What To Look For In An Interior Design Business Coach - Q&A with Marc Müskens

Feb 19

If you have ever thought about hiring a business coach to help improve your interior design business…you’ve come to the right place.

As part of our series on interior design business coaches, I recently interviewed interior designer & interior design business coach Marc Müskens about his coaching business, what makes it different, what makes it special & all the other questions you need to know before contacting an interior design business coach.

Marc is the co-owner of the Institute of Interior Impact, a Netherlands-based interior design coaching business with a unique approach to helping interior designers level up their business.

If you’ve ever thought about hiring an interior design business coach, you’re going to love this interview.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Why should an interior design business owner hire a business coach?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, when I was in the design academy, they taught me a lot of skills, but definitely not the business side, because that's the first thing.

The first thing I was missing with starting my own business was the business skills.

How do I talk with people?
How do I get the deal?
How much do I charge?
How much time can it take?

So that was a really obvious one. The second one could probably be - why you think you know yourself as an interior designer, as a personality.

But it's like there is a kind of metaphor when you are, let's visualize a jar and you are inside the jar, but you cannot read the label on the bottle. And that's most of the time. That's the case with coaching. You think you are this or you are that, with your character, with your skills or your beliefs.

But somebody needs to read the label on the outside to show you who and what you really are and what you can achieve, where you're good at, where are you specialized to the best in. So that's the one.

And, well, really, to generalize it, every successful person in the world has a coach. I never met a successful person in the world without a coach. It's with sports, with athletics, with business side, personal coaching, whatever.

They all have one.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Do you have an ideal client avatar of:

Who you want to work with, and
Who you think would get the most benefit from you?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yes, we do have that. It's actually perfectly in line with my own life.

I know how it is to be in interior design, running a business, running an institute. So, actually having two businesses and having a family and I'm almost 40 and I do have two sons of six and eight. And you have to manage that as well. You have a private life, personal life and a business life. And most of the time we are so passionate about interior design and we forget about the family or all the attention goes to the business or we want to have all the attention to the family and the business is not running.

So in that case we have a lot of systems, tools, structures, blueprints, scripts that are ideally to make your business really efficient so you can save time and you can focus on what you love the most.

So when you have a few years of experience, minimum five. So you have a continuously stream of new clients. You have to have a stream of clients. Otherwise I'm not an attracting clients machine. That's not what I'm doing. Because you need a continuous stream and we can make that really efficient and we can leverage that big time when you have that.

So let's say next week you have a new request and I'm sure we can raise your value, we can raise the profits, you can raise your prices literally by adjusting your story, your value, your vision, your branding, all in that.

So that's ideally so you are around 40, maybe with a family, few years of experience and you want to level up. You need to level up because you want more in life because now you're hitting a kind of ceiling and you think what's next? And maybe you don't want to grow in terms of staff or team members. Maybe you want to add another designer or another staff member or a VA or whatever, that's fine.

But if you want a whole big office building with 60 or 40 people, I don't think you need to go to us. Maybe there are other coaches with big interior design pros.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: When I have spoken with designers and brought up the idea of coaching to them, I keep getting back their concerns. What will a coach actually do for me?

I've been running my business for five years. I'm not as successful as I'd like to be, but I'm really good at it.

What pitfalls, what things that I'm doing wrong? Can a good interior design coach help me with?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, a lot of times we hear I'm too busy. That's excuse number one. I'm too busy. Well, I come back to you when I have the time. And I was like, you're too busy. But too busy means maybe you can work more efficient, maybe you can get more out of existing clients. Maybe you need to change something in your business.

Because the next question is, are you happy with that or are you overworked? Are you underpaid? So that could be the case.

Another one is, I need more clients. And they tell me, first I need to do something with my new website. And they will invest thousands of dollars to a new website. Three k, whatever. They hire a marketing company to see how they can attract clients. But then I ask them, well, that's wonderful if you know what to tell them, your brand story, what it is that you promise to deliver as an interior designer, you knew how you are unique or special in some way, or what you are beyond interior design level.

That's what we love to talk about, the beyond part. That's the real deal.

