Day one, the audio diary series.

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Transcript

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0:12

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could 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. Hey there. I missed you guys. I've been having a little mid year break from the podcast, and I know you know that because I can see the download numbers. I'm like, okay, cool. Some of you have some catching up to do, but a lot of you will be waiting for the new content to drop again, and I wanted to let you know that that's going to look a little bit differently because I am up to my neck hole in course creation right now. I'm so very excited. I'm living and breathing the Framework split into established designers and emerging designers, and I'm just, I'm building out AI systems and assistance, and I'm doing all this cool stuff, and I'm filming automations, and I'm taking you behind the scenes into my funnels, and. teaching how to do paid ads and all sorts of next level strategy for marketing and business. And it's really, really awesome, but it's really, really exhausting. And I'm going to need the rest of July just to get it all done. So what I thought I'd do is I'm going to soft launch back into the podcast because I know you guys have been missing it and missing some new content. And what that will look like is I'm going to bring you on a Tuesday and Thursday. The daily audio diaries I've been recording. So as I've been going through the process of creating courses and splitting them up and tidying them up and filming and looking at learning outcomes and all sorts of stuff each day, at the end of the day, I've just been recording like 15 minutes of my thoughts from that day, what sort of happened. There's all sorts of rollercoaster feelings up and down. There's definitely some wobbly moments of imposter syndrome. And I wanted to show you the real. when we're in the middle of creating a course because it's Full on effort. I have spent time with my kids over the school holidays, um, Wednesdays and weekends with the boys, non negotiable. And then on the other days, I've been doing 15 to 18 hour days, each of those days, and my productivity, like my time tracking app, seems to think over the school holidays, I did 72 hours of work, which is a lot when you're not working full time. So at the end of each day, I just checked in with myself and with you guys and gave you a little update. And so I thought what I'll do is I'll release these on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a little diary entry. I hope you'll find them interesting. If you've ever considered adding a revenue stream, like a course or something like that, you might actually really enjoy hearing what that process is like. And then when we hit it. August. We'll bring our guests back. I've already recorded some killer interviews. I've been chatting to people about Instagram for interior designers, and I have been banking those interview sessions still. And I have a few up my sleeve, but I just need to step back. And I did recognize I was. I don't want to ever resent my podcast. I never want to feel burned out and I bring a lot more than a lot of other podcasts in terms of an hour episode with an interview each week, plus a solo episode, it was starting to get a lot when I'm going through major restructure, such as I am at the moment. So let's all design our own success and look after ourselves and each other and make sure that you are identifying ahead of the burnout, that this is not great. And this is not serving me the way that I'd like it to. So for July, we're taking it easy. I'll share my diary entries with you, the audio diaries, and I will bring the guests back in August. And I would love to hear from you, what you think, what your thoughts are, if you're enjoying it. I am having some big feelings on this podcast, and I hope you will really like that behind the scenes look. So I won't bore you with anything more. I will turn you over to my. Audio diary of day one so about, probably about start of the year, somebody asked me a question, one of the designers inside of the framework about the resource library. And I went into it to find the resource that she was looking for and share that. And it suddenly struck me that this course has become everything I didn't want it to be. So when I first designed the course, I was really careful about negative space and removing things that were too advanced and making sure that it really took my user. Through from arriving with me, getting support, moving through, and then exiting the course, fully set out with processes, documents, confidence, knowing how to do basic level marketing and head in to their second year of business. Now, over the course of the last 18 months, we've had people come through that have had over 20 years experience and they've gotten value because the resource library just got so chocked with absolutely everything. So I decided that I needed to split it into two. One calls for emerging designers that delivers exactly what I just mentioned. And one calls for established designers that assumes they were already working with clients and teaches advanced marketing skills business strategy for growth. So more of a business development management. Kind of lens and looking at ways that we can get everything into line and move on and teach automations, like email, workflows and automations, teaching DM automations, teaching AI for business, teaching AI bots and how to streamline and do things fast so that you can get on with maximizing your profits. So it's not about just going, okay, you're at 10 K and we'll get you to 50 K. What we're going to do is 5X your pricing. That's not going to build you a sustainable, successful business that you love. You actually, there are specific steps that you need to go through in order to have the infrastructure that can catch and support that much growth in your business. Anyway, I'm in the middle of redesigning everything and I wanted to. Basically, come on here and share just a couple of minutes a day of the process so that you can come on the journey. I think it's super interesting if you've ever thought of building reoccurring revenues. Or a course or something like that, then this might be of value to you. So day one, the first thing I did was duplicate the entire resource library in Notion and go in and take out any resource that I felt could be overwhelming, too much or not relevant. To me, if I were an interior