Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success.
Today's episode is another quick one as I recover. I have, as I mentioned, not been feeling great. So I'm going to pop in, hit you with a really impactful, helpful, actionable tip and pop out again.
Today I want to talk about that feeling that I know so many people feel where you put all this effort into a post, you hit publish, it feels like you get tumbleweeds, you ask a question in your stories, you feel like there's no engagement, you literally will go over to your own personal account to check if it posted live. Back in the day, I used to do that all the time. And I used to think, what am I doing differently?
And I'm seeing all these other designers posting about their latest projects, their wait lists, their collaboration opportunities posting about themselves onboarding more work and juggling all the projects. And I would just be sitting there working hard and thinking okay, seriously, what gives? I don't get it.
And I workshopped a similar thing with a designer I coached recently who came just venting all of these same frustrations about putting in the work, following all the advice, and just feeling like she's not getting any traction. And so firstly, I asked her, why are you trying to keep up with people who are playing a totally different ball game or some kind of game you might not even know of?
Like I remember in the early days, I often used to get all hung up on these highly successful designers who had no children and could work 20 hours a day or were just in different seasons of their life. And I do not begrudge them that that is fine. I've had my ambitious, like super ambitious can work 24 hours a day kind of time as well. But I had to often remind myself that I don't know their business scenario. I don't know what their goals are.
I don't know if they can work six days a week, or if they work two hours a week. I don't know anything about the race that they're running, so I don't know why I keep thinking I'm in the lane next to them. And so that's where you get that stay in your own lane thing from. But I did challenge her on that and say I feel like I'm On social media, specifically, people can have a whole team that are just working on their marketing messages for all we know.
We just don't know what's going on in other people's houses. So instead I said to her what do you want to achieve? What do you really need? And she was like I want some clients, obviously. I just want to start booking more clients. I put together a 30 day plan with her and it was not to go viral, not to be everyone's favorite. favorite, but it was just simply to say, we're not going to chase any likes. We don't care.
We don't need to be popular, but we do need more people or the, we need to talk to the next person who's willing to say yes to me and pay me a deposit. So we want to connect with your next yes. And that's what today's episode's about. So with this particular designer, we workshopped her message. We focused on speaking directly to her clients. Okay, what do they want? What are they struggling with? How do you fix it? How do you explain that you fix it? How could you word it another way?
So just going around and workshopping it. And we listed out everything that we could. And at the end of the month, she'd booked three new projects. And this was not an experienced designer and this was not a brand new designer, but it was someone who probably wasn't booking multiple projects per month yet. It wasn't magic, but it was intentional. And I've had this come up in my own business a few times and I have a little go to hack or a go to fix that I always lean in on.
And what I do is I, it's like a, just a little exercise. It might seem Oh, let me guess your ideal client. But it's not that I just go. I grab a blank piece of paper or, a workbook, whatever I'm, I want to brainstorm on. And then I sit down and I pretend that an email has just pinged in my email inbox, which is a website inquiry. So my inquiries come through to my Outlook and in this inquiry, it's the project of a lifetime, right? Whatever that looks like for you, just picture that.
The inquiry says, Hey there, I really, we have. No budget. We love this kind of style. This is what we're doing. So project of a lifetime. Then I make a list of all the things that inquiry would need to know to say yes to me. Every single thing that would, I would need to tell you in a discovery call or across my, if you landed on my Instagram account, what would you need to see to be like, it's a hard yes for me, take my money, did That kind of energy is what we want to be promoting.
So I list out 15 things that make you awesome, things like past projects, client wins, testimonials. I know they seem boring, but if you can get a short but impactful one that really just a sentence that says it all. Those can be really great to share. Things like your favorite parts of the job, show off what makes you the one they've been looking for.
Like I love a modern organic aesthetic, but what makes me different to another modern organic designer, what makes me better than another modern organic. There are lots of things that I like and that I lean towards. So I'd be showcasing a lot of that. Modern organic means something to me that it doesn't mean to everyone. And some types of modern organic that I see isn't the type that I provide. I want you to get personal. So share what you love about your work. Why do you do what you do?
What makes you different? This isn't the time to hold back. Let them see what makes you unique without putting pressure on yourself. We are not listing out your UVPs. We are actually going, I just need to come up with 15 things that this potential client needs to know for it to be an absolute obvious, no brainer, yes from them to pay the deposit. And then we turn this list into your content strategy for the next month.
So every single point of the 15 things that you've listed out, we'll create posts, emails, stories. We want to speak directly to the dream client about all of this stuff. This is gold. This stuff that we're pulling out is the stuff that will make you start to be like, okay, I'm getting traction and people are talking.
And if you can think about the way, like which platforms are you going to post it on the way in which you actually showcase this information, you'll actually be surprised at how quickly your messaging starts to cut through and that you have an actual topic to talk about on your stories. Modern organic, you could do a this or that. You could talk about how you used to think it was you've got a lot in there. I know you do. And whatever that looks like for you, what makes you different?
That's a really quick and the, the, the, The reason I find it such a quick go to for me is I can always picture my dream project. So it's just reverse engineering. My only job to get this dream project is in 15 moves, checkmate.
So what are my 15 moves going to be before I can say, okay, here are my bank details, or here's your invoice inside of all of my coaching things, so coaching pocket, private coaching and the group coaching stuff, of course, I'm always trying to support us to overcome these. Mindset and attitude challenges with systems or strategy because they think we can chase the likes, go after the vanity metrics, feel low on ourselves because we don't get them. Where are you going to get them from?
You haven't built this audience yet that wants to. There's gagging to buy everything from you. And the thing is, even if everybody said yes to you, you couldn't facilitate that amount of clients. So it's really good to take a reality check, a bit like a bit of a cold fish slap in the face and be like, Oh yeah, I only actually need one yes. I only need one yes. one converted client. I just need a project to pay me the money when you're new. That's all it takes.
And if you've got a particular goal, like you're thinking, okay I'd really like to take on two new large projects and I could probably fill two or three small scale services across the next eight weeks. Then write that down and be like, I'm looking for six yeses. And these are the 15. Ways to speak directly to the six people I need to talk to I don't want there's so much noise I say it all the time the cacophony the yelling the look over here. Look over here.
I've got a controversial opinion Oh, look at me. It is so hectic on instagram. We all feel it. Everybody's exhausted. Everybody's drained It's coming to the end of the year What you want is for the person who wants a designer to just think oh, thank god Suddenly someone I relate to someone who's telling it how I feel it You Someone who makes me feel like I can trust them above the noise. And the way that you do that is that you don't think about it as a strategy.
You don't think about it as a way to attract likes and get shares and get saves. You think about it as a way to explain who you are, what you do, and how bloody excellent you are at it. To that one next yes, not going to overcomplicate it. I'm going to leave it there. You can go back and listen because it's under 10 minutes, but this strategy works. It worked for my client who booked three projects.
It's worked for me every time I find myself a bit clouded and I'm getting a bit out there with my content strategy. And I'm like, just pumping out a lot of stuff and not seeing what I want to see. I need to re center, refocus. Focus and go for the next. Yes. I hope it works for you too. Come and tell me what you think of this episode and even better than that, I would be so grateful if you could share it with a friend.
I know that there are business tips and interior design, specific business tips all throughout here. My guests are so generous. I would love for their message to be shared and for people to discover this. If you found that tip helpful and if you think it might help you, you could always pay back the favor by telling one single friend about Designing Success.
If you can pass it on, spread the word, share the podcast, get it out there so that more people can listen to the cool interviews with all the people that I've been lucky enough to chat to and really get behind this sort of thing. This thing did not exist back when I studied interior design. There wasn't it. This like podcasting wasn't as huge as it is now. And obviously there are lots of different design podcasts, but I really try to make as much impact as possible.
And if I learn something or I know something, or I see something, help someone that I'm private coaching, I always try to bring it to you on a free platform. And I hope that, through doing that, you can learn a few things. And if you have learned anything, please pass it on to a friend so that they can join us as well. All right. That's it for me today. I will chat to you next Tuesday. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio.
Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram.
You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success. the the the