Hello and welcome to episode 52 of Design Curious Podcast.
Today on the episode I'm very pleased to be speaking with one
of my coaches, Toby Fairley, and we are going to get into all
about how she started her career in interior design and the path
that she took to get there. Before I talk a little bit more
about her, I want to remind you I have that great quiz that I
just developed for you to take and find out what type of
interior design you should be doing, whether it's residential
or commercial or hospitality or spatial experience.
So go over to the podcast episode and in the show notes
you'll find the link to that quiz.
You can also find the link to the quiz on my Instagram at our
award design under the bio links.
And while you're there, send me a direct message to let me know
that you're listening to the podcast and which episode is
your favorite. In the show notes, you'll also
find the links for those downloads that I have created
for you to help you get started in your career.
So now let me tell you a little bit more about Toby Fairley.
Toby Fairley is an innovation igniter, a thought architect and
one of the leading voices on reimagining what it means to run
a successful creative business in an equitable and sustainable
way. As the host of Design You
Podcast, Toby delivers a life altering inspiration for
creative entrepreneurs mixed with tactical business advice
and unfiltered aha moments on topics most business gurus won't
dare to cover. And I have been listening to her
podcast since episode one and love all the Episodes is great.
So if you want to binge one, you can go back and listen to all of
her great business advice and straightforward talk about
design and what's up and coming in the design business.
She's been featured in many publications as we talked about
in the episode and when Toby's not running her high end
residential interior design firm, leading her online
membership community for ambitious creative
professionals, design you or recording an episode for her top
rated podcast. You can find her working on her
upcoming book Thinking Deep Thoughts about How to Change the
World, Painting or Curled up with a few good books and
spending time with her family and two pups.
Toby lives in Arkansas with her attorney husband and teenage
daughter who's just gone off to college.
So let's hear from Toby. You're now listening to Design.
Curious, a place where you, Creative One, are here to learn
about what it really is like to be an interior designer.
And I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
If you're worried about how to succeed in a creative career, if
you're ready to learn your next steps to become an interior
designer, and if you want the satisfaction of doing something
you love every day you are in the right place.
Grab a coffee, a notebook, and let's dig into today's episode.
Hi, Toby. Thank you for coming on the
podcast today. It's such a pleasure to talk
with you. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm really excited to be here and so proud of your podcast.
It's awesome. Oh, thank you.
Yeah. And I would be remiss if I
didn't say that one of the reasons why I have this podcast
is because of my work with you. And it really prompted me to
start doing courses and a podcast and all the things.
And so you're part of the reason why we're here today.
Well, I'm so happy to be a part of that, and thank you for
trusting us to work with you, but.
I do always remind people when they, when they give me some
credit, that they're the ones who do all the hard work.
So, yes, I, I may have inspired you, but you, but you're the one
who pulled it off. So thank you.
Thank you. So let's go back to talk about
your career in interior design. And I know that you didn't come
to it traditionally like it wasn't your first career choice,
right? Yeah, so it actually ended up
really being my first career, but.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, so
originally when I got out of high school I was always a great
student and always creative. But also, I'm old enough being
in my early 50s that. When I was getting out of high
school, there wasn't as much encouragement to do what you
love. There was a lot more
encouragement to do what would be lucrative or what would be
stable or all of those things. So yeah, at one point I was
like, do I want to do pre Med? I love science, I love biology.
And I was like, yeah, no, I don't think I could do like the
blood and stuff all the time. Although I would be good at it
and I could pass it in school, I don't think I want that as a
career and so. I assumed I would do something
in business and my dad encouraged me, which he had also
done with my brother, to get an accounting degree.
And I mean, I understood that. Like I understood the reason
behind having that kind of business background and I'm
really glad I have it now, but. Four years of accounting degree
was really not very fun. And I'm not a quitter.
I always finish everything. So I finished it, but I was like
it about year three and I started understanding.
It was like when HGTV was kind of just really coming on the
scene and being from Arkansas, I hadn't had a lot of exposure to
interior designers. My parents had worked with a
person or two, but not in the way that we think of design now.
It's really an up and coming field.
And I was like, oh, I think that's my career.
And I remember back then there was number Internet to get
online and search. So I had to call the University
of Arkansas and ask them if they had a degree in this field.
And they had to mail me stuff by snail mail for me to learn about
the career. Wow.
But it was really fun and I was like, OK, I think that's for me.
And so I, with immediately after finishing my accounting degree
turned around and went right back to school and did four
years of design. The interesting thing about that
when you already have an A degree like accounting and I had
160 hours of. Of education.
But design degrees take four years because it's all
consecutive. I had all this extra time, so I
was like, what am I gonna do with that?
I'm gonna have an art minor or whatever.
And I had this great advisor who said no one ever comes through
here with a business degree already.
Why wouldn't you get a master's in business in your spare time?
