Want Great Design Clients on Repeat? Stop People Pleasing!

If you only choose one thing to focus on in 2025 let it be this: stop ‘people pleasing’ your clients!

We’re used to the adage that the customer is always right, but I’m here to tell you that to build a sustainable, successful business means not being at the complete beck and call of your clients. After years of hearing stories from fellow designers and my own experience, I’ve decided on a few approaches that help us avoid bending over backward for clients (which typically does more harm than good anyway)!

Don’t run around in circles making yourself crazy for your clients! In this episode, I share some advice, tips, and responses that you can use when establishing healthy boundaries with your clients ensuring that you always come across like the professional you are because you deserve to be in control of your business and as the expert to call the shots.

This episode is packed with personal anecdotes, tangible advice, and encouragement to help designers kick off the new year with clarity and confidence. Don’t miss it

Episode Highlights

1. The Danger of People-Pleasing in Business
   Rebecca breaks down how people-pleasing behaviors, especially in the design industry, lead to burnout, eroded client trust, and ultimately dissatisfied clients. She shares relatable examples and insights into why setting boundaries is essential.
2. The Key to a Stellar Client Experience
   Rebecca emphasizes that the foundation of success in any service-based business is a structured and stellar client experience. She explains why sticking to your process—not bending to every client whim—is vital for maintaining professionalism and avoiding chaos.
3. Pre-Qualifying Clients for Long-Term Success
   Learn the value of pre-qualifying clients and how to attract your ideal projects. Rebecca shares a powerful exercise to identify where your best clients are coming from and use that insight to refine your marketing and discovery calls.
4. The Power of Following a Process
   Rebecca shares how having—and sticking to—a clear process builds trust, professionalism, and client satisfaction. She illustrates how deviating from your process leads to unnecessary complications and how holding firm to your approach results in smoother projects.
5. Practical Tips to Avoid Burnout in 2025
   From creating solid contracts to enforcing boundaries and refining client communication, Rebecca provides actionable steps to help designers regain control of their businesses while delivering top-tier service.

Episode Resources

• Episode 67 – How to deal with unhappy clients
• Episode 49 – An Interview with my clients: Why having a process made them choose me
• Grab my Free Discovery Call Script to get started on prequalifying your clients with confidence

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;35;25
Rebecca Hay
People pleasing in general means that you are doing actions, activities for the benefit and sole purpose of making someone else happy. Meaning that you’re often not considering your own needs. The needs of your business. Your company. Your team in favor of just keeping the client happy at all costs. All right. I’m Rebecca Haigh, and I’ve built a successful interior design business by trial and error, podcast, online courses, and so many frigging books.

00;00;35;28 – 00;01;06;13
Rebecca Hay
Over the last decade, I’ve grown from an insecure student to having false starts to careers. And now I’m finally in the place where I want to be. Throughout my journey. It’s been pretty obvious that I’m passionate about business and helping other entrepreneurs do the same. Each week, I’ll share tangible takeaways from my own experience and the experiences of other badass women to help you build your confidence and change your business.

00;01;06;16 – 00;01;37;28
Rebecca Hay
Hey hey hey, it’s Rebecca, and you’re listening to Resilient by Design. Welcome to a new year. It’s 2025. Can you freaking believe it? It is time to kick start. We’re diving back into projects that we’re running before the year ended. We’re diving into some new projects. We’re starting to look forward, decide who are our clients. You know, if you were inside designers room, then you’ll know we have a really great goal setting marketing plan setting call happening in January.

00;01;38;01 – 00;02;01;29
Rebecca Hay
Hopefully you’re excited for the year ahead. Today I want to talk about one focus. If you only picked one thing to focus on in all of 2025, here’s my recommendation. And before I share that recommendation, I just want to remind you that we are in a service based business and so you can do all the marketing. You can do all the pretty things to your website.

00;02;02;01 – 00;02;26;24
Rebecca Hay
You can pick all the pretty things, but if you don’t have a stellar client experience, you will not succeed. You will not get raving fan clients. You will not get the clients that you want to work with. Your clients won’t trust you. And so today I want to talk about the people pleasing habits that we have. So stop trying to people please your clients.

