The fantastic thing about the 4 Make-or-Break qualities of a High Profit interior designer is this: You can learn what you lack. 😊!
So, keep sipping that coffee – as I spill the tea about the 4 qualities, I see in the high profit designers whose businesses I help transform into high profit. I see these same qualities in the successful, high profit colleagues in my own circle.
High Profit Successful Designers/Design Business Owners All Possess These:
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Use Excellent Business Systems & Practices:
Anything repeated in business should be systematized – from logistics and business practices to client and project management, to design and creative practices. (Yes! Design too!)
When designers come to me to increase their profits, this area is always one we ultimately identify as a problem, or at the very least, an area that benefits from strengthening in several profit driving areas.
Look at systems this way: Time is money (even if you don’t charge hourly).
The right systems reduce time needed, churn, stress, errors, and deliver excellent outcomes.
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Resilience:
Failing stinks. Not getting a job stings. A client speed bump, painful. A slow moment in your business, unnerving! But what EVERY super successful design entrepreneur knows is this- Resilience is the key to profit creation. Folding and walking away is the path to an empty bank account.
The good news: Resilience is a muscle that can be built. I know. I’ve built my own 😊 and, I build it in all of the designers I coach in my Academy – and what a transformation it is.
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Resourceful:
Not knowing something is never the problem. Shutting down your resourcefulness is. Who can you call? Who can you turn to? A colleague? An industry partner? A workroom? A design business coach? Your network is everything.
Profit Proud designers don’t operate in a vacuum. They reach out for help when they need it; knowing when to ask and who.
The good news; It’s simple. She who asks, learns, finds, solves. 😊
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Invest in Themselves to Uplevel Their Business Skills & Strategies
The competitors that you perceive are, “doing better than you are”, likely are – and – have invested in themselves/their businesses to get to where they are now.
This one quality, the willingness to treat your business LIKE a business (not a hobby) and invest in it, is the single thing that separates the women from the girls: the envious, struggling business from the Profit Rich interior design business.
There’s this blatant misconception that ours is a zero-investment business environment.
Just get business cards and go, right? Wrong-o my friend!
Sure, compared to a bakery that has way higher overhead (rent, a storefront, cash outlay for equipment, ingredients, displays, packaging, personnel etc.)– yes, ours is a very Low-Cost-to-Enter Industry.
BUT – and here’s the big BUT: It’s naive to think we’re a zero-cost endeavor.
This misconception reveals the difference between, “creatives trying to survive” and “business owners who are doing what they love (interior design) and paying themselves really well.”
YOU ARE A BUSINESS. Businesses invest in themselves. Hobbyists do not.
Yes, you do have some overhead costs even if your worldwide headquarters is in your spare bedroom. You do need to purchase business insurance, computer programs (with licensing fees), stationery, a website, a sample library sometimes at a cost, legal services, accounting services just to name a few.
Not super high cost, like a bricks-and-mortar business, but – WE ARE NOT A ZERO COST business either so open those gorgeous, smart eyes of yours.
Where struggling designers really miss the boat is an unwillingness to invest in themselves – which is usually not the most comfortable financially – but it’s done to level-up their skill strengths in areas like:
- Business strategic skills
- Marketing skills
- Sales skills
- Operational efficiencies
- Design efficiencies – to name a few.
- Mindset in support of Business Growth
I don’t say any of this because I coach: I coach because I know that Learnings Equal Earnings.
Nothing speeds revenue growth and business upleveling the way coaching does – learning from someone who cut the path before you helps shorten your learning curve and speeds your growth.
Trying to “cheap out” and do it on your own by following breadcrumb trails in blogs and Instagram Lives, will guarantee you stay in the same middling-to-poor-results you may be in.
I know coaching is a fiscal leap. It was for me when I was standing where you are. BUT – like me, like my colleagues who took the same risk – and like the designers I coach today…
NOTHING will shorthand and speed your profit growth and evolution – or business-peace-of-mind faster than coaching.
The great news?
There’s a coach with the right flavor for you out there.
Go find her. Get off the sidelines. Bet on yourself. Invest in yourself.
Do it – and 6 months, 12 months, 2 years+ – from now, long after your coaching has concluded, you’ll be worlds away from where you are today. Wishing and hoping will give way to having, doing, and being. 😊
And your naive competitor will still be back on the sidelines, wishing and wondering when her turn will come…
I’m cheering you on, my friend!
Xo! Donna
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