Interior Design Business Consultant
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Today, I would like to get you all thinking about how your interior design firm can become more luxury brand oriented. What does it mean to be a luxury brand and how does one achieve that status. First, lets touch on the reasons why this is desirable.
Having a luxury level brand does not necessarily mean that you must cater to the extremely wealthy or charge astronomically high fees. Although it gives you the ability to do so, if you so choose. What it does mean is that your firm will be recommended more, be more highly respected, and be in greater demand. These things are all conducive to being able to build in larger margins into your billing model and provide the ability to select more desirable projects. This is good!
Now, how does one go about developing a more luxurious brand?
Well, not so fast. There is one prerequisite, and it is a big one. You MUST have an organization that has a very well defined and well functioning system of operations. It doesn’t matter how brilliant a designer or business person you are. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, or your level of existing clientele. If your systems are not solid, you will fall short of your own expectations as well as your clients’. I have seen it in countless interior design firms and I can speak from personal experience as well. Despite your high expectations of yourself, your history of excellence and your expertise, you must iron out all the kinks in your system before you can expect to perform at a luxury brand level. NO EXCEPTIONS.
 If you need assistance with this. Call me. That’s what I do for a living. If you have got this covered, you are ready to move to the next level of the interior design hierarchy. Here are a few keys to consider. Ask yourself how well your firm does the following things. If there are a few that you find you are weaker in than others, you know where to focus some of your energy.
5 Keys to Creating a Luxury Brand Interior Design Firm:
1. Remember that your service and your interior design creations ARE the product. It is not just about the final result. They hire you for the experience.
2. Remember that you are selling a FEELING, not simply interior design. It is all about the feelings your clients attach to your interior design process and results. People do not invest in ‘things’. They invest in the feelings and seek out the things they believe will result in those feelings. This concept is a primal truth and it is one that the successful interior designer will master.
3. Handle everything you design or sell as a precious object. This is a very important area that many designers fall short in. Elegance and respect for the creation enhances its value. This is how you build perceived value, not only for what you are presenting or creating, but for your time and your firm as well.Go beyond the item or design itself and delve into the reasons, what makes it special, how it is unique, why it is to be valued. Knowledge about the history and stories about the products or design will be helpful here. Reference history, eras, compare to past design moguls.
People want to be sold. They want to have a story or a piece of information to hold on to that will make them feel like what they have is to be revered or respected in some way. It is the interior designer’s job to give them that story, that history, that point of reference. It is the interior designer’s duty and privilege to give MEANING to everything that is presented.
4. Wrap the price, proposal and presentation as if it were a gift. This is where beautiful and well conceived proposal packages come in to play. When the client receives a proposal or a substantial invoice for your service or products, it should look and feel like a gift. Make it special. Make it unique to your brand. Remind them why they write checks for large amounts of money to your firm. When giving a presentation, make it special and unique to your firm.
 5. Luxury is in the details. This point takes us to the beginning. Once you have mastered your systems, you are then able to devote time and energy into the details. This is the key differentiator between the regular and the luxury brand. This is why having a luxury firm is so special. One must master the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs, before one can ascend to the higher levels of service and performance that a luxury interior design firm demands. It is well earned and hard won. It is something to aspire to. It is a higher standard that drives us all to constantly strive for a greater level of excellence.
Now, I want you to do something. Consider all your points of contact with your clients. Phone calls, emails, meetings, written correspondence; they are all critical. Think about each of those points of contact and ask yourself what message your company is expressing with each. What experience are you providing your clients at these points of contact?
Now, imagine your most luxurious experience as a consumer. Was it a stay in an immaculate 5 star resort, a dining experience or first class air travel abroad? Figure out what that experience is for you and the feeling you had during that experience. Think about how special and well cared for you felt.
Now, think about your company’s contact with your clients. How does it compare? The more on par it is, the closer you are to being a luxury brand.
I am happy to share more on luxury in future blogs, or you are more than welcome to give me a call to discuss your luxury brand development.
Until next time, tell me your how close your company is to being that luxury brand you envision. What are some of the challenges. Send a comment or ask a question. I look forward to hearing from you!
Be well!
Julia A. Molloy
President | Molloy Management Group, Inc.
