Business Coach, Mastermind Group or Mentor: Which Is Best For Your Interior Design Business?

Mar 13

Almost every day, I speak with an interior designer who realizes that they need help to take their interior design business to the next level. But, what should that help look like?

Low-cost, DIY education sources like books, podcasts, YouTube videos & free Facebook interior designer support groups?
The support of a more experienced interior design mentor?
A paid Mastermind group of interior designers - led by an experienced & knowledgeable moderator?
A interior design business coach?
A series of task specific business coaches - marketing, operations, etc?
Formal business education - online courses or even in-class education?
Or, do you skip the education process altogether and opt to pay a contractor / hire an employee to perform those tasks you suck at?

As my Grandpa used to say, “nothing in life is free”. We pay with money, with time, with sweat, with aggravation, etc. But either way, we pay.

For this video, I sat down with interior design business coach Marc Müskens and discussed the pros & cons of learning new business skills from a business coach, a mastermind group or a business mentor. I hope it helps.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Another question that designers frequently bring up to me is that they're already maybe member of like a Facebook group for interior designers, or they know a designer who's been doing it for years and years and they're kind of serving as a mentor.

How would a coach differ from say a mastermind group or a design mentor?
What do you do differently than maybe those kind of ways that a designer could try to get help?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Good question. What I do see in these times, and I think it literally has to do with the times and the generations, everybody knows that this world needs to go in another direction.

It's going wrong. It's about interior design for the outside world is about trends, about consuming, and nothing about has to do with meaning, sustainability, spirituality, well being, all these kinds of elements. And they are so important right now in all levels of society and in the world. And we do see that in every country, literally.

I'm so happy to see that always in the community that people are always caring about, hey, is this good for the planet? We all want to know where projects are coming from. Are they really good and beneficial to the world? So again, if you talk about this beyond level, you can reach people by talking about a lot of stuff which you want to really touch them. They need to feel it inside.

So if you're talking about this beyond level, the higher vision for where you would like to go with interior design, that's our opinion. That's what's created our success of the last few years.

Because, well, right now we are 200,000 plus 4000 or so thousand growing thousand people a week easily the last few weeks. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's really good. It's amazing. It's beyond everything expected. And they are all interior design professionals.

But most of the time we talk about this beyond stuff because there you can empower yourself. Well, if you tell people, I want to make a beautiful place, beautiful pictures are not enough these days. Definitely not. It's not enough. So you need to have another story right now. And it's all in the heart of those designers and creators. They all want more. They are so romantic, positive about the world. They try to make impact. You're not reaching that by achieving the next new cover. They all want to be on the cover of the new magazine, but it's another world.

FYI: You can check out my entire podcast interview with Marc here.