying, no problems. It's a 60 minute in home consultation. It's 495 and you will receive a visual interpretation of everything that we discussed to keep you on track with your project. If you want me to come over to your house, learn more about what you need, and pull together a fee proposal, a scope of work document, a design deck, an invoice, etc. I charge less for that because that is me trying to win the work of a much larger job. This designer that I was speaking to was filling her calendar with one and dones, but doing all the work of her trying to win the work. And she wasn't winning those jobs because those people actually just wanted you to come over. So effectively it is just a consultation, but she was charging it as an initial consultation for wanting to win the job. engage a larger project. And the reason that we charge less, like I might come to your house for a win the work type consultation for 295 or 395, but I'm going to charge you 495 for the hour. and not pull together a scope of work if you're only seeing me that one time. Another thing I factor in when it comes to pricing is if I'm going for a one and done consultation and you live at a particular distance from my studio, there's going to be travel fees involved. However, when I am trying to win the work and when I want to come over See the project, decide if it's the project for me and move forward. Oftentimes that travel fee will be waived for that initial consultation. So there are different approaches and I think the best way to go about getting good at identifying the difference. Definitely sits inside of your discovery call, asking the right questions before you're quoting the cost of an initial consult. So one of the reasons I think this designer and many designers get into that trap where they're like, Oh, I've done two this week and neither of them are going ahead and I only charged them 3. 95 for an initial consultation and I didn't charge the travel fees and they lived, 40 kilometers away from my house and I lost half a day and then I pulled together this epic scope of work of what it would cost for me to be involved in the project and they actually had no intention of allowing me access to the project. They just wanted that first kickoff one and done session where they, I hate this term, but it's. Very recognizable inside of the industry. They wanted to pick my brains consultation. And I think that we can be quite quick in the discovery call to qualify everybody into winning the work type initial consultations. When in fact, if we'd asked a few more questions before we quoted the initial consultation fee, We could probably ascertain that they may not need us to pull together a scope of work. They may not actually want to work with us on a project going forward. Today's podcast is proudly brought to you by Polyflor. Polyflor are a cleaning solution that I use in my own home. I have a white rug, a white sofa. I have three boys, a dog, a cat. I definitely need this in my life. And because it is natural, it is soap and chlorine free. It's a hundred percent plant based formula and one bottle cleans 10, 000 square meters of surface. Cos he lives, am I right? It goes a long way and it's been a game changer for us. So thank you Polyflor for sponsoring Designing Success. Getting clear in your discovery call is really important for actually knowing which column people sit in and what we're doing. And that can come down to as simple as saying, okay, no problem. So before I look into availability and costs to have me visit the property, can I just get a clearer understanding? Are you thinking that I'll come over and share from the lens of my expertise? If so, Everything that I think you can do to improve where you're at currently in terms of quick wins and long term goals and just give you an overall consultation on the state of the property as it is now, and what sort of things I think that you could do to improve that. Or are you hoping for me to come over and get a clear indication of the overall project, who you're working with timeframes, total budget Listing out the full scope of work that's needed. And then I can come back to you with a proposal around what that looks like financially for a commitment to work with me on that project going forward. And that's just a very clear question, but effectively what you're doing then is you're filtering. Is this a one and done in which case? it costs more because it's basically the whole only consultation you do. It's not an initial consultation. It's just a paid service, a consultation, or is this an initial consultation in which case I am a bit more relaxed around the travel fees or it's slightly less because I'm there to win the work. I'm there to hear about the project, build rapport with you. Understand if it's a project I want to take on, look for red flags, all that sort of stuff. Now, it's just a teeny tiny podcast episode for me today. I wanted to just post some of those questions and help you break that down as well, because I could see there was more than one person in this group coaching call that went, Oh, I get it now. If I ask the right questions at the front, and I think about them in two different columns, one and done consultation, or I'm coming to your house to win the work, then Your weeks do not fill up with a bunch of one and dones where you also did fee proposals and scope of work documents and design decks and invoices and, really got excited about moving forward when they have no intention of working with you. I hope that was helpful. I cannot wait to chat to you again on Thursday. On Thursday, I'm bringing you an interview with my friend Jen Bishop of The Interior's Addict. She is going to help you with all things pitching to media and understanding. What's possible in terms of what type of projects you're bringing to digital and print media. And yeah, it was such a cool chat. You're really going to love it. I'll chat to you then. Bye for now. Before I go, I do just want to remind you, I have a Two tickets left to the Be In The Room Where It Happens event that we are running in Melbourne in early June, in a couple of weeks. This is an all day content planning, content filming, professional photography. You get 20 headshots that will be delivered to you that you will choose from a gallery of 50. We're spending the whole day With all of this beautiful high end furniture and high end vignettes, taking photos, taking b roll, I will be running a marketing workshop to help you work out your content pillars, work out how to best use everything that we film. Anyway, there's only two tickets left, so if That is something that you would like to join us on the day. I hope that you can, I'm looking forward to meeting you all and mentoring and working deeply on your businesses. Every single one of these women is going to walk away from a personal and professional development day. So re energized, I can't wait for it. 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. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore 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. Today's episode of Designing Success was brought to you by Polyflor. Polyflor is a 100 percent natural plant based formula. It uses a multi enzyme that continues to work up to 72 hours after you clean. It is a soap and chlorine free and removes stains and odors. I can absolutely attest to this because my father in law rang me in a blind panic last week that he had spilt hot chocolate milk All throughout his rug. So I whipped over there with my poly floor. We treated the rug and I can tell you there are no milk smells and no stains. So thank you. Poly floor for sponsoring designing success.