Awareness of the spiritual center
“At the core of the impeccable leader is the integrity that is derived from a spiritual center. All that one does originates from this one principle. It can neither be taught, nor given, nor taken away. It can only be demonstrated by an authentic source. It is the brilliant spark of life, the invisible force at the center, that makes all things possible and manifests good things from the indiscernible ethos. Without it, nothing that follows, matters. With it, all else is achievable.” – J. Molloy
 The Principal Designer is most effective when they align with their spiritual center We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Many can lead without this knowledge, but for those who understand the underlying principles of the natural laws of this world, leadership is a natural result.
Those whom one comes into contact with will unconsciously be attracted to the power of the spirit. Tony Robbins calls it Personal Power. I call it the Spiritual Center: the true source of power. It is the awareness of the conduit from this world to the unseen forces of the universe. To it, all things are attracted. Mountains and oceans will conspire to move in alignment with it. The earth’s rhythms sync to its beat.
Draw on it for strength. Refer to it for direction. Meditate to strengthen your awareness and experience of it. To touch it, simply study and emulate nature, for she is the perfect teacher.
For the leader, there is nothing to be done. No method, technique or practical application. It simply is. It is your center. It is the seed and from it all things are derived.
If there is anything to be done it is this: Practice the awareness of divinity and love flowing from you through your business, your intention, your words and your actions, to all those your life touches. Imagine brilliant golden light emanating from you, moving with your motion and word, like waves and swirls flowing outward through the air. Imagine that the light and the distance these waves of energy extend, becoming greater with each day. Visualize the smallness of the earth in relation to its place in our galaxy. Then the expanse of the earth will feel small and the idea of your energy expanding to all corners of the world will be as simple as holding a marble in the warmth of your loving hand.
– J. Molloy
The year of ‘survival of the fittest’ for Interior Designers: Fourth Quarter
It is a time of assessment; taking into account the losses and the gains for the year and measuring where we might land by year’s end. I hope you can say you’ve leaned out a bit and cleared out the superfluous. Many of you have had to in order to sustain well. And that is the power of scarcity of at least one resource. It forces us to “do it better.”
This is indeed a time for preparation. We are almost to the double digits, my friends. 2010 is just around the corner, and while there is still an air of uncertainty, it is countered by a rumbling hope waiting to surge and powerful forces lifting us upward. Prepare, to expand in this freshly cleared landscape. Prepare to take flight when the wind comes. Cleanse, purge, refine, eliminate, align, configure and strategize. Those of you who don’t subscribe to scarcity will not root yourselves there, but will use the slower pace as an opportunity to prepare for your next wave of growth. Like a deep breath and the ocean tides, all things serve a purpose.
Action Items to consider for this last quarter:
1. Your identity. If there was ever a good time to freshen up your branding. Now would be that time.
2. Communications and messaging. Take a look at your company’s messages. Read through your bio, company description, list of services, marketing brochures, website and any online directory listings you may be participating in. Tighten up your message. Keep in mind your target audience, be authentic, keep it concise and focused and use your key phrases for your online properties. (If you have attended or purchased any of the DPI webinars on social media, you hopefully have a good idea of the power of effective key phrases. For more info go to http://www.dpi-master.com/socialnetworking2.html)
3. Team development and project throughput efficiency.
Make sure everyone is working to their strengths and your organizational structure is strong and sustainable. The system, if well conceived and implemented, will be the power behind your brand. The engine should purrrr.
4. Organization of your administrative arm. If procedures aren’t defined and written, if things get lost, if items are never followed up on and get forgotten, you’ve got to do some house cleaning. If you need help, find someone competent and reliable to get the job done. Bite the bullet if you need to and just get it done before things speed up again.
5. Clarity of your goals for next year. Assess. Be realistic. Be ambitious. Be decisive. Keep in mind that the root word of decision means ‘to cut away’. Reinvent yourself. Be knowledgably strategic. Push yourself. And finally, have some faith.
6. An effective, fun and motivating performance based incentive program for your team. Make sure you give them visual reports that let them know close they are to their goals. (think fundraiser thermometer.) You want your crew geared up and ready to rock.
7. Your direction. Fine tune your navigation tools. What are they? No, not your gut… well actually, yes, your intuition is key, but that’s only half the story. You don’t know, what you don’t know until you have clear feedback mechanisms in place to tell you your current position relative to where you are going. These two data points are critical for the CEO to be aware of.
