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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.
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Welcome back to the podcast everybody. This is Michelle Lynn, and we are coming at you. After the first of the year, I'm not sure when this is gonna go live. We are looking at January or February. So I hope everybody is deep into some solid momentum. And to continue that momentum in your business I want to introduce to you Michael Basinski, also known as buzz. He is a decorated US Air Force veteran, a serial entrepreneur, international speaker and a best selling author. He has been dubbed a visionary marketer by the American Marketing Association. He has simplified digital marketing success with the rule of 26 to help entrepreneurs avoid the time drain and frustration of managing profitable digital marketing campaigns. And I'm so excited to talk to you about us. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And thank you for your service in the US Air Force. It is also appreciated. You're very welcome. Well, okay, so let's talk a little bit about I want to hear about this rule of 26, which is also the name of your book. Yes.
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Yes, I have a copy of it right here.
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I'm so excited. Yes. Looks just like you on the cover. So how did you come up with the rule of 26? What is it about? I know that personally, when it comes to digital marketing, it's just all over the place sometimes. Right?
2:15
So that rule of 26 came about during the beginning of the pandemic. And I felt that was so everybody knows this, we this whole industry here we're talking to it was affected by it. And I felt paralyzed. In that I knew that small businesses needed help in their marketing, more so than ever, but I felt guilty to be offering a investment opportunity in people's marketing. Right. So it was this catch 22 Though stuck in and I'm like, okay, because when we do marketing for people usually is a done for you product. It's concierge. I mean, it's it's, it's so it's not cheap, right? And so I started looking at how can I serve the small business community? The micro business community really is what we're talking about the 112 person shops, right? Interior Designers are notoriously smaller shops, right? And because they're more passion businesses than there are enterprises. And it's all about the art, at least the ones I've always worked with,
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which is great. And I love that,
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which is why we call this designed for the creative mind, because it is such a right brain driven industry,
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right? Yeah. And so when I was looking at, like, how do I serve the micro businesses that we've kind of grown out of, and I need to give back to that community because we need those people to be successful, and live through and survive the pandemic. And so I started looking at how can we simplify what people are looking at when it comes to their digital marketing. And so if you go out there, there's websites like HubSpot CRM, not cheap, but I mean, it's one of the top ones out there, right. They have over 110 KPIs, so key performance indicators that you can track to make decisions on whether or not your marketing torquing Oh,
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that's perfect. I'll do that in my spare time. And I'm like,
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No, this is not right. Like, who I don't even look at 106 KPIs, and I'm a marketer. I've been marketing for 30 years. There are not 110 KPIs. And I get it, like there's different reasons for different KPIs. And at some level, each of those KPIs have unimportant, but for the business owner, most of those are vanity metrics that agencies feed their clients to keep their job and to keep the job that Yeah, right. And so because they can look good, well, yeah, well, we're not getting more revenue, right? Oh, yeah. But the KPI say we're on our way to that space, instead of saying Yeah,
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you have more followers now than when he hired Yeah, exactly how
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many those followers are no clients? Because at the end of the day, that's all that, that my clients want are more clients. That's, that's my job as a marketer. So then I said, Okay, let's look at KPIs that own that directly affect revenue. And that's where came the rule of 26. So I found three. And so there's three KPIs, there's traffic. So how much traffic is coming? Your website? Conversions? How many? How many of those, how much of that traffic is converting into leads that you can then close make clients? Right? How much money are each of these clients spending with you? Right, okay. Because there's, and we'll get into it in a little bit. But that's a key component. So then I'm like, okay, great. These are the ones now what right? Now I gotta go, Well, how much do we want to increase this? You can increase it infinitely. But I was like, No, people want a number that they can attach to they can identify, right? Because at first I was like, Hey, can quadruple or quintuple bubble gazebo, right? If you increase each of these by 100%, you know, you get this huge number, right? And if it's too big, people don't attach to it. They don't think it's feasible. So I'm like, Okay, well, it's attainable, feasible, and people can wrap their head around. And so I'm like, doubling your revenue. So I reverse engineered it. And it comes to that if you increase each of these KPIs, by 26%, each, you get a compounded effect of 100% more revenue coming from your website. What
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y'all could see as My mind is blown.
