Is edesign right for your business?

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Transcript

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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. On today's episode of Designing Success, I wanted to talk to you about e design and whether it might be a good fit for your interior design business. I've heard all the rumours about e design, it's not real design, it's what you do when you can't, like when you're not skilled enough to do full service design, it's the e design. Easy way out obviously I'm going to refute most of those and think, I don't think there's anything easy in signing up to take on, 15 times the amount of projects a quarter than other designers, because instead of doing sort of four major projects throughout the year, you're doing 40 in a month that are quick turnaround. So I personally don't think there's anything overly easy about it. I think you have to work really hard to get a lot more clients, which we know one of the main things that the two top things that people talk to me about challenges in their interior design business are finding clients and getting their pricing right. So with e design, you're not doing yourself any favors because you're going to have to find A lot more clients, right? It's much easier to find four projects than it is to find 300 in a 12 month period, for example. Today, I'm giving you the 411 on e design reasons. It might be a good fit for your design business. I definitely feel well placed to give you this advice. I am living proof that it's not only possible to make e design profitable, but you can absolutely do it. And I know that people like, Oh yeah, but when you started, it was COVID. Everyone was doing it, blah, blah, blah, blah. I still run my design business. I still currently have Two projects on the go, which is unusual for me. I'm just about to kick off a commercial e design project in Adelaide. I'm based in Melbourne. It is a beautiful heritage old pub in the CBD and we'll be refitting it for office purposes. And I'm excited about it. It's going Great. I love everything about e design. I love that I can collaborate with people all over the world and shop to their locality. So there definitely is some things that you might not know about e design. One is I don't just have my own trade suppliers that I select and procure. Pieces from, and then have those things shipped out to wherever the client lives, I actually shopped to their locality. So I had recently a client in Philadelphia. I'm shopping in all of the shops that ship, that I know shipped to Philadelphia. I use the zip code to do that. I use the postcode here in Australia to double check. I double check what the shipping costs are, all that sort of stuff. So there's additional things that you may not have thought of that I actually have to put into place when working with e design. I've spoken to a lot of designers lately who are worried they can't make money or get enough e design clients to make it viable. And I won't lie, I just said before, you need a lot more clients if the jobs are smaller, but there are some very successful ways to do this, to build referrals. And as I mentioned, I've worked with clients all around the world, being able to share those things. You just build authority, build a network, and people hopefully connect with your concept, develop the concepts that you're sharing, and they want you to do one in their house. Now, the beauty of e design is it's quick and dirty in terms of pricing and other things. You're obviously not going Creating a fee proposal that is multiple five figures. It's generally pretty get in, get out, deliver, pay the invoice, you're done. So it becomes that you can work with perhaps somebody who might've found that they couldn't ordinarily work in a full service capacity with an interior designer. And there's a lot of fun things that you can do with it because anything in business, it's your business. You can bend the rules and you can make things up as you go along. E design was a total game changer for me. Obviously lots of people got into e design, but I actually started my business and e design was the only service that I offered when I was still working as a wedding coordinator. And It was before COVID, so eDesign wasn't a hashtag pivot plan for me. It was something I was doing while I was studying because I felt very capable that I could deliver end to end on an eDesign in a way where I wasn't feeling as confident in the early modules, for example, of studying design, that I could handle that. And it allowed me while my little ones were asleep or feeding or whatnot, to just skip the traffic jams, heading to onsite visits, feeling sweaty, feeling late, feeling nervous. I just kept things exciting, quick project turnarounds no location restrictions, as I mentioned, to work with anyone. And I just loved being invited virtually inside people's homes all over the world. So I've gathered a lot of tips and insights on making e design an actual business model. So here's some of the things I think you need to make your e design business work well inside of your interior design business. First and foremost, price your services right. Just because your services are offered online doesn't mean they should be undervalued. Your design reflects your brand's quality and creativity. Set your prices to reflect the value and effort you put into each project. You do so much, sometimes more, like I just said, you don't have to get the shipping quotes and everything together necessarily when you're working on site, but when you work remotely, you need to communicate a lot more of the nuances of the little details and little extra client notes and things in the style guide, because you won't be there to just know how it should hang or where it should go or what you should do. The other thing that I see people doing time and time again is one size fits all with e design. Like my e designs are 900 per room. Okay, cool. But who decided that? Because why is your entry or an en suite or a powder room cost the same amount as an open plan living or a big I don't know, a big theater room or a kid's room with all the fiddly little decor pieces. I just think not enough people actually think about the nuances that will come up. So my personal approach is I have four different zones in the home and so they fall into sort