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, welcome back to the podcast. This is officially episode two. I'm so excited. This is Michelle Lynn. And I want to share with you a little bit about the how and the why the division of ml interiors group came to be it's called designed for the creative mind just like this podcast. But it's a platform where I teach other interior designers how to run the business of their interior design business, because the design might be different, but the process should already should always be the same. So long story short, my background is in corporate America, I was running two separate multimillion dollar business units in two separate industries over the course of about two decades. So when my most recent position the company sold, and I said okay, God, what next, because I loved the people I was working with. I was making good money. But I didn't really like my job. So I thought, Okay, this is a good sign for me to do what, what God has called me to do. And he led me to I was actually home staging, organizing, and designing. That's what my company started off as. And it's just because I love doing it. My friends were always asking me to come over and help. I had just transformed by now husband's home, because we were getting ready to put it on the market. And it needed it needed some help. And so the business launched. I actually started the business in 2008. That was the year we got married, we bought our house together, and then the market crashed. So I was still working in corporate, but with the blessings of leadership, I was stair stepping out of my management position. So I was working less while I was working more on building my interior design business. So it took about a year and a half for me to get to a point where I was comfortable with enough business coming in and able to make it work financially for me to leave and do this full time. So in August of 2010, I think it was I made the leap, quit cut the ties and knew that I had to make this job work. Doing it full time is completely different than doing it part time because I was now running multiple projects at a time. And y'all It was humbling. I thought I was the shizzle coming out of corporate. And you know, I could just run a little interior design firm piece of cake, right? HGTV was making it look really easy back in the day. So a few years in, nearly crashed and burned. Like I was I was on the floor crying when my husband walked in and it was just like, I can't do this. I just I can't do this. The amount of stress that I was putting myself under trying to meet unrealistic deadlines. Now I didn't know they were unrealistic deadlines, unrealistic budgets, but I didn't know they were unrealistic budgets. And clients who just had higher expectations than I felt I was meeting. And while I don't think I pissed off too many clients, I did not like the feeling of not being the Rockstar. So at that point, I was starting to reach out to other interior designers around town to say like, how do you do this? How do you price like how do you how do you price at the time? Okay, I'm really embarrassed to admit this, but I'm putting it out here. I was charging $75 an hour. But if you think about it, you don't bill like you don't Bill 40 hours a week. So my billable time wasn't making up for the bills that I had to pay. You know, I didn't charge my clients in advance. I was trying to collect on invoices and for work that was already rendered, but then they were questioning Well, why did it take so long? on. And I was like, Well, it took so long because look how pretty it is. I wasn't even charging. I wasn't even doing to the trade. Furniture. I was I was just doing retail, so I wasn't making money there. I was just like all over the place ignorant. So at this point I was, I think Debbie was coming on board. And Noemi, actually, she wasn't coming on board yet. So I was ready to throw in the towel. I didn't. But I did promise myself at that moment, if I ever get this shit figured out, I am going to teach other designers how to run their business. So they don't have to feel this way. Because I was just laying awake at night, worrying about my projects, thinking about Oh shit, I forgot to do X, Y, or Z or I was doing it out of order. So then I was promising clients things that they actually couldn't get because they couldn't afford it. But I'd come up with this amazing design. But then the contractor comes in and says it's like a bazillion dollars. So it was just so stressful. And if you're listening to this, if you're an interior designer and you're in business, you probably have that same feeling of anxiety that I just created in myself. So Ah, okay. I got mad, I got pissed off, I was determined I was not going to quit. Like I had to make this business work. Possibly because I was too prideful. But also be Yeah, it was probably that I was just like, screw that I, I am not going to quit. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of my friends and family too. So there was a lot of motivating factors, a lot of stories going on in my head. But at the end of the day, I was determined. And then I was like, Well, yeah, Michelle, you dingdong, why don't you run your business like the businesses that you just ran like you ran to multi to separate? Like, there was a $6 million business that I ran and a $10 million business unit that I ran, what did they have in common? They had processes. They had procedures, they had very specific ways of doing things that were repeatable, and profitable and easy to explain. So I was running my business like I was like it was a hobby. So that light bulb moment went off. And it was like, oh, yeah, that's what I should do is like, let's make some processes and some procedures. So I wrote things down. And I edited them. And I wrote things down again, and I edited them. And then I implemented them. And then that's when Debbie was coming on board. She's one of my designers that works for me at ml interiors group, she's amazing. And she and I started running our projects based on what we now call the ML experience. It's also known as the 16 steps of sanity. And we started polishing it. And so we would have these steps and then we would create sub steps. And then we would create checklists and worksheets, and just all sorts of processes that allowed us to not think about it, the business could run itself basically.