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Exactly. So that's where the rule 26 comes in. And I and I, it's a very short book, it's 110 pages. And you know, you can, it takes most of the people who are in love with it, like, I picked it up, and I couldn't stop reading it. Because it was just so to the point. So I don't do a lot of storytelling in here. This is just a lot of taxes as I laid out the the strategy, and then we go over the tactics for each of those rules. So you could literally take this book and apply it to your to your current marketing on your own. That was my goal. Okay, now, do we offer help for people? We're like, Nope, that's not me. Yes. That's that's the whole point. Right? It's like, yeah, the people who can or di wires, and offer the help to the people who maybe need help to do it with them? Or maybe they're like, you know, what, can you just do it? That's
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great. Absolutely. Or once they start making money, then then I'm a huge proponent of outsourcing as much as possible. So as long as y'all can get the voice let's roll with. That's fantastic. Exactly. So how does this? So in interior design, a lot of what I heard, as I was, quote, unquote, growing up in the ranks of interior design, is that it's more about the referrals and the word of mouth. But where I come from, it's not necessarily all that it's like, there's so much more Yes. What, what are your thoughts on word of mouth referrals versus the digital aspect? So word of mouth does the rule of 26? Comes traffic, conversion and spend? So that's not referrals?
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No. Well, you some of your traffic can come from referrals. But the problem is, is right funnels are not scalable. Like there are people out there who will tell you that, oh, I can get referrals on demand. I'm like, I don't know about that. You might have good seasons where everybody's in in that space. But I mean, with interior design, there are seasons throughout the year. There's hot months and cold months, right?
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Yeah. And there's clients that I'm up leveling out of, I don't want referrals that are duplicates of them. Exactly. So
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this so when you start leaning on marketing versus word of mouth, or networking, or jayvees, like joint ventures that a lot of interior designers will get with maybe a construction company or a like a referral partner referral partner. Yeah, so we call them jayvees. Joint ventures, right? So they're strategic partners, right? And so they're like, Hey, I've got this guy. I got this woman who wants their kitchen redone, but they don't know what they want, really. And I don't want to design it. Okay, great. Let me bring you my designer, boom. And then I just have my kitchen redone. And the people who are making the cabinets actually word designers, she was awesome. And but she didn't do any of the installation or any of the other build out. So she referred that out. So they had that strategic partner. That's great. As long as one of you has a lead generation system that brings in new opportunities on a regular basis. Right, because just because you got your kitchen done, you know, I could tell everybody in my neighborhood that I got my kitchen done, but half these people don't need kitchen done so there's not going to be new referrals coming in next month. And
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they might not be willing to pay the amount that you're willing to pay because they value things differently. Or
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Sarah, like we saw some people that were like their best isn't good enough for us.
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Some of that stuff a particular way when it comes to that stuff, so just
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we love her. All right, right. Yeah.
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So, so when it comes to your traffic when it comes to growing your business, right? A lot of designers when they refer when they rely on word of mouth and networking, and even joint partnership, strategic partnerships, so if they, if those are the three, like, Yes, I can get enough, I can get my 12 jobs a year. And this is just good enough for me, right? It's it's lifestyle business, I don't want to have to stress about it. Problem is, you're putting yourself into this sales production, roller coaster, up and down, and up and down. Because all of that word of mouth networking and strategic partnership takes time you have to cultivate those relationships. Instead, you could you utilize some strategic digital marketing, or digital marketing strategy, I should say, then works in the background. And then the time that you would normally be out there glad handing people, you're actually taking in requests for quotes and deciding which ones you will or will not be bidding on.