of small Bit bigger than small, medium and large kind of rooms or large being actually, it's like small, medium, large. And then the last one is alfresco entertainment areas or open plan living. Cause they're much larger and there's a lot that goes into them. I have promised this for a really long time and I do promise I will sit down and write a podcast episode around expanding your business globally. But the beauty of e design, it just breaks down geographical barriers. Possibilities are endless. You can offer your services across. English speaking countries, you might have another language. So great. You can lean into that. I worked a lot with the U S sometimes the UK, but the U S and UK are a perfect starting point. There's so much diversity in the projects. You get to work with lots of different retailers. Like I mentioned, I adore shopping like Crate and Barrel and Restoration Hardware in the U S and with a lot of products. Brands that I can't get here in Australia, but I can order and see in my client's house. And the only real restriction is probably just your working knowledge of the measurements. There are calculators online that can do the translations there from Imperial to metric and back again, but that's pretty much the only barrier and there's a solution for all of these things, but it is fiddly. I, again, just want to stress when I've got my spreadsheets going and I've got I'm providing measurement inches in feet. And then I'm providing the link and you've got to get around that perhaps you need to look at your geotargeting or have a bit of a VPN situation going on. So there's a lot to think about. Look, this all came about because I had an opportunity to work with someone in the U S way back when, and I just said, you know what, sure, let's give it a go. Why don't I do it for you at a discounted rate? I gave them a small discount because I'm going to use yours as a trial to see if it's something I want to do more of. So you have to be patient with me. I will need to use, learn the language. I need to be saying faucet and countertop and all these things when I mean benchtops and taps and that person allowed me kindly to practice on them and to pull the processes together. How would it work? How would I get access to the websites? I just worked it out as I went along, but I documented it all as I went. So that became the standard operating procedure for when I work with US clients. There are so many different opportunities and ways now that we can diversify the business and go global. There's so many applications that allow for payments in your local currency and just makes it easier. And technology is just making things easier and easier. You don't have to have a spreadsheet like I had now with all of that, we can program all sorts of project management tools to have access to the different retailers. There's just really cool shit we can do now that we never used to be allowed to do. I think now's the perfect time to be saying yes. And I don't know what the blocker is, but there, I don't see that many people doing jobs outside of their home country. And it is so possible for you. It's so much fun. Like I love picking wallpapers in the UK and then, going and creating a surf shack in Hawaii and doing that. And it's just, it's great challenge. You learn so much, you pick up so much, you get to shop at different retailers, mate. people, different cultures, find out how their family lives, what's important to them. I'm obsessed with it, clearly. I haven't done one in a little while, so if you're listening, and I do see the countries the downloads come from, if you're listening from abroad and you want to think about eDesign, reach out. I don't have any availability till 2025, but let's do it. I'm here for it. Okay, the next thing I want to talk about is practice, practicing and improving your mood board style. It's something that I think we all need to do. I consistently do it. My style has changed over the years, definitely, oh gosh, definitely from the very beginning. But I think you should dedicate time daily to hone those skills. When you familiarize yourself with the suppliers and you're scrolling on their website daily, you get exposure to what stock they have, you stay updated on the latest trends, what's going on. This builds your confidence, obviously, because when you have a discovery call, you're like, Oh yeah, I'm thinking of a beautiful sideboard I saw recently in the new collection, la la la la. But it also ensures that you can offer your clients the best possible solutions for you. Quickly, which is really important with e design and efficiently. It makes you really quick at sourcing. And when you're being paid to do something, the quicker you can turn it around, like honestly, with an e design, it can have a zoom call and then turn the entire design around in 20 minutes, but I'm not going to deliver it for a week because I want the client to think, you know, and I do consider it for that whole week and I come back to it just on the seventh day and I do a few edits if I feel like they're needed. But usually. It's like I design it to get it out of my head and then I sit on it for the whole week thinking about, it's just like you do at 4 a. m. Just thinking about people's briefs and if that's the right desk chair and whatnot. But I think that efficiency thing is really important. If you have multiple clients and you're on the websites all the time, you do get faster. It can feel clunky at the beginning and you can feel like, Oh my gosh, like I see other people do this for ages. But I spoke to someone the other day who was telling me it's two and a half days to do a concept board or a mood board. And I'm thinking, okay, surely we'd need to improve those skills and really need to practice this skill daily because it should not be taking you that amount of time. And especially if you're a decisive person and it's not in the actual deciding, it's in the using the platforms, uploading, putting the details in that sort of stuff. So mood boarding. Is fun to practice. I think anyway, I really enjoy it. So the more you can do that sort of stuff, pull together like Chachi BT now can pump out 10 briefs straight away, and you can just go and be as artistic as possible. Pretend there's no budget and work to those briefs and create something magical. Okay, I wouldn't be me if I didn't nerd out a little bit