Don't start with social media because a marketing company will just try to switch the right buttons on the Internet and trying to get clients. But when the client contacts you, you have no story to tell them. You don't know how to act on that, how to assess them, how to socialize with them, how to share your knowledge with them. Then you're going in the wrong direction. It's literally burning money.

So you have to start on the other side and have a close look to who you are as an interior designer, what it is, what you want to achieve. And that's a kind of zooming out on the person, on you as an interior designer. And then you can dive as deep inside as you want to go because there's a gift first you need to zoom out. So what they can get in terms of time, saving money, saving just average efforts, you can leverage what you're doing. That's what they can normally get to the code.

But besides that, we talk about fulfillment, happiness, meaning all the things that are hard to match. The other ones are, you can count the hours, I will say to you, you can count the money, your return on investment. But for the rest, it's a kind of emotional feeling thing that you can get more rest, more calmness.

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.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I've seen a few people who operate as design coaches who are interested in what AI is doing and now they're looking into using different AI image generating software and creating images for Instagram where that's completely made up.

And they're not saying this is something I did, but they're saying this is what I could do for you, which is blowing my mind because they didn't create anything other than the prompt into mid journey or whatever. Right?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: To come up with this image again. It can be a beautiful picture, beautiful scenery. They can show them what they are capable of.

If you teach me a good project, I'm like, oh, he or she is capable to do that. That's what I can see. But how? You are the director. They are their own client, so they don't show how their communication skills or how they translated ideas or feelings or emotions into that design. It's just like, hey, I'm the art director. I just create a beautiful picture. That's it. So it doesn't work for me. And then I want to know, why does it look like that? What's the intention behind it? What's the story behind it? Just why? I always want to know the why when I see a beautiful picture. I want to know why.

A lot of architects are creating images for other architects, and I do hate that because people need to live in it. They have other goals, other visions, maybe for their home. And I have so much people talking about experiences with interrogatory designers that just say, hey, you need to do this, otherwise I'm leaving. This is not good. The design is not good. If you're moving that door to that place or that area or no, we need to do it like that. This is beautiful. I get really angry when I hear that.

But I think it's fantastic to be the next new interior designer for them with a fresh new perspective on how interior design could be and the impact. Yeah, which blows my mind that people are worried that they're going to lose their job to some sentient AI image generator when it is that back and forth between the client and the designer and the why.

You need to be damn good with creating your own concepts and translate stories of people, demands of people, wishes, dreams from people, and that created to a concept. And then you need to be capable to communicate it with those kind of platforms or AI. But it's not the first phase you're doing, it's a kind of concept phase. And then you definitely need other skills to be a good designer.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I want to know how your experience as a designer impacts your ability as a coach and bringing in that kind of, that old adage of those who can do and those who can't teach. You've got feet in both camps, the design camp and the coaching camp. So I'm really curious to know how you think your experience as a designer, a current designer, makes you better at coaching.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, well, for sure, I think we're hitting the 500, maybe almost all kinds of levels start us to multimillionaires, and you meet all kinds of different people, really rational, emotional, intuitive, and you have to deal with all these emotions.

And now when you do well with your company, you have your own ideal client, and they always reach out to you. They see something on your website. And so this is for me.

So now most of the time, we have a kind of typical client that's always we have names for them, we have description of them. They're always attracted to us. That's great, because that's where you can get the max out of it. But so with coaching, you're coaching people with different personalities.

I'm the kind of extrovert guy, but I can coach a really introvert guy. And Sven, my companion, is more introvert. I know how to deal with that. But they will attract clients that are most of the time also rational or more introvert.

But you need to sell them.

And it's not a system like, hey, this is my first, next step, second step, third step. Would you like to buy it? No. You need to add as well the kind of emotional and experience level to everything you're doing, the beyond level to get the right deals, to make sure they will feel it and not just read it or hear it from you.

So all these clients over the years, and of course, all the coaches I got on events, personal coaching, whatever, group coaching, that's why I'm able to see what makes them tick. This individual interior designer.

