Michelle Lynne 0:02
Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion. Because, well, every design is different, the process should remain the same. Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the woowoo. And probably a swear word or two. If you're ready to stop trading your time for money, and enjoy your interior design business. You are in the right place. I'm your host, Michelle Lynn.
Hey, y'all, thanks for joining me. Thanks for coming back. Back to the design for the creative mind podcast, I've just got to tell you that I am so honored that you choose to spend some time with me whether you are listening, while you're putting on your makeup, whether you're driving the car, cooking dinner, have me on in the background while you're creating a beautiful design. Any of that humbles me, honors me, and I just wanted to let you know that I am very grateful for you. So thank you. Thank you, I thank you, I thank you. So today is a fairly short episode, we're going to be talking about the things in your business to delegate, automate, or outsource. I'm a huge fan, I've learned from trial and error, that you can't do everything. Even if you might be able to do it doesn't mean that you need to be doing it. So a good rule of thumb for delegating, automating or outsourcing is anything outside of your zone of genius. So for that my listening family means anything other than designing. Then you can take it a little bit further and you can say anything below your pay grade. So hopefully you're paying yourself, if you can pay somebody less than what you're paying yourself, then they should be doing it. Anything you're not good at, obviously, anything that ties in with anything that's outside your area of expertise. And anything that somebody can do faster or better or less expensive. It's pretty straightforward when you think about it. But when you're in business, and you're just up to your elbows with things that need to get done. It doesn't feel as obvious. So let's start with let's just start with your branding and your website. If you are starting out or if you are rebranding, you do not need to be in Canva trying to figure out what your brand or your logo should look like or even picking your colors. You can outsource that to a professional. And then once you get that you can have the your web developer or your web designer, take that information and create a beautiful and functional website. If you are on GoDaddy or Squarespace or Wix or even WordPress or whatever, and you are building your own website, you will get bogged down in those details. And those details don't pay nearly as much as if you were designing a beautiful space, a room, a house, a kitchen renovation, that's what pays the bills. You can pay those bills so that you can outsource these types of details. Speaking of details, any sort of maintenance if you're updating and backing up your website every month, that can be outsourced to somebody who does that as a professional. Speaking of professional professional copywriting, when you're working on your website is invaluable. This is one of the areas so I will tell you, I did my own GoDaddy Website. I wouldn't recommend it. If you can't afford to pay somebody then that's where you can do it when you are just an itty bitty baby designer starting off. But as soon as you have the money have somebody upgraded because they are professionals. People hire us to design their homes, because we are professionals. You are hiring somebody to design your website because they are professionals. Yeah, is yours good? Probably because you have a natural creative talent. But are you as good as a website designer? No, you're not. Same thing with copywriting. I I'm a pretty good writer. So I thought I'm just gonna write my own copy from my website. Okay, so I did that when you know starting off I didn't want to pay a copywriter. I couldn't really afford the a good one. So I just did it myself. And it was okay. But when I could afford to pay somebody, holy moly, what a difference it makes. Y'all this podcast episode was made possible in part by foyer, a lightning fast interior design software that creates photorealistic renderings. I'm not kidding, you can barely tell that it's not a real room. So why leave your beautiful designs up to the imagination of your client, when you can show them what their space is going to look like. You will sign more clients and get more approvals with the software. It's powered by artificial intelligence. And oh vouch for its ease, because if I can do it, anybody can. Because y'all know that my design team are the ones who do all the work, find [email protected] as well as in the show notes. Those are some things that you probably are good at. Or think you're good at that if you can afford to outsource it, outsource it. Same thing with any sort of bookkeeping. That one, I usually don't have to arm wrestle my students are my clients to believe me. Because we're probably not accountants, but we think we can design a website. So any of your bookkeeping, outsource that, also your procurement. So your procurement is not where you make a profit. Yeah, sure, selling the furniture, you can make a bucket of money. But procuring the furniture is just an administrative. I don't want to say nightmare. But it's, it's a it's a lot of work. So for those of you who are ordering to the trade, it's you know, it's not just, you know, put the pillow in the cart and checkout. Oftentimes it is, you know, getting a sample of the customers on material, cut a CFA cutting for approval, and then confirming it and then ordering it and then having it sent to your to your upholsterer. And then you're going to make sure that they receive the information, they know the details about the order. And then you're going to confirm when the order ships, make sure it's on route when it's received. Make sure it's the proper item, and make sure it's not damaged when it does get received. And then if it isn't the right item, or if it is damaged, you're doing all of that problem resolution. This is taking you out of your zone of genius. You are a designer, not a procurement professional. So find somebody that you can teach to do it, find somebody who does it for a living so that they are a professional, and stop chasing the orders and start designing. It is a game changer that I wish I would have implemented in my business years and years and years ago, we've only started out sourcing procurement. Plenty within the last three years, I had somebody internally that did it and then I've completely outsourced it. So there's zero overhead. And it is a game changer because at the end of the day, the client is paying for it. So if you can make a, you know, a really big bucket of money on an interior design fee and a little itty bitty bucket of profit from your procurement, which one should you be doing? Which one should you be spending more time in designing.
