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.
0:49
Welcome back, everybody. I'm Michelle Lynn. And you are listening to design for the creative mind. This is a podcast for creatives. So if you're creative if you're an interior designer, if you're a graphic designer photographer, this is mostly for interior designers, but you're in the right place. So thanks for being here. And y'all I'm excited to introduce you to my next guest. My next guest is Jamie Jamie Brown. She is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Studio designer. Over the past five years, Jamie has specialized in working with small to large size design firms. She helps solve and improve their business challenges by helping to implement design specific software into their daily processes. Jamie helps interior design business owners grow and scale their firm. They she helps improve their firm's productivity and gain stronger financial insights to succeed. Jamie, that is like kind of a soft bio, because all the stuff your software does is freaking badass. But I'm glad you're here. Thank you for being on the podcast. I'm excited to dig into this topic.
2:01
Thank you so much. And thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. Well, I.
2:06
So you and I have spoken off podcast time before and you just know how much I love processes and procedures and just singing a good software praises from the sky. So I'm excited to share that with our audience. Because this is I have to practice what I preach. And having you here to go into more detail is just going to be so insightful. So yay, yay, yay, yay. So let's start with your let's start with a little bit of your background. And how did you get into software like, but I mean, we didn't go back. So to give you guys a little bit of insight. Jamie works for studio designer, which recently acquired design docs. Mm hmm. So you started with design docs, let's take that story. And we can move forward. But how did you get how what brought you the software? It's
3:03
really funny. I actually don't think you know this about me, Michelle, but I actually come from a fine and decorative arts background. So yes, surprise. So that's actually what I went to school for. So I studied art history. I went over to London, and I actually trained to work at the auction houses there. Because that was Yeah, that wasn't super passion of mine. And that was pre design docs. That was before I got into more of the interior design world. And I loved it. It was really super cool. I started my career actually at Christie's working in a couple of different departments there. And honestly, it was like an art lovers dream. I got to see all of the artwork in the vaults, I got to see original pieces. I remember touching like paint and sheet music. It was just the coolest experience. But for me personally, I didn't enjoy the working environment there. It was much too corporate. For me. It was too. I don't want to say yeah, it was a little bit snobby. So for me, it was not my vibe whatsoever. So my career took a bit of a turn and I became involved more in the tech space, specifically in interior design architecture. I don't think you know this about me as well, but I actually have a family background in those industries. So my mom is a retired designer, and my brother is an architect. And so that's where I became interested in these fields. And I have always loved interior design, but I don't have the eye for interior design whatsoever. It's just not a strength of mine. That was my mom's I kept thinking like how can I become involved in this really cool industry? But I don't have the passion Generally I for interior design, so that's what led me more to the software business management side. And I started working for design dogs who we were based in Toronto. And it was a small company, husband and wife team also had personal roots to the industry, one of our founders was an interior designer. So that's really where design docs came to be, was to help laka Yeah, yeah, exactly. Lack of options, I think at the time, so I worked there for a couple of years before the acquisition. And it was actually a year ago, in April that we were acquired by studios. So we're celebrating our one year anniversary. Yeah, so that's really what led me to where I am today.
5:50
Why tech?
5:51
Why so high?
5:53
Was it because design docs was related to interior design? And what were you doing for design docs? Yes.