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Right, or putting them on a waitlist, because they
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ruin them for a fee to somebody else who is a better fit. Yeah, so how cool would it be if you had 10 leads come in a week? Oh, I
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would be tickled, right, I would be open, right? And you probably
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only can handle maybe two or three of those at a time. So now you have seven leads that you could sell to other people. So you can get your marketing to pay for itself by just referring out the business you don't want and get to cherry pick the business you do want. That wouldn't suck. Oh, wouldn't suck. But we don't think about that we think about well, I don't have the money to market it. Or is it that you haven't found money to market
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marketing, or created money or created money
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like weird I was just on a mastermind call with a bunch like a roomful of marketers, right? And we're also like, what do you do at the end of the year we go through and we take away all of the, to the digital tools that we've acquired over the years that we can live without, right? And we perish, right? So if we're sitting there, and I'm a I'm a solopreneur, which a lot of designers are, and it's just me, I've found a lot of digital tools that will make my life faster. Problem is, is that we get into the habit of adding those into thinking that we're getting faster. And by the end of the year, you have a bunch of bills that you don't even know because they're automatically running on your credit card, and you're not even using them.
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I was just talking about the same thing, go get rid of those subscriptions. If you're not using
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now. Yeah, you've already been paying for them so you can afford them. So instead of putting that back into your operations, you need to put that bucket of money into marketing, what can I do with that money instead? To get me more business? Right? Now, when you get to a point where it's like, I can't handle more business, you have to take a look at how you're spending your day. And can you hire out on a part time basis, some of the things that are sucking your day away from you, they're not profitable. Right? Okay, so then we go, this kind of leads into the average revenue per client arcp, arcp. Average? I'm sorry, I did that backwards. arpc. There we go. All right. So when we talk about digital marketing, when you get a referral, you don't have any control over who they refer. Right? So how many times you got a referral that really, Bob, that's what you're sending me as somebody who needs a new sink. Right. But in your on your website, and you have marketing, pulling pushing people to your website, you can talk to directly to and weed out those who don't want to talk to
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that makes sense. So the website can quote coming from is, yeah, that which is crucial to our business. Right. So okay, so that's a great point, because Because designers think that most of it, and I'm generalizing, but most of the designers that I talk to the website is their portfolio. But you're saying that basically, this website is also a way to squeeze out the people that will not become our clients. Regardless of the photos,
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we need to stop looking at selling our portfolio, or portfolio is what you've done yesterday. You're only as good as your next design. Okay, that's that right there. Now, if you have a portfolio of people who rave about you with a collection of pictures, that's great. But if I look at a picture of something, I don't know if you actually did that for one, like I've actually seen people who put so let
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me let me just throw that wrench out right now. Your there should not be anything for y'all listening. That does not. That is not your work on your website, right.
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But you know what people what people buy what It comes into your design, the relationship, the experience, we're selling an experiment, right? The reason they're reaching out to you is not that they need your ideas because they can just go to your website, get the ideas, and then give it to a contract and say, make it look like that. Okay? They need the experience of somebody walking them through and making that space, there's. And so your website needs to talk to those people, because those people don't care how much you charge. And when we can find the people who don't care how much you charge, or we're willing to charge what you're worth, because everybody has a budget, I get it. But if you can identify who those people are, and talk to them and their pains and their dreams, you're going to get more prospects, through that website that meet you the requirements of we're working with you.
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Absolutely, I don't, I couldn't say that any better myself, that is just so onpoint. And keeping in mind that it's the abundance mentality versus the scarcity. Because we can't serve everybody. We don't want to serve everybody. Lord knows we've tried. It's exhausting.
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And if you have referral partners, so there's always the folks that just started, right, and they're going to take all the business they possibly can because it got paid bills, I get it. We got that everybody does it. I did it when I when I first started my business. Okay, so those newbies need business. So if you've been around a minute, you need to be shedding those to that newbie, and then charging that newbie for those leads. Right? Right. That's a strategic partnership, right here, I'm gonna give you business, I'm not going to take it. But I'm going to take a little bit off the top
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because I sent you if it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have that business. Exactly.