Which I went ahead and did. So I remember not only did I
tell my parents, OK, I'm going back to school and I'd love it
if you would help me pay for it. Then I called like 3 months in
and said, oh, and now I'd love to also go to grad school.
And so now all my hours will be paying grad school hours because
I'll be considered a grad student.
And they're like, great, Like what?
What else can we pay for? But it turned out to be a
really, really great decision. And in hindsight, it looks like
I was so smart to have all of that.
It wasn't as forethought as it looks, but it really did pay off
to have the combination. And I ended up really in the
field that I was supposed to be in all.
Yeah, for sure. So when you talk about like your
parents want you to have a career that's financially stable
and everything like automatically interior design
gets kicked to the curb like. Right, right.
As do all the other artsy degrees, right?
Anybody who wants to be an artist or a creative, it's like,
well, that's not going to do it, right?
Right. Yeah, but thankfully I did have
a sense that although maybe the average salaries for art type
careers, artsy careers. Are not always enticing.
I have this kind of knowing that if you really do follow your
heart and what you're meant to do, and you really become really
great at what you do, that it doesn't matter what you do, you
can. You can definitely create a
financially stable, lucrative career.
So I was hanging on to that thought and that thread the
whole time going OK Maybe the starting salaries are horrible.
But I'm gonna do something different with this.
I'm gonna go to the next level with this.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Use that to spur you on and to elevate the field.
Really. And so that's.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful.
Yeah. I know a designer who actually
sometimes requires her employees to have a minor in business as
well as interior design because it's business is such a huge
part of, especially of the residential designers like.
Yeah, it's really just being an entrepreneur.
Like our skill set is design. But really the bulk of what we
do is we run a small business day in and day out.
And so it kind of doesn't matter what kind of small business it
is. Small business is hard,
entrepreneurship is hard, cash flow is hard, and all that stuff
really does matter, especially the people who tend to be more
creative and don't really like to think of that stuff.
You know, I have the benefit of literally being about.
About 5050. Left brain, right brain, even my
human design says so, which is kind of funny, but I've always
known that about myself. But a lot of creatives tend to
lean very into the creative brain and don't want to think
about any of that, you know, linear stuff or the structure or
the spreadsheets. And we don't really have a
choice if we're going to run our own business.
So, yeah. And so from what I know about
you is that you're kind of a super learner and so you're like
you want to do know about something, You'll go and take a
course or you'll get a degree or get certified about it.
Do you think that it is required though, for all people to kind
of get that level of education going into the field?
No, I mean, definitely it has benefited me to be that type of
person. Like you said, when I'm
interested in something I have an extreme drive and in a
ridiculous amount of focus. To be able to really go deep
into something, I like the confidence it gives me when I
put some level of formal education behind something that
I'm doing. Not everybody's wired that way.
There are plenty of people who are like, I'll figure it out
along the way. And I mean, I definitely have
that I'll figure it out thing. But I I like to hedge my bets
with hard knowledge and tangible facts and all of those things.
So it's not a requirement, but do I think it's made it?
Easier or giving me more confidence?
I would say yes, I think it's the confidence thing because I
think we tend to, as women, as creatives, as business owners,
as humans, second guess, so many things.
And when I can back up my thought process, my logic, my
sort of educated guesses with facts and numbers, it usually
gives me a lot of confidence to move forward in decisions where
I think a lot of people say, say stuck so.
It definitely. I have a bias towards taking
action towards making decisions quickly and easily, and I I
think that probably has to be part of it because I've got a
lot of knowledge to help me as I'm moving forward in big
decisions. Yeah.
Have confidence in taking action because you have all that data
behind you. Yeah, totally.
Facts of learning. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's good. So you got your degree and then
did you start working for someone else or did you start
your own business? Yeah, so that's an interesting
story. So when I finished my degrees
degrees after nine years, literally I could have been a
doctor. I just chose not to be one cuz I
was in school for so long so I got out of school in about 98
ish. And I went and interviewed in
Little Rock in Arkansas, where I live for a design position and
the starting salary was $17,000. And I was like, I mean, yeah,
it's 1998, but that was still extremely low.
Like, you're not going to be able to support yourself on that
amount of money at that time. And so I had done an internship
in Las Vegas that it was required to finish my degree in
design and hospitality design, which was really fun.
And then I had just elected to do another internship for
someone who was local, I mean, in a town kind of just outside
of Little Rock. And he had been a designer in
New York for years, and then, as he was getting older, had
retired back to Arkansas. But he still had offices in both
places. And so I elected to work for him
for the summer. And got the taste of really
dealing with some very highend clients and what that was like.
Thankfully, I did have those two experiences.
I don't recommend necessarily people not working for other
people like I did, but after interviewing and hearing those
starting salaries, I was kind of like, you know what?
I come from an entrepreneurial family.
My dad runs a family owned business and has my whole life.
I think I'm just gonna rip the Band-Aid off and jump in.