6:00
So I was running business development and the customer success department at design docs. I love working with designers. I love helping designers. And I wanted to be in a very client facing role. To answer your question about why tech for me Tech was interesting, because it's constantly being innovative. And I think that's the aspect that was really lacking for me working in our business where it was very corporate and very slow to change. And for me, I have that creative out of the box thinking there. That is much more where I feel like I fit in. Okay,
6:44
that makes sense. And that's probably a question that's been lingering in the back of my head, Jamie, what, how what, but it makes sense, because you still get to play in the pool of designers, you just don't have to be a designer. So that so y'all that are listening, I am a huge fan. You know this, this is not a commercial for studio designer. But I am a huge fan of the products that will make your life easier as a designer, make you money. And also just streamline all the things. So we first were on studio designer, I probably knew this yet before went to design docs. So studio designer went through an upgrade, and we had some hiccups. So being a small business, it was just difficult. And we ended up landing with design docs, who coincidentally, now that studio designer, all their hiccups are unhappy, they're not hiccups anymore. Studio designers taking them over. But let's just talk about this. So for those of you who are not familiar with it, or maybe you're on some other platforms that will not be named tell me, Jamie, like, why does the accounting software integrates? It's not just accounting? But like how explain to our audience how an integrated accounting software thingamajiggy? What is it? And how does it increase our productivity and our profitability as business owners?
8:16
Okay, so let's start with the what is it? There's a lot of different software's in the market that are catered for interior designers that sync with a generic accounting system like QuickBooks is probably the most common. What our system does, or what an integrated system is, it combines those two aspects into one platform. So you can run your project management, your administration, really the bulk of your workflow. And in so doing that then feeds into your company level financials. So you have it all in the same place. And this is really key, especially related to productivity. There's no kind of syncing between two software's or no transferring of information between two systems. And a lot of the time, I'll see designers either having one that syncs with QuickBooks, or they'll work on that classic Excel QuickBooks combination. Maybe when they first started, they started on spreadsheets. And Michelle, you're smiling. I don't know if the same boat back in the day, it was back in the day. Exactly. Because it's easy, right? It's the easy solution for you to pick up as soon as you start your business. But the difficult thing is is that it requires then you transferring information from Excel into QuickBooks, which takes time and somebody has to do it and I screwed it up more than once. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of a lot of people do to be honest. Which it can be costly at the end of the day, you know, if you mess up transferring the information and it can cost you money literally in your business. And I've seen it a lot, actually. So the benefit of having it all in the same system is that you have to enter the information just once. And from there, you can then go through the whole rest of your workflow. You can create all your documents, your proposals, invoices, whatever. And that then gets fed into your reports, your financial reports so that you have access to them in lifetime.
10:30
That's been so helpful. And then just being able to run a variety of reports at any given time has been ideal. And I think part of it is just learning what numbers you're looking for. Yeah, find them when you need them. For sure. So from a productivity standpoint, I'm it is very helpful, because the way it works, and what you guys want to look for is when you are contemplating maybe upgrading to something that's a little bit more robust, because honestly, like studio is, it's a lot, it's overwhelming, when you first look at it, you're like, Oh, I'm just gonna stick with the damn spreadsheet, and QuickBooks and so forth. Yeah. But what basically happens is you can put in an item, put in the price that you're paying for it. And then you can aim for whatever markup or margin you're wanting to get. And it will give you the price that you charge your client. Yep, so if you want a 75% markup, then you can just you can do that automatically. You can also. So you don't forget to mark anything up pre program, every category, so that if you're marking up your labor by 20%, it automatically does any new vendor that you put in as labor. If you're going to mark up your fabric 100% or whatever, then automatically when you put a vendor in that is a fabric vendor, it will do that you don't have to manually remember these things. And it's just and then it will also calculate if you get a discount somewhere. If you're shopping at Pottery Barn, let's I don't recommend, go buy from your to the trade vendors, so that you can make the most money as possible and get your clients the best product. That's a whole other podcast. But you know how I feel about it? The Productivity is fantastic. So it's also an it's also you can let's just say you are selling a pillow, like some of those components for the pillow are taxable to the client, and some of them are not. So in Texas labor is not taxable. So I don't have to remember that stuff. Because I'm pre programming, the vendor that does labor and it's not taxable to pass on. So you don't get the bit with their sales tax stuff. It's activity is fantastic. How do you see the accounting software? integrated accounting software? Because what do you call it integrated?