Where do they want to go?
What is the impact they want to make?
What is their ultimate fulfillment at the end of a project?
What is it that they just do normally, naturally, very good. And then you add this other layer that is missing.
Sometimes it's systemizing with really emotional people. Sometimes this emotional level is beyond level with really practical people.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Say this was our first meeting, and I'm thinking about hiring you, and I've bought into what you're saying, but I really suck at the business side of running my business to the point where I really need somebody almost to come in and take over that side of the business.

But I don't have a partner who can do that of the business stuff, the contracts, the legal stuff, the marketing, the processes, for sure. Possibly employees or HR questions. How do you work with your clients on those kind of nitty gritty kind of detail stuff?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, we all start with the very first beginning when a client is reaching out to you. That's why? We work with experienced interior designers. They need to have a continuous stream of some clients over a year. If it's just five, that's okay. You know what I mean? If it's five good ones, wonderful.

But you need to know how to take on your clients when they reach out to you by phone or by contact page on your website, social media, whatever you need to know.

What's the first next step?
So we have a method for that.

I will not go in depth on that one, but that's where it all starts.

Then you are going more in depth with the conversation. Most designers are showing their skills. They would love to do that. I did it. Big mistakes from the very first years. Always showing my portfolio. See what, Luke? This is what I can do. Would you like to work with me? This is the price. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. So the very first steps are how to take on clients.

Then the next one. If you go more in depth in the conversation, light conversation, or just the next step, you want to go more in depth. So you need to talk. What's the real purpose of doing this? What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you stand for in life? What is it that the interior design needs to add to your life?

So the higher purpose, then people want to know, how do you do that? We talk about principles.

Principles can be a kind of signature. It's okay when you have a signature and every interior design looks almost the same. Wonderful. If you do have clients for that, and you love to do this every time you copy paste it, and you have a wonderful business model, there are enough, plenty examples of successful people in the world with a signature. I'm getting bored too easily, but that's another story. But you need to have your own principles, why you're doing what you're doing, so you can explain to people how you do that. They want to know it. If you just say, well, just let's start and let's see where we're going. That's not enough.

When you want to have high end clients, they want to know a program, a plan, so a kind of system. If you do know what you stand for, how to take on clients and how you do that, you can develop systems, and, I mean, you can systemize things. You can automate things or maybe outsource if you want, and then we're coming to the extra level. When that is in order, you save yourself a lot of time, money, efforts, whatever. You can focus on what you love to do. And then there is your secret ingredient. The individual, superpower, x factor, whatever you like to call it, your potential and you can dive, then it's the time to dive into that and to maximize everything you are a superstar in.

And then you have a damn good system in your business. And so the word business is not sexy for most creatives, and money is not sexy. They know it's helpful, and they do want more money, but they don't like those words. It's the b word and the n word, we call it. Yeah, it's literally like that. And if we can show people how great it is, if you're not good in selling, and selling is another thing. If they talk about a great event or a great product, they're just using, and they are kind of ambassadors for it.

They tell me the story, like, oh, last year I was using this kind of tablet, and this is what it does. And this is what it does. I say, look what you're doing right now. You're selling me the product, and you are passionate about interior design. So don't call it selling. Just talk about your passion. But you need to talk about the good things, the best things of you. But get the story straight. And you're not selling. You're just talking, presenting, and they will buy you. You get bought. Business skills are. I hate the word business plan. It's boring. Let's design your business. Yeah, no, exactly. Design your business.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Speaking specifically to residential designers, the industry is overwhelmingly dominated by one, women and two either solo or very small teams. Commercial design is a whole other kind of animal. When you're working with residential designers, do those two factors, female small businesses, play a part in how you coach versus if you were to work with a commercial firm that's larger?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Well, my first impression was that it was a difference. And again, because you want to coach on, you want to walk the talk and talk to walk, practice what you pre.

So we don't have a lot of experience with commercial, but we do have hospitality experience. Residential is a specialty right now. So in first side, there was a difference.

But in fact, what we discovered is for every kind of client, you need a kind of system in place, so there's no difference. You need a kind of clear package or pricing system that it is really clear and logical for people to take the next step. And, yes, some people with bigger companies, they have to communicate it to another person. So you need to have good documents that they can communicate it to their chief or whatever, but in the end, it's all the same.