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It's valuable and your reputation is valuable. Yes, people don't realize how much their reputation is worth. And that's where air arpc comes into play as a people don't charge what they're actually worth. And so when we talk about increasing our air PC, not just by the quality of the leads that we have, and the the size of the projects that we have, maybe we just if you're spending, say, I'm going to use round number $100 an hour for my design time, guess what, the same people will pay you $126 An hour on this, you could it properly, they will not know the difference between you charging 100 and $126. And I have now just increased your revenue by 26%. Like that, absolutely.
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I couldn't agree with you more. And oftentimes we get so stuck on, they won't pay, they won't pay, they won't pay, but they will, you just have to lead them down the right path. Right.
17:30
So first you sell on the story then you sell in the portfolio.
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Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe, you kind of know what the ingredients are, but you don't know how to put it all together. After lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomachache behave. Running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way. That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too. If you don't want to figure out the hard way, and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted. Someone that has already been there and done it and will help you do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program, the interior design business bakery. If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000. Or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity, this is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind.com forward slash business dash bakery. Check it out. You won't regret it.
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Okay, so how
19:03
tell the story. So when we talk about there's a great book by Donald Miller called Story brand, great book, Love Story brand concept. He basically walks you through how to build out any page on your website in a story brand fashion, which basically puts the user as the forefront of the conversation, not the service provider.
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Right? Because it's all about our client. It's not about us. And that's
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how you sell the story though. You tell them a story of what it looks like for them to
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go through your process and how your process makes their life so much better. And
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at the end you go and here are some of the folks that have gone through that story. And the portfolio of each of their basically make them case studies. So here's a testimonial and their kitchen. Here's the testimony in their bathroom. Here's a testimonial on their new living room. There's a testimonial and then with that, see more boom. Boom, boom, and then tell the story of behind each of those pictures, not just like, here, look, here's 12 pictures of like, how beautiful it makes it no talk about like, we just we did a herringbone tile on our backsplash, right? If I was the designer for and I actually design it.
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So I was by design background. So anyway. But you know, that was one of the things she was like, What do you want to do? I
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said, this is what we want to do. So we went to the store and kind of played around with it right? And we fit we found something. If I was a designer, I would say you notice that herringbone backsplash there. There's a story behind this. And I want to tell the story about my initial thoughts about what I thought it was going to look like and what it ended up looking like. Now given more story to the story, to the experience, right? Knowing that, hey, even great ideas, sometimes some don't turn out the way we want it. But we're flexible, and we're creative. And we overcome those those struggles during the creative process. It's a creative process. Absolutely. And with me, you're gonna get that same creative process.
21:01
And it makes the people desire to partner with you, and enlist you. And it's and and it's not about price at that point. It's about like you said, the experience and the outcome.
21:13
Yep, the outcome is they're gonna get their dream space. If they're getting a designer, they're looking for a dream space, right? It's aspiration. They're not looking for just the builder grade BS, right? So if you if you think that that's what you have to worry about, you're selling the wrong product. Stop selling design and start selling experience. Absolutely.
21:35
And when you're doing that, when you're talking from a digital standpoint, so from so we've got some good strategy from a tactical standpoint, are you talking about, like Link creating lead magnets and bringing them back to your website, social media, bringing them back to your website, blogs, all the things or all
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the things? So as much as you possibly can you want to point all things to your website? Right? That is huge. Exactly. So then it becomes about your message. So when people talk about, like, where to go to get for traffic, right? Look at where your best clients have come from? And those people, where do they hang out? What types of places? Do they hang out? What types of groups? Are they in those types of things? Right, right? You can go into social media, there's a bunch of interest groups out there, you can create your own group, right? in your local area, if you're not a traveler, right? If you're just you're just serving your local area, your county, okay, great, then just do the, you know, I'm in Sangamon County, so I'll be like salmon, Sangamon. County, interior design ideas. When people look up stuff on Facebook for interior design ideas, and your group shows up, where they're gonna go, they're gonna go no, no, you can find somebody else's group. So that's, that's, that's an arduous process. It takes time to build
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that you have to grow it and interact and right immunity, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly.
