Why Aren’t You Listening to These Interior Design Podcasts?
The BEST Interior Design Business Podcasts - Episode 121
If you’re an interior designer looking to improve their business…you’ve got to start listening to our curated list of interior design business podcasts.
Today’s interior design podcasts episodes come from hosts Terri Taylor, Michele Williams, LuAnn Nigara, Darla Powell, Melissa Galt, Laura Thornton, Dennis Scully, & Kate “The Socialite” Greunke.
Today’s podcast guests include Julie Murphy & Sean Anderson. So much good stuff to help you build a better interior design biz.
Interior Design Business - Terri Taylor - Big Price Tags - 26 min
Profit Is A Choice - Michele Williams - The Journey of Buying a Business with Julie Murphy - 1 hr 2 min
Window Treatments for Profit - LuAnn Nigara - Attracting the Luxury Client: Build Revenue and Profit Margin - 36 min
Designed By Wingnut Social - Darla Powell - Mini News : Why You Need an Instagram Strategy - 7 min
The Affluent Creative - Melissa Galt - The 20 Keys to Effective Client Communication - 42 min
The Business of Beautiful Spaces - Laura Thornton - Let's Talk Designing with Mistakes - 29 min
Business of Home Podcast - Dennis Scully - From janitor to buzzy designer: How Sean Anderson got his start - 41 min
The Kate Show - Kate “The Socialite” Greunke - ChatGPT: 3 Smart Ways to Use AI in Your Marketing - 20 min
Interior Design Business - Big Price Tags - 26 min
Have big price tags ever caused trouble for you in your design business?
In today’s episode, host Terri Taylor shares some of her stories about designers getting in trouble with big price tags, but probably not in the way you’re thinking right now.
Terri shares these stories to demonstrate how your money mindset can clash with your client’s money mindset and get messy. You don’t want to let your own money mindset get in the way of delivering a big price tag to your client. Saving money isn’t always the best option, and in this episode, you’ll see why.
Topics covered in this episode include:
How your values around money interfere with clients’ jobs
Why you shouldn’t be afraid to present a big price tag to your client
Understanding that your money stories aren’t the same as your clients’ money stories
The truth about becoming a high-end designer
You can check out this podcast episode here:
Profit Is A Choice - The Journey of Buying a Business with Julie Murphy - 1 hr 2 min
In today’s episode, host Michele Williams chats with Julie Murphy. Julie is the owner of Designer Draperies of Boston, a full service to the trade workroom. She began as a home-based business in 2006. In 2014 she purchased Designer Draperies of Boston and merged the 2 businesses. She has tripled the size of her team as well as sales since transfer of ownership. She attributes her growth and continued success on 3 things: Quality, Effective Communication and Exemplary Customer Service.
Today’s episode focuses on Julie’s journey to make a business acquisition – the highs and the lows.
Topics Mentioned:
Purchase type
Policies and Procedures
Employee retention
Support Teams
Key Thoughts:
I wished I had reached out to somebody, at some point, and waved my white flag, and said, I need help in figuring out how to deal with business growth. Julie Murphy (45:59)
I still talk to clients and people all the time that are using pen and paper and I get it or they're using Excel to run all of their financials. I get it. I did it too, for a couple of years, until I realized that as you said, I could not get reports. I could not see where I was, I couldn't understand the impact or the cash flow or any of those things, what was happening truly happening at a glance, even if I was keeping up with those details to hand off to my accountant in a year. They were not helping me manage the day-to-day of what I was doing. I mean, that's the whole reason that we've even built Metrique is to take all of that data and to be able to put it in one place to look at it because there is knowledge and power in looking at those things. Michele Williams (48:38)
I would say really look into what the business has for documented procedures. The other thing that I'm running into too, is what's in place for your staff, human resource-wise. As a small business, we don't have to have certain things. Even if you have three employees, I think it's important to make sure that you are doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. Julie Murphy (54:00)
The more you document, the more you keep up with your financials, and the more you show that you're able to be paid and then the beautiful thing is if you can show that growth, that continual growth year over year over year, even at 10%. Michele Williams (57:54)
You can check out this podcast episode here:
Window Treatments for Profit - Attracting the Luxury Client: Build Revenue and Profit Margin - 36 min
The highest profit margins are in the luxury level of the window treatment market, but how do you attract this market?