designer running a business in my first 24 months, for example, so there were webinars in there that probably touched a little bit more on advanced sales psychology, or there were webinars around things that might be shiny object syndrome for them. It might be a little bit distracting when actually the best outcome will be to go back to the core, set it up properly, and then move into the scaling sort of side of your business. So I duplicated it, I removed all the mess, and then I duplicated my original plan for the framework for the video lessons. And I had a look through it and I was like, yep, okay, everything's still pretty much fine as is, because there's nothing wrong with the framework, especially the video lessons, because they haven't grown in any way. They're still mapped out to take wanting to start an interior design business to being in a business that's attracting clients. So that is the core of the original framework. So everything was fine. I went into Canva, I reassessed my brand kit or applied my current brand kit to each video lesson. Now I went in and I watched every single one of them. I want you to know that there are 40 snackable video lessons and I absolutely, yes, I playback speed them on 2. 5, but I watched them. I refilmed probably about, I would say 25 percent plus I filmed up to date tutorials for things like content planning, for things like using notion, things that I have. better skill in now than I did 18 months ago. I refilmed all of those so that I could communicate it in a more confident way than probably first time course creator me did. But I was really pleasantly surprised actually when I went in how much of that content is really evergreen and really Stuff you just need to know to start a business and things that don't change. Like the way we deliver things, the way we stay client centric and the approach to business that I have is still the same. So I refilmed what I needed to, I saved everything ready to be uploaded as the new version. And then I went back to the resource library that I had edited and taken a lot of stuff out. And I individually went into each resource. Looking at it through the lens of an emerging designer. Does this make sense? Is it simple? And is it easy to apply? Implement and I used AI to assess some of that stuff. So I looked at it from learning objectives. I uploaded my whole lesson. I'd be like, can you read through this and give me some advice to act as a consultant and pinpoint any areas that Students might possibly struggle with or is there any ways that I could improve this? And I just listened to the feedback. I did not take it all on and I did not apply AI into my course. I feel very strongly that the course, the video lessons, the learning outcomes, everything was written by me. Process and the methodology is my own. And it's one that I've learned from 20 years of business experience. It's not something I got out of chat GPT and yeah, but I did actually ask for advice and I would definitely say that's a little tip. If you're worried about something, ask the question, upload the thing into chat, GPT, and just say, does this have the right tone? This is who I'm looking to appeal to things like that. It's always worth asking. So I took on some advice from Chattopadhyay. I definitely ignored others, but I went into all of the resources and I felt privileged that I could look at it now that I've actually had over 150 people through the framework from start to finish and gotten feedback. And I know because I meet with them weekly in our Q and A's, I know what questions come up at what point of the course. When we look at course creation, I think the statistic is something ridiculous, 3 percent of people who purchase a course finish a course. the rest just give up or they can't get through it or it's, it's too dense or it's too difficult or they're not hungry enough or whatever the reason. We're all guilty. I'm sure there are courses that I've purchased. In fact, I can tell you right now, Jenna Kutcher's Pinterest lab, I'm still up to module two. Sorry, Jenna. I just couldn't get past it at the time. I don't know why it just wasn't working for me. And I'm so Like excited and proud of the fact that I have over 60 percent of designers who have signed up for and purchased the framework have completed every single video lesson yeah, they're still working their way through the resource library, but I do that. They watched 40 lessons and went from module one to module five and watched them all and. Over 60 percent of them is incredible. And I'm very grateful. And I feel like that's good feedback that it's working. But anyway, I was able to go through the resources one by one and think about when I have been working with people, what are their biggest challenges in this particular section, is it in pricing or in developing services, or if it's like at a part of the course where we're looking at marketing platforms, and I took lots of notes. What are those challenges over the last three months? I have a notion database that I've been looking putting ideas in, putting notes in, knowing I wanted to do this when it came time to execute. So I had a bit of a back catalog. So I was able to do that, but I also was able to write a shopping list of AI assistants that I wanted to build to help people get through this course. Faster and easier. Like sometimes it's really hard for us to think about what are your USPs? I don't know what's good about me. I don't know what kind of designer I am because I need some clients to become a designer. I don't know. You tell me that's the kind of feeling that I get. I now have the skill to build these AI support assistants, and what that means is I go into AI and chat GPT as a GPT, right? So I'm building GPTs, which are your sort of support assistants that can work with you while I'm asleep or so that you don't have to ask me the question because they are effectively using my IP, my intellectual property. Okay. I teach them in the back end. What is my process for designing services? And what do I consider? What do I take into consideration? And what are my suggestions? And what's the method that I teach in the framework? And I built that all into the coding in the back area of ChatGPT. And then I have these support assistants that I give to people inside of the framework. So my original OGs have been brilliant at testing these for me. There are three currently finished, and there are seven more in the works. I just need to not be doing the restructure and be doing the bot