What Interior Designers Can Say Goodbye To As They Move Into their CEO Role
When you first start your interior design business, you have to wear a lot of hats. Unless you have investors, you’re single-handedly managing the marketing, sales, client delivery, admin, customer service, finance, operations, and IT. By yourself.
But after time, you realize that is not sustainable, and it leaves you with no time or energy to actually grow a company that gives you more time and freedom—which is the whole point of starting your business in the first place.
Am I right?
But, once you hit a stage in your business when you have a consistent pipeline, profitable projects, and a proven track record, you’re likely itching to get out of the day-to-day. More often than not, the realization that being buried in client work and handling customer service issues and furniture claims is actually COSTING you money and opportunities is what propels interior designers to find a new way of doing business.
Whether you are a self proclaimed “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” type of person or you simply don’t have time to make changes to take your business to the next level, I’m going to share some things you can say BYEEEEEE to as an interior designer so you can step into your role as CEO so you can level up your business.
01 | Say Goodbye to Following Someone Else's Vision for Your Company.
I don’t know about you, but if everyone else is doing it, I’m out.
This often means I take the slower, unpaved route.
And that’s pretty much been my life.
But guess what? It has worked for me because I know where I’m going and I am confident to go off the beaten path or take big-ish risks.
So, just because everyone else is offering full-service design, rolling out an e-commerce shop, posting the same type of content on Instagram, or expanding their team, it does NOT mean you need to if it doesn’t get you closer to achieving your big-picture vision.
Don’t bend to someone else's vision of your company. Successful CEOs dedicate their time to creating a VISION or a North Star for what their business and life will look like. Then, they share that with their team and reference it when making every single decision for their company.
Once you know where you’re going, it’s MUCH easier to reverse engineer the path and implement the correct steps to get there.
02 | Say Goodbye to Being a Generalist.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “The riches are in the niches,” and it is 100% true.
Don’t be afraid to narrow your business specialty and find a niche for yourself in the market.
Here are just a few ways you can niche your interior design business:
By project type - renovation, new build, furnishings only, kitchen and baths
By client type - bachelors, empty nesters, young couples, growing families
By style - traditional, contemporary, modern, moody, sophisticated
By budget - small budgets, large budgets
By home type - vacation homes, Vrbo, yachts, industrial
By product type - retail only, custom only, vintage or antique only, sustainable only
When you niche down, you can allocate resources more efficiently and market more clearly to attract the exact types of interior design projects and clients you want. It will seem like magic when suddenly … all your project inquiries are from ideal clients with dream projects.
This is not an accident. This is done intentionally and happens when you niche down.
03 | Say Goodbye to Working with Clients Who Aren’t a Fit.
Sometimes you’ll talk with a potential client and they or their project simply aren’t a good fit for you. Whether it’s a service you don’t have experience in, a timeline you can’t deliver on, or a person who is giving you alllll the red flags, it is YOUR JOB to know what is best for your company, your team, and your process.
If you want to take your business to the next level, don’t take on work that doesn’t align with the big-picture vision for your company (like getting published/breaking into a new market/niching down into certain types of homes, etc).
The projects you take on should meet your design fee, budget, and size minimums. Saying no will save you from lost time and money or unsatisfied clients.
04 | Say Goodbye to Offering Products or Services that Aren't Profitable.
This aligns with #3. You MUST say no to project types that aren’t profitable or that don’t align with your vision.
As we share in #9, you MUST know your numbers and regularly assess the profitability of your services and products to see where to double down and where to make adjustments.
For example, you may run the numbers and realize construction-only projects aren’t profitable because there are minimal product sales. But when you run numbers for your furnishing projects, you see those are very profitable. This information allows you to make an INFORMED decision about what to offer and how to price your services.
05 | Say Goodbye to Recreating the Wheel & Doing Everything Yourself.
All thriving businesses have standard operating procedures (SOPs) that streamline work to create consistency, save time and reduce mistakes. No need to start from scratch with each new project if you have well-documented, repeatable processes.
This also allows you to delegate MOST of what you are probably doing on a daily basis.
Not only will this give you balance and keep you charged for doing what you do best, but it will also allow you time to focus on growing the company. Delegating day-to-day tasks frees you to focus on high-revenue activities, which can increase profitability and make a larger impact.
06 | Say Goodbye to Letting Clients Control Your Time and Process.
You are the expert. You know what gets your clients the best results.
Stop letting your clients dictate your process.
If you think they won’t hire you if you won't bend to them or they’ll get mad if you enforce a policy, guess what, they’re probably not going to be a good fit. (see tip #3!)
Good clients trust you and will take YOUR lead.