13:01
I guess we call it integrated just because it's all in one. It's not like
13:06
and it's all of the accounting, but we also do our procurement from it. Exactly. Yeah. Reports. Okay, yeah, I can just go down so many bunny trails. You're such a geek at heart when it comes to the technical stuff, the zoo profitability. How do you explain to let's just say to prospective and y'all, this is not a commercial, I just want to state that that's not a commercial. I'm in love with this product. Jamie sells it for a living. So if it sounds like a commercial, just take it as education. So tell me, that's how it increases profit. There's
13:39
a couple of different ways. And I think one of the main key takeaways, it can help to increase your profit by you knowing what your profit is, if we start there, right, so a lot of designers that I speak to some of them, they might get, for example, your Profit and Loss report from your bookkeeper at the end of the year. And it's okay, here's how you did. But studio and other integrated systems that incorporate the accounting. They have those profitability reports built into them so that you can monitor them throughout the course of the year throughout the course of your projects, so that you can be more proactive in making changes. So that's one area. The other couple of areas is that it provides you with we call it item level profitability. But what I mean by that is you can basically track your profitability by product, which is something that you cannot get in a generic accounting assistance system like QuickBooks, for example. And this is really key. I actually recommend for my designers to look at this report when they're doing their pricing when they're creating their estimates or their proposals for customers. so that they can actually make sure that they're making enough money at the end of the day do what we do at MLM group. Exactly. And you're running a business, obviously. So you want to make sure that you are making enough money. And that's one of the ways that you can do that. And by not having that information, yes, game. Yeah, it is, it is for sure. It's really hard.
15:24
So what we do at ml interiors group, so I don't design that much anymore, I give my opinions. And that's the cool thing about owning the businesses, they have to listen to my opinions as advice, but I can give my opinions. But anyway, what we do is, for every project, we break it down by room. So of course, we have all of the items that we are specifying for the client broken down by room. And what I tell my team is, every room has to have a minimum of let's say, a 45% margin. Okay, you all there's a difference between markup and margin. But and so with that, we have to have a minimum overall, because there are some vendors that we get a really great pricing from. And then sometimes you'd have to go to Etsy to get what you're looking for. And there's really, sometimes you can't add much margin there. But at the end of the day, each room has to be a minimum of 45% 47%, whatever that looks like. And those reports, allow them to do it without me having to go back and edit their pricing. It's been Lastic in that respect, and then the overall project needs to have this type of margin. Plus, we also factor in the labor. Because we're tracking our hours, even though we charge by a flat fee, we track our hours by individual and their overheads. So we can take a look at our overall job cost is fabulous.
16:51
Yeah. And that's so interestingly, you give them a target, Michelle, that's really cool. Yeah,
16:57
it's because you empower them, they can play with it. But hell, they can't read my mind. Not that I'm not that my team would, but they would just give it away, because they're happy to make things pretty well. Yeah, business, you have to have a you have to have boundaries. Yeah, pricing boundaries.
17:13
I also love what you said too, about how you get your team to track their time against the flat fee. This is something that I see a lot of designers have this kind of perception that if they are charging for design on a flat fee, that they don't have to track their time. I see that all the time.
17:34
Girl, you really, we should set up an affiliate for the interior design business bakery, just send them in, let me teach you. I'll teach them. I'm
17:43
so glad, though, that you encourage your team to do that. Because again, it feeds into the profitability, right? A lot of designers I know. And I think you may come up with your flat fee a little bit differently. But a lot of conversations I've had is designers will create a flat fee based on an estimated number of hours, right? So they might have a couple of different phases. They think phase one will take 100 hours, and then they're shooting in the dark because their team is not tracking their time. So it could be like 200. Well,
18:15
it'll come back and bite you in the ass. Because also, what you need to do is you need to tell your team, you have X number of hours for this, that and the other. Yeah. And if you're tracking it, because come on, even myself who I'm not in design, in the deep end, sometimes we just get lost. And we're like, oh, this is so pretty. Let's look at this. And let's look at that when seriously, like we already picked the greatest lamp for their bedside tables. We've already picked it. But why am I going down this bunny trail? It's because it's pretty. But that's hours that are eating into the firm's profitability. Yeah, you have to track it. And you have to be disciplined about staying on point. Look at that on your own time, for
18:59
sure. And there's actually a really nice report in studio that I tend to show a lot of my clients who I work with, it allows you to see hours spent by activity for each staff member Do you that? Do that's awesome. I'm so happy to hear that because it's one of my favorite reports. Yes.