Let me interrupt myself to take a quick moment to thank that enough 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 worried 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. And so we got it pretty well polished. Megan, my other designer who works for me, came on board and we were able to just train her on it. And she runs the projects, just like we say. And now it's a three week say not just like how I say or Debbie says, but we all agreed this is what we do. And then we still tweak things. So don't get don't get the impression that my business is perfect. We still figure things out to do things more efficiently and more effectively on a regular basis. But the way I knew that this was working is that I actually went to Michigan in July of 20 No June of 2018. I went to Michigan for a month to adopt my now daughter. So I had the blessing of spending time with her birth mom for the week leading up to her birth and then got to cut the cord between my now she goes by Gigi Her name is Genevieve Grace and her birth mom and just love on the sweet little baby and enjoy this new family. And we you have to stay in state for a few weeks because you can't take a child, you can't take them over the border. You know, if you can imagine how much paperwork there is to buy a car or a house, there's a lot of paperwork that goes into adopting a child. So we were up there for a few weeks. And while we were up there, I wasn't getting any calls from Debbie or Megan. And I'd have to call and check on them and say, hey, it's everything. All right, what's going on? They're like, Yeah, well, we just signed a new client. And we started a new project and lalalala a lot. I was like, holy moly, you're doing all that without me. And I was like, This is awesome. And so I had my maternity leave, and still wasn't getting a lot of calls, I was able to get some work done on the laptop, and so forth. But that's what I knew this stuff works. So my second baby was born, that same timeframe, that babies the design for the creative mind platform, or division of ml interiors group. So I was able to take that time and actually start outlining, outlining what I wanted to create. I originally created a six week digital course that I thought I could just upload to the interweb. And people could download, buy it, download it and live happily ever after. And then people were saying that that's great, but we want you to teach it. So then I started teaching it. And then I started doing some personal coaching. And then I did it was still six weeks personal coaching was 90 days. And then students and clients were saying, Yeah, that was great. We learned everything we needed. But we need to do six or nine months later, because we had questions we needed to review it. We wanted to know how to handle certain situations, and so forth. So I started a program that is now a year long, it's called the interior designers business bakery. And it's basically the content that was original to the program. That was six weeks on steroids. So we've added a lot of content, and we go through it and we spend, we spend a year together. So I am living this dream of owning my interior design business, Debbie and Megan, do all of the heavy lifting, I still get to play with the designs, they just get to handle the details that I basically the business outgrew what I wanted to do, like even designed capabilities, I don't have the desire to get that far into the details. So I get the big picture stuff, they get to do the details, I get the big picture stuff of teaching other interior designers how to manage the details of running the business of their interior design business. So that's how everything came to be. And I mean, I'm so excited that I am, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. And so I hope that you will continue joining me, as we walk through and have some amazing guests on this podcast, we'll have some of just me teaching things rambling on, we'll have my interior design team, come on. I'm taking requests too. So also join me in the interior designers business Launchpad, which is a free Facebook group that I hop into once a week to teach people things there. So I love this stuff. And I love seeing the light bulb go off when people realize when when designers realize there is more there is hope. There is profit in this business. So the interior designers business Launchpad, it's free. Yes, I know, it's Facebook. But you can just hop on in there, get the training once a week, noodle around, make some new friends with designers, because designers understand designers. This is just a group specifically for designers. And I'm so pleased about the community that is growing there. And join me here on the podcast as well I plan on doing we'll probably get up to weekly episodes. I just need to finish a few other things and see where we go from there. But I look forward to hearing from you. I look forward to meeting you, hopefully inside the Facebook group and seeing you at some of the events that we have planned coming up. And like I said, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And that's here with you. So thank you for joining me. 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 pack. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fun. 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