00;02;26;26 – 00;02;48;10
Rebecca Hay
Stop. Stop trying to people please your clients. Now you’ll notice I didn’t say please your clients. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people pleasing. And you guys know what I’m talking about. I’m just sipping my tea here. We’re on a new podcast set up, so if you guys aren’t on YouTube, hop over to YouTube and check it out and give me a thumbs up if you like it or whatever you do on YouTube.

00;02;48;11 – 00;03;09;01
Rebecca Hay
I’m just testing things out. I was tired of being in my dark office inside my studio here in Toronto. We have offices and I have a great office, which is great to work in and, you know, has a nice backdrop for zoom calls. But I was feeling fatigued because the light was always on my face. It was a dark background and I just wanted to be in more open space.

00;03;09;01 – 00;03;29;01
Rebecca Hay
So we’re playing around with things this year. So for YouTube, things might shift and look a little bit different as we move through the year. Don’t worry, everything on your podcast will be the same. All right. So stop trying to people please your clients because it will lead to burnout by you. And actually it leads to unhappy clients.

00;03;29;03 – 00;03;53;14
Rebecca Hay
This may sound counterintuitive because so many of us grew up hearing the client is always right. Right. And I’m not disagreeing with that sort of slogan or saying, but what I think we need to be careful with is the client is always right in the sense of we want to make them happy, right? We want to get them the results that they signed up for.

00;03;53;16 – 00;04;22;09
Rebecca Hay
But you need to find a balance between toting the line, holding firm, sticking to your process, and giving in to your client’s whims, desires, and asks and requests. And I can tell you from helping hundreds of designers now, over the last few years, and having gone through this myself, this can be a really difficult habit to break. And so what I’m hoping to do today is kind of walk through what I mean.

00;04;22;09 – 00;04;43;01
Rebecca Hay
Like, why does people pleasing your clients lead to burnout? And then I want to show you what you can do about it, because I don’t think it’s worth it just to go blame and shame and and make you feel bad about yourself. If this is you. Don’t sweat it. This was me, too. And it can change. So let’s first talk about why does it lead to burnout?

00;04;43;01 – 00;05;08;00
Rebecca Hay
Why does people pleasing clients lead to burnout? Well, people pleasing in general means that you are doing actions activities for the benefit and sole purpose of making someone else happy. Meaning that you’re often not considering your own needs or in this case, the needs of your business, your company, your team in favor of just keeping the client happy at all costs.

00;05;08;06 – 00;05;33;27
Rebecca Hay
Here’s the problem with that. Oh, so many, so many things. Where do I begin? First of all, it will erode your client’s trust in you. Let me explain. If you are at your client’s beck and call and completely respond to every ask that they have eventually they start to feel like they can take advantage of you. And I’m not saying that clients are bad.

00;05;34;03 – 00;05;52;12
Rebecca Hay
Clients are just humans. They’re inherently good. But you know, in any situation, if someone says, hey, do you mind? Can I just come to the showroom with you? I just, you know, it’s just something about fabric. And if you don’t really want to do that, but you do it anyways, then you go with them to the showroom. Fine.

00;05;52;14 – 00;06;12;10
Rebecca Hay
There’s a whole can of worms there. If that’s not something you do. And then the next time they might say, well, you know, that was really helpful. Going to the showroom. I really value that. Do you think we could go with you to the furniture store? Do you think we could go with you to this place? Can you come with us next week, when we’re going to such and such a place and it can become a little bit if you give an inch, they take a mile.

00;06;12;12 – 00;06;29;21
Rebecca Hay
And I don’t want this to sound negative, because what I want to do is to empower you, to show you that it actually doesn’t always work to your client’s benefit. And take this with a grain of salt. Okay. You know that my process, I do full service design and I don’t drag my clients around. This is just one example.

00;06;29;22 – 00;06;47;02
Rebecca Hay
If you are someone who and we have designers inside Power of Process who say, I love shopping with my clients, amazing. Then this example isn’t the best for you. But maybe if you go shopping with your clients and I don’t know, maybe you don’t share your discounts and they say, well, you know, think you could show your discount just this one time?

00;06;47;02 – 00;07;03;17
Rebecca Hay
Like it’s such a big ticket item I really want to have. It will make such a difference. Sure. No problem. What does that mean for the next time and then the next time? Or maybe you’re on vacation in Italy and there’s work happening at the house. You know, the at your project, but you’re on vacation. Your client knows your client said, don’t worry about it.

00;07;03;17 – 00;07;37;00
Rebecca Hay
I got this like nothing’s really happening with the contractor in the next couple of weeks. They’re just framing. And then you get a call in Italy from your client saying, panicking, saying they’re laying the tile, but something doesn’t look right. I don’t know if it’s the right grout or I don’t know if it’s the right time. And so all of a sudden, you potentially could be in a bad time with a client trying to help them, stressing over it, answering everything to then find out weeks later, they’re now pointing fingers at you and blaming you because, you know, when the tile was laid, it was laid wrong.

00;07;37;02 – 00;08;03;15
Rebecca Hay
Well, it’s like, listen, lady, I wasn’t there. I tried to help you. I went out of my way to help you while I was on vacation. No, thanks. No thanks for all the extra effort. I don’t know what any of these examples resonate with you. These are just some examples that I have seen. And so the idea is that when you are people pleasing your clients, you’re doing what you think in the moment is just going to make them happy without thinking of the bigger picture, without following the way that you want to do things.

00;08;03;15 – 00;08;28;24
Rebecca Hay
And if I’ve learned anything in ten years in business, it is this you need to dictate how the show will run when you show up for the client any time of day, in any way, in any form, be it text, phone call, email, FaceTime, zoom, whatever when you are just available to your client because you think it’s actually going to help, it shows them that you’re not in charge.

00;08;28;26 – 00;08;49;08
Rebecca Hay
And the idea of being a professional in a service based business is you need to have some parameters around how you work, because otherwise it will lead to burnout. And that’s when you are just done. You’re exhausted. You don’t have the energy. Sometimes you might even consider throwing in the towel thinking, is this industry even for me? Like I’m exhausted.

00;08;49;08 – 00;09;06;28
Rebecca Hay
I can’t keep my clients happy. And as a people pleaser at heart, I can tell you I take things pretty personally. And I don’t know about you, but if a client’s not happy with me, all I can think is, wow, where did I screw up? What did I do wrong? How can I make this better? I just want them to like me.

00;09;07;01 – 00;09;27;11
Rebecca Hay
I don’t really care if I want to lose money. I just want them to like me. I want them to be happy with me. I don’t like it when people are disappointed in me. And I’m sharing this because I know so many women can relate. It takes therapy to work through this. I’m still working through this myself, but I can tell you that it’s never worth it because it will lead to burnout.

00;09;27;17 – 00;09;57;25
Rebecca Hay
So let’s get back to a focus and intention for 2025 2025 is a new year. What can you do in your business to get ahead of this? To find a way to make your clients happy without people pleasing them to your own demise? And I want you to take some time to think about situations. And if you’re already running a design firm, chances are you’ve been in situations where you recognize that maybe you went the extra mile and it wasn’t appreciated.

00;09;57;27 – 00;10;19;06
Rebecca Hay
And again, these are good people. They just want what they want and they want to get it done. If you aren’t there to be the backbone to say, we’re going to get it done, here’s why I don’t take clients to showrooms. But what I will do is I’m going to bring some samples from all the different colorways we’ll meet at my studio, or I’ll bring them to your house and let’s look through it.

00;10;19;06 – 00;10;37;13
Rebecca Hay
Or you could make the one exception one time, but then the next time something comes up, you can say, no, I find that wants you. If you’re outside of your process and you make an exception to people, please a client, it’s really hard to claw your way back from there. And it takes a little bit of ChatGPT strength to write that email.

00;10;37;15 – 00;10;58;15
Rebecca Hay
So let’s try to avoid that. We. What do you do? What do you do when you feel like you’re in a situation and you just want to say yes to a client even though you don’t want to? And it’s not that you’re like, lazy and you don’t feel like helping your client because let’s face it, we all want to help our clients, but there’s only so many hours in the day.

00;10;58;17 – 00;11;23;01
Rebecca Hay
What I recommend you do is you stick to your process. You stick to your contract. If you don’t have a contract, this is your year to get one in place. You want to have a legal binding agreement, not because you’re going to go to court, because it makes you look more professional and inside that contract, it outlines how you work your order of operations.

00;11;23;03 – 00;11;46;00
Rebecca Hay
It outlines every step in your process. You can explain. Here’s how we do the sourcing. Here’s when we’re going to meet. It shows your clients that you’ve got their back and that you know what you’re doing. You look professional. So if you don’t have a contract yet, this might be your year to hire a lawyer. Go and get yourself a contract.

00;11;46;03 – 00;12;15;20
Rebecca Hay
Before we dive into what you can do differently this year besides, of course, getting a contract. I know that there are some of you that are in situations right now that are feeling tried, tested by a project, by a contractor, by clients. And I want to tell you, I’ve already done an episode about this. If you want to figure out how you can deal with an unhappy client, like maybe you’re like, Rebecca, these episodes are coming in a little too late.

00;12;15;22 – 00;12;38;09
Rebecca Hay
It’s too far gone. I just want the project to be over because I can’t do anything right by this client. Go back and listen to episode number 67, how to deal with unhappy clients. Episode 67, where I’m going to walk you through some strategies that you can use. We will include that in our show notes. So what can you do differently?

00;12;38;10 – 00;12;59;18
Rebecca Hay
Well, first of all, you can get a contract. Amazing. Second of all, make sure you’re working with the right clients. And the only way you can do that is if you are really properly pre-qualifying your clients. So perhaps, maybe in 2024, you didn’t get those raving fan clients, or you thought they were going to be amazing, and it turns out they were a little extra demanding.

00;12;59;18 – 00;13;24;23
Rebecca Hay
Or maybe if the project went great, but you just felt like a little use an abused or a little tired and maybe you burnt out. What I’m going to suggest you do is really hone in on your discovery call. You guys know that I have a free script. If you want to get it, just go to rebecca.com/discovery. You can download the script that I use with the checklist of questions that I ask every time I have a phone call with a potential client.

00;13;24;25 – 00;13;41;22
Rebecca Hay
It has been so impactful to help me really get to the bottom of, is this the right type of client for me? Do I want to work with them? Do they want to go shopping? Do they have an adequate budget? How did they find out about me? All of those questions and more are inside that script, so definitely go get that.

00;13;41;22 – 00;13;59;18
Rebecca Hay
You can download it for free. We’ll link that in the show notes as well. Rebecca hay.com/discovery. But you really do need to pre-qualify your clients. Look at where your clients are coming from. And a great exercise that I love to do as part of my end of year review. So if you missed the end of your review call that I did in Designers Room in December.

00;13;59;18 – 00;14;22;07
Rebecca Hay
If you remember, go back and listen or watch it because it’s saved. But if you haven’t done something like this before, there’s one activity that I recommend you do and that would be ask your client where they found you. Yes, ask the new client. And that’s one of the questions in my discovery call script. But ask your past clients and if you don’t know, go back and ask them.

00;14;22;07 – 00;14;42;13
Rebecca Hay
I used to be so nervous to ask clients how they heard of me, which is so silly. I don’t know why. I just was like so timid and so shy and afraid. But it’s so helpful because what I want you to do in this exercise list all the clients you had last year or maybe the past two years, depending on, you know, you want to capture a good number of clients.

00;14;42;13 – 00;14;59;06
Rebecca Hay
If you weren’t super busy in 2024 and you don’t have a ton of projects from that year, maybe go back a couple of years. Just list out the name of the project or the client, however you track your projects, and then next to the name of that project, I want you to write down where they came from. Was it a friend from high school referred them to you?