I was single at the time, even though it was like 28.
And I was like, if I can't afford to eat, I can always
drive over to my parents house and they'll at least feed me.
Uh, so I think I'm gonna wing it.
And I actually though ended up opening a little shop, a little
like retail space. It was fun.
I'm just got back in retail. We can talk about that in a
minute, and I haven't been in it for 14 years, but I do really
love that whole experience, as so many creatives do if being a
shop owner and a shopkeep, even though it's also.
Sometimes not something I recommend, but it was a great
way to start because for people that didn't know me, I had other
things to sell and I could build relationships.
And so I started with a little shop.
I started outside of Little Rock in a little community because I
couldn't afford the rent here. But I found myself working here
more often than not, which is our biggest city in in Arkansas
for friends, parents, people I knew in college, that kind of
thing. And it just kind of went from
there. So I did start off on my own
right out of the gate and I think my business was.
Incorporated in 1999. So I did those internships for a
few months and then I jumped right in.
So I learned, learned school of Hard Knocks, made all the
mistakes, did all the things, spent all the money, overspit
all the stuff. Yeah.
So I know that you do a lot of coaching now.
Did you seek out coaching them for yourself back then?
Was that something that you were?
Yeah, so, so I started my business in 99 and the first
business coach that I found. Was a person who I think still
actually is in the business, believe it or not, and it's
amazing that she is. Her name is Mary Nakstet, and
she had written a lot of books, including textbooks, and one of
my school textbooks was written by her.
And so it was about professional practices.
I had no idea that she ran these mastermind groups.
And I was studying for the NCIDQ exam and I was using her book to
study and I got to the very back of it and there was like this
Backpage that had a flyer for these like little mentorship
groups she had and I remember calling the number.
And again this was in 2004. So I had to wait till like
Monday because this was on a weekend.
I found that I didn't wait till till Monday.
There was number looking anything up on the Internet and
I called. And I remember calling my mom
because I had stayed home. We're big football fans and all
my family was at the Arkansas, Texas football game in Austin.
And I had stayed home to be responsible and study for my
NCIDQ. And I remember calling my mom
and she was at the game, so at least there were cell phones
then and she could barely hear me.
And I was like, I think I want to go to this thing in New York
and it's like $5000. And she was like, what?
And like, she was like, I can't hear you.
And I like, will you go with me? And so she ended up going with
me. She paid her own way.
They let you bring a companion for like, I don't remember like
another two or three thousand or something.
And so I think four or five years, I went once, 1/4 and
worked with Mary as my first business coach.
And it made a tremendous difference.
She was the first person to teach me how to charge flat
fees. And I listened to everything she
said. I did everything she said.
I remember coming home from some of those sessions thinking,
well, what have you got to lose? And my dad was even saying, this
is never going to work. You're going to charge people
how much to do this work. And I remember I pitched my
first fee to someone. It was $29,000 in 2004 and they
said yes. Immediately I was like, OK, this
lady really understands the concept of pricing per value,
not per dollar and like really helping elevate and create a
highend luxury brand and all the things.
So yeah, and but the other thing that I knew when I was going to
work with her is I had this understanding that some point in
my future, I also would be really good at consulting and
teaching because I was just really able to.
Understand, absorb, breakdown, kind of make things very
practical and understand implementation of the things she
was teaching me. And it goes hand in hand with
that part of me that it's a learner that has like all of
that focus. And I like to think about
building business almost as much as I like to think about
building a space or a room. So I kind of knew from then.
I was like sometime in the future I will be doing.
This kind of work too. Yeah, it was interesting.
Yeah, I had a similar kind of feeling too.
As I grow in my business and got coaching, I'm like, I really
love being coached, but I also love coaching other people.
People just started asking my advice and things like that and
it just was really just lighten up when someone asked for my
opinion on how to like help with their business and things like
that. So I had a similar kind of path
with that. And so then here we are.
I have a mentorship group, so that's a really fun path to
trial. So then you really grew your
business at some point. I don't remember what year it
was, but I know you were on like magazine covers and I just
really you had such an iconic style that it really stuck with
me. Like your name was in my head
because I knew your name and all the bright colors like went
together all the time. Yeah, I would say that was about
10 year path to really start showing up more in like a
national way. And I remember prior to that I
had looked at Suzanne Cassler. I had gone on one time to her
website and I was like, I wonder how long it took her from the
first time she started getting published like locally in
Atlanta to when she was on the covers of like national
magazines or had a product line or whatever.
And I remember it was about 10 years.
It was like from 98 to 08 or something almost exactly.
And I was thinking about that path.
I had been getting published locally and at home in Arkansas
and having covers and doing well, like really getting my
workout there and. Growing my business and got some
really, really lucrative projects and like $1,000,000
interiors projects and this was probably around about from 99.
This was about 08 or 09 which was interesting because it was
right around when the recession was was about to hit as well.