And people are driven by emotions. They want to buy this new future. They want to buy the thing of you when you are left as an interior designer, not what you're doing. We are just a tool. Sometimes they will literally think we are screwdriver just designed for us and created and that's it.

No, they want the end result. They want to picture, to visualize life after you've helped them. And that's with everything in life itself.

Otherwise, why would you hire somebody to consult you no matter what?

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I don't know how many other coaches that you've interacted with or even if you can speak to this honestly, but can you give me an idea of what you think differentiates a good or great interior design business coach and an average or really a bad one and no name?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. With coaching, it's always like, who can get me out of the comfort zone or who is doing what I want to achieve. When I'm looking for coaches, I want a next level coach. I want a person who's on the next level where I want to go and preferably maybe two levels higher, but definitely not on the same level and definitely not lower, although it's a nice person or he's cheaper or what else. No, I don't want that.

So that's my first selection and I want to have somebody who can get me out of the comfort zone. So that should be the second filter for somebody. If you want to grow, somebody needs to kick your ass in some way or it is in your mind or literally by taking action or implementing depends and then therefore you need to look for a person who you think can do that for you. Otherwise it's not working.

I had a really bad driving instructor. This lady was, well, she was a devil. Not the way of coaching I preferred. It's like, just tell me what to do and I will do it. But don't yell at me, don't scream at me. It was horrible. So I will never look, reach out for a person like that.

I want somebody with the same principles and the same beliefs. Okay, then it's working. You can go for coaches with just skills, but then need to be really clear that you're just going there for skills and that's it. You don't want to copy, to copy the personality or the character or it's not a role model for you, it's just the skills you are hungry for. Then do that.

And I think that if you were a designer looking for a specific tweet to your business, whether it's social media, improve that or someone specifically to help you bring on new hires. I could see that hiring somebody who is just very specific do this, this and this.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: But what a coach is doing is, like you said, giving that overall look, that above that 30,000 view, that outside the jar kind of thing that you mentioned is a different animal altogether than a very specific one task. I need help with this kind of thing.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, I think coaching has to do with everybody has a different set of limited beliefs and goals and dreams they want to achieve and a perspective on life. And that's why I say it's about skills or it's about mindset. And combined is perfect because if you can change the mindset of somebody and that's more the mentoring coaching side and then you can offer them the skills how to do that, that's much easier.

But if you just copy paste skills from somebody, that was mistakes we did before, like, hey, I want to create, well, let's call it an automated webinar or something. And we took a role model with automated webinars, but we didn't like the person and we copied all the skills. It was not working at all. Not working because I didn't feel it. It was not mine, it was not authentic. So then it's literally worth nothing. What you teach there. You have a kind of new perspective, which this is learning money. That's how we call it.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, you keep leading me into my next questions because my next question was going to be about the two types of coaches I see, whereas one is about the process or a specific way of doing the business and the other type of coach is more the mindset or to a lesser extent motivational. And I see that a lot of times where it's like two separate things. Like you can only do one or the other, where for me I'm like, you need both of those things together, right?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: You have coaching and you have mentors. There's always a kind of story about it.

What's the difference between a coach and a mentor?

I think a coach will just guide you on the steps you're taking so you can have a question like, hey, I need some guidance with this. And a coach can tell you, oh, maybe you can do this. This is a strategy.

And I think a mentor has been there already. He knows what he's doing and he can look at from a distance and then say, hey, those are the steps you need to do. Because maybe what you think you need to do is not what you need to do. And most of the time is that it's with problems. I'm stuck. People attend, I'm stuck. I need somebody who can help me. And actually they are frustrated about the how. That's most of the time that's the case. I don't know how. And they're frustrated. Yeah.

But are you focusing on the right problem? Is this really the problem or is there something else behind? And then you maybe are looking for social media coaching or how to deal on social media, but actually you're telling yourself, hey, I need more clients. So what is the real problem? Why you don't have more clients? Is it really social media?