19:20
And we might talk offline and make sure we're doing it right. But you don't have to do is because we have different designers. They're paid different rates. And instead of going through and charging my client different rates, I just track it internally with that. And then we have for those of you who've been through like the interior design business bakery, what I teach is we have 60 Like every project is different, but the process should be the same. So we have 16 steps. I call it the 16 steps of sanity. Interiors group is called the ML experience, but this is what we teach also. And it's every single step. We've compiled them a little bit so that there's not 16 steps that were are tracking Hours Against, because that just got a little bit overwhelming. And sometimes they cross over. So we've consolidated some of them. But we totally do that. And then it also helps when you break it down by phase and things along that line. So you can say, Okay, you have overall 100 hours. Yeah, you including the design presentation, the two hours that you spend with them, are you including time for revisions, all of that type of stuff needs to be taken out and strategized from that overall number.
20:29
And one, one kind of tidbit that one of my clients told me and she actually looks at this report for future projects to like, for a new client, for example, she can go back and have a look at a similar project of a similar scope. And say, this is how much I estimate it's going to cost. So this is how long it took us to do this. So
20:50
we might have estimated it was 100 hours. And that's what we charges our design fee, but it actually took that 200 hours, oh shit, I need to up my fees. Exactly. That goes back to the leaving money on the table, if you're just repeating, so you have to track the data.
21:06
Exactly.
21:11
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, reading 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
22:34
one of my old bosses back in a completely different industry. But he would always tell me if you're trying to figure something out, the numbers will tell you go back and look at the numbers and analyze them and it's not sexy. But you know what? It's not sexy if you have to go bankrupt either. Exactly.
22:50
Yeah. And I know it's not everyone's favorite task, especially designers or your all creative people. You went into this industry to design beautiful spaces. But these are some of the things tools that will help you run a better business and a more profitable business for sure. Absolutely.
23:10
And it just it gives you some sanity as well. Because you make better decisions when you have that information. Like here's my decision, I'm going to I'm going to charge 200 The equivalent of 200 hours. Yep, whatever that looks like. Yeah. Or here's how many hours you have to back into it. So let's so one of the things that talking to some of my students, or just talking to designers on a regular basis, is the when I say Hey, y'all need to look at a better a high level software. And now I'm going to be using your terms and integrated accounting software. A lot of times what they say is, yeah, but I can't do I can't do that. And I'm like, you don't need to do it. You need to outsource your bookkeeping. So let's talk about why it's so damn beneficial to outsource your bookkeeping, please.
23:59
Yes, yeah. you outsource your bookkeeping to Oh, yeah, I sure do. And,
24:06
and because you know what? I'm not a I'm not a bookkeeper. Exactly. I'm a designer. I'm like, I'm not. So I'm not going to do my bookkeeping. And so don't be so afraid of these integrated accounting software's because they are big. Yeah. Let your bookkeeper do all you just put the data in. Exactly. And he or she is going to extract it and do the bookkeeping stuff.
24:33
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And there's lots of bookkeepers that you can find that specifically know the interior design industry. And I think that is also a key point as well as that interior design is complicated. It's a really complicated business.
24:52
There are so many components. Yeah, yes, sir. Let's just talk about accounting. So many components A Pillow has 550 Oh my gosh. And you have I know for all of these,
25:07
I know and you mentioned this at the beginning, like this has sales tax, and this doesn't have sales, and it's like enough to like make your brain explode. And then also like, never mind if you're doing projects in different states or different countries or whatever, it's just, it's a lot. It is really a lot. Yes.