Another thing to consider while you're designing is if you're not technically adept within a rendering software or computer aided drafting or anything along that line, outsource that, outsource it. There are so many professionals that you can find that will do these things for you. Great place for outsourcing is going to be fiverr.com. And there's there's a couple of other websites that do that. So if you can outsource it, you can outsource it or you can delegate it maybe you can hire a junior designer to do your renderings or computer aided drafting for you or you know, an assistant that maybe they aren't like the best designer but they're really good technically and they want to be in this environment. You can outsource it internally like I guess it'd be insert in source it no technically it's delegate delegate, automate or outsource. Alright, so procurement renderings, other things that you can outsource or even automate is going to be sending out your weekly where your monthly or your quarterly marketing touches. So for example, if you have a monthly newsletter, you write all of those in advance or you pay your copywriter to write them all and then you automate how they get sent to your email list. Same thing with your blog posts. You or your copywriter or your social media person that you're outsourcing it to writes your blog, post the blog, and then it is automatically sent to you or audience. I used I'm not kidding you, I used to go and copy the first paragraph into the news letter, whatever software I had. And then I would hyperlink that says read more. And then I would manually hit send, once I had hired a technical VA, and she was like, Oh, here's all we need to do. It was a game changer, y'all, because I didn't have to remember, okay, post the blog, write the blog, post the blog, and then send the blog. That's what I was doing, when I should have been designing. So if you can get those automated, get those automated, if you are not in a place right now to hire a copywriter or hire a social media manager, that is doing your social posting your blog, writing, and so forth. If you're not there yet, that's okay. work towards that goal. And let the professionals do the professionals because there's a lot more detail that goes into, let's just say your hashtags are the accounts that you interact with, that your social media manager is going to know and be an expert at. Just like you know, and you're an expert at the interior design. If you're not there yet, stop and think about how much am I going to pay them versus how much I'm going how much time I'm going to spend doing it. And then cross reference how much money you are losing. And that will tell you if you're ready to outsource it. If you're not an app that goes with any of this, this that goes without about any of this. If you're not, then go ahead and sign up for a software platform that allows you to pre schedule and post your social media comments content. So you will still have to get in there and manually write your captions, create your hashtags and schedule it. But you will have it done in advance so that you don't have to stop in the middle of the day, and post something on Instagram just to keep your relevancy. So a lot of them will also cross reference into Facebook. So you've got your Instagram presence and your Facebook presence covered. Some things you can look in like Planoly buffer is buffer one, I think buffer might be one, I use tailwind because it has a smart bio in it, Link thingamajiggy. But, um, so I use that. But I also use it with a social media manager that I've recently hired, and I'm hopeful will work out. So that's something as well, is that just because you've outsourced something doesn't mean that you can ignore it, you have to monitor the progress to ensure that they are meeting your expectations, or in in a perfect world that they exceed your expectations. And they do it 10 times better than what you were doing before. And you are relieved. So I have done out sourced social media, they just couldn't pick up my voice. Y'all know, I'm a little quirky, I'm a little silly, I'm not very proper. And they couldn't quite get that. And they couldn't quite get a few of the other things that I had asked them to do specifically for my account. And so after about six months, we had to part ways, you have to be able to say this isn't working, it's not personal, I'm sorry, I need to find another solution. So whether they are doing your procurement, or whether they're doing your copywriting and they just can't get your voice or whether they're doing your social media, anything along this line, you are still the boss. So imagine if you go and like, I color my hair, I know. You're surprised, right? You look at my hair and you think oh, that's just natural. It's not, but I go and I pay my professional to do it. If she gets my highlights to blonde, then I say, hey, the next time I see her my highlights, were a little bit too blonde, can we turn them down a little bit or do whatever you need to do so that they're not quite so blonde. And I give her feedback. So she knows what I like. So you have to give these people that you are outsourcing or delegating to the feedback