Have you ever thought about what makes your interior design business stand out in a crowd?

This shorty is aimed to get you thinking about what makes you unique! I call this finding your core differentiators. You should highlight and celebrate these core differentiators to stand out from the crowd and become immediately distinguishable to your ideal client. Through the episode, I provide a resource, a few examples from my own business, and the one thing you need to ask yourself to figure out what makes you and your business exceptional.

 

Episode Resources

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

Hey, Hey, Hey, it’s Rebecca and you’re listening to resilient by design. Today I’m diving into what makes you unique and different as a designer as a creative. What is it about you and your business that people are going to hire you for? core differentiators. This has been fundamental for me inside my business as part of my teachings inside Power of Process, where I walk designers through exactly how to help them figure that out.

But I’m hoping that today in this quick, shorty episode, I’ve I can at least get the wheels turning and get you thinking about what it is that differentiates you from your competition and makes you stand out. And sometimes I’ll tell you it’s not such a mind-blowing thing. It’s actually pretty easy to figure out identify your core differentiators.

This was something that I first encountered when I read a really great book. It’s called the blue ocean strategy. It’s a bit of a heavy read. So it’s, it’s actually not on my recommended reading list because I had a hard time even getting through it, but the concept behind it is really, really good. The idea is that you need to understand what sets your business apart and then how that is going to propel your marketing efforts to a whole new level.

But the question is, do you know what sets you apart? Like, what is it that sets you and your business apart from the competition? What makes you stand out amongst the crowd? At face value, you might not think there’s anything different, right? You might just think, well, look, I’m designing beautiful homes.

So is Rebecca. So is so and so. So is someone else. But there are subtle nuances that are actually going to make you stand out. The idea behind the book that I mentioned, The Blue Ocean Strategy, is that most businesses are operating in a sea of red, in a red ocean, where the competitors are more or less working in the same way.

And it makes them virtually identical. Indistinguishable to the client, right? They’re like, I don’t know, who do I pick? And as a result, those businesses tend to just compete on service and fees, right? Well, this is my service or, well, I’m cheaper than them. So maybe they’ll hire me or I’m more expensive. So maybe I’ll get higher-end clients.

But the problem with this is. That you’re not standing out. You are stuck in a red ocean of designers. You’re just another one of the crowd versus being in a blue ocean. You know, there’s a great example that they share in the book of Cirque du Soleil, and if you’ve heard of Cirque du Soleil, Canadian shout out, they’re a circus acrobatic circus act that travels around the world now, very famous.

Back in like the eighties, they were a circus and they started to think about, okay, what is it? About the circus that can make us stand out because they’re not going to win and beat the other circuses by selling 10 tickets, right? Taking care of animals, selling concessions. Those tend to be the ways that people are making their money.

So instead they transformed their circus into a dinner theater. They charged a higher ticket price than anyone else in the industry, and they started to attract a new demographic. They are now a totally international sensation. They realized that people would pay more to come for an experience versus the regular traditional, as you’d always known at circuses, that were maybe differentiating themselves by the type of animals, the types of concessions, the colors of the tent, the marketing.

They completely stood out and they found themselves in a blue ocean and they are still supremely successful today. Okay. So how do you figure out what your differentiators are? So I want you to think about one big thing. I was going to say more than that, but this is the one thing I want you to think about.

What is typically done in your industry and what do you do that’s different? For example, I wrote out all the different things that kind of are, I would say the like categories within our industry. So within our industry, there are things like price, right? So how can you be different? So there’s price, there’s timelines, there’s budgets, there’s sustainability, there’s knowledge of products, there’s accreditation, there’s organization, there’s billing structure, right?

All of those things. And then I went through and I determined, okay, of all of these things, of all of these categories, Where does the industry have sort of a muddled, low emphasis? Like, where does the industry think that this is either everyone’s doing it the same way or it’s kind of not important versus where do I value and emphasize it in my business?

And so I went through all of them and I highlighted where I felt that we were exceptional. Within that sea of red. And the areas that I found were four. I found that we were unique and that we offered full, service offering was very specific. I only wanted to offer full service from start to finish.

Whereas most of my competition was offering color consultations. You could do paint, you could do design only, you could do e-design and I was just offering one full service. Another area that I saw was that. Typically in the industry, I had sort of an attitude that was a little bit snooty, a little bit intimidating.

A lot of design firms come across as quite intimidating to the average person in the public. And one thing that I noticed for us is that we’re quite friendly. I’m a friendly person. I have a friendly attitude. We’re very approachable. The third one was that I really wanted to emphasize our process. We have a very streamlined process that at the time a lot of design firms were not doing.

Now there are many more of you because you’ve taken power of process. Shout out to my poppers. But that was something that was really a differentiator for us in that we had a streamlined, organized system for you to follow. We were very, very organized. And then the last pillar that I like to call it was the environment.

At the time when I did this exercise. Really, no one was talking about sustainability. No one was talking about the environment. There were not a lot of fabrics out there. There was even recycled content. Like there wasn’t anything and this was like maybe only five or six years ago. And so I thought about our passion for sustainability.

Well, what that did is I wrote all four of those out on a piece of paper. Those were our pillars. I said to my team, this is how we’re different. We need to highlight and emphasize this On our website, we need to highlight and emphasize this in our client communications, and in our marketing efforts. And that’s exactly what I did.

I started creating YouTube videos. I started talking about sustainable and healthy homes. I really started emphasizing our process. I revamped our website. You need to find your blue ocean. So start with defining the scope of typical products or services that are offered in your industry. Ready? Those categories.

Then two, identify where you believe the average business in your industry lands. Then three, identify where you believe your company stands and stands out. And then look and highlight the areas where you think you feel strongly about it and you know that you’re doing it at a higher level. The point of this is that you’re not going to necessarily be the only one who has a friendly attitude.

But you could emphasize that because it’s true about you and there are not a ton of firms that are talking about that. You might not be the only one. I’m definitely not the only one now talking about sustainability. Is it still a differentiator? Hell yes! The industry at large is not all talking about being sustainable.

I’m also extremely passionate about it. So take the time to think about what are the core differentiators for you in your company and put them on paper because this is going to help your marketing, especially as we roll into the fall and you want to attract a whole new caliber of clientele. I can’t wait to hear how this exercise goes.

Hit me up with a DM and let me know what are your unique differentiators. Please leave us a review on iTunes. Guys, I hope you liked that shorty episode. I’ll see you soon.