I am amazed at the number of talented and inspiring Interior Designers I have worked with who could not get their accountant or office manager to tell them what they need to know in the way they need to know it. Your financials need to be categorized well, clear and visual. You need to know more than just what your numbers are! You need graphs, charts and intelligent spreadsheets that do the work for you. You should look at your monthly reports and they should tell you a clear, simple easy to understand story about where you are; your cash on hand, profit, where your team’s time is being spent, but also how they relate to how you were doing last year this time. Plot out your project schedules and track them visually? Your numbers should always be viewed in relation to your goal for that month. This is where the real power of discernment comes into play. This is when you begin to be in control of your direction and destiny. This is the role of the CEO. This is your role… This is your job!
How next year goes for you will certainly be decided by how well you prepare now. If you’ve ever caught a wave, you know that it doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to know where to look, spot the right swell. Position yourself strategically, get a sense for timing, and then paddle hard and fast, so that you are already in motion by the time the wave hits you.
Only then, will it carry you forward.
-Julia Molloy
What a tremendous last couple weeks it has been! I’ve just now sat down long enough to give you all an update. Seems like I’ve hardly been home since the beginning of September. I was recently invited to teach an all day CEU workshop for the faculty at the prestigious New York School of Interior Design. They were recently ranked in the top 7 for Interior Design schools and are well known for excellence throughout the U.S. and Europe. Their historic building, on-site art gallery and faculty were exceptional and I truly enjoyed the experience.
 The workshop was on that hot topic, Social Media and how it to applies it to the interior design industry. If you’ve attended one of David Shepherd’s DPI Webinars or been to one of my lectures or workshops, you would know I have, shall we say, a passionate viewpoint on the subject. I never really considered myself much of a windbag, and sometimes I wonder if I will have enough to say when I do these presentations. Well, I guess I’ve stopped worrying about that by now, because as it turns out… I have a lot to say!
That 5 hour workshop at NYSID might as well have been one hour because it flew by in an instant and I could have easily kept going! Social Media as it pertains to Interior Designers is simple in its essence, but there is a lot of nuance and technique involved. So many designers… I should really say, the overwhelming majority of the industry is NOT presenting themselves adequately online. It’s not a lack of style, professionalism or anything else. It is literally that the online medium is evolving extremely fast, reliable web designers are a rare find, and there is an absence of relevant information on executing an effective website, blog and social media campaign.
That is why we have launched the Online Presence Division of MMG. We address the need for Interior Design firms to present themselves impeccably online, across all of their online properties. I am so excited about this new offering, I can hardly contain myself… and why should I! We’ve come up with something that really will set the bar for the industry. Exciting stuff.
So, between flying out to NY, speaking at NYSID and taking a couple extra days while there to work on-site with one of my most fabulous clients, launching the Online Presence Division and spending a few days in Las Vegas at the Designing for Profit conference, (I’ll tell you more about that next time) I’ve hardly had a moment to breathe! And that’s all aside trying to keep up with my 11 month old who just took his first steps this last week! Just wait till he starts walking. Then I’ll really never sit down again!
Such an amazing time and I am truly blessed. I hope you all take advantage of the Online Presence Programs we’ve developed for you. Many of you do indeed need an online image upgrade, and I can help you in a way that no one else can, so call me. Also, I am going to be doing more training sessions on how to blog appropriately to attract new business and much more. Feel free to call my office to get a schedule of the training sessions. I’ll keep you all posted!
- J. Molloy
As I mentioned in part 1 – Inefficient / unhealthy working environments increase turn-over, decrease ability to attract the best team members and clients, lowers morale, lowers productivity, lowers company’s output capacity, lowers quality of Client / Company interaction and lowers overall project quality. It is a vicious cycle and a disease that kills countless companies every year. It silently sucks the lifeblood out of the firm until it can no longer compete.
You will see inefficiency taking its toll in many ways, including higher turn-over rate and lower gross income and higher operating costs. All of these translate to less net income for you and your firm.
It also takes its toll on people. Employees exposed to same-context interruptions, over short periods of time, actually show to increase accuracy and productivity, while increasing stress. However, over extended periods of time as a daily working condition, it is shown that the following factors in the questionnaire, contribute to significantly increased stress levels, perceived job difficulty, perceived higher workload, a significant decrease in job satisfaction, higher levels of frustration and significantly higher turn-over rates. It is also shown that over extended periods of time productivity decreases and error rate increases. Politeness is even shown to decrease over time!
It’s not your fault really. No one ever taught you this in design school. You just need some systems and tools in place…(and someone with a with a whip keeping you in line.) That…would be me.