23:03
But you could also go to somebody else's group. And as long as you're lending ideas, and not selling your process, or selling your product and your service, right, you're gonna be able to do whatever you want in there.
23:15
Yeah, and now you'd be cautious. So that your integrity is not respectful. Yeah.
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Just like if somebody came into your group that you built, you're gonna let them in? Yeah, absolutely. And I would collaborate with that person. And then I would, and then for me, as the user that's sitting there looking at two designers like giving me all these new ideas. Now I'm gonna go to both of their websites and pick the one I like best. Yeah, well, I can trust, right, boom, done. So that's one strategy and tactic right there. You can also buy ads, right? And you and it's in a local area, you can do that pretty easily with very little money. And you target the neighborhoods you want to work in.
23:56
Right? So are you talking Google ads, Facebook ads,
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Facebook ads, Facebook, ads, interrupt advertising. Now, on your search ads, you're looking for the keywords that people of your echelon of design, right are going to be using. So that's where you have to go back and do market research with your current clients. So a lot of times, people don't realize I got gold sitting there on the people have already paid them. That's a valid point. But who they can refer to it's the amount of information that can give you about who they are and what made them buy from you.
24:28
And I think that that goes back to identify who your ideal client is. Because I don't want di wires. So I'm not going to put DIY blogs on my post on my website.
24:38
And that's why you're going back to your clients that you've had a really good experience with and nine times out of 10 You know what you can do? You can interview them, just like this. Yeah, right. And you could use this interview just like what me and you were doing right here talking about your your service with a perfect client and make that a testimonial video of like, hey, so why did you Excuse me, what did you love about me? What was the most? What was the most stressful thing about working with me? Ask all of the questions, you can edit it later. Get all of the information now
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and put it in a website copy. Right? And
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then and just the video. Yeah. Right. And so when your search engine optimization, then you're going to tie all that together so that that video comes up. And it's like the 10 things that you should look for, for an interior designer for blah, blah, blah, right? Whatever that looks like, right? You got to do your research on that, or get somebody to help you with that research, right? And then you make the content to what people are searching for on the search engines, and you can either pay for it, or you can get the organic rankings or both. Okay, so that right there, that's inbound marketing, because people are looking for you. outbound marketing, are they gonna be the advertising that you do, and say there is a, there's those neighborhood magazines now get, they get expensive, fast, but they do have these neighborhood magazines in neighborhoods that are usually very affluent. And you can put in if it's not already inundated with interior designers, a quarter page, not a whole page, a quarter page with a really good a message of why people buy from you. And a QR code to they can go to your website, I think that makes sense. Super, don't do a whole page. You don't need a whole page layout says the
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digital marketing man.
26:29
But no, I go to the whole tradition. I still plays traditional
26:34
combination. But I wholeheartedly agree with you that digital, just you get in front of so many more people.
26:41
Exactly. So many buddy, you do. But when you're looking at one of those little ad, those neighborhood ads, you're actually advertising to that neighborhood. That is your perfect prospect ultimately
26:54
dialed into.
26:55
Right. So sometimes you pay more to talk to less people, but every person you're talking to is a higher quality prospect.
27:03
So I would also say that marketing in general is a layered approach.
27:07
Always yeah, there's no one trick pony. And the problem with one trick pony is is that just like everybody who is doing Facebook ads back in 2014, you were killing it. And then 2016 came around. And everybody that I had, I had millionaire friends that became impoverished overnight, because of iOS 14 came out, and basically took all third party data away from them. And they couldn't do the hyper focusing they used to be able to do with third party data.