In today’s episode, host LuAnn Nigara is doing a recap of the IWCE talk she gave a couple of weeks ago on how to do this.
You can check out this podcast episode here:
Designed By Wingnut Social - Mini News : Why You Need an Instagram Strategy - 7 min
Host Darla Powell has produced a new informational webinar, “The 6 Keys to Success on Instagram.”
Today’s podcast focuses on why you need an Instagram strategy, the benefits of Instagram, and what you need to build your own Instagram strategy. If you want to watch the full one-hour webinar, you can go to their Instagram @wingnutsocial & check out their bio or just click on this link to head directly to the webinar sign-up form.
You can check out this podcast episode here:
The Affluent Creative - The 20 Keys to Effective Client Communication - 42 min
Let’s face it, as designers, we are in a business that is very complex, which can create a lot of frustration for our clients through everything from the long lead times to construction challenges. Your communication can not only land you the project, but it can also keep your client happy through that long dark tunnel of design.
As designers, we’ve got to remember that while we are used to the stress and frustration of the design process, our clients aren't. But, if you are following the most important keys to communication, you will keep things on track, moving forward, and alleviating your client’s frustration just by paying attention to them.
Today, host Melissa Galt is diving into her 20 keys to effective client communication.
In this episode, you will hear:
The importance of separating facts from feelings and fiction
Why avoiding defensiveness is crucial for successful communication
How to create win-win scenarios for yourself and your client
Real-life examples of how these principles have helped me and my clients achieve better outcomes in our projects
You can check out this podcast episode here:
The Business of Beautiful Spaces - Let's Talk Designing with Mistakes - 29 min
Starting a business is always a risky venture. As an entrepreneur, we invest time, money, and energy into building something we believe in. However, it is inevitable that we will make mistakes along the way. In the interior design industry, these mistakes can be costly, time-consuming, and detrimental to our reputation. But, if we can learn from these mistakes, we can turn them into valuable lessons that can help us improve and grow as business owners.
In today’s episode, host Laura Thornton discusses designing with mistakes.
You can check out this podcast episode here:
Business of Home Podcast - From janitor to buzzy designer: How Sean Anderson got his start - 41 min
Sean Anderson has come a long way to get to where he is: after growing up in a small town in Mississippi and dropping out of college, he spent a decade working as a bartender, electrician and janitor. After moving to Memphis and redesigning his partner’s home, people began to notice Anderson’s work—so did design magazines like Architectural Digest and Elle Decor, and today he’s one of the southeast’s buzziest young designers.
On this episode of the podcast, Anderson speaks with host Dennis Scully about the advantages of working with a remote staff, his experience with The Expert, and why, for young designers, comparing yourself to someone else is the worst thing you can do.
You can check out this podcast episode here:
The Kate Show - ChatGPT: 3 Smart Ways to Use AI in Your Marketing - 20 min
In today’s episode, host Kate Greunke dives into ChatGPT.
I never thought I’d be talking about robots and artificial intelligence on this podcast. But, here I go. If you’ve heard of ChatGPT-4 (for the sake of brevity, I’ll just call it ChatGPT going forward), you’ve likely also heard that some businesses are attempting to let this AI create all their marketing content. If you think that sounds amazing (and who wouldn’t?), you might also wonder if it’s too good to be true (a sign that you’re a smart human).
Because ChatGPT is still quite new, I decided to interview the bot itself on all things marketing. Primarily, I wanted to know whether it was smart to allow ChatGPT to do time-consuming marketing tasks, such as writing entire blog posts.
Secondarily, I was curious. As a techy person, I’ve largely considered technology to be my friend, but ChatGPT had me feeling a little apprehensive - because if a robot could create free marketing content in seconds, would that content even be effective? Was there a right and a wrong way to use AI in marketing?
ChatGPT was refreshingly transparent when answering my questions. By the end of the interview, I found myself saying niceties such as “please” and “thank you” and got weird satisfaction from watching it type answers to my questions at a scintillating rate. Here are the results of that interview. Enjoy!
You can check out this podcast episode here:
