Hey there, it's Rebecca. Before we dive in today's
episode, I have something exciting to share.
If you've been dreaming about starting your own interior
design business, but you're feeling stuck on what to do
first, how to set things up legally, or even how to find
your first clients, this is your sign.
Doors are now open for my Launch Your Business Boot Camp, an 8
week step by step program designed to help you build a
profitable design business from the ground up.
You'll learn everything from clarifying your brand and
setting up your systems, to getting your contracts and
finances in order so you can start your business with
confidence and direction. I'll be walking alongside you
the whole way, mentoring you through each step so you're
never left wondering what to do next.
And the best part? You'll be part of a community of
other designers doing it right alongside you.
So if you're ready to stop dreaming and finally launch your
design business the right way, go sign up now at our Ward
design.com. You'll also find the link in the
show notes. All right, let's get into
today's episode. 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.
Hello and welcome to episode 167 of Design Curious Podcast.
I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast, I'm giving you one last overview of Launch
Your Business Boot Camp. We've had several great series
going on in the podcast on my solo episodes and this last one
being from Dreaming to Designing.
And I kind of gave you a lot of information.
Some of you who are really go getters could probably just take
that and run with it, but today I'm going to talk about why you
actually need to sign up for Boot camp and all of the
benefits that come along with it.
I believe you don't have to be a super hero to start a business,
that anybody can do it. You just need to have the right
format, the right framework to work off of and that you can be
profitable and successful doing it.
Many designers are not profitable, but they're still in
business. And so we'll talk about that too
because I don't want you to be one of those.
We talked about a few statistics and really how to avoid becoming
a bad statistic. So we'll get into that in the
episode. And all the things that you need
to access will be in the show. Note links and stick around to
the end. I have an announcement if you
haven't heard yet, so you'll want to hear of this special
thing that I have for you that's free you can sign up for.
OK, so let's get into it. Have you ever struggled and
struggled with something and then finally asked for help on
how to do it? Maybe it was when you were in
school and you had problems with math and you didn't understand
how to do the algebra. You finally got a tutor and then
it all became clear. Well, that's kind of what it's
like starting the business. I think you can struggle and
struggle and not make any headway and ultimately fail if
you don't do things properly. You can easily, though, ask for
help to get you to the next level and not fall into the
statistics of businesses that fail.
According to the Chamber of Commerce, about 20% of new
businesses fail in their first year and many don't make it to
Year 5. It's 50% that don't make it to
Year 5. So that is actually a high
percentage of failure rate for entrepreneurs.
And you don't have to become a statistic because you have the
resources that I'm going to tell you about today to start your
business the right way. You are building a structure to
succeed by already listening to this episode.
And of course, what I'm talking about is launch your business
boot camp. The doors have just opened as of
today when you're listening to this, and you can go ahead and
sign up for it. So let me tell you why you might
want to do this if you aren't in business already as an interior
designer. Hopefully you are a successful
designer, but if you're not there yet, it's OK to ask for
help. I spent probably the first two
years of my career, two or three even getting to the point where
you will be in eight weeks starting in January.
So if you like to fast track things and learn from other
people's mistakes and have a clear path set before you that
you can easily follow. Now, I'm not saying that it's
going to be easy. Actually, it's going to take you
some time and some dedication and focus in these first few
months of the year, but then you are on track to really start
taking on clients and get going as an interior designer.
We've talked before a few episodes a couple of months back
about designing the life that you want.
You are a designer naturally, or else you wouldn't be getting
into this field. And you have the power to apply
your design skills to your life as well.
Dream about what it could be and then set up a plan to implement
it. So here is what we're working on
today with lunch of Business Boot Camp.
I thought we'd kind of go over some of the things that we're
doing in boot camp from week to week just to give you a clear
idea of what you might get. And besides the boot camp, you
also get a full year access membership to my Design Mentor,
which is already a great platform.
It has 12 learning modules, has access to me coaching all year
round and the students that are in there have really just taken
advantage of all the different ways that a mentor can help.
Whether it's looking at your contract, helping with a
proposal with a client, how to talk to a client, working on an
actual design feedback. Sometimes we're siloed and
working by ourselves and it's nice to have another designer
take a look at our design, especially one that's more
experienced. So all those things you can get
with my design mentor. But besides that, in Launch Your
Business Boot Camp, first of all, the first week we're going
to start with why? Why do you want to start the
business? It's very important foundation
to lay and we get into the nitty gritty of that really self
identification as a business because you are the brand of
your business. And so you need to know why
you're doing this so other people can know why you have
this business and be drawn to it and attract that client.
And then once you figure out who you are and what your business
is, we'll get into the branding. That's always the fun part,
right? I think interior designers like
to think they're graphic designers sometimes, but we can
definitely connect you with graphic designers.
But we kind of talk about what do you want your branding to
look like? What do you want the ethos, the
aesthetic to be for your company?
So we get into that in Week 2 and then Week 3 we go through
all the official documentations and a lot of it I talked about
in the last couple of episodes in the series of from dreaming
to designing, like all the different legal things, the
contracts and everything you kind of need to become official.
Well, I'll be there walking you through.
I'm sending you the links and helping you answer questions on
the form. Anything that you need to become
official as a business. And that's just in the first
month. So that's a lot to do.
So then week 4 of that month of January, we will give you a
catch up week so you can meet with me and say, oh, I'm having
trouble here or I fell behind here.
So can I get some help with this?
I know that's a lot to do your first month.
It's a really big step. A lot of people don't take that
quite so succinctly within one month.
And so I think you're going to be way ahead if you follow this
path in our boot camp. OK, so then when we get to
February, we are going to talk about running your business.
So now you've had it all set up. You have to run a project well,
or else you never have a client come back to you.
Or you might have a client be angry and yell at you.
You don't want that. You want to know how to run a
project. If you've never run a project,
even if you intuitively know how to run a project, you have to
have a system set up. So I'm handing you these systems
based off of what works in my own business and letting you
adopt them, adjust them, make it work for you, for the type of
design firm that you want to have.
So whether you're commercial or boutique, or maybe you just want
to work with small spaces, maybe just want to do, you know,
whatever your niche is, we can adjust the systems and they
should work the same every time regardless of the client.
And so we're going to help you set up your operations and start
running a project. And then when you're running a
project, you have to take in money and manage money.
So we're going to have all the money management parts in Week 6
and look at your contract and all your legal work and make
sure that is all set up properly and then you are pretty much
ready to launch. So week 7 we talk about
launching, working with social media, announcing to friends,
etcetera. We want you to launch big and
really capture that first project for March.
So that is in week 7. And then week 8 we have a bonus
to like kind of follow up if you fell behind anywhere.
If you need any additional help with me in Week 8, you are ready
to go and you are official and ready to launch as a new
designer. And it's so exciting.
I really get a lot of excitement helping people set up their
businesses because as I've talked about before, I guess I
always played at being an entrepreneur even when I was
little. And so now I love doing it in
real life and I want to help other people do as well who are
excited about that prospect. Now, not everyone's an
entrepreneur and that's OK. I was just reading in a book
called Your Next 5 Moves by Patrick Bett David and he also
talks about a concept of being an entrepreneur.
And that's where you take ownership within a company and
you act as though you are an entrepreneur, but you have the
safety of being within a company.
That's another path you can take as well.
So you might not want to take the risk of starting a business.
There is risk involved. You might want to just take risk
with inside of a company while you're still getting paid.
And so that's an Ave. we can discuss as well.
I think I'm going to add that book to my book club in my
design mentor. We do a new book each quarter
that you're welcome to read along and discuss with me.
And so I think that one's going to be coming up in my Design
Mentor. OK, so now you might be asking
or telling me as you're listening to this in the car or
wherever, that, hey, I can just do this myself.
Why don't you just give me a list of things to do and I will
implement it myself. Well, if you could and if you
want to, why haven't you done it already?
Sometimes we just need that start date and end date to make
us actually do something. We need the accountability and
we need to have someone hold our hand through the process, hence
the boot camp. And yes, maybe it is a little
more of an investment than you would hope to spend, but there
are some statistics that tell us.
One from ICF, which is the International Coaching
Federation says that the average return on coaching investment,
which would be like this boot camp or any business development
course or sign up that you go to, the average return on your
investment spend is roughly 7 times what the initial cost is
because you're saving time money by getting knowledge fast
tracked to you. So yeah, it's true to the same
that you got to spend money to make money, but it's important
where you are spending that money and oftentimes on a
coaching program like this, it will help you to get gains on
your business and have more profitability in the long run.
Another statistic I heard from SCORE, which is a organization
that helps small businesses, says that only 40% of small
businesses are actually profitable, which I definitely
think is true for interior designers.
I could get on my high horse talking about how designers will
do this because they love it whether they get paid or not.
And oftentimes they don't get paid.
And if they're getting paid, it's very small potatoes.
They can't even cover their cost.
They can't make a living off of it and so you want to have your
business set up correctly so it's profitable from the get go.
I cannot say enough about this and so I'm going to stop right
there. I have other episodes that talk
about it so you can go back and listen to this.
But it is so critical that you are a for profit business as an
interior designer. You're not a not-for-profit
unless you're like, you know, working for a not-for-profit
company, you know, helping other things.
That's totally different. You can still help people and
make money at the same time. There's nothing wrong with
making a living and being profitable.
So I want your business to start out the right way.
You want your business to start out the right way or you
wouldn't be listening to podcasts like this.
So I highly encourage you if you are thinking about it, go ahead
and sign up for Launch Your Business Boot Camp.
We'll have the link directly for you in the show notes.
There is going to be some pre work that you need to do before
we get started in January and I want you to have as much time as
possible to kind of get your head in the game before we get
started. I know the holidays are
approaching. It's one of the busiest months
of the year and so it's hard to think about January, but I love
reflecting in December about what has gone on this past year
and how I want to change it for 2026 going forward.
And the time to do that is this month.
It's not in January after the year has already started.
You want to be already set up to go by the time January hits,
right? So by making intentional time to
understand what it is you want to be different about next year,
then you will actually make changes in your life and be
designing the future that you want.
Peter Drucker said that whenever you see a successful business,
someone once made a courageous decision and you can make that
decision today also. Nelson Mandela said it's always
seems impossible until it's done.
I know starting a business is daunting, that's why I created
this program. But it's not impossible.
Many people have done it and failed, and you are going to do
it and succeed by having all the right tools in front of you.
So I would love to hear from you.
If you have any questions about all of this, please reach out to
me. You can e-mail me or message me
on Instagram and I would love to chat with you more to help you
get reassured that you are taking the right steps toward
the future that you love. I would love to have you in the
program, tell a friend about it who might be thinking about it,
and just make this something that you could do together.
Actually, I think that's a great idea.
If you had a friend, both of you thinking about starting a design
business and you could do it together and be on the same
steps together, how much more support would you have going
along as you get started? And of course, we're all about
community over competition. There are enough clients for
everybody. There's going to be enough
businesses can't have too many interior designers, right?
So you want to make the world a better place through design, and
so we can take all the designers we can get.
So yeah, think about it. Then sign up and make 2026 the
most intentional, beautiful and exciting year that you have had
to date. And if you aren't entirely
convinced already by listening to the episode, I do have a
webinar that you can register for.
It's free and it is on this Wednesday.
If you're listening to this in real time when the episode comes
out December 1st, then you can sign up to go to the webinar and
we'll talk about going from passion to purpose and some of
the five steps that you need to get your business started so you
can get some more information there.
If you're still not convinced about working with me to start
your business, just go ahead and sign up for this free webinar
and we'll have the link for the registration in the show notes.
And you'll also find it on social media on my Instagram.
I would love to have you join me on the webinar, join me in the
boot camp, join me in my design mentor and just listen along to
the podcast. There's a lot of great
information that I give you through these last 167 episodes.
So I'm so glad you're here. I'm really grateful for you, if
I haven't said that already, just for taking the time to
listen to this. And so I would love to see you
in there. Buy yourself this Christmas
present. You know the of boot camp
because I know that it's an investment, but it's not going
to be the last investment you make.
And you will see immediately about how much return you get
for this investment. And you are going to love being
a business owner. I absolutely love the life I've
designed. I love the flexibility I have.
I love the autonomy and I love having me be the face of my
brand and being out there and helping people and having them
be attracted to that. You're going to get all of those
things too when you launch your business.
That is all I have for you this week.
Next week we'll have another great episode and until then,
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, simply
head over to my website arworddesign.com or e-mail me at
podcast@arworddesign.com.