25:23
And at the end of the day, I love making things pretty my team adores making things pretty. But I also like making money. Yeah, this is not a hobby anymore. This is this is for real. This is putting food on my table and paying for my kids shoes. So why am I not going to maximize every little bit that I possibly can without the stress of staying awake and burning the candle at both ends? Trying to track those pennies down?
25:54
Yeah, for sure. If you can get someone and I know you have support as well on this side, Michelle, but if you can get someone that specifically knows the interior design industry, that will be a game changer.
26:08
I think last week's podcast, I had that same conversation with my guest. And it was there's so much. Yeah,
26:14
there is. And if you can alleviate some of that and take it off your plate. That's their specialty. Perfect. Yeah,
26:23
absolutely. It's, it's funny. I always for y'all listening. I'm sure you're tired of my analogy, but I don't do my own hair color. Right. I don't do my own good wine. Yeah. So you need to source to the professionals. And at one point, I actually so right now Shana, she does my cut my color. Like all the things she's just a freakin artist. But previously, when I was getting my hair done, I actually had somebody who did only cuts and and the other person did only color. And so yeah, you can just niche down and you get the best of the best. And that makes a huge difference.
27:00
Yep. And a lot of them to like ones that have been in the industry for a while. They also provide additional services. They know how to review the specific reports that are needed for your business. They provide business consulting, so yeah, I would highly recommend for sure, yeah. And
27:20
our service, the dev agency is who we use. And I had Beth on the podcast like back in 1902. So if y'all are interested in that she was probably within the first 25 guests, I can go back and look at that, and drop it in the show notes. But they also do our procurement. So because their accountant is talking to my procurement professional, and I don't have to run interference.
27:44
That is the perfect kill two birds with one stone.
27:47
Oh my gosh, yes, it is fantastic. And here's another thing is that, as we have gotten more proficient in this software, I have found where I have previously left money on the table, because my tracking was incomplete. Or it or there wasn't ticking a tie where you find it. Oh, I forgot I had left that money sitting out there, too. So if you have a good platform, you can't forget, like you might not be able to close out the month or something, there's a trigger that does not allow you to just leave it sitting that you can't close out the project until you collect that extra freight that you hadn't planned on or whatever.
28:32
That happens so much, Michelle, I see that a lot.
28:36
I cringed at the amount of money that I know I left.
28:41
Yeah. And it's little small things here and there. Right? As you say, shipping is a big one where the price of shipping might have gone up, for example. And I see it a lot where it's too late to collect that money from the client. Or they feel bad like, Oh, I know. It's only $10 I don't want to be bothered them with us and other ways for $10. You know what I mean? Whatever.
29:08
It's only $10. And it's not 1000 bucks, that sitting out there that you end up eating because you feel bad, like 10 bucks. But I've had things that were just like, Oh, sure. Xyzal
29:19
Yes, exactly. And that yeah, add a couple of zeros to that is not a fun, fun situation to be in. But even like the small things like the 10 $20 things like they do add up over the course of a project. What if your projects two years long, and you those things that are adding up that you just forget about that you don't collect on they could be hundreds of dollars at the end of your project recently.
29:43
The receiver maybe we maybe it took two months longer to get the renovation done. And so their stuff is sitting there. We paid for it. And we didn't build a client just yet because we were waiting to see how long they were going to be there and then we're excited for the installation and we'd forget to go back and run reconcile the receiver. It's done. It's done for me.
30:03
Yeah, for sure. Shipping, receiving is a big one and awful. Also, project expenses is another big one as well that I see a lot. So like, little things here and there parking, like coffee with your clients like those type of things, they really add up over the course of a project for sure. So it's really important to have proper tracking in place so that you're not, it's not eating into your bottom line at the end of the day.