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: It's those unknown unknowns, those things that you don't even have a clue about. I think a mentor is good to take you from a distance, to show you from a distance what really is going on, instead of giving you the right tool at the moment. Like, hey, I have a screw. Oh, do you need a screw? Right, here you are. This is how you do it. That's more kind of coaching. Right?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I do like that once in a while because it's really practical and instant success. Sometimes the small steps, you can be really joyful and celebrating those steps, but in the end it's all about the bigger picture, right. For a long lasting change and improvement, which is what we're looking for, I guess. So that's what I'm looking for.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So coming again from the point of view of a residential designer who's looking for a coach doesn't know much other than they've seen some posts on Instagram or possibly listened to a podcast.

There are going to be coaches who've got a bigger brand on social and I'll lump it all into one, that social kind of envelope. How much do you think that brand, that name recognition does play and should play into a designer choosing their coach?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Oh, well, I think it has to do what..we went to a lot of big events from coaches with thousands of people in a room, and you can work with coaches that they will guide you as a coach after the event. It depends on what you're looking for.

I think the big names can be more impersonal or whatever. It doesn't have to be like that. So it's really hard for me.

Like I said, there are a lot of same with interior designers. There are a lot of amazing interior designers. They can do a much better job than me, for sure. I know them. I know them already from my design academy from years ago, but they never made it because they were missing some skills.

So it can be the same with coaching they can be on every price level unknown, but they can take you somewhere where you want to go.

But again, make sure they are in a level you want to go. So if you're here, they need to be one step further. If there are a lot of steps further, well, maybe the price is higher, probably, or at least your perception of their price is much higher, but they can take you there and that's the fast lane.

Maybe more expensive, but in the end not expensive at all. Right. Return on investment. Yeah. If you can afford it, do it. Do it. It's much quicker than all those cheap unknown coaches. Take good ones that resonate with you.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. We talked briefly about technology. I'm curious what you think. Does a coach need to meet face to face with a designer in real life? Is there any advantage to a coach being local?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I do love personal, local contact in one on one level, that's what I prefer, but not always because a lot of times the screen is not there. I do a lot of online coaching with people from around the world in every time zone, but the screen is not there. After a few minutes it's already gone and it's literally like I can see everything in the face verbally. You can see the sweaty, getting nervous nonverbally. So you can coach really good. You have no distraction at all from the environment. That's my big difference.

Let's say if you have a two hour coaching life, it will take 3 hours when you are in a restaurant or another place for sure. So it depends on the character. Sven again loves to have a kind of helicopter view and everything and he meets the distance. If I want to get in somebody's mind or head, I prefer to meet them live sometimes. It's most of the time with my race adventure clients. I need to see them live always. We did in Covid, other practices only online. Never made it to the depth and the fulfillment I would like to achieve with coaching.

I have both good examples, so I don't know yet. What I prefer depends on you, I guess. Yeah.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And I would also assume that as your business grows, one, there's only the two of you. At a certain point you're going to run into that log jam where you can no longer take on new coaching clients. So you're going to have to train coaches to coach like you coach, which is going to change your business altogether, right?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Probably. They are success stories from our members that would like to. They are from the same religion. Then that's what you're looking for. They need to talk the walk and practice what they preach, what they've done. So that's the most logical step.

But, well, in terms of live events, we are busy with planning a live event somewhere in Europe on a beautiful city location with a small group of people. Because that's life, that's wonderful, that's fulfillment. That's how I want to design my business, and I prefer this life element. You can add more activities to it than just coaching. It's literally the whole lifestyle and mindset, communicating with other people, masterminding connection. It's up to you. Again, you can design it for yourself.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Other than obviously going to your website and starting to work with you immediately, how would you advise interior designers to go about starting to look for a coach? Right? Should they start googling? Should they go listen to podcasts? How should they start their search?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's a good one. Normally it just happens to me. In my experience, life is happening for you, so people are crossing your path and you have to respond, is this something for me right now or not the same with books or trainings that you are offered. Everything is in the well…that's what I really believe.