00;14;59;13 – 00;15;20;12
Rebecca Hay
Was it a magazine that you were featured in? Was it Instagram? Was it your mom’s friend? Like, whatever it is, put it down in that second column and then I want you to go back and circle your favorite clients of all time. Right? Just like circle or highlight, I love to use highlighters. I’m a big fan. If you guys have taken my programs, you know I love multicolored highlighters.

00;15;20;16 – 00;15;40;21
Rebecca Hay
Light me up. Highlight or circle the ones that were the best that you loved working with. Forget about the money for a second. Which were the ones that you loved working with. Made your job feel easy. That went smoothly. Circle them and then I want you to look at where they came from. So you’ve circled, let’s say you have ten projects and really only three of them lit you up.

00;15;40;23 – 00;15;57;15
Rebecca Hay
Where do those three come from? Who referred them? Chances are you are going to start to see a pattern of where your best clients are coming from, and that’s going to inform your marketing this year. And this episode is not about marketing, but I just wanted to give you that quick little exercise. It can be really mind blowing.

00;15;57;18 – 00;16;23;29
Rebecca Hay
When I did this exercise a few years ago, I looked back on my favorite projects. The ones where I actually had creative freedom, where I got to photograph it, I got in magazines. I’m like, where did these projects come from? And the clients were really trusting they didn’t have time to deal with it. They weren’t in it. And I realized they were all coming from my friend from high school, Karina, if you’re listening, which she’s not, she’s she’s an optometrist, but she referred them.

00;16;24;01 – 00;16;42;05
Rebecca Hay
And so I really shoot. I gotta, like, take this woman out for dinner and thank her. Right. Let’s hang out. Let’s go for lunch every once in a while. For you, it might be the golf swing country club, or it could be what? Whatever it is for you, pay attention to that because you want to start to pre-qualify your clients.

00;16;42;12 – 00;17;13;28
Rebecca Hay
You want to start getting in front of the right clients, because once you get the right client into your funnel, they’re less likely to push and you’re less likely to need to. People, please. Seriously, there are just some clients who try to push, push, push. And if you’ve had those clients before, you know what I’m talking about. So the next thing that you can do differently to try to not people please every client all the time is stick to your process.

00;17;14;00 – 00;17;33;27
Rebecca Hay
Many of you have taken power of process. You have a structure to how you run projects. I have my seven steps. It’s the Rebecca Highway. That’s how we do things. We do one, two, seven. But if I have a process and I don’t, I’m kind of loose about it, which I do see a lot of designers doing. They’re like, oh, well, I did.

00;17;34;00 – 00;17;52;08
Rebecca Hay
I created a process and I took your course. It was so great. But but yeah, I don’t really always use it. Well, guys, if you don’t use it, you may as well lose it because I’m telling you, if you don’t follow it, first of all, if you’ve presented it to a client and they’re like, oh, cool, she’s so organized.

00;17;52;08 – 00;18;14;20
Rebecca Hay
She has this process. She’s so professional, which there is an episode of this podcast where I interview my very own clients, and they talk about the reason that they chose me. And I’m going to have the team link that episode to in the show notes. So definitely go back and check the show notes if you’re interested in hearing from my clients mouths why they chose me and why my process was such a powerful reason.

00;18;14;23 – 00;18;30;18
Rebecca Hay
But basically they said that was one of the reasons. So if you are like me and you’re like, this is really great, I’m going to have a process. I’m going to be really structured. I’m going to show my clients that I can lead them through a project from start to finish, but then once you start working with them, you don’t follow it.

00;18;30;20 – 00;18;52;17
Rebecca Hay
You are eroding their trust. You are looking less professional. It looks like you’re winging it, like you’re flying by the seat of your pants. And there’s a time and a place for that. But not when you’re running a design project. And so what I think is important to take away from this is you need structure, you need a process, but you need to follow it because having it is not enough.