The bottom line is; it takes a lot of money to be inefficient. Find out how much money you invested in it over the last year?
Ask yourself these questions. Ask key members of your team to answer these questions. If you want to simply provide your times per week and average billing rate, we will complete the calculations for you.
Click Here to Download the MMG Efficiency Quantification Worksheet (PDF)
Make sure to include your contact information and we’ll send you your efficiency analysis.
Send in your worksheets to FAX: 888.830.4030.
- J. Molloy
Please Welcome Faith Sheridan
I would like to introduce our very first Guest Blogger here at MMG, Faith Sheridan. I am so excited to have her contribute to our blog. Besides being an absolutely lovely person and a good friend of mine, she is also a very accomplished interior designer. Her firm, Faith Sheridan Interior Design www.faithsheridan.com is based in Seattle. She is known for her signature style, ‘Elegant Restraint’.
Faith also doubles as a prolific blogger and a speaker on design and social networking. She’s been around long enough to know who’s who and she is a very well respected member of the interior design community. She also has more knowledge than any other designer I know about social media and its players.
Today she will be sharing with us a bit about Social Media.
Everyone, please welcome…drum roll please…. Faith Sheridan!
Growing your business
Are You Socially Connected? Why You Need a Social Media Presence
So exactly what is social marketing and why must designers quickly adopt a strategy? Social marketing is all about connecting with people on a human basis through conversations and messaging about shared interests. Unlike commercial marketing, social marketing’s primary focus is on the consumer and learning what people want and need instead of trying to persuade them to buy what we happen to be selling.
 We humans like to engage with others who share our interests, even when we haven’t yet met. Social marketing concepts include sharing of yourself through user-generated content, sharing your thoughts and building social currency through blogging, connecting to people you don’t know yet through messaging( Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), and providing feedback through comments.
Because of readily available programming on HGTV, many consumers are participants who attempt to produce their own design solutions (with varying degrees of success), and can now appreciate the professional training and practice necessary to accomplish great designs.
Designers who encourage and share with consumers and welcome their thoughts and comments quickly gain admirers (fans) and in turn the designer gains respect and trust. Respect and trust are crucial to successful design projects, both from repeating clients and new ones.
David Bassett, founder of Ava Living says there are three tenets of the new social marketing paradigm we all need to accept:
1. Retool
Like all companies that have successfully retooled for web 2.0, interior designers must do the same. Having a yellow page listing and email address is so basic; you might as well say you have an abacus and a pencil. As David notes, consumers don’t shop for your services at YOUR website; they go to where other consumers are talking about you. And if no one is talking about you, then for them you really don’t even exist.
2. Share Information
Designers maintain an encyclopedia of design knowledge in their brains. Sharing our knowledge earns us expert status and gets the design project. We need to let consumers get to know us and build connection.
3. Develop Fans
If you speak to designers they say their business is from referrals. While this represents an instant endorsement, it fails to recognize the larger audience waiting to get to know you beyond the smaller fan base. With social marketing you engage with people you don’t know, represent your knowledge and personality and build a fan base that extends your reach to new potential clients. Using social media, we share the knowledge, personality and attitude that are a window to our design skills and talent.
Thank you Faith.
We will be talking much more about social media, websites and the interior designers’ online presence in future blogs.
As a matter of fact, MMG will be letting the cat out of the bag in a few weeks. You will want to have your seat belt on for this one…
See you next time!
- J. Molloy
Transforming the Reactive State – Honor each others’ time
Often when an office is running in reactive mode, everything is last minute, late, or wrong. An office can get into the mindset of guilt or indebtedness. Knowing you’ve done wrong, you tend to acquiesce to the client to help make up for your errors, lack of answers or information or delays.
In this state, you will find that you also, have a disregard for people’s time. In an attempt to keep up or put out fires, you may interrupt your team constantly. If this is the case, STOP IT!
When your firm is in a reactive state, you spend your time putting out fires instead of getting work done!
This becomes a terrible cycle to get into. As a result, your team is less productive, you are frantic, there is a high stress energy in the office and ultimately, due to your delays and the hyper vigilant client… we’ve all had them… the client ends up running the project, not you! They call, you drop everything, the day has gone by, you have accomplished nothing, which then puts you into an even more reactive state!