Well, I think, well, if you're a podcast fan and you're listening to a business coach with a cool podcast and you love the voice, you love the character of this person, if this is really authentic, I think I'm exactly the same with doing hosting a podcast than coaching. They can get my straight answers. They will hear it from me. I will not tell them a few weeks later what my real opinion. It's just like that. So if you love that, that could be one filter.

If you love articles from somebody, well, I don't know how they are verbally if you want to work with them. So I definitely want to speak with them. Right. Because some people can write wonderful, but then on screen or in life, they're like, is this the same person? Yeah.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And is it the same for you, too? Right? Because you're talking about you and your partner have different personalities. Maybe I get on a Zoom call with you and I'm like, oh, can't stand that Marc. Can't stand. Yeah. And, but, so maybe that also needs to be, you have to assume that you're going to have to actually put some time in and kind of interview the coach. Does that make sense?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Definitely, yes. You have to assess your coach. Don't assume that they have the right solution for you, because when the solution is not giving you in the right way, it doesn't work.

I can just tell you as an interior designer. Hey, your designer fee is so low. Double it tomorrow. Double it. Do it. And they're like, I don't want to double my prices. Doesn't work. And maybe after a year they have doubled the prices. But they were so scared, nervous, burnout, whatever. They need another approach to double your price. And I'm not telling that this is my approach. Definitely not. I want to build that up, that it's logical.

But yeah, I want to make those bold steps with them and that I make sure I give them the right recipe for them. So I will customize the recipe always.

And, well, the advantage of Sven and me is that we have different personalities. Sven is a helicopter. I'm going really deep. So we have both of them, and that's always. Well, you can add two business people in your company. So if you're missing this business point, you have two extra people. Or just take care about that and you can do whatever you love and learn from them.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, realistically, what kind of return on an investment for hiring a coach, should a designer be able to expect? And that could be like, say, within the first year, but then going forward, like in the next five years.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, return on investment. Well, I can guarantee, like I told you before, we can double or triple the designer fees. So that could be an easy one. You can count with that.

You can say, oh, this is the money I spent. This is what I got back. That's an easy one.

We can count the time that you were using for taking on new clients. We have examples of people that are spending more than 8 hours to a new prospect with all the activities around it to get the deal or not even that. And if you do that 30 times a year with new prospects, 8 hours, you're spending one month a year on only prospects. And if you have six deals out of it, well, count the hours and count the money. So this is an easy one.

But a lot of interior designers are not in the game for money. We're so passionate. We want to create beautiful environments, making people happy, making yourselves happy. So that's the strange thing about creatives. We do it actually some projects, we will do it for free.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: When I say return on investment, I'm not speaking specifically and solely financial. It is all of those other things. Because you're right. So many designers, whether they bill hourly or they bill for the entire job, the amount of hours they're putting in ends up bringing down their hourly wage to something ridiculously low.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. So I know for sure when I have an assignment of a boutique hotel and I will tell them, hey, you can do a boutique hotel, would you do it for free? I know a lot of hotel designers from around the world. They will do a boutique hotel for free because it's on the bucket list.

But it's so wrong to do that because you have your own expertise.

So return on investment. Talking about that, some things are not, you cannot measure it, but you know, you have to deal with the emotions of clients. They're fluttering. Crisscross. Three design process. And that can be really frustrating. You know, design version five was the best one for them and you already end up with 27.2. So this is a frustration.

If you know how to handle your clients in this direction, how to guide them and they want to be guided, promise me. They want to give you a lot of money to guide them in the right direction, short and quickly.

Then you have another issue. You have a return on investment on time and frustration and happiness level. If you have return on investment, like you have a really clear vision of who you are as an interior designer, what you want to achieve, back again to the principles and the purpose of your interior design.

If you can communicate it really well, you will feel so much more fulfilled with every new interior design client that if they don't match on that level, you can be happy to say no, say, hey, we're not a good match. You want to have just a beautiful environment. I want to solve everything in your home. So we're not a good match. They don't value your expertise and, well, all these kind of factors can be return on investment. But yeah, again, the easiest one is time and money. That's on top of it. You can measure it if you can have both. Right?