00;18;52;21 – 00;19;17;05
Rebecca Hay
You need to follow it. You need to ensure with every step of the way that when the client tries to push you past or outside of your process, or tries to have you make an exception. And I’ve said this here many times before, every time we veer outside of our process, like me and my design firm, or we’ve made an exception for a client, I regret it.

00;19;17;07 – 00;19;36;19
Rebecca Hay
Every single time. There isn’t one example, any one example of when I’ve decided to step outside and do things differently that it that I didn’t end up paying for it. It could be something as simple as well. Let me just tweak how we’re going to build. Yeah, you’re right. Maybe we’ll just we’ll build you 50% for a design fee upfront.

00;19;36;19 – 00;19;55;26
Rebecca Hay
And then the other 50% after the presentation. I have not done that, but it could be something like that. And then you’re chasing the client for money, or it could be something like, you know what, I’m going to break it into, multiple presentations. I’ve done this or I’m like, you know what? It’s a really big project. Let’s present all the hard materials first, and then months later, we’ll do the decorating.

00;19;55;28 – 00;20;22;20
Rebecca Hay
We’ll guess what? That backfired because half the decorating got pulled off the table because there was no money left. Then we were not able to connect some of the finishes and it was just like a whole shit show. So get your process and stick to it and tell your clients this is how we work. And then when they come to you and they ask for you to do something a little bit outside the box, or do something a little bit different, you have to say no.

00;20;22;22 – 00;20;46;01
Rebecca Hay
And you say it the polite, friendly way, and you explain why the right clients aren’t going to keep pushing. But if you can’t stand your ground, do. When they ask for you to do things differently, then eventually you’ll do it more and more. And I’ve seen this snowball from my own experience where towards the end you don’t even know how you got there and you regret making so many choices, but you can’t change it.

00;20;46;03 – 00;21;13;07
Rebecca Hay
And then those clients are probably not going to write a rave review about you. And this is what seems counterintuitive, and this is what I’ve learned in ten years of growing and design firm, is that you think you’re doing the right thing by just giving them everything at all costs. But ultimately, a client who keeps pushing is never going to be satisfied, and you are going to be resentful, and that will come across.

00;21;13;10 – 00;21;25;05
Rebecca Hay
Those are not the clients that are going to write the rave Google reviews, who are going to then refer you to their clients. You’re not going to leave that project feeling like, yes, we aced it. You’re going to leave feeling like, oh my God, I just want to get this over with, please. Oh my God, is it behind me?

00;21;25;09 – 00;21;43;29
Rebecca Hay
How far behind me is it? Like, I can’t wait until like June when I don’t even have to think about that project anymore? That’s burnout recipe. And you’re not actually making your clients happy. I’m happy. Client is someone who feels like you listen, you understand them, but their experience of working with you is that you are a professional and that you run the show.

00;21;44;01 – 00;22;03;14
Rebecca Hay
It’s like you’re hosting a dinner party as a designer. You’re hosting the dinner party. The guests, aka your client are coming to you. And when you go to someone’s house, you expect that they have a process, right? When you get to the door, somebody should greet you. They should probably open the door when you ring the doorbell, right?

00;22;03;21 – 00;22;21;22
Rebecca Hay
Maybe it’s locked. You can’t get them. Someone takes your coat. Maybe they offer you a drink. Maybe as the host, you determine what time dinner is going to be, what time the appetizers is there going to be dessert? Are you going to have a dance party afterwards? Whatever it is you need to control the parameters. You’ve decorated your space, right?

00;22;21;22 – 00;22;43;25
Rebecca Hay
You’re playing the music. Maybe you got childcare for the night, you’re hosting a party. And so when your guest comes to your house and says, oh, actually, I think I’m just going to order pizza because I don’t like your food. That’s never happened. But anyhow, this is just like a wild, crazy example. What don’t you be like? First of all, you’d want to say no, but you’re not going to say no.

00;22;43;28 – 00;23;02;08
Rebecca Hay
You want to be nice, but then don’t you start thinking like, why did I invite this person in the first place? How did I miss that? How did I miss the detail that they only pizza or whatever it might be? Well, you didn’t pre-qualify them. You don’t know that guest very well or you didn’t tell them, hey, does anyone have any dietary restrictions?