In 2009, I was named one of the traditional home new trads, and
that was the first time they had brought back their list.
And everything kind of just started falling into place that
same year, right about the same time in the spring.
I also was on the cover of House Beautiful and I had started
networking and I was at market at high point and I had met Neil
Turner, he was the assistant editor.
And then Steven Drucker was the editor at the time.
And it happened to be at this event.
And I went up and was talking to Newell and introduced myself to
Steven. And they said, I said I have a
project that I'd love for y'all to see.
And they said, well, we're actually looking.
For we have a hole in the March issue.
Any chance it would be appropriate for that?
I mean it was just like divine timing.
And I was like maybe it's blue and they're like, you're kidding
and like it. This is the blue issue.
And I was like okay and I sent it in and they were like, we
love it, can we shoot it? And it was.
The project was in Northwest Arkansas, about 3 hours away.
And they flew in this amazing photographer, Francesco Leneze,
who was like the top of his game.
They flew in Robert Ruffino, who I love, who just actually
retired from working with Hearst.
He's been a stylist for them for years.
And so he came in to style the pro.
I mean, like the top people. I mean, it was blowing my mind.
It just was like a fluke. And it all happened.
And it literally happened in like a weekend.
Like, I sent them the project at market and like, by the next
Monday they were like, when can we shoot?
Wow, that was just a dreamy situation.
And I had no idea it would be the cover.
And then they called. And they're like it's the cover
of the blue issues. It was just one of those things
that I don't know was meant to be or the timing was right or
whatever, but it really was some very elevated work for me.
It was a different level of work than I had done because I had
the client that was willing to be adventurous and that had the
funds to be and they had an art collection and they, they spent
a lot of money on the project. It's just kind of the stars
aligned. That moment was major game
changer. People think if you get national
publicity that you're suddenly going to have all these clients.
It's not really that. It's like you have a rush of
clients. People don't see the magazine
and pick up the phone and start hiring you, but it just puts you
in a different level of credibility, kind of aligns you
alongside some other peers that have had that accomplishment.
And it also just does something for your own confidence.
So that's probably when you started seeing or sometime after
that. So that was in 09 and the list
was for traditional home was in 09 And then in 2012 I had
another cover that's home with traditional home and then I
think I had one in 2014. So, and I've had a national
cover since probably 2014, which is funny now is almost 10 years
ago. We don't push magazines the way
we used to in our industry. We do a lot of stuff on, you
know, online and with Instagram. But I had a really good run
there in a like about 10 to 12 years into my career.
I mean almost 25 years now or 24.
That really took me to a different level.
The other thing that was happening right then is that was
right at the same time that design blogs and the whole
blogosphere was like happening. And I was an early adopter,
which I often am to things. I was an early adopter and I was
one of the only practicing interior designers writing a
design blog. There were a handful of us, but
most of the people blogging were design enthusiasts and not
interior designers. So Lauren Lease was writing.
I was writing. A few people were Aaron Gates a
handful of people. And I don't even know if Aaron
was a designer yet or if she was more of a Blogger.
Paloma Contreras was more of a Blogger first before she was a
designer. So Lauren and I, I think had
full blown design businesses, but when that was happening, it
was also so intriguing to magazines because they were
scared of it. They were like are these people
our competition, but at the same time they wanted to tap into
that knowledge and that tech and what was happening in the
growth. And so it also opened up a lot
of opportunities with magazines. They would be reading, like I
would publish. And in real time, you know, an
hour later, somebody from, like Southern Living would say, we
saw you're having a party. Is it something we can
photograph? What is it?
Can you see this pictures? Yeah.
So that was so cool because that had never happened before.
And now it's so saturated in social media.
But at that time, there just weren't that many of us doing
it. And so it started instantly
connecting us to magazines. So that was just again, sort of
a right place at the right time. I guess my lesson from that for
people is be an early adopter of things.
Don't wait to try things because there's so much opportunity.
You don't even know what could happen from you being willing to
to try things to put yourself out there to test new technology
to you know, be on the front end of a curve.
So as we don't know what's going to happen with things like a I
in the future, I would say stay very open and be willing to try
and and jump in on things because that's the very thing I
was doing and it was paying off in humongous ways.
Yeah, and you've made this point recently on your podcast too is
listening that to be an early adapter, to be an entrepreneur,
you have to be a risk taker as well, you know.
And so you have to put yourself out there.
You have to be vulnerable. So there are a lot of mindset
management that you have to do to totally make sure that you
can. Keep being vulnerable and like,
you know, have a little bit of a tougher skin if somebody didn't
like your photo, you know, right.
If they didn't like it. And also just like the risk is
like, it might not work, yes, somebody might not like it, but
you also are potentially wasting time.
You also are potentially wasting money.
Like you could create things that never gets picked up
anywhere or published anywhere. But what if it does, right?
And so that was my experience. Like, if I'm going to look and
say, well, I spent all this money of these projects that
nobody ever said yes to, but they did say yes to a handful
that took me to a whole other level.
And so every time that I would invest time, money, photography,
spending my own money, just style things to take to a next
level or mock up a party and like photograph it or do things
like that. Yeah, I was spending money and
time, but it was an investment in the potential success, not
the actual success. But what I found is if I was
willing to go ahead and put my own time and money into
something, more often than not people would say yes to it.
An example of that is I did this teeny little thing.
It's not even, I mean, I wouldn't have ever even really
called it a show house. It they kind of did.
But I would call it more like a parade of homes or a model home
or something in this tiny little community outside of Little
Rock. And it was based on the idea of
sustainability like at the very beginning of that movement.
So again probably around that same period 00809, I don't know
sometime a long time ago it was called the Energy House and I
had noticed that traditional home was doing this new thing on
social media that they were calling a tip clip and it was
just a little video way before short form video.
And so I was like, if I go shoot myself touring the home and
spend my own money and hire a videographer and make some
little clips and send them over to them.
And not only say here's a project I'm pitching about
sustainability and like energy efficiency, which is a new
Cuttingedge thing, but I also went ahead and spent my money to
photograph it and to make these videos.
And I knew magazines were short on budget.
Things were, it was a recession and so they accepted the whole
thing. I got a four page spread in
traditional home and they ran my videos all over the place.
That's a risk. They could have just said no
thank you or we'll do it ourselves or whatever.
And they literally took everything as is.
And we're like, Oh my gosh, yes, can we send this?
Can we run this? It saved them time.
It saved them money. It was an investment in 4 pages
in the national magazine that you can't buy that kind of press
because it wasn't an ad, it was a feature.
Right. So those are the kind of choices
and risk that I've taken along the way.
And sometimes I've gone into debt to take some of those.
I'm not recommending that, but I'm just saying like they are
actual risk. It wasn't that I just had a pot
of money sitting around, but I would make an educated decision
and think, OK, this one, I have some proof.
I see what they're doing. What if I meet them halfway or
what if I can I go there, I wonder what's going to happen.
And that has paid off time and time again for me to do things
like that, Yeah. Yeah.
So in that vein, let's talk a little bit about the retail side
of it. So you had a store before and
then now you've got one again. Can you tell us the differences
of what you did back then? And I know you closed it for a
reason for a certain amount of time.
So absolutely yes, all of that okay.
So I started in 99 with the the shop, which was great and a way
to get people in and get people to know me.
And then in 2009, so 10 years in, my design business was
thriving, the recession was happening.
I was starting my coaching business as a new revenue stream
during the recession and I started having design camps and
things. It's really how that started and
people were seeing that on the blog and we're like, oh, I want
to come learn from you. At that time, the design
business was carrying the retail business all the time.
So people would come in to shop, not really buy anything, wait
for it to go on sale like people did and still do sometimes in
retail stores these days. But I would get clients from it
and then I would sell, you know, $100,000 worth of product to
somebody like in their house. So realizing that the design
business was where the money was at that moment and the store was
a lot to take care of in a distraction.
I had a toddler. I think Ellison was like, see,
she was four and 09. I said it doesn't make sense
anymore to me, I'm going to close the shop.
I mean it was really kind of a trend in retail at that moment.
Bennie Williamson had her beautiful shop in New York,
Charlotte Moss had and they had. Both were closing their stores
because retail was getting really hard right then because
it was Amazon and a lot of the direct to consumer market was
new and retail was getting shut out because of the Internet.
So closed it, happy I closed it happy I had it all.
Wonderful said I would never do retail again.
Like you couldn't pay me enough to do that.
It's it's not profitable. Fast forward 14 years and things
are really different now. So they're Shopify.
There's Shopify that integrates directly with Instagram.
People can shop right from their phones.
There are companies who drop ship to you and you don't even
have to invest in the inventory necessarily.
So things are so different. And also that four year old
toddler from back then is now an 18 year old young woman going
into apparel merchandising whose dream is have a boutique.
And so this Mama and my Mama heart was like, OK, let's do it.
I was going to get back in anyway to sell my product lines
that I have with like Woodbridge and other things and do more of
the furniture side. Her dream is on the apparel side
and to be honest, I'm loving and having so much fun with the
apparel and the clothes and but it's so different because as
we're recording this, we've been open for six weeks or seven
weeks, I think 7 weeks. Our customers are about 40%
local or Arkansas and 60% everywhere else.
And every day we're shipping clothing or drop shipping lamps
or art or other things to mostly right now are kind of hot places
are Georgia, North Carolina and places all over New York State,
a couple of people in California but like we're shipping
especially all over the South. So I must have a pretty good
kind of audience on social media, like in that whole
Southern kind of region, because the number of people in Georgia
and North Carolina that have shopped with us is pretty fun
and interesting. So it's so fun to wake up now
every day and be like, oh, somebody bought a top or
somebody bought a pillow or somebody bought a candle and
then look and see. And more often than not, they're
not here. They're in another state.
So that is something that was not available in 2009 when I
closed the store. The Internet was not even that
helpful. You know, e-mail was about the
only way there was number social media.
You know, you'd have to try to e-mail or snail mail somebody an
invitation if you were gonna have an open house or a
Christmas event, right. And you know, social media has
made all of that difference. So it's kind of been interesting
to watch how the Internet and e-commerce and apps like Shopify
and Instagram have brought this business to a totally different
place. It doesn't mean that it's
without risk and it doesn't mean everybody should jump into it
necessarily, but a lot of the kinks are have been worked out
in that realm since I was in it, and it makes it easier and fun
in a lot of ways to be able to have a global audience.
And so for me that worked out great because over all of those
14 years I've been building an Instagram following on my main
Toby fairly site of 80,000 people or whatever.
I have people all over the globe that now can shop with me, get a
piece of our brand or what we're selling.
And so it's kind of fun to revisit it.
And I definitely eat my words to say I would never do this again
because I'm right back in the thick of it.
But it's a completely different animal than it was when I left
it 14 years ago. Yeah.
OK. So then, yeah.
So you would not necessarily discourage someone from going in
to have their shop, if that's some, right?
Yeah. So it's definitely different.
And back then, you know, I was carrying three or $400,000 worth
of inventory on 2000 square feet of showroom space with high rent
and all kinds of things. Now my shop's in a teeny little
town outside of Little Rock, in a building my parents own.
That cost me basically thing to run and it doesn't matter where
you're based anymore because you can literally ship everywhere
and most people buy online anyway.
So yeah, we do get some foot traffic, but most people are
just watching what we're putting on Instagram every day and
saying, I want that top, I want those pillows, I want that
candle kind of thing. Yeah.
So definitely if you keep your cost in check, we try to aim for
about 70 to 80% drop ship product on our site versus about
30% being things that we would actually inventory apparel,
clothing. You do have to purchase the
items. You can't mostly drop ship
those, but it's a completely different ball game than
carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory
and sitting and waiting for somebody to find you without
even having social media that we did not have back in 09 and 99
and all of those time, yeah. So yeah, definitely different if
you did it differently, if you did it in a way that is more
conservative with your spend, I would say.
And then honestly, the main thing is you just have to work
it. If you're not showing up on
social media every day, you're not going to sell anything.
The days that I get busy doing other things and we don't post,
we don't sell. The days that I show up multiple
times a day, like I put up a post this afternoon about some
football, like game day bags and within 15 minutes I had sold
$300 worth of something to what, a bag To a customer.
And so like if you're posting somebody's looking, if you're
working your social media. So that's such a beautiful thing
that we didn't have the last time in retail.
So that's a quick turnaround, very satisfying.
I know it's not fun. And then you tell it.
Yeah. So I think that a shop is
probably one of the main alternate revenue sources that
designers think about. Wanted to go beyond the Onetoone
Design services, but I know that you have explored a lot more
than that for revenue streams and you've coached people in
this as well. So I've been doing coaches on
the business side for a long time and fully intend to do way
more on the design side. So I know that like courses are
one that you definitely are proponent of and you have a
program about that now. Actually did some about how many
years ago was that? They're still selling, but
probably five or six years ago House Beautiful asked me to
partner with them and I did some design courses with them and
Creative Live, which is a very established company that sells
online education. Since then, I've mostly done
things in the realm of business coaching.
But I've taught many, many people and helped many people
create design courses, and we're going to be rolling out a lot
more of those ourselves soon. They work really well with the
shop, right? Teach people how to decorate and
then also say, and by the way, here's where you get that, like,
really beautiful colorful lamp that I just taught you how to
use. But what I've watched over the
years is even the people that had such a great idea, they
wouldn't get around to making their course for all kinds of
reasons. They're busy.
They don't know how. The tech is overwhelming.
Back in the fall of last year, I decided that I wanted to try
something and created what I call like a container, an
experience where someone would work with us or a group of
people would work with us for six months.
And at the end of that six months they would have a
finished course and we would meet twice a month and also give
them homework and give them like our spreadsheets and our tools
and our best practices and templates of how to create
modules and all the things. And so we just finished the
first ever group. It's called the online course
incubator. I think we had nine people go
through want to keep it at about 10:00 so that we can have hands
on work with everybody and we just finished it.
It is so fun and we had one of our members who has just been,
she had just such a great idea and she's kind of been known as
the Christmas Queen for years and does holiday decorating.
And so she launched her course. Her name's Alyssa Berry and as
of today it I think your course has been out.
This is, I think, the 10th day, 9th or 10th day.
And she sold about 40 of them. So she's made like about $20,000
in 10 days, which is blowing her mind.
Yeah. And not every course flies off
the shelf like that. But if you can tap into
something that there's a void in the market or that you really
have a level of expertise. And she has done a great job
over the years of working her following and having a very
loyal social media base as well. So that was my goal, was to take
somebody like her who kept saying I'm gonna get around to
it, I promise. I know I need to.
Yeah. And then create an atmosphere
where they would buckle down and have some deadlines that would
make them just rip the Band-Aid off and do it, even though it
felt hard and like a sidekick for a minute.
And she did it and she did the work and it worked and and it's
really paying off in a really short time.
So that's really fun. So when I launched it in at the
end of last year and we started in January, I was like, we're
going to give this a whirl. I don't know if I'll ever do
this again. It's not inexpensive.
It's $5000 to do this program with us.
But although like, look at her, she's like made four times that
back in 10 days. So not everybody's going to do
that, but it's possible to pay for itself.
It was so much fun and they loved it, that we're going to do
it again. So we're getting ready to launch
another round with 10 people Max.
It's going to start in October. I don't have the exact dates
right on me, but we're just opening up like the early sales
around the time probably your podcast comes out.
So August, September, we'll be selling, we'll get started in
October. We'll spend six months together
at the end of that six months, if you buckle down and do your
thing, you can have a finished course.
We'll help you like, learn to sell it and market it, all the
things. And yeah, it was fun and they
loved it and we loved it. And so, yeah, we're going to do
it again, so. Wonderful.
That's great. Just to help creatives find
another outlet too, like. So a lot of them I I'm sure are
designers or creative types. Yeah, So they weren't all
designers, definitely all creatives.
There were a couple of people working in like the kind of
health related space. A lot of them had like an
adjacent like your environment is a part of like their health
and Wellness or well-being. Or one of our people is a as a
Doctor Who is helping people with aging parents and there's a
whole like interiors kind of adjacent component to it.
But she also just helps you with that whole it's called
unsandwiched and like if you're the sandwich generation and
you're in between the raising kids and the aging parents.
And so like her course, I don't even think it's live quite yet
or it might be, it might be just going live.
So we had the diverse group of people.
We have somebody creating a course on how to create a
kitchen that helps you manage your weight, which is
interesting. So like, there's a really cool,
We have a couple of people in that like Airbnb and shortterm
rental space. So like, it's been a really fun
process to see. One of them is an architect
who's through the pandemic, let her hair go silver.
She's in Canada and like had a whole new kind of like, epiphany
of like who she is and stepped into kind of the next version of
her. So she's all about aging
beautifully. So she's in her 60s and she's an
architect and she's like this is, I'm just kind of like coming
into the next version of me. So I think it's called silver
style and it's about finding your style.
So like some really cool, unique things.
And then one of the things we're doing in addition to that is
we're in the process of creating a platform to sell other
people's courses besides our own.
So, OK, people that go through and finish a course are gonna
have the option and they're getting that ready for us right
now to submit for consideration. If we accept their course into
our program, like we'll be also helping to sell and do a revenue
share with them. Because I know the next step is,
OK, you got your course done. But then what if I don't really
have a big audience or what if I don't know how to market it.
And so it's going to be really fun to use our platform and our
followers and to say, hey, you can not only get Toby's course
on decorator, Toby's course on business, but you can get
Alyssa's course on holiday decorating or this person's
course on Airbnb's. And so like creating that hub
for online education in the design related space.
So you know, I'm always playing with ideas.
I'm always testing and trying things and I'm always looking to
see how I can help designers and creatives get over a hurdle or a
hump that's kind of in their way, that's keeping them from
being as profitable or having the kind of lifestyle or
business that they want. I knew that would be the next
hurdle. I was like we can put all these
people in business and they might have like a good out of
the chute, kind of like, you know, sale.
But then when everything kind of settles down and the new wears
off, what are they going to do to keep getting in front of new
eyes and really turning these courses into legit revenue
streams that hopefully make six figures or multiple 6 figures
for them? And so we want to play a role in
helping them get there too. So that's the next thing.
Yeah. So I'm always trying something.
Yeah, yeah, you are. That's so great.
I think that would be kind of fun too, to be on your side of
it. And seeing all of these amazing
ideas come through that like, you know you wouldn't have
thought of, that all these other people are bringing to you, and
that you kind of get to be the first to peek in on these ideas
and help to yeah. And some of the other people
that we've helped build courses through, like our design new
program, even before we had the online course incubator.
Our student and my good friend Linda Holt comes to mind who's
created the course on how to shoot Interiors with your iPhone
because she's a photographer. So we've talked to Linda about
partnering with us and selling her course on our platform once
it's live. And so, you know, so we have so
many. Amazing people that we get to
come into contact with all the time that you're right, that
have great ideas and expertise that I don't have, but I do have
the platform and I do have the reach.
So how fun to put those two things together and say like
what if we partner, what if we collaborate or what if we just
sell your thing through our sources.