and tech talk about streamlining the back end systems. So the backbone of a successful e design business is absolutely in the repeatable systems because if we can create templates, implement clean systems, automated processes whenever we can, you minimize what you actually have to do for the money because you're not massive amounts of money. You want to keep this low cost to the client. Everything that you can eliminate in the process can help you to keep it affordable for the people you want to work with. You love designing, so do the designing part, that's totally fine. But we don't love admin and there's heaps of ways because this is Delivered electronically and all sorts of things. There's heaps of amazing things that you can do. Like I designed a client hub. I load up all of my selections and procurement, and then in one button, you can click it and it exports to Excel style source book, have a similar thing coming out, they are a free mood boarding platform and they have project studio, which is really cool, which allows you to share concept development and full FF and E from the mood board. Which watch this space. I've been in testing it as a beta tester and love it. It's lots of fun. It's not an end to end solution for me. I still need my client database that I built in Notion where I can store the client, all the client's details for future targeting for referrals, for email database, like all sorts of stuff, that's fine. I like to keep everything in that Sarah and that I already have working, but project studio is lots of fun. And I think if you haven't used it, look out for it. It's coming to be released very soon. Every time I had some downtime or quieter moments, and I know that sounds really counterintuitive to running a small business, but there are certain seasons where it is quieter. I've heard from a lot of people, the temperature for the first six months of this year specifically was very quiet. So those are the moments to audit what you can improve in your business. That would have been a primary time to create a process and workflow for e design to create a launch strategy around sharing that you now offer e design, create, what does e design look like for you? What are you going to put inside this service and what are you going to charge for it? Yeah. And how do you make it fast, quick, pleasant, like you want the clients to be like, Loving it sick and obsessed with the method of delivery, everything about it. I just love what I've finally managed to achieve in my business. It's taken a really long time, but I would say from mid 2022, I am next level obsessed with every single design client, the onboard process, what they get, how it's delivered, it's just been refined to the point where all the FAQs are ironed out and I don't get any pushback. Like the edits are so different. In the first half of my business, like the first two and a half years versus the last two and a half years. Like in the first two and a half years, I would just get, Oh, we don't like this. We don't like that. Can we change that? Can you do a different curtain? I don't know about that. Oh, do you really think that would like, and they were asked so many questions and now on this side, now that the systems are all in place to capture, to catch them and to support them into sign off, then I generally just get Obsessed. Love it. Can I see a different rug? Like one thing? Yes, absolutely. You can. Okay. And now I just want to quickly talk about diversifying your revenue or adding on services. So there is a world of opportunity inside of e design to add on all kinds of things. So digital products, I've got quite a few of those. Brand collaborations. I have Gotten so many wonderful opportunities through brands that I've tagged in my mood boards over the years, who've become aware of me. I used to do retail. This sounds like a big old resume of I'm so wonderful, but I'm trying to share my experience of when I ran an e design, like why e design was for me and why it was a good thing to put in my business and not just a placeholder, I guess. and that, I guess, Justifying that I think you can have an entire business that is just e design. As long as you do look at these diversifications of where you can get revenue in. So trade supplier. In 2022, I think 40, 000 of my overall revenue for the year came from trade profit. So being able to invoice your clients and then order something and have it delivered to their house and access trade pricing, no matter how, what method you use to hand that over to your clients, whether that's in full, whether it's 50 50, whether it's, Not at all. That's your business. I'll do a trade supplier or trade pricing episode another time. But yeah, over 40, 000 of my revenue came from that in 2022, those brand collaborations that I previously mentioned, some huge opportunities have come my way. I'm a major partner with James Hardy and their preferred interior designer, along with Three Birds Renovations. I've done stuff like masterclasses with Choices Flooring, gone to over and recorded those with them. So those things come up because they become aware of me when I'm tagging them or making mood boards for them. A lot of brands have reached out and just paid me to make the mood board and I don't even put my logo on it, maybe you just give it to them. I definitely had some retail subscriptions, so that meant they were furniture retailers that I would make one mood board for them per month over a 12 month period. So they'd pre buy 12 of them and then brief in what they were looking for in their marketing for that month. And so they seem to work really well and they're a great way to sell them. I guess the revenue because as I mentioned, you have to work with a lot of people to make the same amount of money as a couple of jobs when they are larger jobs, but they do add depth and variety to your business. So I'm all about variety. I always have been. It's why I struggled so much in the early days to niche. I love, love, love all the things. I want to be in contemporary mode. When I'm in contemporary mode, I want to go cottagecore if I'm up for it. Like I just love to be in everything. Being able to have a lot of different revenue opportunities means that, I'm doing collaboration, brand partnership, a post campaign reports as a presentation. And that's keeping my mind entertained and variety going. You can create