And the other one, if you can't wait to start your day and to work on a project because you have a client who's listening to you, who's paying you well, who's willing to implement all the ideas you've designed, and the creation projects creation realization phase works really short and smooth because client is just like, hey, I do trust you. Here's your money. And we are so happy with the end result. Well, how much worth is that? What's the word of that? Well, you could pay priceless.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. You look forward to starting your day every day. How much is that worth to you?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. For me, if I start my day and I'm not energetic and not passionate about what I'm doing, I immediately change what I'm doing. I'm like, hey, what's going on here? This is wrong. Life is not meant to view stupid stuff or working with people or meeting people that you don't like. For sure. Most designers are surprised with if you have the good skills and tools and you guide your clients in the right way. Every client can be an amazing client because you will reach the kind of depth of fulfillment you're looking for because you know how to guide them to there. Sure. And that's kind of magical.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, shifting gears a little bit, let's say we've just had our first meeting. I'm the designer. I'm looking for a new coach, and I'm like, okay, this is perfect. Marc sounds like exactly the person I want to work with.

What would the next step be?
What would the onboarding look like to become one of your clients?
What would the first month, the second month, what would that look like?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, we tell them we have a kind of formula system method to get what they want, and we refer to their wishes, and then we say, let's plan the first day where we are going to design together. We have co creation days, and for big projects, it means three days spread over four weeks. And within four weeks, the whole project design is ready up to the tape drawer and the kitchen drawer. Okay, four weeks, and we need only three days of them.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so let me get that straight then. So that's something completely different than I've ever heard is you're not talking about you're actually going to participate with one of their jobs.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: We are going to participate with the client. We take on the client in our team, because all the information is there, all the information, all the answers are in your client. Most of the time, designers do have a lack of inspiration, and they open magazines. They go on Pinterest, social media, whatever, or AI to get the right ideas.

But you need to know why you need to design something if you know the true why. Again, beyond their design, you know what to do, you know what to solve. So you just can go more in depth, in depth, in depth with your client. You can show them really easy what's going on, how a situation can work out. When you move a wall, when you're opening a door, when you color it, color something or change a material, you can show them on the spot, in their house, in their private, secure environment so they will open up freely instead of inviting them to your design office and in a landscape of, like, I don't know how to move here or do you want coffee? No, it's the other way around. They are in their home, so that's magical to work with them.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, well, that sounds completely different than just about everyone else I've talked to who's doing this.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, great. Yeah, this is the way. How we hated the traditional way of working and we saw it was not working at all. Why should we spend all those nine months, or for sure months with the clients and ending up with a design which is just. I think this is it. No, I don't want that. I want them to be full in tears after four weeks. Like, oh, this is.

Imagine that we didn't got any idea of what it would look like. And now three, four weeks later, we have the whole design complete. And it's like people are so, yeah, they're literally getting emotional, but it's really in a conscious and natural way. It's not that we are putting that or speeding up processes that takes too much time for people normally. It's just guiding them in the right way with the right tools, templates, telling them what's next.

Managing expectations turn into appreciations and then they love it. And. Well, imagine high end clients, they have lack of time, right? High end clients, they have a busy lifestyle, so they pay you a lot for saving time. They don't want to be busy for one year, and then they're in design. And no, if you can promise them in four weeks the design is ready and you can prove that with your earlier projects, they're in. If they have the right match. If they are the right match for you. Otherwise, it's not working. If they love the idea but not you as a designer, I go away.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so I've always looked at a coach as, and this comes from personal experience, whether it was sports or when in my own business, I have hired different coaches to do different things, is as much as nobody likes the brutal honesty, right? The pointing out of our shortcomings, what we're doing wrong, how important is that, that you would be honest to your client, not just tell them what they need to hear just to keep paying you?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, maybe it helps because people already know that I'm not an introvert person, but if you are an introvert, please tell them and ask them permission to say what you love to say. Just literally design the opportunity for you to say what you would like to say or put it or phrase it like a question, is it true that or in my perspective you're telling me this and I see that.

Can you explain me how that works? It's literally the coaching is a lot of involved. That's what my design business coaching showed me, that I did a lot of coaching with my residential clients.