27:38
We had to go back to traditional marketing techniques. And that was I like I didn't I've never any problems. Because that
27:45
was just one of the tools I use for my clients. That makes
27:47
sense. So again, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah,
27:51
yeah. And you need to be testing them. So we had a plumber. I know they're not interior designer, but it's right on point. They were in three neighborhood magazines. And when we went back in, I said, How much business are you getting from each of them? Now for a plumber? How many visits? Or is it gonna take the magazine, they were in Sacramento, California. So it's very, very, a lot of large, the neighborhoods are much bigger, right? $2,500 have a half page ad in this thing, okay, like how many visits it take before you broke even, right? Just on gross, just on gross sales, not gross profit, because your your plumber is gonna charge you 150 $200. But you they also have to pay for the truck. And they have to pay for the person that's in it and that dispatcher and the and the invoicing and all the other things that go along with that their gross profit is probably 30% of that. So of that 30%, how many people if you're getting $30 per visit, right, just for something small? Or maybe you're making 150? Even if you're making 250? That means you have to have 10 clients from that ad magazine per month, or even per month? Yeah, right now for interior design, you could get it to where it's like if say you're paying $2,500, and you make about $1,250. For every design you make it's two designs, depending on how big you are. That could be good. That could be bad. My thing is that if it's going to if you're getting $1,250, for that, you should be getting three to 4x on that investment. Right? Minimum, right. So if I'm putting to over $2,500, I need to see $10,000 worth of consulting business out of that. So that my marketing is only about 20 to 25% of my income.
29:31
There you go. I think that's a great benchmark. Yeah,
29:35
it's it's a benchmark I use. I literally like when I have I give people Commission's based on my marketing budget, because I was going to spend it to get that client anyway. Yeah, that makes it just came from that way. So I was like, okay, cool.
29:48
I'll give you what I was going to spend in marketing. And
29:51
there you go. Yeah. That's where your referral partners come in. And you're like, hey, now I don't give them my whole budget for that, but I will give them a big chunk of it. Yeah. So if say it's 25% I'm gonna say, Hey, listen, I'm gonna give you 15%. Of, of the sale when you when you send somebody to. Easy peasy, so it's a $5,000 I'm just gonna give you 400 For the bucks. I'm gonna send you as many referrals as I possibly can.
30:13
Absolutely. It's mailbox money. Yeah, I love that I love. So I could sit here and chat this whole, like, for another hour, this just this just, oh, maybe we need to do another one. And maybe still Yes, because I know that you also have a plane to catch. So I don't, I don't want to be the reason that you're running late. And anybody's screaming at you to get there. So with that, I think we will probably have some sort of a follow up episode because there's there's some some depth that we can go into. And I think it's very applicable to the audience. But in the meantime, but how can the audience find you? How can they connect, and learn? Well, I'm
30:54
going to do this, I'm gonna do one better. I want to give people a copy of this book, the rule of 20. Rock on, you're gonna get a free copy. If they go to rule of two six.com. All you got to do is pay shipping and handling. That's it. And I'll even sign it for you.
31:08
There you go. I think that's perfect. That is perfect. So I will make sure that that information is in the show notes. And I'm sure audience will reference that. Are you anywhere on social?
31:21
Yes. You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Michael Brzezinski. Yeah, Michael Basinski on all those. Yep.
31:30
We'll have all of that in the show notes as well. Okay, so last thing, y'all if you want a business, a business bestie who can send you business tips, encouraging words, little nuggets of wisdom, directly to your fingertips, please text the word bestie to 85578 480 to 99 and you'll hear from me on the regular just arriving in your on your fingertips in your pocket in your purse, and I promise no spam. So until our next episode, Thank you boss for being here and choose to be great today y'all. And every day. Hey y'all. If you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would
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