building instead. So the three that I have is one is called Navi and she is a navigational tool to help you find the resource you're looking for in the resource library because it's massive, right? I think there was over 2000 resources when I, like, when I worked out the coding and had to map it all. And so you can go into Navi, just like ChatGPT, she's in ChatGPT, you click on the word Navi in your sidebar, she comes up and says, Hey, how can I help you find something today? And you're right. Oh I've got a first time consult or initial consultation, and I want to know what questions to ask. And she will bring up all of the resources that are related to first time In home consults. So that's Navi. She's great. I love her. She's going to save me so much time because nobody's DMing me. I know that I saw a webinar about this, but I can't find it in the resource library. Now, I've completely eliminated that as part of my business in terms of supporting, which allows me more time to be hands on as I am and review the documents you send me and chat to you in Slack, because I'm not actually just answering questions about where things live in the resource library. The second AI assistant I created was Mary, and Mary, which is an inside joke, I know the names seem really dorky, but they're part of the framework Slack conversations that have been had. So Mary designs your services. with you. So if you're not sure what to offer, she asks you all the questions and she makes suggestions, including what inclusions you could add, how you can make them unique or signature services. She gives suggestions, suggested prices based on your locality and the market research in the area that you are going to operate. She's incredibly clever and I'm very proud of Mary. I think she's doing a great job and all the feedback I've gotten so far is yep, exactly what I would have done when I did it. And it took me three weeks to decide on my services. She did it in under 20 minutes. And then I was able to move on and build an investment guide. So loving Mary for you, especially this one is for emerging designers. You are going to think Mary is the bomb because she can help so much. And the last one that I have created that is going to be for sale for anybody that wants it is Percy. I love the name again. Percy is a pricing calculator and he can set your hourly rates based on your experience, your market research in your area, your locality, what is the industry standard, he helps you work out what you should charge based on like how much leave you want to have this year and what are your. Own financial goals and what do you need to consider? What are your expenses? But he does it in such a way that it's like he just asked five key questions. It takes under 10 minutes and spits out accurate hourly pricing. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm suggesting interior designers should be on hourly models. In fact, I'm the opposite. I'm big on value pricing. Price for the outcome that you provide, not for the hours it takes you. But I do think emerging designers need to know What sort of hourly rate and how many hours it takes to do things in order to calculate what the value should be in order to understand how it correlates with your hourly rate. So Percy is a game changer and he will be for sale if you don't want to do the framework, but you just want to use Percy in your own chat GPT to workshop your pricing. DM me the word Percy over at oleander underscore and underscore Finch and I will send you information about exactly what he does, exactly what he's here for and details on how you can purchase him. Okay, so that was day one. That was a lot, right? So just to be clear, we don't write Entire courses in one day. I have written this course 18 months ago. I have delivered it for 18 months to over 150 interior designers. I have a huge notion database of ideas, improvements, feedback, all categorized in terms of what I needed to do. And today was just the day that my husband took my kids out for me to work 14 solid hours on beginning to execute this plan. And I. End of the day, I'm Over the moon excited. It's got a new look and new feel. It's all up to date videos that AI assistants are incredible. They are like, they've been life changing for my business and the things that I've created in terms of getting them to content plan or. Getting them to cut through the noise and get really clear, amazing content, that kind of stuff, you are going to love them if you're doing the new look framework, either for emerging or established designers, part of the launch offer is going to be to get these bots included. They never will be after that. You'll have to pay as additional because they're so worth it. They're my entire methodology in that you can run through AI in 10 minutes, 20 minutes, like tiny little speed demons. I love them so much. And I hope that you will too. If you want to be on that wait list so that you get the launch offer and you can actually consider is the framework for you in order to get all of these bots and you get to meet the bots and understand what they do at time of launch, please go over to my website, www. oleanderandfinch. com. You can join the wait list. There's a link in the show notes to just directly jump on the right wait list, one for emerging designers and one for established designers. And I cannot wait. To see how this lands in the market, because there's nothing like it. There is nobody creating authentic methodology delivered through chat GPT that acting as them. So it's basically, I'm probably doing myself out of a job because all these private coaching clients that I have now, I'm just building my. my 20 years experience of business and marketing into support bots. Let's hope that the human element is still valued and you guys still want to hang out with me and actually one on one with me going forward. But that's it for today. That's day one's update. Day two, day three is going to be a lot shorter because I really got to get into it because that's the deep work, because I'm writing an all new course. I'm not just giving established designers the scraps or the overflow from the emerging designer course. I've cleaned up the emerging designer course. I'm so excited. It's really clear and it really delivers a transformation. And now I'm going to map out exactly what I want to do and say to established designers to take them out of the overwhelm and into growth. Okay. I'll chat to you tomorrow. 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.