And so that's going to be a fun next experiment to see what that
looks like. So yeah, great.
Wow, love that. OK, so there's lots of things.
We're going to keep tabs on you and put the link for everybody
to to be able to watch that course incubator come live and
be able to sign up for that and just see what other ideas and
things you have coming down the pipeline for all of us out here.
So what other things would you say before we go would you
recommend to a designer who's just thinking about getting into
the career? I think that we kind of started
out saying you really have to have that business background or
you have to think like an entrepreneur.
And I've had so many people over the years say to me, Toby, I
think you pivot, they call it pivot.
I call it kind of just grow or expand.
You pivot better than anybody I've seen.
And I think what they mean is I'm always trying something just
like we're talking about, you know, I moved into coaching in
addition to design. And then we're like, what if we
help people build courses or what if we try this e-commerce
thing and so? The advice I would give people
is it's so easy to think that you're just going to do this one
thing. I'm just going to be a designer.
It's going to make me all the money I need for the rest of my
life, and I don't really think business works that way anymore.
Yeah, the consumer can be your biggest competition doing their
own design work. And so we have to have different
angles to come at the revenue stream problem.
I call it like putting a lot of poles in the water, right?
We have one pole in the water. We can catch a fish at a time.
If we have 5 poles in the water, we can catch 5 fish at a time.
And so I would say to people either new in business, changing
careers or just coming out of school.
That be open to the idea that business is multifaceted.
Successful businesses are more multifaceted in 2023 and beyond,
and you have to be willing to do multiple things, which can feel
exhausting at times. But it also can be really fun
and adventurous. And the sooner you get your mind
around that whole idea of testing and experimenting and
playing kind of in your business with different ideas and revenue
streams. We can really tap into our
creativity and it can really make a huge difference in
potential financially for us to grow our business and I don't
think that was a way of thinking that most of us had, especially
people my age coming out of. College in the 90s, like you
watch people get a job and do that thing for 40 years and
right that's just not how businesses anymore.
You're gonna be lucky if the thing you're selling it stays
hot the way it is in the format it's in for three or four years.
But the consumers fickle and technology is.
Fast and always moving and you've got to be moving and
adapting to. So definitely encouraging people
to start thinking that way, to not be surprised how much you
have to be nimble and how many things you have to try to make
businesses work. Because I think otherwise.
That's the part nobody tells you and I think that's the part that
can be, can create a lot of burnout for people, it can be
very disheartening for people. It can feel extremely hard.
And I think more than anything, it's the not knowing or being
surprised by that that takes a toll on people.
But if you can know going in, I'm going to become a lot of
different versions of me throughout my design career.
And I'm going to have fun testing and trying and playing
and being willing to put things to bed and and invent new ideas
or even, like I just did, circle back 14 years later to an old
idea and like bring the new version of it to life.
I think that's just what how we have to think is as business
owners and creatives. Today and moving forward.
So that would probably be my biggest piece of advice.
It's served me very well to have that kind of a mindset, to be
willing to keep reinventing myself.
And it's also just way more fun, yeah.
The 50 something version of me that's reinvented is different
than the 40 something, than the 30 something.
And I know the 60 something will get to be different again too.
And it makes it fun. It keeps me happy, it keeps me
excited. And you got to stay excited in
your business if you want it to do well.
So yeah, really good to show that you can use your creativity
not only for your design projects, but also in your
business and in your life. So that's a great application
for that. Well, thank you so much Toby for
sharing your knowledge and insight with us today.
It was so fun. I'm often on the interviewer
side of the mic and I should do more of these because it's
actually, it is really fun and it reminds me of a lot of
amazing things that I have been able to accomplish, but also
that a lot of other people have helped me do over the years.
And I think that that's something that I should probably
spend more time doing because it makes you a little less burned
out about your business and a little more grateful when you're
reminding, remembering all of those fun things.
So thanks for taking me and back down to relaying and like
reminding myself how fun of a career it's been and.
How much potential there still is left to to do?
Exactly. Yeah.
Like a gratitude session. So, yeah, absolutely.
Wonderful. All right.
Well, thank you, Toby. We'll talk to you later.
Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that
conversation with Toby. It's always a pleasure to talk
with her. I have been on her podcast as
well as in some of the groups in her design new program that she
had, and it's just always great to talk with her.
She has such great insight, very direct in her advice, and it's
just as definitely a voice that I needed in my career path.
So go and check her out. There's links to her course
incubator in the show notes, as well as all the other things
that she has going on her website and her Instagram.
You can reach out to her. She's very active on there so
I'm sure she would love to hear from you.
And that's it for this week, so stay tuned.
I've got another great episode next week with just a solo one
with me and we're talking about a very relevant topic for most
interior designers. So stick around and find out
what that is. Until next time, stay creative.
Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please
leave a rating and a review. This helps me reach other
curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simly head over to my website
rwarddesign.com or e-mail me at podcast@rwarddesign.com.