like actually, that's really good. That sounds a lot like me, let's keep doing that. Or I love that I love that color of blonde highlight. Thank you. Let's keep doing that. So you you are still responsible. And it's a lot of work on the front end. But once you get in the groove, it's something that you can want and done. And you don't even have to think about it. So another thing that you could outsource is updating your agreements. And what I mean by that is if you do your scope of work presentation and your your client says, Okay, let's do, let's do all of these rooms except for these two and they take those two off and they say we'll do those in phase two, then you're going to have to update your agreement to reflect the new pricing and the new scope. You don't need to go back and do the administrative typing and adjusting and editing and so forth. If That's something you can delegate or outsource to maybe a virtual assistant that you trust, then you can just say, hey, here's the changes, here's the details, here's the email. And then he or she can make those changes, and send the new agreement, the revised agreement and the updated scope of work out for signature, here, and here's where you where it's automated, it is via an electronic signature. So once it's signed, boom, it lands in your inbox, boom, the client has a copy, everybody's happy. Another thing to outsource, it's pretty obvious, but not always is going to be your project photos. So any photography, you should outsource. Let me interrupt myself to take a quick moment to thank satinath Insurance Agency for sponsoring this episode of The designed for the creative mind podcast. Their support and understanding of the interior design, decorating and home staging industries is unrivaled. Satin off understands what our businesses do, and they provide insurance that lets me sleep at night. Yep, this is the firm that I use. And they will do the same for your sleep habits. And your business too. They're more than an insurance agency, they're an extension of my business, they take care of the worry, because they are the experts, which allows me and my team breathing room to do what we do best design beautiful spaces, you can find their contact information below in the show notes, give them a call today. When you're just starting, there are there's definitely a need to probably just take some vignette photos with your iPhone. And there are some amazing courses out there specifically for interior designers that that will teach you how to use your iPhone for interior design use. When you're first starting off, this is not a problem. You can take pictures of vignettes around your house, rearrange things and just use your fancy angles, you have an artistic, I use your portfolio setting on your iPhone, and I don't know anything about Android. So for those of you who are on Android, I apologize. But I know that they take some badass pictures too. So you can outsource your photography as you can, as you start getting more projects and you can afford it. You don't have to go for a fancy interior design photographer right out of the gate, you can always use a real estate photographer, that's how I started. So realtors, they have great photographers that can turn their photos around pretty quickly so that they can get their listing up. If you know a good realtor, ask them how do you use Google it real estate photography, go take a look at their portfolio on their website and see if they can help you see how they work because every photographer, just like every interior designer, they have their own model for business. Another thing, and this is something I can talk out of both sides of my mouth because I've done it both ways, is if you can get somebody to help you with your pre qualifying calls and scheduling your appointments and your calendar management. If you can get somebody that will I call them a screener
then you are going to find yourself much less frazzled, because you won't be thinking, Oh, I can do that, oh, I can do that, oh, I can do that. It's not going to take that long. And you're going to stack yourself and you're going to over promise and under deliver. Because you get somebody on the phone, you develop this quick report. It sounds like a juicy project. And you want it so you kind of agreed to it before you know much. Or you agree to go see him? Oh yeah, I can go out there tomorrow. And then you hang up and you're like, oh, sheesh, I was actually supposed to spend six hours designing for this project where I have a deadline of next week. So then you have to work on Saturday, because you just screwed yourself out of some time. If you can get a screener, he or she will be able to really say to the individual on the other side of the phone, we'd love to be able to see you as soon as tomorrow but unfortunately, we're not able to get out to to your project for another two or three weeks. They don't have that same. Like, I don't know what it is about us. But we I think we've all done it. We don't they don't have that same people pleasing drive. That's just what I'm gonna call it. And same excitement about a project that they that we all have found ourselves thinking, Oh, I can do