30:31
Yeah, that makes sense. That See, I was learned something I love, you know, I've told this story before is that I came to podcasting, almost kicking and screaming. But I had my mentor advisor person telling me, this is what I needed to do. And I was like, Who has time? I don't even like talking to people like a small talk. I'm done. Like I'm out. I'm an introvert. But I sucked it up and did what I didn't want to do. And I freakin love it. And I get to meet the coolest people like you and I chit chat. But now I'd learned something as well. Like, are you project expense tracking? I need to implement that specifically, because we're doing it a different way. But anything I can put into the system? You put good quality data in you get good quality data
31:19
out. Exactly.
31:22
Yeah. How old? Are you finding money left on the table?
31:24
I would say project expenses are a big one. That is definitely a huge one. The other one we talked about already would be the flat fees. So yes, what I am seeing more and more actually, interestingly enough, is a change in the billing model, where designers will start with a flat fee. And then they'll switch over to hourly at some point in the project. Now whether that be it's something out of scope, or they've hit their fee estimate that they originally ballpark. Right. So that goes back to your tracking time. Yes.
32:03
And an even less so we've recently switched to like our construction and implementation. We're doing a retainer for that now. And we're able to do a retainer in the system.
32:16
Yeah, great.
32:19
We just dropped that sucker in there. And then we're tracking our hours against it. And it calculates when we're just about done with that we can eyeball it and say, Oh, look, we just went through that. $10,000. Yeah, and rebuild it so that we can continue moving forward. And we can also tell our client, dude, you're about done with this retainer? Can you please make up your mind on this? Whatever.
32:40
I'll just send you another invoice. I don't mind doing that. But do you really want to? Because we should have had it done?
32:45
Yeah, ya know, for sure. Yeah. Those are the two big ones. I would definitely say that I'm seeing most often. I don't know if you ever see different types of scenarios. But those are the most common, I would say. I
33:00
think a lot of it also is just the item tracking the markup. Yes. Because when you have 100 items in a room, or more, you're assuming that you're making money. But over the course of three months, when you're designing this and you're going through multiple vendors, like I want to see what my overall margin is, because of my overall margin turns out to be 27% Because I found so many cool things on Etsy. Okay, then I need to revisit that and maybe go back and market my Etsy products? Or can I start by shopping at the vendor where I make the most money? Yes, maximize that. And can I make 122% margin? Or markup? What does that look like? So I love being able to just spot check it?
33:49
Yes, that's a really good one. Actually, I like that a lot. Do you ever? Are you ever able to negotiate better discounts with your vendors? Um,
34:00
some of them we have? And then others, we just don't have as much leverage. We're a relatively small firm. Yeah, I've now that we're I'm doing more coaching. And we've got those studio works. co working space and then side Mark. I'm not we're not pushing design as much. So I'm not I'm no longer pushing into the seven figures and above and stuff like that. It's, there's not enough of me. So have as much leverage. But now that we're at Studio works, that's something that we're exploring to see if we can get more buying power with our members. Yeah, my mind doesn't shut off. I just have to figure out I have these ideas. I just need to implement them.
34:41
Yeah. And I guess that too, will allow them to be able to mark up the product more, right? Yeah.
34:48
So we all make wine. Yeah, that's amazing. And we and one of the things we're working on now with my team is actually going deeper with some vendors instead of why so that we can get more revenue, more sales with fewer vendors. Okay, that makes sense. Because here's the deal. At the end of the day, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Once you find the right solution, if you can find it within a particular vendor, and I'm not saying that we need to sit down and look like everything's forehands, okay, or everything's Gaby, like they have a look like, it's part of using a designer is that it's curated. But if you can get some of the bigger pieces from a vendor repeatedly create a relationship that is profitable for both parties, I just, why not? You don't have to go comb 17 different vendors for I don't know, a rug, sometimes you do, but not always. So start with where you make the most money, get as much as you possibly can, and then continue to add layers. That's what we're working on.
35:56
And how do you find which vendors you make the most money?
36:00
Um, for the most part, it's just, it's the conversations with the rep. It's like, where am I, some of them on the website says, This is where you are in our program. So the first X number of dollars, you get this pricing, and then you hit this tier, and you get that pricing and so forth. So it's, and part of it is also just asking, like, where am I in the middle of the year? So you only have 22 cents until you get another 25% off? Like I better buy something from my house. Yeah, we've we've sometimes fallen into deeper tears, and we didn't even know about it, because they don't necessarily notify us.
36:38
Interesting. How that happens. Who has
36:42
the time for these inquiries until you know that you need to be asking. So
36:46
yeah, that's a good tidbit, too. Yeah.
36:48
So speaking of tidbits, my selfish selfish loves of being podcast host is asking my guests what books you would recommend. Are there any books that you've read recently, whether it's business related or not, that you would recommend? I
37:06
really enjoyed lessons in chemistry. That was one I know there's a show no. Oh, that's what it is. Yeah, yes. There's one. I think it's Apple TV that it's on. But I actually read the book first. And I really liked it. It was something that I read as part of my book, Love. I have one little mom's book club. Some of the other members of my book club thought it was quite like raw feminism. It's very late. But personally, I loved it. That was probably my best recommendation recently.
37:38
Good, good, good. I keep track of all these. Yeah, no, it's a good one. Good. Good. Good, good. What piece of advice would you give to your 20 year old self? If you could go back? I've tried
37:49
to even think of what I was doing when I was 20 when
37:53
he was just out partying. So that's why you can't remember exactly, I
37:56
think that is probably pretty accurate. Oh, that's a good question. I think, look, you're 20 Have fun. That's what I was doing when I was 20. And I could probably say the same thing when my daughter is 22. Seriously, yeah. Don't take life too seriously. It's before you have any kind of real commitments and life responsibilities and that kind of thing. So just enjoy yourself and get as much exposure to different cultures as possible. And I did that when I was 20. Yeah,
38:31
that and it worked. Well. Yeah. That is very fun. Jamie, I could have this conversation for another two hours, but I think our audience would probably be done with their walk. Or maybe they're just driving and dropping their kids off at school or something. Tell our audience how they can get in touch with you, please.
38:50
Yes, I am more than happy to speak to anyone from the audience. They can reach out to me directly if they want. My email address is Jamie. So J I M E dot brown like the color brown? At Studio designer.com. So they can reach out to me directly.
39:11
Ja, I M E, not the way I used to spell it and get it kicked back all the time. J. So yeah, I think of it Libby Shem
39:19
in French, if any of French. Exactly. Yes. So J ai me dot Brown at Studio designer.com. They can also look us up on Instagram, our handle is underscore studio designer. Or if you're just looking for some more information, you can visit our website at WWW dot Studio designer.com.
39:43
That's fantastic. I'll make sure all of that is in the show notes.
39:47
Perfect.
39:48
Thank you so much. And thank you. Absolutely. Yes, I think we've been trying to get you on the podcast for I don't know how long, a
39:55
long time but I'm so glad that we're able to do it.
39:58
I adore you And I absolutely love the product. So it has made us money. It has saved us money and a lot of time and sanity. So thank you. It makes
40:09
me happy as that up to whomever
40:12
created it. It's just fantastic. Okay, now y'all listening, if you want a business bestie, you've heard me say this before, if you've listened to the podcast, but I will send business tips, encouraging words, event updates, and just whatever I think is relevant to help and support you in your business. And I'll send it directly to your fingertips. You can text the word bestie 285578 480 to 99. Again, that's 85578 480 to 99, you'll hear from me on the regular to know probably no more than four times a week, because I can barely keep up with myself. But I love just being able to share little nuggets. So thank you very much for listening. She used to be great today and every day. And thank you again, Jamie, for being here.
41:03
Thank you.
41:07
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 the 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 feed. 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