First, understand something, Luv. The change must start with YOU. Focus on the manner in which you conduct yourself as the CEO. Calm assertive energy is what your aiming for. As the leader, you set the tone. Be the change you seek. If you walk around in a state of panic you will get more of the same. If you are an A.D.D. addict, noone else will focus either. If you assert a strong presence of focused productivity and a calm efficient approach to your projects, others will become more productive and focused.
Second, FIX YOUR SYSTEMS! Fixing your systems will allow you to get a handle on timing and quality of service. As you put these systems in place, model respect for people’s time and demonstrate respect for your own schedule as well. Clients and your team will ultimately respect you more, place a higher value on your service & product and hold your firm in higher esteem.
Simply put, fix your systems and wean yourself and others off of calling or interrupting constantly for instant gratification.
With new clients, establish your work style from the beginning. Always model respect for their time by having your phone meetings with them scheduled ahead of time by your office manager.
You demonstrate a respect for their time and expect it for yourself as well. Consciously or not, most clients, and employees will follow your lead. Be in control of your time and your schedule and others will do the same in working with you.
Set reasonable boundaries with overly demanding clients. Balance the line of flexibility and firm demonstration of respect. Thus you establish a non-frantic working method and are perceived as being more in control and worthy of more clout. (We’ll talk more about hyper-vigilant clients later.)
Within a few months, if done consistently, you will find that you, your team and your clients relate on a higher level and honor each others’ time. When you run a proactive firm, your life is easier, your service is impeccable and your clients are in awe of your brilliance. It’s a beautiful thing.
We will be working the steps toward creating a proactive vs. reactive interior design firm. Recommendation #2 on the topic will come next.
In the meantime, this is your homework:
Begin to honor your time and others’ time more consciously.
Pay attention.
How often do you interrupt others?
How often you you get interrupted?
Increase your awareness of the reactive state of your design firm.
How often are you reacting versus being the proactive leader sagaciously propelling everyone else forward?
Above all, know thy self. The first step in any transformation is awareness.
- J. Molloy
Excuse me, but your inefficiency is showing…
I can immediately gauge the health of a company by its turn-over, start and stop frequency and its task redirection frequency. What am I talking about? I’m talking about you, the CEO of your design firm. I’m talking about how you run your team and your projects and how much money you waste in productivity by fostering chaos… or not.
In Part 2 coming on August 25th, I will provide a portion of one of the tools I’ve created to evaluate efficiency so I can hone in on a design firm’s problem areas. The working method in an office is incredibly important and it will determine your success and the longevity of that success. Many designers are so brilliant, have harnessed the power of attraction or are so well connected they can get away with it for a while… you know who you are.
Yes, you are fabulous, but unfortunately, the laws of nature cannot be broken and your inefficient system catches up to you. Thus, you end up taking two steps backward sooner or later and it really throws you for a loop. Why? Economy, too much overhead, staff issues, lost project, projects on hold, too many $20,000 suits from the south of France, or was it Italy?…whatever. No matter what you tell yourself, the reality is, it all boils down to how YOU run your business and the first place to start is with your operating efficiency.
Inefficient / unhealthy working environments increase turn-over, decrease ability to attract the best team members and clients, lowers morale, lowers productivity, lowers company’s output capacity, lowers quality of Client / Company interaction and lowers overall project quality. It will ultimately lower your status as an interior designer in the eyes of your clients and peers. It is a vicious cycle and a disease that kills countless companies every year. It silently sucks the lifeblood out of the firm until it can no longer compete.
You will see inefficiency taking its toll in many ways, including higher turn-over rate and lower gross income and higher operating costs. All of these translate to less net income for you and your firm.
What is a brilliantly creative and dynamic creature such as yourself to do? Well, its simple. Get your act together! I can put it nicer than that, but I won’t. You need systems and documentation and you need to rein yourself in a bit. How? For starters, keep reading the MMG blog, send me questions, and acquiesce to the fact that your business is going to have to ‘grow-up’. It’s a new world out there and you can’t be sloppy anymore. Don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for and I’m really not that mean.
So, your first piece of homework, On August 10th, read part 2 of this blog posting and get the PDF of the Efficiency Worksheet to figure out how much money you are wasting every year. Then send it to me to analyze. I normally charge for this, so take advantage of being a MMG blog subscriber and receive it for free before I change my mind.
In the mean time, start paying attention to how many times people interrupt each other in your office. Ask everyone in your office to do the same and to keep track of how many times they notice it each day.
Keep being fabulous!
- J. Molloy
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