You want to change their perspective and to find out, to explore what's the real truth. And it can be another truth. But you need to say, hey, this is what I see. This is what you see. Tell me how it doesn't add up for me. So ask us for permission.

That's a wonderful strategy that people know that you are telling them what's best for them and in the end they will write it down. If you ask them, what do you expect from us as an interior designer? They will ask, give me out of the box ideas, stretch me, come up with ideas that I didn't came up with all these things they telling you. So if you refer to that like, hey, you want it out of the box ideas, right? Just take a clear look at this design version. Is this secretly ticking all the boxes? We talked about this, this and this. Can you find something that is not in this design version? And they will say, hey, I never thought about this. And then you have the best score because you literally did something that they could not come up with. That's the value again.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: All right, well, that is actually all the questions I had for you, but I'm wondering if there's anything that I've missed that I haven't asked you that you think would be beneficial to a designer thinking about hiring a coach?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, I can share some of my biggest insights with the coaching, and that is most of the time. Interior designers, they value their expertise with time, with the fact of time. I'm working so much hours on this, so this is my hourly rate, so this is my price. So the biggest mind shift we're always creating is like, it's not about time, it's about value. Because if you know the value you need to create, time is not important.

They want you to create what they are looking for. And if it takes you 4 hours, well, that's okay. But imagine AI again, AI can do the job if you know how to switch the right buttons or how to communicate really clear with Chat GPT or whatever, just to save yourself time in the process. It's all about this communication.

So if you can do it in 1 hour, and you could do it excellently, 1 hour, you don't ask the client to pay you for 1 hour. It's like the value for the end result, right?

`So the format is, when you offer a program with the fixed price, hours are not important. It's about the value. And then they value you for sure on all kinds of different factors than time. They don't look at the time, you are saving them time. And that's what they love.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And I know a lot of designers, they want to move from that pricing structure of billing per hour to billing per job or per square foot or whatever. But obviously important to that is then having the amount of time that it's going to take you to do that job then, right?

If I'm going to bid $50,000 to do someone's living room, but I can get it done in the design part of it done in 4 hours versus 44 hours, my profit is radically different.

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, right. You have to start counting the hours because that's depending on your own expertise and your own tools and things you have in place to get it done. Right. But then nobody's telling you, hey, your hourly rate is $60, 100 and $350. Nobody's telling you that. It's your own story. You make up in your mind about the value. And most of the time that's the problem. That's the case of a lot of people. They don't value themselves enough.

But when you sketch the real situation, for example, people want to rebuild their home and they want the construction, and they are going to spend $400,000 or $500,000. What's 10% of that? Right? $50,000. That's for an interior designer. That could be a lot to ask for a design fee. But if you can save them all the risks, time, mistakes, investments, whatever, call all the benefits, they're like, $50,000 is not that bad.

But you need other stories in your mind. We're all creating our own stories. And that's the most beneficial.

From business coaching. Interior designers are looking to other interior designers. They're looking to the people who tell them, hey, if you Google, what's the price of a regular interior designer that will give them comfort? Like, oh, I'm just below average, I'm cheaper, so they will pick me. Well, I'm really expensive. Oh, this is not going to work. Why not?

I know interior designers who can deliver one sheet of a design and they get 50,000 for it. And another one is asking 150 euro. One dollars for this one sheet. It's thousands, thousands of times more expensive than. But it depends on what is it that they really get. It's not this sketch. It's not this drawing set or this 3d model.

It's beyond interior design. And if you can go to this beyond level, then your whole business is changing and your whole life, it will be way more successful and your regular lifestyle, personal and professionally will be way more fulfilling.

And you have space and energy and time to go to your next level. Whatever it is. You save yourself time. That's how we got into about funding an institute. We were like, we can take on more clients or we can move to another level.

That's really fulfilling and exciting for us to do that. And that's only by designing your business in such a way. You can do whatever you love to do. And if you want more free time, use this extra time for free time, holidays, family time, whatever. All right.

Alright…there’s our Q&A interview on interior design business coaching with Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact. I hope it helps. If you want to connect with Marc, check out his links below: