As interior designers, we all want consistent work, but what happens when that work is consistently lacking? In this episode, I share my own experience of being stuck inside a seemingly never-ending loop of budget clients, how it happened, and how I escaped.
“Budget clients” may be great when you start out, but unfortunately won’t allow you to level up budget-wise or design quality as you and your business grow. To be clear “budget clients” are not “bad clients”. These can be great people and appreciate what you do but may not have the means of hiring a luxury design firm that you may be trying to build and scale.
If you’re wondering how to get out of this “budget client” loop, it all starts with you. As an interior design business owner, you need to be sure you are aligned with your true, unique strengths so you can avoid getting stuck, burnt out, and uninspired. You also need to understand who you WANT to serve. We’re not talking about who you CURRENTLY serve, but the clientele you aspire to service with the business you want to build.
In the end, I leave you with a bit of homework so you can listen, learn, and identify the ways to prevent or escape the pitfalls and challenges that come with a budget client loop.
Episode Resources
Read the Full Transcript ⬇️
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;36;05
Rebecca Hay
Interior designers and decorators are unknowingly attracting budget driven clients because their messaging and their offerings and how they show up isn’t aligned with really what their true unique strengths are. And more specifically, that’s not aligned with your high value clients expectations. All right. I’m Rebecca Hay, and I’ve built a successful interior design business by trial and error, podcasts, online courses, and so many brick and box.
00;00;36;07 – 00;01;06;19
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;21 – 00;01;31;26
Rebecca Hay
Hey hey hey, it’s Rebecca and you are listening to Resilient by Design. Today, I want to talk about why you’re stuck with budget driven clients and some tips on how you can break free. This is something that I struggle with a lot early in my career. It’s no secret I’ve talked about it here. In fact, I used to refer to it as the bad client loop, which then I realized was not really fair or accurate because these were not bad people.
00;01;31;26 – 00;01;55;12
Rebecca Hay
They were great people. They just were two obsessed with not spending any money. And it was very challenging, and it made it hard for me to really do the type of design work that I wanted to do. And so if this is you, if you’ve had this experience, then you’re going to love this episode and maybe you didn’t even realize you’re in this budget client loop or budget client cycle.
00;01;55;28 – 00;02;34;20
Rebecca Hay
And so this might just give you a little bit of food for thought to consider if you are looking to make a change. Now, I will put one caveat ahead of this episode. It’s okay if you want to work with budget friendly clients. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s different strokes for different folks. But if you are a designer who is looking to work with more high end clientele, who have more money to spend, who want to invest in more expensive things and do more elaborate and out of the box designs that cost more money, then you will enjoy this episode.
00;02;34;23 – 00;03;01;20
Rebecca Hay
Do you feel like you’re always stuck with clients who haggle over budgets? Or maybe do you feel like they don’t value your expertise? Like truly? Do they really? I mean, they said they do, but it seems like from their actions that maybe they’re not. We’re going to dive into what happens and more importantly, how to break free. I have got to mention first I have a boot camp, which is going to help you solve this problem.
00;03;01;20 – 00;03;23;25
Rebecca Hay
I’ve never offered a boot camp before. Just go to rebecca.com/boot camp. We’re going to dive in over two weeks. We’re going to eradicate these budget clients for you so that you can attract higher end paying clients. So you guys go find that in the show notes. I just want to let you know that ahead of time. But today I just want to get just into it a little bit with you to help you understand.
00;03;23;25 – 00;03;55;22
Rebecca Hay
Is this you and why is this you? So the budget client loop, what I call it is basically interior designers and decorators are unknowingly attracting budget driven clients because their messaging and their offerings and how they show up isn’t a aligned with really what their true unique strengths are. And more specifically, that’s not aligned with your high value clients expectations.
00;03;55;25 – 00;04;21;19
Rebecca Hay
Let me give you an example of this from my own life. When I first left my job as a design assistant to go out on my own, I was working in HGTV. I worked behind the scenes, I worked on several TV shows Property Brothers, Income Property with Scott McGilvery and then a couple other shows. But essentially my experience with that helped shape my understanding of this issue.
00;04;21;19 – 00;04;43;21
Rebecca Hay
It took some time to figure it out. I was working with Scott McGilvery. Love, Scott. Shout out to Scott if he’s listening. And he referred me to someone who worked with him. One of his top C suite executives at his company. Not we’re not affiliated with the TV show. He has a whole other investment company. She was amazing.
00;04;43;24 – 00;05;09;17
Rebecca Hay
And he referred me as, like, Rebecca’s awesome. She’s been with us this season on TV. I mean, I’m assuming this is what he said. Anyhow, you got to reach out to Rebecca because this person who became my client was looking to do a renovation on a budget because, of course, duh, let’s get an HGTV designer because they will absolutely have to be able to do things on a tight budget, because that’s what the TV show was all about.
00;05;09;17 – 00;05;29;17
Rebecca Hay
Right? And we watch these shows and it seems like you can do everything for like a penny and a dime or, I don’t know, I show this expression there. So he referred me to her. She was lovely, like great, amazing human. Everything about her was ideal except the amount she wanted to spend on her projects. Right. Because she was renovating a rental property, which made sense.
00;05;29;22 – 00;05;49;05
Rebecca Hay
I was just on a TV show called Income Property. But then what happened was after that project was finished, she referred me to one of her colleagues, Rebecca’s, the boss. She got to work with Becca. She’s so lovely. Oh, my God, I’m so grateful for the referral. Right. Thank you so much. And at that time, I was just so happy people liked me.
00;05;49;05 – 00;06;09;10
Rebecca Hay
I was just so happy people wanted to hire me to get to do what I love to do. But then at once I would get into it. I would get so frickin frustrated because I wanted to do a built in, but they were like, no, I think a chest of drawers is fine. Or I wanted to do this really beautiful exotic hardwood.
00;06;09;12 – 00;06;31;16
Rebecca Hay
No, we’re just going to do laminate floors. You see where this is going. Right. And so at every step of the way they would push back. When I say they, I refer to all of the clients I had in these early years, all these clients that kept being passed around, I kept being passed around this circle of people, and they all had tight budgets.
00;06;31;18 – 00;07;11;25
Rebecca Hay
And here’s the thing this can happen in a positive way too, right? You can get into a luxury client loop because the reality is, once you serve one person well and they are happy with you, they are going to refer you to their friends and colleagues. Typically, people move in circles with people like them. So if you are working on a $10 million home with very luxurious furnishings and furnishings and all the kit and caboodle, chances are that person has friends that also own $10 million homes.
00;07;11;28 – 00;07;39;28
Rebecca Hay
Or you could be starting out like me, with zero contacts, no $10 million homes, knocking at my door and working with my HGTV referrals where they kept passing me around. Other professionals who had similar income, similar outlooks on life, similar value system and kept going around and around. Now you can be grateful, obviously, to get the work and to know that the people are happy with you to refer you.
00;07;39;28 – 00;08;03;11
Rebecca Hay
But at some point I decided I needed to break free of this budget client loop because it wasn’t fulfilling me. It wasn’t satisfy me. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was a referral of a referral of that very first referral from the TV show, referred me to a house in a part of Toronto that is not fancy, and it was far from where I lived.
00;08;03;11 – 00;08;27;01
Rebecca Hay
I drove all the way out there. I got to the house, the client potential client opened the door and the house was a piece of shit. Like, I have never seen anyone live like this. It was dirty. It was falling apart. It was old, it was messy. And I thought to myself, there is no way these people value nice things.
00;08;27;03 – 00;08;47;18
Rebecca Hay
And I wasn’t wrong because when I did go to do the proposal, they were like, that’s outrageous, we’re not going to pay that. And I didn’t even counter or try to reduce the scope because I was like, nope. This is not a project for me. Now, getting out of that loop can be hard if you don’t know what you’re doing.
00;08;47;21 – 00;09;16;24
Rebecca Hay
The budget clients keep showing up though, because of a few factors one, those are the referrals that you’re getting, and your business might only rely on referrals to. You’re probably not super clear about the unique value that you bring to the table. You are maybe not confidently showing up. Explain what it is that’s unique about you. What specifically do people rave about you doing?
00;09;16;24 – 00;09;47;10
Rebecca Hay
What is your unique design edge? You probably aren’t really talking about that. You’re just happy to get the project and you dive right in. Three you’re not pre-qualifying these clients. You’re probably not really asking the right questions, right? You’re probably not finding out ahead of time. You’re probably also not talking about the money. You got to talk about the money, honey, and you have to talk about it in the phone call before you even go to that messy, falling apart, decrepit house.
00;09;47;13 – 00;10;04;22
Rebecca Hay
Because if I talked about budget upfront on the phone, I never would have made it to the house because they never would have hired me for a consultation, because they would have known that they did not have a realistic expectation about budget. You need to know your numbers and you need to talk about them with the clients. How do we do this?
00;10;04;22 – 00;10;27;12
Rebecca Hay
How do we break free and attract the high end clients? There are so many ways, and this is what I’m diving into inside my bootcamp. So you guys are going to want to definitely sign up for that bootcamp, because I’m going to go into detail, I would ask you to consider what makes you unique as a designer. Why are you valuable?
00;10;27;15 – 00;10;50;27
Rebecca Hay
What is it because you want clients who value what you do. You want clients who see your distinct perspective. You do not want to attract clients who are just happy to have a designer, any designer. And that’s where I was. These were clients who hadn’t looked at my website like, how many of you have been to a consultation?
00;10;51;00 – 00;11;12;04
Rebecca Hay
And you get there and it’s clear they just needed a designer to pick some paint finishes and or, I don’t know, help with the layout and maybe tell them where to shop. And their friend had heard your name, or you did something for a friend. And so they’ve called you. But it turns out they haven’t actually seen your website.
00;11;12;04 – 00;11;28;28
Rebecca Hay
They don’t follow you on Instagram. They’ve no idea what your design esthetic is if you even have one. They really just need a designer to help them execute the project, or they just really want a designer as a personal shopper. Now these services are fine if this is what you love to do, but for me, I didn’t love to do those things.
00;11;28;28 – 00;11;49;05
Rebecca Hay
I didn’t want to do those things. So you need to be super clear about what it is that makes you unique and how you work. All I wanted to do in those early years was full service design, but do you think I want mentioned that? Oh my god, absolutely not. I might scare off clients. That was a shift for me.
00;11;49;07 – 00;12;14;19
Rebecca Hay
So I needed to know what made me unique as a designer. What is it for you and want? You can clarify this. You can transform your business. Once you have a set way that you do things, and you can communicate that to the client and you can pre-qualify the client, you are going to break free of the budget client loop.
00;12;14;21 – 00;12;33;10
Rebecca Hay
So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and I want you to take some time after this episode to just think about it. What do some of your favorite clients compliment you about working with you? What did they say is one of the best parts of working with you? Think about this. Write it down. What do people said to you?
00;12;33;10 – 00;12;55;25
Rebecca Hay
What if they maybe put in an email? What if they told a friend or when they referred someone to you? What does that person said to you? Oh well, my friend Susie worked with you and she said you were. So fill in the blank. And then I want you to answer the second question for yourself, which is which type of people energy is you and what did they value the most?
00;12;55;28 – 00;13;27;23
Rebecca Hay
Because chances are, if people who energize you are going to be your clients, then you’re gonna have a better experience. You’re going to be in alignment. Get clear on who you are, what makes you unique, and you need to communicate that upfront. If you’re ready to do this in a deeper level, and to stop attracting budget clients and start working with clients who, let’s face it, honestly, truly value your expertise and they’re willing to pay for it.
00;13;27;25 – 00;14;04;18
Rebecca Hay
I want to invite you to my very first ever live boot camp for interior designers that is going to help you nail the first three steps in your process to lock in those premium clients with confidence. These three game changing shifts are what made the biggest difference for me in my business. To help me get out of that budget client loop, it’s literally going to help you turn inquiries into dream projects, because you’re probably tired of constantly attracting designers who don’t value your worth, who don’t want to pay the fees.
00;14;04;22 – 00;14;27;25
Rebecca Hay
Maybe they don’t even trust your vision, and they could possibly be nickel and diming you. I don’t know, just a few examples. I’m going to help you get clear on what you need to change at the very beginning of your process to help you attract those premium clients. So head on over to www.rebecca.com/bootcamp. That’s where you’ll find all the information.
00;14;27;25 – 00;14;48;26
Rebecca Hay
I look forward to welcoming you inside my first ever live bootcamp. It’s coming up and we’re going to have a lot of fun together. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I will see you inside the bootcamp.