00;23;02;10 – 00;23;17;07
Rebecca Hay
Here’s what we’re going to be having. It’s a very simple comparison, but I hope it makes it clear to you you want to bring the right people into your party so that you can give them the best experience. So when they leave, they’re like, man, that was a good Friday night. Wow. Rebecca knows how to throw a good party.

00;23;17;10 – 00;23;40;18
Rebecca Hay
I wish I had thought of all those details and had everything organized so well. The same thing goes for running your design firm, and if you can hold those parameters to say, dinner’s at seven, I’m sorry if you showed up hungry, but this is the plan. There’s some appetizers here. Okay. Have some appetizers. Have a cocktail. Right. Go home, I don’t care.

00;23;40;25 – 00;24;01;04
Rebecca Hay
Dinner is a tavern because the food is not ready. Who could argue with that? Let me be like, don’t take it out of the oven. I like raw chicken. Like, come on. It is important that you control your environment so that you can actually give them a well-cooked chicken. I don’t know how I ended up here, guys, but I’m just going to keep going with it.

00;24;01;04 – 00;24;43;09
Rebecca Hay
Whoa. This is not part of my notes. If you can’t control the environment where you are the one coming up with the creative designs because let’s face it, they’ve hired you for your creative brain, your know, how, maybe your team, maybe your ability to project manage. But all those things exist because you know how to do it when you have the right parameters, when you have the right tools at your disposal, if someone comes in and destroy your cooking and they start talking to you because you’ve poorly planned the timing of your cooking of the meal and the guests are arriving, you haven’t finished cooking, then the meal might be late and you might feel

00;24;43;09 – 00;25;05;28
Rebecca Hay
like, oh, I’m being a better host by talking to them. But then they get grumpy because they’re hungry. It and o’clock in the food still not ready. This is like my husband as the chef. By the way, dinner is never before nine. This is not with children. I just want you to think of it that way, because you actually are going to give them a better experience if you are organized, and if you let them know this is how it’s going to go.

00;25;06;00 – 00;25;25;03
Rebecca Hay
Obviously you want their ideas, you want their input, and maybe you do like to shop with them, but do it on your terms. They will be happier. They will feel more taken care of. They will feel like you are in charge, and ultimately you will get to the end resolution or the end of your project more seamlessly and likely faster.

00;25;25;06 – 00;25;51;21
Rebecca Hay
Okay, woohoo! Tangent I hope this episode at least get you thinking about what can I do differently so that I don’t just spend my year running circles around clients trying to make them happy at all costs? That is not how you grow a thriving design business. That is not how you grow a thriving any business. Yes, customer service is everything you need an incredible customer experience.

00;25;51;23 – 00;26;29;00
Rebecca Hay
You need to get clients who are going to trust you so that you can put your great design choices out there, but ultimately, you need to be in control. And that is how everybody wins and everybody is happy. I hope that gives you a little a little boost of confidence, a little bit of excitement, of ideas, of what can you do a little bit differently this year to get those clients who are going to let you run the show, and what can you do a little bit differently inside your business to make sure that you are in charge and you have set ways of doing things so that you’re not constantly reinventing the wheel and

00;26;29;00 – 00;26;54;12
Rebecca Hay
doing things differently for every client, because that is a recipe for burnout, and the clients are never ultimately satisfied in the end. So this may have been a controversial episode. If it is, send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Please share this episode with a friend. If there someone you know who you think could benefit from hearing this, maybe you have a designer bestie who is so frustrated and gets struggles and is always complaining about their clients.

00;26;54;14 – 00;27;10;09
Rebecca Hay
Maybe this is for them. Maybe they need to hear this message. Share the podcast. It’s going to be a big year. It’s gonna be a great year. I’ve got a lot of exciting content coming down the pipeline in the podcast for you and on YouTube. So go watch us on YouTube, let me know how I’m doing, and I’ll see you guys soon.