that. I know it's a small budget, but I'm special. I can value engineer it. Well, here's the deal. You are paid for your design genius and your experience. You do not price yourself based on somebody else's budget. So having a screener is very helpful. On the other hand, because I want to talk out of the other side of my mouth, it's also very nice for you to be able to connect with your clients on the front end. If you have a team that is outside of you. And that's that that's relevant for me If you're a solopreneur, it's not the same. But because I am in the not in the field leading projects, but Debbie and Megan are leading the projects, will this opportunity when I get on the phone with clients, I have to be the one who has enough strength to say I'm sorry, but we're booked for the next couple of months. And as much as I'd love to help you, I I'm not going to overtax my designers. So it gets the chance for me to get in front of the clients, when I hand them off to Debbie and Megan to actually do the design. So there's there's two, two ways to look at that. Another thing that you can outsource is writing and promoting press releases. So if you are involved in a community project or a show house, or you're hiring somebody, or something that is relevant and worthy of a press release, you don't need to do that outsource it, you can outsource it probably to your copywriter. But you'd have to ask them if they do press releases, because there's actually a formula for a press release. And if not, then you can probably outsource it on fiverr.com or some of the other outsourcing platforms that you can find. Um, one last thing would also be data entry. So if there's ever anything that you find yourself repeatedly typing into your computer, or clipping images for or whatever the case may be, then you can outsource that as well. And that's relatively simple to train somebody on. You could even hack some of the I've used college kids that are friends of my family, to help me with some of the data entry. Even if it's just like your Christmas card list or your holiday card list. Whatever is politically correct, I send Christmas cards. So I had her going through and handwriting all of the envelopes. That's not something I need to be doing even though Yeah, I could probably do it while I'm sitting in front of the television, you know, the month leading up to when I'm going to mail them. But if she can hammer it out in a couple of hours during the day, and I have it done, she even had better handwriting than me. So it worked out really well. So those are some of the things that you can delegate, automate, or outsource. So just remember that the good rule of thumb is anything outside of your design genius. If it's outside of your zone of genius, you should delegate it automated or outsource it, if it's below your pay grade, if you know that. So here's here's how you can figure out what do you get paid per hour, okay, remember, we don't get paid by the hour, we don't build by the hour. But if you take your take home salary last year was X number of dollars, you divide that by 2080 hours. And that's on average, what your hourly rate is. Now that might make you cry, you might take a look at your your take home pay and divide it by 2080 hours and decide that you are making $1.50 per hour, well, then you know that you really need to start upping your prices. But besides that, if you are making $25 an hour on average, or $50 an hour on average, or whatever the case may be, if you're going to pay somebody $15 an hour, and you're making $25 an hour, you just made $10 Like you just you just saved that you just made it because you are a billing yourself out for more than what you're paying somebody to help you do. So the numbers will tell you what you need to be doing and when you need to be doing it. Some of those are a reminder for me, there's a couple of things I noticed, I was like, oh, I need to go back and revisit my own advice. So for those of you who can benefit from even more resources surrounding the business of running your interior design business, come on over to the facebook and join me, the interior designers business Launchpad. We're in there weekly. I do a live training. We have some time for q&a. And it's a great community that I'm really, really having fun with. So come see me there. Join us. And also, as a reminder, don't forget to leave a review anywhere you're catching this podcast, please. It really does help keep us relevant. It will keep us searchable. And even if you just go ahead and rate it and don't leave a review. That's totally cool, too. I appreciate it. So until next time, take care. Hey y'all. If you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers. And if you like what you're hearing, want to put a face with a name and get even more business advice. Then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business launch pad. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fine. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast. So please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition. So let's work on elevating our industry, one designer at a time. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