This is where a well-documented client experience process will save you. They’ll guide the process and educate clients on how everything works. By laying out the steps during your onboarding process of what it’s like to work with you, clients will know you’re the professional and your tried and true process gets results.
07 | Say Goodbye to Keeping Everything in Your Brain.
This is a business basic in 2024. It’s time to incorporate software and documented processes into your day-to-day operations. Trying to remember the details of all of your jobs is unsustainable as time passes and you gain customers. Along with the worry and anxiety created by trying to keep everything straight in your head, there’s no room to delegate any tasks and it leaves so much room for error. Having a written record of your projects allows you to reference accurate details instantly, allocate work to team members, and free up brain space for more fun and creative endeavors. Working with tools like online calendars, project management systems, CRM platforms, and finance software is a great way to bring your operations up-to-date.
08 | Say Goodbye to Ignoring your Numbers.
Yeah NO. As the leader of your company, you need to know your numbers. What’s your monthly overhead, what’s your profit margin, what’s your working capital, etc. Understanding your finances allows you to make informed decisions to help you grow your business and stay profitable. DO NOT IGNORE YOUR NUMBERS. They are the easiest metric to measure in your business.
The quote, “What gets measured gets managed,” comes to mind here, meaning that when you measure something, the probability of you acting on that information is a lot higher.
So, for example, let’s say you find out you’re losing money on a particular service because you ran the numbers and the numbers don’t lie. You would immediately either i) restructure that service, ii) increase the price of that service, or iii) stop offering that service. This lets you make a change immediately and stay on the road to profitability.
09 | Say Goodbye to Wasting Your Time on Things That Don’t Work.
20% of our efforts drive 80% of our results. Whether you’re spending time setting up an online shop-the-look page, getting generic business coaching from someone with limited experience, or undertaking marketing efforts that aren’t bringing in quality business, stop the insanity.
Be sure to spend your time on activities that make you and your team stronger and that grow your business.
Don’t get bogged down in discovery calls with people who can’t afford your services, saying yes to clients who aren’t a good fit, responding to client text messages on the weekend when you’re with your family, doing admin work when your hourly rate is $250, or bending your process because a client pushes back.
NOPE. Set your boundaries and be firm with them (remember what’s at stake!!) and once you start valuing your time, other people will too. This means you’ll say NO to a lot, but with more time on your plate, you can say YES to the things that matter and move the needle most.
10 | Say Goodbye to Being Afraid to Invest in Yourself/Your Company.
Once you know your numbers, you will have tangible information about investing in your company. This might mean hiring a new employee or subcontractor to expand your offerings and elevate your client experience, taking classes and seminars, investing in new software, creating a streamlined operating system for your business, or bringing in experts like brand designers, web designers, copywriters, PR consultants, HR consultants, and similar to take your business to the next level.
11 | Say Goodbye to Consuming Unnecessary Information.
Stop consuming every single drop of information you can find about interior design and instead practice in-time learning.
The amount of information out there can be overwhelming. To avoid the noise, be intentional with your learning. Make a list of areas you want (or need) to dig into and piece it out. Instead of listening to 20 podcasts about all things interior design, listen to 2 podcasts a week on a specific topic to address a specific problem you are experiencing or to develop a skill you are lacking. Then, take action on what you learned. Solve one problem at a time to ACTUALLY make progress in your business.
This also ties back to #9. STOP GIVING YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION TO THINGS YOU DO NOT NEED.
12 | Say Goodbye to Being Scared to Show Up As Your True Self.
Be true to yourself and your company mission and vision. You’ve set the vision of who you want to be and laid out the steps to get there, don’t change to fit someone else’s idea of who you should be. Potential clients have endless choices when it comes to hiring an interior designer: don’t let them compare to apples to apples. Show up and share your personality with them so YOU are the differentiator.
13 | Say Goodbye to Playing the Short Game.
James Clear says, “Patience is a competitive advantage. In a surprising number of fields, you can find success if you are simply willing to do the reasonable thing longer than most people.”
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the every day, here-and-now details of your business, from answering emails and phone calls to creating marketing posts and organizing your sample library; getting bogged down in the day-to-day blocks you from achieving longer-term goals.
Yes, these day-to-day tasks are important, but you should either standardize those processes and delegate them to an assistant OR set aside specific times each week to complete these admin tasks so you can allocate your time to working ON the business (the long game), like adding new revenue streams, getting media features, attracting more upscale clients, or expanding your network.
And remember: things take time. They may not work immediately, but if you look at the numbers, you can measure the results to know whether something is working or not.
Additional Resources:
Take the Quiz - find out what to focus on to step into the CEO role
Designed to Scale® Method - our signature program to help you streamline and elevate your entire interior design process