all the multiple income streams that you can think of. You could have add on eBooks and style guides that people could buy. Shelf styling was always an additional one that would get me upselling all the time. I will not do shelf styling inside of a. Baseline e design price because it's so fiddly and it's so many pieces of decor and I've got to check everything It's just not a thing so you can buy a shelf styling package and add ons So if you're not already adding things on to your e design menu of things that people could buy I really would sit down this weekend and think is there one or two things that I could set up as a service that people Could add on so then you've got like A bump cut situation happening at checkout. So you can brainstorm this with chat GPT. Just go over and say, Hey, these are my services. These are my packages. This is my pricing. I'm wanting to increase and diversify my revenue. Have you got some ideas for me where I could and some opportunities? Can you see any gaps that I can't identify where I could add on? Just play around with her and chat to her and see what she comes up with. I bet you there's stuff in there. You haven't thought of that. You're including for free that you could absolutely upsell. Okay, I, this is going to be a really quick one. And then of course you got me talking about e design. So I'm gushing because I love it. But just make sure you're not just dumping mood boards into your Instagram, sharing the finished product, but try to take your audience on the journey with you. So they absolutely love it when you can say, I've just gotten off a zoom call for this new e design project. I've got the brief is this Gonna find it a little bit challenging to find x, y, and z in this location or this is my little challenge. Give them something that might be a little bit harder and then update them throughout the week and then celebrate when you find the thing and you overcome the challenge and then show the finished mood board and then you've really taken them on a journey and they feel part of it and that's what we're trying to do. How you build audience engagement. That's how you build a trust. That's how you build portfolio, credibility, best social media friends. But above everything, the secret to the most successful e design businesses I've ever seen lays in their passion for helping people curate their spaces and stories. If you're not. obsessed with it. If you don't love mood boarding, if you don't love creating the concept boards and telling people where and how to place things, then it's just not for you. Don't just add it so that you can be like, I'm predominantly do full service design or I specialize in kitchens and bathrooms and I do e design because I'd like to diversify my revenue. That's just doing things for the sake of doing things. And I'm not a believer in that. I'm very much here for making sure that you That you lead with an actual desire to help people and a love and passion for what you do. You show up ready to serve them the rest, all the money, all the other things they will naturally follow all the brand collaborations. When people can see that you are so obsessed with what you do. Everything falls into place, but. I'm not joking when I say over 70 percent of you still don't even show up on social media. I don't know your faces. I can't find you on your website, in your socials, on your stories. I've never seen the animated you. I don't really know you. So that's a little bit of food for thought. If you want to make an e design business, really. Succeed. You need to come at it from the lens of the client, which is, I don't trust this. This could be AI. This could be a bot. This could be a scam and I've got to pay. There's a link that's come through payment link. I'm going to pay a deposit 50 percent of the room and it's 1195 and I don't know if this person is real or not. So that was a huge objection that I learned early on. And so I. Worked really hard to show up all the time to be like, I am me. I am not a computer. When you dial in, you talk to me. This is what I'm doing this weekend. La, then always updating my audience all the time. So they knew I was operating this e design business and I was doing the work, not. Banking the coin and running off to Mexico. Like I was a real person. And I would ask for their help. Could you leave a review? Could you come and say something nice about it? If you enjoyed your e design, because people don't necessarily trust e design because they think I could be a scammer. I could be a bot and I rely on you and your kind words to help alleviate other people's concerns. And oh my goodness. It gets so many testimonials from people that are like, yes, absolutely. That must be so hard. I know you're not a robot because I just worked with you on my open plan living. Okay, that's it for me. I will wrap it up. But if you find the business side of design overwhelming, things like setting up all of those templates, all of those automations, being able to turn over an e design really efficiently and really quickly, cause like step one, step two, step three, send it off, everything like that. And you need to break it down into small actionable steps and daily habits that lead to success. My inbox is all about that. Always open. My private coaching is open. My group coaching is open. If you have any questions and specifically if they're about a design, I feel like I'm all over that and can add to them. Just come and see me tap the link at the top of the show notes. It says. Tell me what you think of today's episode. Come and ask a question, come and say hi. Let me know if you've got any other things I can help you with in terms of e design because I just got on here and started talking random things. I didn't have a plan for today and look, I'm 25 minutes in. I cannot stop talking about e design. So definitely have plenty to say and lots of knowledge around. What that could look like for your design business too. Okay. On Thursday, I'm bringing you a very special interview with Michelle Canney from Michelle Canney interiors. I sat down with her today and recorded that. Oh my goodness. We could talk for hours, but I will edit it into a nice one hour package for you to keep you company on your walk on Thursday. I will chat to you then. Bye for now. 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. This is the end of the video.